02-16-21
Wei Gao, Assistant Professor of Medical Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry for 2021. Recipients represent the most promising scientific researchers working today. Their achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders. [Past Fellows] [Caltech story]
02-11-21
Graduate student Brit Wylie has been awarded a Matthew Isakowitz fellowship. The Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program is a highly selective internship, mentorship, and networking program that provides extraordinary summer opportunities to current college juniors, seniors, and graduate students passionate about commercial spaceflight. Brit is excited to work on commercial space accessibility with Rocket Lab and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program this summer. [2021 Recipients]
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Brit Wylie
02-09-21
Yu-Chong Tai, Anna L. Rosen Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering; Andrew and Peggy Cherng Medical Engineering Leadership Chair; Executive Officer for Medical Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Professor Tai was elected for "contributions to microelectromechanical system technologies and parylene-based biomedical microdevices." Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education." [NAE release] [Caltech story]
Tags: EE honors MedE Yu-Chong Tai MCE
02-05-21
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced Caltech to shift to a model of remote learning, Adam Blank, Teaching Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, focused their research on new technologies and techniques with the potential to improve student comprehension and the quality of education. Blank concentrated on making classes work remotely and helping students overcome the issues inherent in being away from campus. "The biggest thing is that I am unafraid to use a new tool, see it fail, and switch to another new tool," Blank says. "I adapted quickly—I think it's the way that I would put it—because I am used to trying new technologies all over the place and seeing what works and what doesn't." [Caltech story]
Tags: CMS teaching Adam Blank
02-01-21
Materials science undergraduate student Abigail Jiang is the winner of the Doris S. Perpall Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) Speaking Competition. She was recognized as the best speaker out of 200 students who presented their SURF research. Abigail's SURF project was entitled, “Developing Physical Lab Infrastructure for Thin Film Material Growth and Evaluation." Robert C. Perpall, a Caltech mechanical engineering alumnus and past member of the SURF Board, created the Doris S. Perpall SURF speaking prize in 1993 as an incentive for Caltech students to give excellent oral presentations. [View Presentations]
Tags: APhMS honors Abigail Jiang
01-25-21
Researchers from Caltech and NTT Research are collaborating to develop a high-speed Coherent Ising Machine (CIM). A CIM is a network of optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) programmed to solve problems that have been mapped to an Ising model, which is a mathematical abstraction of magnetic systems composed of competitively interacting spins, or angular momentums of fundamental particles. The principal investigator at Caltech for this four-and-a-half-year joint project is Kerry Vahala, Ted and Ginger Jenkins Professor of Information Science and Technology and Applied Physics; Executive Officer for Applied Physics and Materials Science. “We are delighted at the prospect of working with Professor Vahala to develop an extremely small and high-speed CIM,” said NTT Research PHI Lab Director, Yoshihisa Yamamoto. “This work will advance our understanding of the CIM’s capabilities, map well with ongoing and related work with other institutions, provide new demonstrations of this awesomely powerful new information system and, we hope, set standards for the CIM’s speed and size.” [NTT Research story] [Business Wire story]
01-20-21
Graduate student Yashwanth Nakka, working with Soon-Jo Chung, Bren Professor of Aerospace; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Research Scientist, and colleagues have won the Best Graduate Student Paper award at the 2021 AIAA SciTech Forum in the area of Guidance, Navigation, and Control. The paper is entitled “Information-Based Guidance and Control Architecture for Multi-Spacecraft On-Orbit Inspection,” and the co-authors are Caltech postdoctoral scholar Wolfgang Hoenig and research engineer Alexei Harvard, as well as JPL colleagues Changrak Choi and Amir Rahmani. This work was supported by the JPL-CAST Swarm Autonomy project.
Tags: GALCIT CMS Soon-Jo Chung postdocs Yashwanth Nakka Wolfgang Hoenig Alexei Harvard Changrak Choi Amir Rahmani
01-14-21
There are things in life that can be predicted reasonably well. The tides rise and fall. A billiard ball bounces around a table according to orderly geometry. And then there are things that defy easy prediction: The hurricane that changes direction without warning. The splashing of water in a fountain. These phenomena and others like them can be described as chaotic systems. Lihong Wang, Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, has developed a new tool that might help to better understand chaotic systems. [Caltech story]
Tags: EE research highlights MedE KNI Lihong Wang
01-13-21
Steven Low, Frank J. Gilloon Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is being recognized, “for theoretical foundations and real-world deployment of Internet congestion control and smart grid optimization.” The ACM Fellows Program recognizes and honors outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology. [ACM release]
Tags: EE honors CMS Steven Low CNS
01-13-21
Mathieu Desbrun, Carl F Braun Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is being recognized, “for contributions to geometry processing and discrete differential geometry.” The ACM Fellows Program recognizes and honors outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology. [ACM release]
Tags: honors CMS Mathieu Desbrun
