01-02-08
Professor of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering Sossina Haile, creator of the first solid-acid fuel cell, is profiled in Newsweek. Soild-acid fuel cells operation at much lower temperatures than conventional fuel cells. Early this year, the start-up company Superprotonic—founded by two of her former grad students—will ship the first commercial prototypes to energy-systems makers. [Caltech Press Release]
12-07-07
A ground-breaking ceremony for the new Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology was held on Friday, December 7, 2007. Wallis Annenberg delivered these remarks: click here to read.
Tags: Caltech infrastructure
11-29-07
CS undergraduate Kevin Dick has been selected as a winner of the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2008. This award recognizes the top undergraduate students in North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Kevin was recognized for his achievements on several summer research projects (algorithms that take advantage of hardware prefetching; approximation factors for problems related to DNF minimization), coauthoring a conference publication, and maintaining an outstanding academic record.
11-29-07
The AT&T Tech Channel discusses Plasmonics with Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science. New research in Plasmonics promises breakthroughs with implications ranging from the creation of faster than light computing, possible new weapons against cancer, and maybe even achieving invisibility. [Video]
11-29-07
Building on six years of record-breaking developments, an international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by Caltech joined forces to set new records for sustained data transfer among storage systems during the SuperComputing 2007 (SC07) conference. By combining FDT with FAST TCP, developed by Professor Steven Low, together with an optimized Linux kernel known as the "UltraLight kernel," the team reached an unprecedented throughput level of 10 gigabytes/sec with a single rack of servers, limited only by the speed of the disk systems. [Caltech Press Release]
Tags: research highlights CMS Steven Low
11-21-07
Wood is made of three tightly intertwined compounds; taking it apart is a challenge, and termites are among the few known animals that can do it. Professor Jared Leadbetter led a team of researchers from other universities, private industry, and the Department of Energy (DOE) in uncovering the genetic underpinnings and the roles of bacteria in wood digestion by "higher termites." These insects abound in tropical and subtropical ecosystems. What the team found, says Leadbetter, is "a comprehensive set of blueprints for the bacteria that help dismantle wood." This has recently become a focus of interest for those interested in developing an effective, industrial method to convert wood into ethanol. [Caltech Press Release]
11-11-07
Caltech undergraduates Euiwoong Lee (class of '09), Seungwoo Shin (class of '10), and Ben Zax (class of '10) have won the ACM Southern California Regional Programming Contest. Coached by Donnie Pinkston, the team was the only team to solve all six problems of the challenge. Caltech has won the regionals for the last 6 years straight - and eight years out of the last nine. Kudos programmers!
Tags: CMS Euiwoong Lee Seungwoo Shin Ben Zax
11-11-07
Full video presentation of the Fifty Years in Space Conference held at Caltech is now available: click here for details.
Tags: GALCIT EAS history
10-01-07
In October, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Council elected Paul Dimotakis as a Fellow of AAAS. He will be recognized for his many contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum to be held on 16 February 2008 during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.
Tags: APhMS honors GALCIT Paul Dimotakis
06-01-07
Ares Rosakis has received the 2007 D. R. Harting Award, from the Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) for the "Best Paper" published in Experimental Techniques. The title of the paper is "Supershear and Sub-Rayleigh to Supershear Transition Observed in Laboratory Earthquake Experiments". Rosakis and his co-authors, Dr. Kaiwan Xia and Professor Hiroo Kanamori received this award in June 2007 at the SEM Annual Conference, Springfield, MA.
