Alexandra Bodrova Receives 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award
05-21-19
Mechanical engineering student Alexandra Bodrova, advised by Professor Joel Burdick, is a recipient of the 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. She is passionate about robotics autonomy and its applications to extreme condition situation handling where human lives might be in danger. This summer she will be doing research on an automated charging battery. It would aid drones in conducting rescue missions in collapsed buildings or tunnels. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.
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MCE
Henry Ford II Scholar Award
Joel Burdick
Alexandra Bodrova
Professor Beck Receives Masanobu Shinozuka Medal
05-06-19
James L. (Jim) Beck, George W. Housner Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, has received the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Masanobu Shinozuka Medal, "for his original contributions to subset simulation in reliability analysis of stochastic systems, a powerful technique that allows probabilistic estimation of rare events; for his pioneering work in developing technologies for machine learning in earthquake engineering applications." The medal is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of stochastic mechanics, reliability and risk and simulation. [List of medal recipients]
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James Beck
Undergraduate Students Win International Data Science Competition
04-19-19
Undergraduate students Hongsen Qin, Emma Qian, Thomas Hoffmann, and Alexander Zlokapa (advised by Professors Aaron Ames, Erik Winfree, Jonathan Katz, Maria Spiropulu, and Yaser Abu-Mostafa) have won the Citadel Data Open International Data Science Competition. This winning team chose to investigate the optimal way to spend $1 billion to save lives from malaria and sanitation-related diseases, allocating funds for different prevention methods and optimizing budget breakdowns country by country. To quantify the socioeconomic impacts of their policy proposal, they modeled a variety of aspects from mosquito feeding cycles to climate change using techniques ranging from causal discovery methods to interpretable machine learning. The Caltech team was among 24 teams that were evaluated and questioned by a panel of experts including the former Chief Scientist of AI at Microsoft, a Princeton professor, and the chief of equities at Citadel. The Caltech team was chosen as the first place winner based on the depth, rigor, and comprehensiveness of their analysis.
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CMS
Erik Winfree
Yaser Abu-Mostafa
Aaron Ames
Hongsen Qin
Emma Qian
Thomas Hoffmann
Alexander Zlokapa
Joel A. Tropp Named 2019 SIAM Fellow
04-03-19
Joel A. Tropp, Steele Family Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics has been elected to the 2019 class of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) fellows. He was nominated for his exemplary research as well as outstanding service to the community. He is being recognized for contributions to signal processing, data analysis and randomized linear algebra.
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Joel Tropp
Professor Hunt Named 2019 SURF Dedicatee
03-11-19
Melany Hunt, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been honored as the 2019 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program dedicatee. The SURF Administrative Committee selects the dedicatee based on their record of extraordinary impact to the program, Caltech students, and the Institute. In the words of Professor Katherine Faber, SURF Board Member who introduced this year’s dedicatee, “Professor Melany Hunt fits the bill in all three of these categories. She has mentored over 50 SURF students since 1991. In the classroom, she has twice received the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology (ASCIT) award for excellence in teaching. She has inspired students in courses on Thermal Science, Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transport and Multidisciplinary Systems Engineering.” In regard to Professor Hunt’s extraordinary impact on Caltech Professor Faber mentioned the Giving Voice program which uses recorded vignettes to “guide discussions on unconscious bias and provides concrete suggestions on how to start workplace climate conversations.” [Giving Voice] [SURF Program]
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SURF
Melany Hunt
Katherine Faber