 Professor Tom Hou is the first recipient of the Morningside Gold Medal Prize in Applied Mathematics. He was honored at the Third International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians for his seminal research on applied partial differential equations, scientific computation and numerical analysis. This research includes convergence of the point vortex method, accurate numerical methods for fluid interfaces with surface tension, analysis of three dimensional vortex sheets, and singularity criteria for the three dimensional Euler equation.
 Professor Kaushik Bhattacharya is the 2004 recipient of the Young Investigator Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES) in recognition of his contributions to engineering science in the areas of thin films, active materials, and continuum mechanics. He was also presented with the 2004 Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators in Applied Mechanics from the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in recognition of his seminal contributions in identifying the critical crystallographic features that govern shape memory behavior in solids and thin films.
 For the second consecutive year, the "High Energy Physics" team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers have won the Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge with a sustained data transfer of 101 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. This is more than four times faster than last year's record of 23.2 gigabits per second, which was set by the same team. The extraordinary achieved bandwidth was made possible in part through the use of the FAST TCP protocol developed by Professor Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team.
Professor James L. Massey of ETH Zurich will give the James R. and Shirley A. Kliegel Lecture in Engineering and Applied Science on Monday, November 15. His topic: Is a Mathematical Theory of Cryptography Possible?
 Christof Koch, Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology, will give an Earnest C. Watson Lecture entitled The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, at 8 p.m. on November 10, in Beckman Auditorium.
 Professor Melany Hunt was Melany Huntfeatured on Weekend America discussing the acoustical properties of avalanching sand dunes. The sound is unusual because it is made up of one frequency; and the noise persists even when the sand stops moving. It's likely due to a resonance effect, much like a string being plucked on a musical instrument. Over a long period of time, whatever rain that falls in the desert percolates into the sand dune, eventually forming a band of moisture some two meters down. In time this sand hardens, forming a hard, cement-like crust. When the sand on the surface is disturbed, friction between sand grains creates a noise that reverberates, back and forth, between the dry sand on the surface and the wet sand below. Click to hear the broadcast (Real Player). Read More...
 Professor Sossina Haile and colleagues, including postdoctoral scholar Zongping Shao, have definitively solved a key problem in bringing fuel cells closer to practical widespread use. Their new cathode material, "BSCF", brings the operating temperature down to the relatively cool range of 1100 deg F, while achieving more power output than others are achieving at the higher temperatures--about 1 watt per square centimeter of fuel cell area. Read More...
 A forum to discuss the relationship between science and public policy is slated for October 20, at 7 p.m. Speakers include professor of environmental science and engineering Janet Hering, president David Baltimore, vice provost David Goodstein, and JPL scientist Ashwin Vasavada.
 Professor Rob Phillips is among the first nine recipients of the Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. The Director's Pioneer Award will provide Phillips with $2.5 million in funding for the next five years as part of the NIH's new "Roadmap for Medical Research" program. Phillips, an authority on the nanoscale mechanics of biological systems, says he will use the funding to enter into novel research areas. NIH Director's Pioneer Award is designed to support individual scientists and thinkers with highly innovative ideas and approaches to contemporary challenges in biomedical research Read More...
 Ali Hajimiri, Associate Professor of Electical Engineering, has been named among the 2004 list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation.
Researchers from Caltech and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) along with colleagues at AMD, Cisco, Microsoft Research, Newisys, and S2io have set a new Internet2 land-speed record. The team transferred 859 gigabytes of data in less than 17 minutes at a rate of 6.63 gigabits per second between the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, and Caltech in Pasadena, California, a distance of more than 15,766 kilometers. The speed is equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD movie in just four seconds. Read More...
 EAS welcomes Houman Owhadi, Assistant Professor of Applied & Computational Mathematics and Control and Dynamical Systems.
 EAS welcomes Mathieu Desbrun to Caltech as Associate Professor of Computational Science and Engineering and Computer Science.
 Hongxing Tang, Professor Michael Roukes, and their colleagues have developed a novel method of measuring the resistance of "domain walls," which are the nanoscale boundaries separating areas of a magnetized material that possess different magnetic alignments, or a "twist" of magnetic spins. Reporting in the September 2 issue of the journal Nature, they show that their approach leads to an unparalleled precision in isolating, manipulating, and trapping domain walls one by one. Read More...
Geobiology graduate student Tanja Bosak and Professor Dianne Newman, the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Geobiology and Environmental Science and Engineering, announced their first major success in using a novel method of "growing" bacteria-infested rocks in order to study early life forms. The research could be a significant tool for use in better understanding the history of life on Earth, and perhaps could also be useful in astrobiology. Reporting in the August 23 edition of the journal Geology, the scientists describe their success in growing calcite crusts in the presence and absence of a certain bacterium in order to show that tiny pores found in such rocks can be definitively attributed to microbial presence.
 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Demetri Psaltis $8 Million for research on new types of optical devices. To conduct the research, Caltech is establishing a new center called the Center for Optofluidic Integration. Read More...
Francesco Ciucci, doctoralstudent in Mechanical Engineering, wasgiven the 2003-2004 GSC teaching assistant award for excellence in graduate level teaching. He was a TA for ACM 95/100.
The joint Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP) has issued a report outlining four relatively simple and inexpensive steps that can be taken to ensure that voting procedures in this fall's presidential election are as accurate and reliable as possible.
 K. Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor and Professor of Computer Science, has received one of the coveted ASCIT Teaching Awards this year. This award is presented annually to several instructors who "the students feel have shown exceptional enthusiasm, dedication and clarity of teaching, as well as genuine interest in students".
 Paul Jennings, Professor Emeritus in Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, has been named Caltech's eighth provost. Read More...
Iram Bilal, who just earned her B.S. in EAS, has received a Watson Fellowship to pursue research on "Dance: Language of Emotion or Culture?" The Watson Fellowship program encourages participants to pursue a passion and undertake a coveted, "once-in-a-lifetime" project that they might not otherwise have the opportunity to pursue in their careers or lives. Read More...
 Connections, Foundations, and Edges: A Celebration to Mark John Doyle's 50th Birthday, was held on July (14) 15-16 (17), 2004. This symposium is designed to bring together experts in mathematics, physics, biology, and networking in an interactive exchange of ideas on the design, analysis, and control of complex systems.
Suzana Sburlan, has received a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue graduate studies abroad for one year. Sburlan recently graduted with a M.S. in Applied Physics. Read More...
 Caltech's 110th Commencement Ceremony was held on Friday, June 11th. Carly Fiorina, chairman and CEO of HP, addressed more than 500 graduates. The E&AS Division awarded 105 Bachelor of Science degrees; 67 Master of Science degrees; and 48 PhDs.
 Professor Mory Gharib has been selected for the Pollak Distinguished Lecturer Award for 2004/2005. The Israel Pollak Distinguished Lecture Series was established at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in 1996. Two Pollak Lecturers are chosen each year from all areas of science and engineering. Previous recipients of this honor have included Sir John Thomas of Cambridge University (England), Professor Juergen Troe, Director of the Max Planck Institute, Goettingen, Germany, Steven Weinberg (Nobel Laureate 1979).
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Bin Wu, a junior student pursuing a BS degree in Electrical Engineering, is the recipient of the 2004 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. The Henry Ford II Scholar Awards are funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to the engineering student with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.
Kudos to Professor Tom Hou, who has been named the Charles Lee Powell Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics, and to Professor John Doyle, who has been named the John G Braun Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, Electrical Engineering, and Bioengineering (both appointments as of June 1).
 Professor Tapio Schneider is one of six Caltech professors to receive an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship this year. The Sloan Fellows are selected on the basis of "their exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge." Schneider works on understanding climate and the dynamical processes in the atmosphere that determine basic climatic features such as the pole-to-equator temperature gradient and the distribution of water vapor. Developing mathematical models of the large-scale (1000 km) turbulent transport of heat, mass, and water vapor is one central aspect of this research.
 Three members of the faculty have been named among the most recent winners of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), including Professor Babak Hassibi of EAS. Hassibi was cited by the White House for his "fundamental contributions to the theory and design of data transmission and reception schemes that will have a major impact on new generations of high-performance wireless communications systems. He has nurtured creativity in his undergraduate and graduate students by involving them in research and inspiring them to apply new approaches to communications problems." Also receiving the award are Mark Simons, a geophysicist who specializes in understanding the mechanical behavior of Earth using radar and other satellite observations of the motions of Earth's surface, and Brian Stoltz, an organic chemist who specializes in the synthesis of structurally complex, biologically active molecules.
Professor John Doyle is the recipient of the 2004 IEEE Control Systems Award for his fundamental contributions to the analysis and control of uncertain systems.
Six Caltech graduates who are leaders in science, industry, or academe, have been selected to receive the Institute's Distinguished Alumni Award. Four of this year's honorees are from EAS: M. Blouke Carus (BS EE '49), Narendra (Naren) Gupta (MS Ae '70), Gerhard Parker (BS Eng '65, MS EE '66, PhD EE '70), and H. Gerard Schwartz Jr. (CE '66). The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Saturday, May 15, during Alumni Reunion Weekend and Seminar Day.
 Caltech's ACM programming team placed 7th at the The 28th Annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals last week in Prague, Czech Republic. Our team consisted of Po-Shen Loh (senior, mathematics), Jacob Burnim (sophomore, CS/mathematics), and Adam D'Angelo (sophomore, CS/mathematics). All three were competing in the world finals for their second time, making all of them ineligible to participate again in the future. Last year the team (including D'Angelo and Burnim) placed 13th, so congratulations on a great leap forward this year!
Professor of Electical Engineering, Emeritus, William H. Pickering, a central figure in the U.S. space race and former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1954 to 1976), passed away on March 15. In 1958, as director of JPL, Pickering led the successful effort to place the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, into Earth orbit. Following on the success of Explorer 1, Pickering was instrumental in leading a new era of robotic space exploration, including the first missions to the moon and the planets.
 Professors Harry Atwater and Paul Dimotakis have each been awarded 5-year MURI grants for research into "novel devices for plasmonic and nanophotonic networks: exploiting x-ray wavelengths at optical frequencies" (Atwater) and "design, performance, and operation of efficient ramjet/scramjet combined-cycle hypersonic propulsion" (Dimotakis).  These large-scale multi-university research initiatives are extremely promising because they allow teams from several universities to focus on outstanding problems in revolutionary domains. Atwater's group aims to develop the science of plasmonics to enable new plasmonic materials that combine the optical properties of metals with dielectrics to obtain a wealth of new devices, including high efficiency LED and laser sources, subwavelength-scale waveguides, switches, resonators, components for subwavelength scale imaging and spectroscopy, and nanophotonic circuits combining these components. Dimotakis's group will address several challenges in hypersonic flight, such as non-ideal-gas dynamics and high-enthalpy ground testing, compressible-turbulence mixing and combustion, and inlet and nozzle design. Ground testing of full-scale designs and vehicles at fully duplicated flight conditions, as well as other experiments, will be performed; and an advanced simulation environment for integrated combined-cycle hypersonic vehicles and technology will be developed.
 Go Team Caltech! "Bob" completed about 1.3 miles of the DARPA Grand Challenge on March 13 before getting caught in barbed wire. Team Caltech is now gearing up for next year's race.
The Division presents the fourth issue of a semi-annual publication for EAS alumni and friends—ENGenious. View PDF pages of the Fall 2003 issue.
The Kavli Nanoscience Institute has been established with a generous $7.5 million gift from the Kavli Foundation. KNI is dedicated to defining research frontiers and establishing new scientific directions in nanoscience. Michael Roukes, professor of physics, applied physics, and bioengineering, has been named the founding director of KNI.
Professor Ali Hajimiri and his students Hossein Hashemi, Sean Guan, Arun Natarajan, and Abbas Komijani have built a novel antenna array system on a silicon chip that functions (among other things) as the world's first "radar on a chip." The low-cost chip promises to change our technological world, and may prove useful for such consumer applications as a smart cruise control that can avoid other cars; service robots in our homes; or to enable perfectly clear cell phone calls. Read More...
 The work of Professor Paul Bellan was highlighted by the American Physical Society in their annual review of physics highlights (see Physics News in 2003). His work in unraveling the long-standing mystery of the formation of spheromaks, self-organizing toroidal plasma configurations, was cited. Spheromaks are promising routes to plasma-based nulcear fusion. Understanding their origin is also important for explaining the behavior of plasma in the solar corona, as well as understanding the physics of jets that issue from black holes, galactic nuclei, and other astrophysical objects.
The California Institute of Technology for the first time moved into second place among all American universities in the number of annual patents awarded, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. For 2003, Caltech was awarded 139 patents, which was slightly ahead of MIT's 127 patents but behind the University of California System with its 439 patents. Read More...
Professor Demetri Psaltis is the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award for senior U.S. scientists, which includes an honorarium of EUR 60,000. The Humboldt Research Award is in recognition of Professor Psaltis's accomplishments in research and teaching.
 A cutting-edge computer design program and tool created by CS graduate student Steven Schkolne that translates physical movements into virtual, 3-D images is featured in nano, an exhibition that opens December 14 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
 Carver Mead, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus, has been named by President George W. Bush as a recipient of the National Medal of Technology. Mead was presented the award "for pioneering contributions to the microelectronics field, that include spearheading the development of tools and techniques for modern integrated-circuit design, laying the foundation for fabless semiconductor companies, catalyzing the electronic design automation field, training generations of engineers that have made the United States the world leader in microelectronics technology, and founding more than 20 companies including Actel Corporation, Silicon Compilers, Synaptics, Sonic Innovations, and Foveon. He was also recently awarded the Founders Award by the National Academy of Engineering for "visionary contributions in the field of micro-electronics including VLSI technology and computational neural systems." The Founders Award was established in 1965 by the Academy to honor outstanding contributions by an engineer both to his profession and to society.
 Deniz Armani (EE), a 4th year graduate student in the Vahala research group just won first prize at the "The Leading Edge Student Symposium" held as part of the 36th Annual Symposium of the Southern California Chapter of the American Vacuum Society. The title of his presentation was "Ultra-High-Q Microcavity On-A-Chip" and described research on the first Ultra-high-Q microresonator on a chip. Other student co-authors on the presentation were Sean Spillane (APh), Tobias Kippenberg (APh), Lan Yang (APh), and Andrea Martin (APh). Armani received a $500 prize and will also attend the AVS International meeting in Baltimore.
Professor Babak Hassibi has been awarded a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. The Packard Fellowships were established in 1988 to allow the nation's most promising professors to pursue science and engineering research early in their careers. In 2003, the foundation selected 16 Fellows to receive individual awards of $625,000, payable over five consecutive years. Dr. Hassibi will be invited to an annual conference to meet with other Fellows, and the Advisory Panel and members of the Board of Trustees September 1-4, 2004, in Monterey, California. |
