News

11-23-20

Caltech has awarded the third annual Milton and Rosalind Chang Career Exploration Prize to alumna Nivetha (Niv) Karthikeyan (BS ’20) for her proposed project “Intersections: Building Solidarity Through Community Archives,” which intends to construct and share a new online community archive recording how people of color have historically created alliances, coalitions, and communities with other racial minorities in the United States.

Tags: honors CMS alumni Nivetha Karthikeyan

11-18-20

Methods that were originally created to help robots to walk and autonomous cars to drive safely can also help epidemiologists predict the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aaron Ames, Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems, and colleagues took these tools and applied them to the development of an epidemiological methodology that accounts for human interventions (like mask mandates and stay-at-home orders). By utilizing the U.S. COVID-19 data from March through May, they were able to predict the infection wave during the summer to high accuracy. "This is the greatest health challenge to face our society in a generation at least. We all need to pitch in and help in any way we can," Ames says. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights MCE CMS IST Aaron Ames CDS Andrew Singletary

11-18-20

Katie Bouman, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Astronomy; Rosenberg Scholar, has been chosen to receive a Graduate Student Council (GSC) Teaching Award for outstanding instruction of the inaugural course on Computational Photography.

Tags: EE honors CMS Katie Bouman

11-17-20

Oscar Bruno, Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. Bruno was incorporated into the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of those who dedicate their life to science, both for the merit of their scientific and personal background and for what it has done for the development of its specialty in Argentina.

Tags: honors CMS Oscar Bruno National Academy of Sciences of Argentina

11-04-20

Nearly 200 undergraduates from more than 120 colleges and universities across the country joined Caltech for FUTURE Ignited, a virtual event that aimed to encourage students of color to pursue graduate studies in science and engineering. The goal of FUTURE Ignited is to diversify STEM with students of color who will go on to become incredible graduate students and scientific leaders in their respective fields. [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS EE GALCIT MCE CMS ESE FUTURE Ignited

10-19-20

Four Engineering and Applied Science graduate students are among 26 who have been named as recipients of a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF), which the DOE provides to future leaders in the field of high-performance computing (HPC). [Caltech story]

Tags: honors MCE CMS Alexandra Baumgart Emily de Jong Ethan Epperly Margaret Trautner

10-07-20

A new quantum chemistry tool, called OrbNet, uses machine learning, quantum-chemistry calculations that can be performed 1,000 times faster than previously possible, allowing accurate quantum chemistry research to be performed faster than ever before. OrbNet was developed through a partnership between Tom Miller, Professor of Chemistry, and Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights CMS IST CNS Animashree Anandkumar

09-17-20

The 2-Photon Optical Clock Collaboration has been awarded OSA’s 2020 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award. The team comprises researchers and engineers from Caltech, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Caltech contributed the microwave rate frequency microcomb to the clock. [OSA story]

Tags: APhMS honors Kerry Vahala Boqiang Shen Myoung Gyun Suh Ki Youl Yang

09-10-20

Urmila Mahadev, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, has been named a recipient of the 2021 Inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize for work that addresses the fundamental question of verifying the output of a quantum computation.

Tags: honors CMS Urmila Mahadev

09-03-20

The technology behind the quantum computers of the future is fast developing, with several different approaches in progress. Many of the strategies, or "blueprints," for quantum computers rely on atoms or artificial atom-like electrical circuits. In a new theoretical study in the journal Physical Review X, Caltech demonstrates the benefits of a lesser-studied approach that relies not on atoms but molecules. One concept behind the new research comes from work performed nearly 20 years ago by John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics; Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, Alexei Kitaev, Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, and their colleague Daniel Gottesman. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights CMS Alexei Kitaev John Preskill