News

12-12-13

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, is a recipient of a 2013 Okawa Foundation Research Grant for his research project entitled "Computational and Statistical Tradeoffs in Large-Scale Data Analysis". This grant honors outstanding young researchers working in the fields of information and telecommunications. [Past Recipients]

Tags: EE CMS Okawa Foundation Venkat Chandrasekaran

10-24-13

Thomas F. Rosenbaum has been named the ninth president of Caltech. Dr. Rosenbaum, is currently the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, where he has served as the university's provost for the past seven years. Also joining Caltech and the EAS Division will be Dr. Rosenbaum's spouse, Katherine T. Faber, the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. Professor Faber's research focuses on understanding stress fractures in ceramics, as well as on the fabrication of ceramic materials with controlled porosity, which are important as thermal and environmental barrier coatings for engine components. She is also the codirector of the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS), which employs advanced materials science techniques for art history and restoration. [Caltech Release]

Tags: APhMS Thomas Rosenbaum Katherine Faber

09-30-13

Adam Wierman, Professor of Computer Science, and colleagues have received the award for Best Paper on System Operations and Market Economics at the IEEE PES General Meeting for their paper entitled "A unifying approach for assessing market power in deregulated electricity markets."

Tags: CMS Adam Wierman Subhonmesh Bose

09-30-13

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has won the Young Researcher Prize in Continuous Optimization at the Fourth Mathematical Optimization Society International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT) for his paper entitled "Rank-sparsity incoherence  for matrix decomposition".

Tags: EE CMS Venkat Chandrasekaran

09-23-13

Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor and Professor of Computer Science, and Leslie Lamport's paper entitled “Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of a Distributed System” has received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Operating Systems (SIGOPS) Hall of Fame Award. The award recognizes the most influential Operating Systems papers that were published at least ten years in the past. [Past Awardees]

Tags: honors CMS Kanianthra Chandy

09-20-13

The Best Student Paper Award at the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Performance conference in 2013 was given to Caltech alumnus Minghong Lin (PhD CMS '13) for his paper entitled Joint optimization of overlapping phases in MapReduce.

Tags: honors CMS Adam Wierman alumni Minghong Lin

09-20-13

Business Insider computed a new ranking of America's 501 colleges and universities based on the student body's average scores on standardized tests. Caltech was ranked number one with its average SAT scores in math and verbal being 1535. Second place was shared by Princeton, Harvard, and Yale with average scores of 1500. [Business Insider, Yahoo Finance]

09-17-13

Professor Erik Winfree and colleagues have won a second $10 million award for research in molecular programming. "Computer science gave us this idea that many tasks can actually be done with different types of devices," Winfree says. For example, a 19th-century cash register and a 21st-century computer can both be used to calculate sums, though they perform the same task very differently. At first glance, writing a computer program and programming a DNA molecule may seem like very different endeavors, but "each one provides a systematic way of implementing automated behaviors, and they are both based on similar principles of information technology," Winfree says. This Expeditions in Computing Award will be used to take their work in molecular programming to the next level: from proof-of-principle demonstrations to putting the technology in the hands of users in biology, chemistry, physics, and materials science. [Caltech Release]

Tags: honors health CMS Erik Winfree

09-03-13

Last year a group of students in an engineering project course called Introduction to Multidisciplinary Systems Engineering, taught by Professor Melany Hunt, began planning for the Dynamic Augmented Living Environment (DALE), a joint SCI-Arc/Caltech entry in the 2013 Solar Decathlon competition. This type of multidisciplinary and collaborative experience is important for Caltech students, notes Hunt. "Engineering students need experiences in which they design, create, build, and test," she says. "They also should have opportunities in which they work as part of a team. Most engineering projects require multiple perspectives with input coming from a range of individuals with different expertise and vision." [Caltech Release] [LA Times Article]

Tags: energy MCE CMS Solar Decathlon Melany Hunt

07-03-13

With a $10 million gift, the Los Angeles–based Otis Booth Foundation has created and endowed the Otis Booth Leadership Chair for the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) at Caltech. "The first funds from the endowment will support time-sensitive research that is too high risk for most traditional grants," says Chair Ares Rosakis, the inaugural holder of the Booth Leadership Chair. "I am excited to see what inventions and ideas become realities as Dr. Rosakis and his successors at the helm of EAS use this endowment now and far into the future," says Lynn Booth, president of the Otis Booth Foundation, a Caltech trustee, and a prominent Los Angeles philanthropist. [Caltech Release]

Tags: Ares Rosakis Lynn Booth