News & Events

12-02-21

The Caltech Center for Sensing to Intelligence (S2I) has announced that, in collaboration with Rockley Photonics, a photonics-based health monitoring and communications solutions company, it will allocate $1.5 million in research grants over the next three years to jumpstart efforts to combine sensors with artificial intelligence. "We would like to have sensors in every device these days, generating a huge amount of data," says Azita Emami, Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and the director of S2I. "But it's difficult to extract the most important information from the mountains of data they create." [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS EE Changhuei Yang MedE CMS Azita Emami CNS Animashree Anandkumar Alireza Marandi Katie Bouman

11-29-21

A team of Caltech undergraduates participating in NASA's 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge has earned the award for Best Developed Product. The Habitat Orientable & Modular Electrodynamic Shield (HOMES) team earned the Best Developed Product award, because—as noted by NASA—"it's not a concept; it's reality."  [Caltech story]

Tags: GALCIT Charles Elachi Manan Arya Soon-Jo Chung Michael Mello Jason Kastner Richard Abbott

11-08-21

Harry Atwater, Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; Director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance, has been elected as Optica Fellow. Since 1959, over 2,800 members have joined the ranks of Fellow. These members have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics through distinguished contributions to education, research, engineering, business and society. [Elected Fellows]

Tags: APhMS honors Harry Atwater

11-05-21

A $75 million gift from the late William (Bill) H. Hurt has established a suite of endowed early-career professorships that brings young faculty together to collaborate, build connections across disciplines, and engage in research and teaching that has the potential to define new fields of study, develop technologies, and advance innovative solutions to address the greatest challenges of the day. Joseph Falson, Assistant Professor of Materials Science, is among four faculty members who make up the inaugural cohort of William H. Hurt Scholars. William H. Hurt Scholars receive unrestricted funding and gain a network of colleagues with whom they will interact through programming designed to catalyze new research ideas and collaborations. [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS honors KNI Joseph Falson

11-04-21

Graduate Student Michael Marshall, and Sergio Pellegrino, Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist; Co-Director, Space-Based Solar Power Project, have won the 2021 AIAA Spacecraft Structures Best Paper Award from AIAA 2021 Scitech Forum. The title of the paper is “Reduced-Order Modeling for Flexible Spacecraft Deployment and Dynamics."

Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino Michael Marshall

11-02-21

Harry Atwater, Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; Director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance, received the 2021 Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s (MRS) highest honor. Atwater is being recognized “for fundamental research in light-matter interactions—particularly nanophotonics, plasmonics, photonic metamaterials, and solar energy conversion—and numerous applications of photon control of materials illustrating the value of fundamental research to technologies that improve the quality of life.” The Von Hippel Award recognizes those qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers—brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines, as exemplified by the life of Arthur von Hippel. [MRS story]

Tags: APhMS honors Harry Atwater KNI

10-26-21

This past year, a new two-story building took shape in the northeast corner of the Caltech campus. Though modest in design, what takes place inside the structure could transform the future of computing. The building is the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, the result of a partnership between Caltech and Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing branch of Amazon. The goal of the collaboration is to create quantum computers and related technologies that have the potential to revolutionize data security, machine learning, medicine development, sustainability practices, and more. "AWS will benefit from the ideas percolating here on campus," says Oskar Painter, John G. Braun Professor of Applied Physics and Physics and head of quantum hardware at AWS. Painter says quantum computing is still a very young technology, so it is crucial for development efforts to be directly connected to the latest research in academia. [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS CMS Oskar Painter KNI Fernando Brandão

10-26-21

Katie Bouman, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Astronomy; Rosenberg Scholar; Investigator, Heritage Medical Research Institute has been selected as the 2021 Progress Medal recipient by the Royal Photographic Society. Bouman is being recognized for her work developing solutions to image such phenomenon as the first image of a black hole. Her research focuses on computational imaging and designing systems that integrate algorithms and sensor design, making it possible to observe phenomena previously difficult to capture or impossible to measure with traditional methods. [View announcement] [Past recipients]

Tags: EE honors CMS Katie Bouman

10-22-21

Scientists can control light more precisely than ever with a material only three atoms thick and constructed from so-called black phosphorous. In the lab of Harry Atwater, Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; Director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance, three layers of phosphorous atoms were used to create a material for polarizing light that is tunable, precise, and extremely thin. Black phosphorous tech could revolutionize telecommunications by vastly improving light signals sent through fiber-optic cables. The technology could also open the door to a light-based replacement for Wi-Fi, something researchers in the field refer to as Li-Fi. "Increasingly, we're going to be looking at light-wave communications in free space," Atwater says. "Lighting like this very cool-looking lamp above my desk doesn't carry any communication signal. It just provides light. But there's no reason that you couldn't sit in a future Starbucks and have your laptop taking a light signal for its wireless communication rather than a radio signal. It's not quite here yet, but when it gets here, it will be at least a hundred times faster than Wi-Fi." [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS research highlights Harry Atwater KNI

10-15-21

The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that John O. Dabiri, the Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB). The SEAB meets quarterly to advise Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm on how best to achieve the department's priorities and offer recommendations on scientific, technical, and programmatic issues relating to the DOE's mission. "I'm excited to work with the secretary to ensure strong support for fundamental science research, especially in areas where the technological application might be hard to predict today," Dabiri said. "Secretary Granholm's vision to accelerate deployment of climate solutions matches my own sense of urgency to advance sustainability. I'm honored by the opportunity provide advice where it can be helpful for achieving that goal." [Caltech story]

Tags: honors GALCIT MCE John Dabiri