News

08-27-18

CMS alumna, Ashley Williams, was named 2018 Woman of the Year by the Aerospace Corporation. Dr. Williams received her Caltech PhD in 2011 and was advised by Professors Jerry Marsden, Richard Murray, and Mathieu Desbrun. Currently she is the director of the Studies and Analyses Office at the Aerospace Corporation. [Dr. Williams’ Caltech thesis]

Tags: honors CMS Jerrold Marsden Mathieu Desbrun alumni Richard Murray Ashley Williams

06-20-18

Early in his freshman year CMS and BEM alumnus Ramsathwick “Sathwick” Pathireddy (BS ’17) realized just how challenging a Caltech workload could be and turned to his housemates and friends for help. “When I had questions about time management, what classes to take, or what internships to go for, I always had someone to talk to,” Sathwick says. [Breakthrough story]

Tags: CMS alumni Ramsathwick Pathireddy

06-05-18

CMS alumnus Ramruthwick “Ruthwick” Pathireddy (BS ’17) is described as curious, ambitious, and rigorous. “When people talk about Caltech, they think of students studying really hard,” Ruthwick says. “While we do study hard, there’s more to it than that. I don’t think people realize the social opportunities that are available here, how enriching the activities are, and how close the entire undergraduate community is. It’s really like a family.” [Breakthrough story]

Tags: CMS alumni Ramruthwick Pathireddy

01-05-18

As she steps down as CEO of the Anita Borg Institute, Telle Whitney (PhD ’85) reflects on her career in tech—and the path ahead for the next generation of women. From Caltech to researcher to entrepreneur to advocate for women in technology, this Caltech alumna’s career has thrived on risk-taking and transition—and she’s inspired and assisted hundreds of thousands of women along the way. [Techer profile]

Tags: EE CMS alumni Telle E. Whitney

10-17-17

This year’s CMS Techfest was attended by five hundred members of the Caltech Community and brought together more than thirty companies and nonprofits developing the latest technologies related to the computing and mathematical sciences. Two thirds of the companies attending were from the local area, eight have Caltech alumni co-founders, CEOs, or CTOs. The main goals of the event were to expose students to the latest technologies and a wide range of career options, building and supporting the CMS alumni network, and supporting the local start-up ecosystem. This year’s Techfest involved a demo fair focused on providing startups, companies, students, postdocs, and faculty with a chance for meaningful interactions with each other. The Partners Program company members including as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Northrop Grumman showed off cutting-edge research, and brand new technologies. Students learned about the breadth of applications for CMS across industries and networked with company representatives.

Tags: CMS alumni

10-12-17

Caltech alumni and members of the Information Science and Technology (IST) Advisory Council covered the cost of attendance for many of the forty Caltech students who participated in this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration—the world’s largest gathering of women in technology. [Breakthrough story]

Tags: CMS alumni

09-05-17

Professor Morteza Gharib and colleagues including alumni Derek Rinderknecht (PhD '08), Niema Pahlevan (PhD '13), and Peyman Tavallali (PhD '14) and Caltech visitor in medical engineering Marianne Razavi have demonstrated that the camera on your smartphone can noninvasively provide detailed information about your heart's health. "In a surprisingly short period of time, we were able to move from invention to the collection of validating clinical data," says Professor Gharib. [Caltech story]

Tags: GALCIT MedE Morteza Gharib alumni Derek Rinderknecht Niema Pahlevan Peyman Tavallali Marianne Razavi

09-01-17

This fall, three graduate students will enter Caltech as Kortschak Scholars in Computing and Mathematical Sciences. They are the first students in the Kortschak Scholars program, a newly established endowment for incoming PhD students in computer science at Caltech. “We are grateful to the Kortschaks for their vision and generous support enabling our students to identify the research areas where their passion could have the biggest impact. The Kortschak Scholars will be attracted to Caltech by the opportunity to work at the leading edges of computing and mathematical sciences to invent the technologies of the future,” said EAS Chair G. Ravichandran. [Breakthrough story]

Tags: CMS Guruswami Ravichandran alumni Walter Kortschak

06-30-17

Joe Zadeh is vice president of product for Airbnb. At Caltech, he pursued graduate work in bioengineering, designing biomolecules and created algorithms for self-assembling nucleic-acid structures. Addressing other alumni he states, “Caltech gave you a degree in a field, but it also taught you how to think. What you’re doing is trying to [take] something nebulous and make it concrete. In some ways, that’s what start-ups do. Actually a lot of start-ups don’t look a lot different structurally from most research labs at Caltech.” [Techer story]

Tags: CMS alumni Joe Zadeh

06-10-17

The Amori Prize was established in 2017 by Caltech alumnus Michael Amori (MS 2007) to honor outstanding dissertations in the computing and mathematical sciences during the current academic year. Awardees are selected by a committee of computing and mathematical sciences faculty each spring. The first winner of this prize was Rachel Cummings whose advisor was Professor Katrina Ligett. [Read Dr. Cummings Thesis]

Tags: CMS alumni Rachel Cummings Micheal Amori