Annenberg Center Ground Breaking
04-24-08
The topping off of the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology occurred on April 24. The last girder, with the flag and a tree, was hoisted and placed. The building, designed by the architectural firm Frederick Fisher and Partners in Los Angeles, will serve as home to participants in the IST initiative, a program of interdisciplinary research and instruction that addresses the growth and impact of information as it relates to all science and engineering practices. The types of questions that IST researchers seek to answer are: What are the theoretical foundations of information? What are the fundamental physical limits to information? How does nature compute and communicate information? How does information shape social systems? The Annenberg Foundation donated $25 million toward the construction of the approximately 50,000-square-foot building. Caltech Trustee, Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., donated $1 million in support of the final stages of construction. [Caltech Press Release]
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CMS
Caltech infrastructure
New Center to Study the Global Environment
04-15-08
To address the complex issue of global climate change from a wide range of disciplines, Ronald and Maxine Linde have established an $18 million endowment for the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, uniting faculty from chemistry, engineering, geology, environmental science, and other fields. The initiative will help Caltech achieve its vision of having an integrated program in global environmental science, spanning the many disciplines that must make up such a program. Edward Stolper, Caltech's provost, explains that the Linde Center "will provide a central home and focus for researchers and students working on understanding natural variations in and the impact of human activity on the global environment. These are among the most important and most difficult problems facing our society." [Caltech Press Release]
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ESE
A New Take on Microbrewing
04-09-08
David Boyd, Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, graduate student James Adleman, Demitri Psaltis, Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, and David Goodwin, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics, have crafted the world's tiniest still to concentrate scant amounts of micromolecules for easier detection. This device may help to overcome difficulties in tracking extremely low-abundance molecular biomarkers, which can indicate disease. [Caltech Press Release]
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APhMS
research highlights
MCE
David Boyd
New Rosen Bioengineering Center Funded
04-03-08
Seeing a burgeoning new research field at the interface of biology and engineering, the Benjamin M. Rosen Family Foundation of New York has donated $18 million to the California Institute of Technology to establish the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center. The Rosen Center will advance both basic scientific exploration and development of engineering analysis and synthetic approaches. Innovations in these areas are resulting in rugged and inexpensive diagnostic devices, in new insights into the functioning of the heart, and in the engineering of molecular devices capable of recognizing and responding to disease processes in individual cells. [Caltech Press Release]
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health
