The Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering is an undergraduate and graduate-level engineering school offering BS, BA, MEng, MS, MAS and PhD degrees at the University of California, San Diego in San Diego, California.

The first chair of the Department of Aeronautical (later Aerospace) and Mechanical Engineering Sciences (AMES), Sol Penner, recruited numerous experts in their fields from the California Institute of Technology.

The first four faculty members recruited including Penner were Hugh Bradner, Forman A. Williams and Sinai Rand, who were followed by Paul A. Libby and others.

[5][6] Penner would later recollect that "Roger Revelle's dream of building a State University with emphasis on distinguished graduate work had immediate appeal for me because it was consonant with what [he] had become familiar at the California Institute of Technology.

[8] Research achievements in the 1970s included faculty member Hannes Alfvén's receipt of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics and Kenneth Bowles's development of UCSD Pascal.

Six years later, Irwin and Joan Jacobs added to the endowment with a $110 million gift for scholarships, fellowships, and faculty support.

[10] The School of Engineering occupies ten buildings on 20 acres in and around Earl Warren College on the UC San Diego campus.

The primary thoroughfare, Warren Mall, runs from Geisel Library's Snake Path at its western end to EBU 2 at its eastern terminus.

Two new collaborative and learning spaces, the Design and Innovation Building and the Franklin Antonio Hall, were opened in November 2021 and September 2022 respectively.

Tim Hawkinson's 2005 work Bear frames the academic courtyard north of Warren Mall, and in 2012 Do Ho Suh's Fallen Star was mounted slightly askew on top of Jacobs Hall.

Graduate students may obtain MS, MAS, and PhD degrees in the areas of applied and solid mechanics, material sciences, fluid mechanics, energy, thermal sciences, engineering physics, dynamic systems and controls, environmental engineering, biomechanics, and design.

However, its independence from the department predates this split, as the Structural Systems Research group was separately administered beginning in 1993.

[17] Presently, the department has 24 faculty, 517 undergraduates, and 201 graduate students housed in the Structural and Materials Engineering building.

Pisano was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 “for contributions to the design, fabrication, commercialization, and educational aspects of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).”