Every department, every lab, every idea — explored through a community of faith. DISCOVER is your map to academic life at UC San Diego: a Watch Altars ambassador in every major, research and tech you can join today, the journals worth reading, and a marketplace built by students for students.
“In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” — Colossians 2:3
UC San Diego · Triton communityDepartments & majors represented
Student ambassadors & leaders
Research & tech groups active
Tritons in the DISCOVER network
From Jacobs Engineering to Revelle's humanities, every UC San Diego department has a Watch Altars ambassador who hosts gatherings, connects newcomers, and builds community where you already study.
Featured department
Where late-night labs meet weekly prayer. Our engineering ambassadors run study halls before midterms, a Friday "Faith & Design" circle, and a mentorship chain pairing freshmen with seniors.
Daniel Kim
4th yr · Mechanical Eng. · Ambassador
Weekly gatherings
Activities / mo
Students
BiologyMaya Reyes
3rd yr · Ambassador
Computer ScienceAaron Tran
4th yr · Ambassador
PsychologySophia Park
2nd yr · Ambassador
EconomicsJames Cole
3rd yr · Ambassador
PhysicsElena Novak
4th yr · Ambassador
Hannah Lee
Ambassador · 70+ community
Activities: lab-prayer partners · Gatherings: Thu commons
Ravi Bhatt
Ambassador · 55+ community
Activities: proof & prayer · Gatherings: Tue tea
Grace Adeyemi
Ambassador · 82+ community
Activities: justice & faith forums · Gatherings: Wed debate
Clara West
Ambassador · 48+ community
Activities: poetry & psalms · Gatherings: Mon reading room
David Osei
Ambassador · 64+ community
Activities: mind & soul lab · Gatherings: Thu seminar
Nina Khan
Ambassador · 73+ community
Activities: ethics in biotech · Gatherings: Fri makerspace
Every UC San Diego department has an ambassador. 120+ majors, six divisions — scrolling live across campus right now.
Faith and rigorous scholarship belong together. From PI labs and undergraduate grants to peer tutoring, study abroad, and grad-school prep — this is a living engine of opportunity, refreshing in real time.
indexing open opportunities…
Lab placements / yr
Active study circles
Grants awarded
Mentor matches
Partner countries
Ambassadors broker placements across Jacobs Engineering, Scripps Oceanography, the School of Biological Sciences, and the medical campus — bench science, computation, fieldwork, and clinical research, with someone walking beside you.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord.” — Colossians 3:23
Sixty-four department study circles meet weekly — organic chemistry, multivariable calc, data structures, econometrics, writing — led by students who have walked the road and want you to make it too.
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” — Proverbs 27:17
Our matching engine pairs you with a faculty fellow or senior peer in your field — for research direction, course planning, and the deeper questions about vocation, faith, and the life you're building.
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” — Proverbs 15:22
Triton Research micro-grants, conference travel stipends, and project seed funding — over $180k awarded to student-led research that serves the community and pushes a real question forward.
“Each should give what they have decided in their heart to give.” — 2 Corinthians 9:7
From the annual DISCOVER Undergraduate Symposium to national conferences, we prep your abstract, sponsor your travel, and stand in the room while you present your first paper.
“Let your light shine before others.” — Matthew 5:16
Hands-on workshops on research methods, statistics in R & Python, scientific writing, LaTeX, lit review, and reproducible science — taught by grad students and faculty, free to every Triton.
“Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.” — Proverbs 23:12
Drop-in tutoring for the courses that weed people out — orgo, multivar, physics, CSE 12, econometrics. No cost, no judgment, just a peer who'll sit with you until it clicks.
“Carry each other's burdens.” — Galatians 6:2
Exchange terms and field schools across 42 countries — Oxford summer seminars, marine research in the Pacific, language immersion, and global-health practicums, with a sending community behind you.
“Go therefore into all the world.” — Mark 16:15
A growing network of placements — biotech in Torrey Pines, software in the Bay, policy in DC, and on-campus labs — plus resume clinics, mock interviews, and alumni referrals that actually open doors.
“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” — Proverbs 16:3
Application bootcamps, personal-statement workshops, GRE/MCAT study cohorts, recommendation strategy, and mock admissions panels — so the next step is a door you walk through, not a wall you hit.
“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance.” — Proverbs 21:5
Neuroscience
3 open
PI: Dr. Whitfield · Cognitive Neuroscience
fMRI & EEG studies on attention and memory. Undergrad RAs run preprocessing pipelines and join weekly journal club.
Wed 4pm · CNCB
Scripps Ocean
2 open
PI: Dr. Navarro · Marine Biology
Field sampling off La Jolla plus genomic analysis of reef resilience. Boat days twice a month, no experience required.
Fri 9am · SIO
CSE
5 open
PI: Dr. Aronsson · ML & Vision
Vision models for assistive tech and medical imaging. Strong Python a plus; mentorship for first-time researchers.
Thu 6pm · CSE
Chem & Biochem
4 open
PI: Dr. Osei · Organic Chemistry
Designing catalysts for greener synthesis. Bench training provided; great prep for the MCAT and grad school.
Tue 3pm · Pacific Hall
Economics
2 open
PI: Dr. Castellano · Applied Micro
Causal inference on poverty & education policy. Learn Stata/R and contribute to a working paper this year.
Mon 5pm · Econ
Bioengineering
6 open
PI: Dr. Lindqvist · Regenerative Med
Building scaffolds for cardiac tissue. Wet-lab + CAD work, paired with the Faith & Bioethics reading circle.
Fri 2pm · Franklin AntonioMechanisms, problem sets & exam jams. York Hall 3000.
39 / 50 seats · led by Maya R.
Vector fields, surface integrals, whiteboard drills.
31 / 50 seats · led by Daniel K.
Trees, graphs & PA debugging. CSE basement labs.
44 / 50 seats · led by Marcus L.
Full-length reviews, CARS practice & prayer before exams.
28 / 40 seats · led by Amara O.
Argument, structure & voice. Peer review every week.
22 / 40 seats · led by Helen C.
Regression, R labs & problem sets. Econ commons.
18 / 40 seats · led by Priya N.
Jordan S.
2nd yr · Bioengineering
SEEKING MENTORDr. Whitfield
Faculty Fellow · Neuro
MATCH FOUNDTONIGHT · 6PM
Orgo exam-jam · York Hall
WED · 4PM
Kavli lab info session
FRI · 5PM
Research grant deadline
MAY · ALL DAY
DISCOVER Undergrad Symposium
“I walked into the Machine Perception Lab as a sophomore who'd never written a line of research code. Two years later I'm first author on a paper and headed to a PhD at Stanford.”
Sarah Kim
CSE '25 · PhD-bound, Stanford AI Lab · former ML Lab RA
“The MCAT cohort and a $4k research grant got me into three med schools. But it was the prayer before each exam that kept me steady.”
Tobi Okonkwo
Human Biology '24 · UCSF School of Medicine
“A study-abroad term in Oxford turned into a published essay and a Fulbright. DISCOVER funded the flight and believed in me first.”
Lena Müller
Literature/Writing '24 · Fulbright Scholar, UK
Our tech frontier console cycles continuously through the fields shaping tomorrow — AI, biotech, quantum, robotics, space and clean energy. Each one carries real Triton projects, weekly builds, and honest questions about how to build well.
scanning frontier fields…
Our AI & Ethics Lab ships a working project every quarter — agents, vision models, RAG tools — while wrestling weekly with stewardship, bias, and what it means to make in the image of a Maker.
Bioengineering ambassadors run a bioinformatics circle and an ethics-in-biotech forum — analyzing real datasets, debating gene-editing, and asking where the line between healing and remaking should be.
Physics & CS students co-host a quantum reading group — Qiskit notebooks, Shor's algorithm, and late-night wonder at a creation stranger and more ordered than intuition allows.
From combat-bot builds to assistive-robotics for the disability community, the Triton Robotics crew engineers hardware that meets real human need — design reviews paired with Friday "Faith & Design".
Our space team designs CubeSat payloads and rocketry experiments with SIO and aerospace mentors — building instruments that look outward, and a community that looks upward.
The Climate & Energy guild prototypes solar, battery, and grid projects — treating creation-care as discipleship and engineering as a way to love our neighbors downstream.
Weekly builds + a discussion on responsible AI. Ship a project by quarter's end with a mentor on every team.
Thu 7pm · CSE building
36-hour faith-grounded build weekends with mentors, meals, and prizes — across every frontier field above.
Next: Spring quarter
Founders & researchers share what's next — and the human questions that come with it. Open to all majors.
Monthly · Price Center
A living circle of thinkers who take both faith and reason seriously — debates running this week, reading salons in motion, and visiting scholars in conversation with students.
connecting to the forum…
Visiting Scholar · Cognitive Science & Faith
“To ask what a mind is, is finally to ask what a person is — and that is holy ground.”
Leads our flagship Forum on consciousness, AI, and the soul. Her seminar pairs hard cognitive science with the oldest questions about personhood and the image of God.
Faculty Fellow · Physics & Natural Theology
“The heavens are not silent. The deeper we look, the louder the order sings.”
Hosts the “Fine-Tuning & the Cosmos” debate series — walking through inflation, multiverse arguments, and the design inference with rigor and honesty.
Doctoral Researcher · Justice & Markets
“Economics without ethics is just accounting for who gets left behind.”
Convenes the Common Good salon — reading Smith, Sen, and the prophets together to ask how markets can serve neighbors rather than consume them.
Research Lead · Responsible AI Lab
“We are building minds before we have agreed what a mind is for.”
Moderates “Can a machine be conscious?” — the most-attended debate of the term, bridging transformer internals with theology of personhood.
Visiting Thinker · Genome Ethics
“The question is never only ‘can we?’ It is always ‘who will it cost, and who decides?’”
Frames the gene-editing forums — CRISPR case studies, disability advocates, and the line between healing and remaking human nature.
Chaplain Scholar · Great Books Salon
“Every generation thinks its questions are new. The library says otherwise.”
Curates the Great Books reading salon — Augustine to Dostoevsky to Weil — close reading over coffee, every week, all majors welcome.
Civil, refereed debates on the biggest questions — science, ethics, meaning. Two positions, one moderator, real disagreement held with charity.
Wed & Thu 7pm · rotating halls
Close, slow reading of classic and modern texts over coffee — Augustine to Dostoevsky to Simone Weil. No prior reading required, just curiosity.
Sun 4pm · Geisel Library hub
Scholars, authors and founders in unscripted conversation with students each term — followed by open Q&A and a late dinner table.
Monthly · Price Center theater
From biology to economics to data science — a continuously refreshing feed of the papers, preprints and essays shaping each discipline, curated by our department ambassadors and read through a lens of faith.
syncing the research wire…
Editor's pickdoi:10.1038/s41586-026-08412-xBy M. Reyes, A. Fournier, L. Okonkwo & the Triton Genomics Circle
A self-limiting daisy-chain drive suppresses malaria-vector mosquitoes in caged field trials without spreading beyond the target population — a step toward responsible ecological gene editing, debated weekly in our bioethics forum.
TrendingarXiv:2606.01934 [cs.LG]By A. Tran, R. Mehta & the AI & Ethics Lab
A hierarchical routing scheme lets transformers attend across million-token contexts on a single GPU. The team pairs the engineering with an honest chapter on compute, access, and who benefits from ever-larger models.
Featureddoi:10.1103/PhysRevX.16.021004By E. Novak, D. Osei-Bonsu & the Quantum Reading Group
Reconfigurable atom arrays reach below-threshold logical error rates, a milestone for fault-tolerant computing — discussed alongside late-night wonder at a creation stranger and more ordered than intuition allows.
Editor's pickdoi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.05.018By D. Osei, S. Park & the Mind & Soul Lab
High-density recordings link slow-wave sleep to replay in the default network, reshaping how we think about rest, formation and the embodied mind — a recurring theme in our faith-and-neuroscience seminar.
Creation caredoi:10.1073/pnas.2606123126By N. Khan, the SIO Climate & Energy Guild
Seagrass and mangrove restoration sequester carbon for centuries at scale. The authors treat stewardship of creation as discipleship — engineering that loves our neighbors downstream.
Common gooddoi:10.1093/qje/qjae041By A. Okafor, J. Cole & the Common Good Salon
A field-experiment on cooperative norms shows how shared moral commitments out-perform pure incentives in sustaining public goods — read together with Smith, Sen, and the prophets.
Trendingdoi:10.1038/s41551-026-01177-1By N. Khan, the Bioeng Makerspace team
A microfluidic liver-on-chip predicts human toxicity better than animal models, reducing harm in early trials — built with weekly questions about where healing ends and remaking begins.
Our journalTriton Review · Vol. 9, Spring 2026By Triton Review editorial board · student-run & peer-reviewed
Our own quarterly: undergraduate essays at the intersection of faith, science and culture. This issue gathers fourteen pieces across eleven departments, each reviewed by a faculty fellow.
Gene-drive containment in wild Anopheles populations
M. Reyes, A. Fournier · +3
A self-limiting daisy-chain drive suppresses malaria vectors without spreading beyond the target population.
Earth-abundant catalysts for green hydrogen evolution
H. Lee, P. Andersson
Nickel-iron frameworks rival platinum for electrolysis at a fraction of the cost and toxicity.
Surface-code thresholds on neutral-atom qubit arrays
E. Novak, D. Osei-Bonsu
Reconfigurable atom arrays reach below-threshold logical error rates — a fault-tolerance milestone.
Sparse attention at million-token scale, constant memory
A. Tran, R. Mehta
Hierarchical routing lets transformers attend across million-token contexts on a single GPU.
Soft-actuator exosuits for assistive mobility
D. Kim, Triton Robotics
A lightweight pneumatic exosuit restores gait for stroke survivors at a tenth of rigid-frame cost.
Gratitude practice & resilience under academic stress
S. Park, C. West
A randomized trial links weekly gratitude journaling to lower burnout across an exam term.
Markets, morality & the commons, revisited
A. Okafor, J. Cole
Shared moral commitments out-perform pure incentives in sustaining public goods.
Gene-drive containment in wild Anopheles populations
M. Reyes, A. Fournier · +3
A self-limiting daisy-chain drive suppresses malaria vectors without spreading beyond the target population.
Earth-abundant catalysts for green hydrogen evolution
H. Lee, P. Andersson
Nickel-iron frameworks rival platinum for electrolysis at a fraction of the cost and toxicity.
Surface-code thresholds on neutral-atom qubit arrays
E. Novak, D. Osei-Bonsu
Reconfigurable atom arrays reach below-threshold logical error rates — a fault-tolerance milestone.
Sparse attention at million-token scale, constant memory
A. Tran, R. Mehta
Hierarchical routing lets transformers attend across million-token contexts on a single GPU.
Soft-actuator exosuits for assistive mobility
D. Kim, Triton Robotics
A lightweight pneumatic exosuit restores gait for stroke survivors at a tenth of rigid-frame cost.
Gratitude practice & resilience under academic stress
S. Park, C. West
A randomized trial links weekly gratitude journaling to lower burnout across an exam term.
Markets, morality & the commons, revisited
A. Okafor, J. Cole
Shared moral commitments out-perform pure incentives in sustaining public goods.
Deliberative assemblies & the common good
G. Adeyemi, M. Sandel (vis.)
Citizen panels reach more durable consensus than referenda on contested moral questions.
Lament & consolation in the late novels of Dostoevsky
C. West, T. Whitfield
A close reading of suffering, freedom and grace across Karamazov and the notebooks.
Sharp bounds for sparse recovery in high dimensions
R. Bhatt, L. Zhou
New phase-transition thresholds for compressed sensing under structured noise.
Sleep, memory consolidation & the default network
D. Osei, S. Park
High-density recordings link slow-wave sleep to replay in the default-mode network.
A vascularized liver-on-chip for safer drug screening
N. Khan, bioeng team
Microfluidic tissue predicts human toxicity better than animal models in early trials.
Coastal blue-carbon as a durable climate sink
SIO Climate Guild
Seagrass and mangrove restoration sequesters carbon for centuries at scale.
Causal inference under distribution shift
L. Zhou, A. Tran
Invariant-risk estimators stay calibrated when deployment data drifts from training.
Deliberative assemblies & the common good
G. Adeyemi, M. Sandel (vis.)
Citizen panels reach more durable consensus than referenda on contested moral questions.
Lament & consolation in the late novels of Dostoevsky
C. West, T. Whitfield
A close reading of suffering, freedom and grace across Karamazov and the notebooks.
Sharp bounds for sparse recovery in high dimensions
R. Bhatt, L. Zhou
New phase-transition thresholds for compressed sensing under structured noise.
Sleep, memory consolidation & the default network
D. Osei, S. Park
High-density recordings link slow-wave sleep to replay in the default-mode network.
A vascularized liver-on-chip for safer drug screening
N. Khan, bioeng team
Microfluidic tissue predicts human toxicity better than animal models in early trials.
Coastal blue-carbon as a durable climate sink
SIO Climate Guild
Seagrass and mangrove restoration sequesters carbon for centuries at scale.
Causal inference under distribution shift
L. Zhou, A. Tran
Invariant-risk estimators stay calibrated when deployment data drifts from training.
Papers curated/yr
Fields tracked
Triton Review vols
Ambassador editors
Our journalThe Triton ReviewEngineering to literature, biology to economics — a continuously refreshed shelf, a featured pick every day, week and month, and book clubs you can walk into this week.
Francis Collins · 304 pp
The head of the Human Genome Project on why rigorous science and belief in God belong in the same mind — a landmark for every STEM student.
Douglas Hofstadter · 777 pp
A Pulitzer-winning meditation on minds, machines, recursion and meaning — the perfect bridge between math, music and the mystery of consciousness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 824 pp
Faith, doubt, freedom and guilt wrestled out across three brothers. Our whole-community read this month, with weekly salons in Geisel.
Each meets weekly with snacks, a discussion guide, and zero pressure to have finished the chapter. Walk in, listen, belong.
Clubs
Readers
Books/yr
Now reading The Language of God · 48 readers
Now reading Karamazov · 70 readers
Now reading The Tech-Wise Family · 55 readers
Now reading Mere Christianity · 64 readers
A complete launchpad to excel in your workplace and industry — pairing deep expertise with living faith. Career building, real industry connections, company partnerships, ventures, mentorship and skills, all in one trusted Triton community.
SponsoredReal briefs from real companies. Solve a sponsored challenge, get paid, and convert your work into an internship or pipeline offer. Current sponsors span Qualcomm, Illumina, Salesforce and more.
"The career studio rewrote my whole approach. I walked into Illumina interviews grounded in my calling — and walked out with an offer."
Sarah Kim
Bioengineering '25 · Illumina
"The venture studio gave us a $10k grant and a praying cohort. We shipped, we raised, and we never compromised who we are."
Marcus Johnson
CS '24 · Founder, Lumen Labs
"My mentor met me monthly for a year. When I hit an ethics crossroads at work, I already knew who I wanted to be."
Ana Patel
Economics '25 · Deloitte
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