The University of California, San Diego (also referred to as UC San Diego or UCSD) is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States. The university occupies 2,141 acres (866 ha) near the coast of the Pacific Ocean with the main campus resting on approximately 1,200 acres (490 ha). Additionally, UCSD is considered to be one of the Public Ivies, consistently ranking in top ten lists of best public universities. The school is particularly strong in the Biological Sciences, Social Sciences and Engineering. With its coastal location in La Jolla, California, and with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, UCSD gets top marks for oceanography and the biological sciences. The school has a system of six undergraduate residential colleges modeled after Oxford and Cambridge, and each college has its own curricular focus.

Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the university was first envisioned by Roger Revelle, then director of Scripps, to be a graduate school of science and engineering comparable in quality to Caltech. UC San Diego, the seventh oldest of the ten University of California campuses, offers over 200 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines and enrolls about 23,000 undergraduate and about 5,500 graduate students from the United States and around the world. The university was admitted to the Association of American Universities in 1982.

San Diego /ˌsæn diːˈeɪɡoʊ/ is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the U.S. Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology enclave. The population was 1,301,617 at the 2010 census.

Historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Cabrillo claimed the entire area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later. The Presidio and Mission of San Diego, founded in 1769, were the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of newly independent Mexico, and in 1850, became part of the United States following the Mexican-American War and the admission of California to the union.

Conan Christopher O'Brien (born April 18, 1963) is an American television host, comedian, writer, producer and performer. Since November 2010 he has hosted Conan, a late-night talk show that airs on the American cable television station TBS.

O'Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and raised in an Irish Catholic family. He served as president of the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, and was a writer for the sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News. After writing for several comedy shows in Los Angeles, he joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live, and later of The Simpsons. He hosted Late Night with Conan O'Brien from 1993 to 2009, followed by seven months hosting The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, the only person to serve as the permanent host for both NBC programs.

O'Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston) to Thomas O'Brien, a physician, epidemiologist, and professor of medicine at Harvard, and Ruth O'Brien (née Reardon), an attorney and partner at the Boston firm Ropes & Gray. He is the third of six children. O'Brien's family is Irish Catholic and descends from pre-Civil War era immigrants. In a Late Night episode, O'Brien paid a visit to County Kerry, Ireland, where his ancestors originated.