Recent News
Cal Poly to Celebrate Grand Opening of New Oppenheimer Family Equine Center June 1
May 31, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — A grand opening celebration will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, June 1, to celebrate the completion of the first phase of the Oppenheimer Family Equine Center at Cal Poly.
The now-complete 60,000-square-foot covered riding area, foaling barn, stallion barn and hay barn at the northern end of Cal Poly’s campus was funded by the $20 million donation made to the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences from longtime Cal Poly supporters Peter and Mary Beth Oppenheimer.
Cal Poly Engineering Students Take Top Three Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards
May 24, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Students at Cal Poly’s College of Engineering took the top three honors and shared $30,000 in this year’s Innovation Quest, an annual competition that encourages innovators to pursue their ideas by providing award money that can be used to launch businesses.
The competition, sponsored by Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), was held April 28 at the San Luis Obispo Country Club.
Civil Rights Activist DeRay Mckesson to Speak at Take Back the Night Event May 29 at Cal Poly
May 23, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist focused primarily on issues of innovation, equity and justice, will be the keynote speaker at Cal Poly’s annual Take Back the Night event at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 29, in the University Union Plaza.
Take Back the Night is an international event with the mission of ending sexual violence. Cal Poly’s event, organized by the university’s Safer office, will focus on the intersections of race and gender-based violence. It will consist of speakers, an open microphone, march on campus, a campus and community programs resource fair, and a candlelight vigil.
Cal Poly Project Expo on June 1 to Highlight Student Work Benefitting the Disabled, Disaster-Stricken, and More
May 21, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — A motorized surfboard for disabled surfers and a solar power generator that can be air-dropped into disaster areas are just two of the beneficial student creations that will be featured at this year’s College of Engineering Project Expo on campus June 1.
The expo, which will be held at the Engineering Plaza between noon and 3 p.m., will feature more than 200 individual and team senior projects, along with several club projects. A highly visual representation of Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy, the expo features a variety of projects that can have an immediate impact.
Cal Poly Announces SLO HotHouse Summer Accelerator Program’s 2018 Cohort
May 21, 2018
Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) has accepted eight startup companies into this year’s SLO HotHouse Summer Accelerator program.
The intense 13-week program is designed for students and recent graduates who have developed new ventures that need funding and CIE resources to help launch their companies.
The program provides $10,000 in capital, plus hands-on strategic business guidance from faculty and mentors, weekly programming and dedicated office space in the SLO HotHouse. Companies receive training, introductions to investors, and resources to help move their startups forward. At the end of the program, participants will have an opportunity to pitch their ideas to investors during Demo Day, to be held in September.
Cal Poly Names Adriana Popescu Dean of Library Services
May 18, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Cal Poly has named Adriana Popescu as its new dean of library services effective June 1, Provost Kathleen Enz Finken announced today.
Popescu will be responsible for the direction, development, implementation and evaluation of all aspects of library services and programs to meet the scholarly and intellectual needs of the university community. She was appointed dean following a nationwide search.
She joined Kennedy Library in 2015 as the associate dean for academic services and has filled the dean’s role on an interim basis since 2016, overseeing an annual budget of more than $7 million and about 50 faculty and staff members.
Cal Poly Men and Masculinity Program to Host Manifest Exhibit May 22-25
May 17, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Cal Poly’s Men and Masculinity program will host its annual Manifest exhibit from May 22 through 25 at the University Art Gallery. An opening reception is scheduled for 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 22.
The exhibit aims to create an engaging and dynamic space for people to think about, talk about and participate in shaping individuals’ thoughts about men and masculinity. This year’s exhibition theme is “Masculinity: Art from Dark to Light,” which seeks to capture the wide range of experiences and perceptions of masculinity.
Jupyter Collaboration Led by Cal Poly and UC Berkeley Receives Top Software Award
May 17, 2018
Software is the go-to tool for authoring and sharing code for computational research, data science and AI
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Project Jupyter may be the best-kept secret on the Cal Poly campus, but the open-source software is well-known at such tech giants as Microsoft, Google and IBM, which have created entire commercial data science platforms based on it.
Led by Cal Poly physics Professor Brian Granger and Fernando Pérez of UC Berkeley, the international team that developed Jupyter received the 2018 Software System Award from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest society of educational and academic computer scientists. Past award recipients include the inventors of the World Wide Web, TCP/IP networking, the UNIX operating system and the Java programming language.
Cal Poly Students Earn Four Awards at Statewide Research Competition
May 15, 2018
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Four Cal Poly students received awards — including three who earned first-place honors— at the 32nd annual California State University Student Research Competition held May 4-5 at Sacramento State University.
The competition promoted excellence in scholarly research and creative activity by recognizing outstanding student accomplishments throughout the CSU — the nation’s largest four-year public university system, with nearly 485,000 students. Forty-one individuals received either a first- or second-place award in 21 categories. They shared $15,500 in prizes; $500 for first-place awards and $250 for seconds.
Cal Poly Scholars Program to Receive $80,000 Gift From Amazon
May 15, 2018
Four-year scholarships will benefit students in computer science or software engineering
SAN LUIS OBISPO — Cal Poly today announced that Amazon has pledged $80,000 to the university in support of high-achieving students in the Cal Poly Scholars Program.
The donation will support eight Cal Poly Scholars majoring in computer science or software engineering for four years, starting in fall 2018.
The universitywide Cal Poly Scholars Program was established by President Jeffrey D. Armstrong in 2012 to recruit and retain qualified California students.