The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation has selected two Caltech seniors, Kurtis Carsch and Paul Dieterle, to receive 2016 Hertz Fellowships. A total of 12 students were selected from more than 800 applicants and will receive up to five years of support for their graduate studies.

Carsch and Dieterle bring the number of Caltech undergraduate students who have received the Hertz fellowship to 62.

Kurtis Carsch, a chemistry major from Bellevue, Washington, attributes his interest in chemistry to playing with LEGO blocks at a young age—paving the way for his current focus on what he describes as "combining elements to create molecules with unprecedented properties." His work experiences at SAFCell and Honeywell UOP, as well as his research experiences at Caltech with William A. Goddard, the Charles and Mary Ferkel Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science, and Applied Physics; and professor of chemistry Theodor Agapie, have focused on the interface between experimental and theoretical chemistry. He will receive both a BS and an MS in chemistry this spring and begin his PhD work in inorganic chemistry at Harvard University in the fall, where he, inspired by multimetallic enzymes in biology, will study the manipulation of chemical bonds by multiple metal centers. Carsch is also a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Paul Dieterle is a senior in applied physics from Albuquerque, New Mexico. While attending high school in Madison, Wisconsin, Dieterle discovered a passion for physics, as well as for rock climbing and creative writing. At Caltech, he has worked and studied under the guidance of Oskar Painter, the John G. Braun Professor of Applied Physics and Fletcher Jones Foundation Co-Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute; professor of physics Maria Spiropulu, professor of applied physics Keith Schwab, and the late professor Tom Tombrello. His research focuses on the physics of superconducting quantum circuits, photon-phonon interactions, and many-body interactions. In the long term, he says, he aims to "construct integrated quantum systems to explore both fundamental and application-oriented physics." Dieterle will also attend Harvard University in the fall, pursuing a PhD in quantum physics.

According to the Hertz Foundation, fellows are chosen for their intellect, their ingenuity, and their potential to bring meaningful improvement to society. "Following in the footsteps of Hertz Fellows who have come before them, these young men and women will utilize this fellowship to pursue work that will have a tremendous impact on the future of our country and society as a whole," said Robbee Baker Kosak, Hertz Foundation president, in a statement.

Since 1963, the Hertz Foundation has awarded fellowships to students they describe as "the best and brightest" from the fields of science and engineering. The highly competitive selection process for the Hertz Fellowship includes a comprehensive written application, four references, and two rounds of technical interviews. 

Three Caltech professors and four Caltech alumni have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The announcement was made Tuesday, May 3.

Raymond Deshaies is a professor of biology, investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and executive officer for molecular biology. Deshaies's work focuses on understanding the basic biology of protein homeostasis, the mechanisms that maintain a normal array of functional proteins within cells and organisms. He is the founder of Caltech's Proteome Exploration Laboratory to study and sequence proteomes, which are all of the proteins encoded by a genome.

John Eiler is the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry, as well as the director of the Caltech Microanalysis Center. Eiler uses geochemistry to study the origin and evolution of meteorites and the earth's rocks, atmosphere, and interior. Recently, his team published a paper detailing how dinosaurs' body temperatures can be deduced from isotopic measurements of their eggshells.

Ares Rosakis is the Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. His research interests span a wide spectrum of length and time scales and range from the mechanics of earthquake seismology, to the physical processes involved in the catastrophic failure of aerospace materials, to the reliability of micro-electronic and opto-electronic structures and devices.

Deshaies, Eiler, and Rosakis join 70 current Caltech faculty and three trustees as members of the NAS. Also included in this year's new members are four alumni: Ian Agol (BS '92), Melanie S. Sanford (PhD '01), Frederick J. Sigworth (BS '74), and Arthur B. McDonald (PhD '70).

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare. It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.

A full list of new members is available on the academy website at: http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/may-3-2016-NAS-Electio...

Ronald Drever, professor of physics, emeritus; Kip Thorne, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; Rai Weiss, MIT professor of physics, emeritus; and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) discovery team have been selected to receive the 2016 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize for their observation of gravitational waves, distortions in the fabric of spacetime. The Cosmology Prize honors a leading cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist, or scientific philosopher for theoretical, analytical, conceptual, or observational discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the universe.

In a press release, the Gruber Foundation called the detection of gravitational waves a "technologically herculean and scientifically transcendent achievement."

The existence of gravitational waves was predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity, but it was not until the 1960s that technological and theoretical advances made detection even possible to consider. In the 1970s, Thorne founded a research group at Caltech to study the theory of gravitational waves. Weiss had developed a design for a gravitational wave detector; he and Thorne recruited Drever, one of the leading creators of gravitational-wave interferometer prototypes, to lead what would become LIGO. On September 14, 2015, during the first observations with the newly upgraded Advanced LIGO interferometers, LIGO detected the first signal of gravitational waves—the result of the collision of two black holes to produce a single, more massive black hole. The detection was announced on February 11, 2016.

The Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize includes a $500,000 award, to be divided equally among Drever, Thorne, and Weiss. Each will also receive a gold medal.

Past recipients of the prize include Caltech's Charles Steidel, the Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Astronomy, who received the Gruber Prize in 2010 for his studies of the distant universe.

The award ceremony will take place on July 12 at the 21st International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, held at Columbia University in the City of New York.

Hirosi Ooguri, the Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics and founding director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, will be the 2016 recipient of the Chunichi Cultural Award. Founded in 1947 by Japanese newspaper Chunichi Shimbun to commemorate the enacting of the Japanese constitution, the award celebrates individuals or organizations who have made significant contributions to the arts, humanities, and natural or social sciences. Other awardees this year include physicist and 2015 Nobel Laureate Takaaki Kajita, poet Toru Kitagawa, and biologist Ikue Mori, each of whom will receive the 2 million yen ($20,000) prize. Previous recipients include six other Nobel laureates and one Fields medalist.

The prize honors Ooguri for the "development of innovative methods of modern mathematics in high energy theory," according to the prize citation. His research focuses on creating new theoretical tools in quantum field theory and superstring theory, which may ultimately lead to a unified theory of the forces and matter in nature. He is particularly renowned for his work on topological string theory, which has had broad applications ranging from black hole physics to algebraic geometry and knot theory in mathematics.

This April, Ooguri was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the recipient of the Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics from the American Mathematical Society, the Nishina Memorial Prize, the Humboldt Research Award, the Simons Investigator Award, and is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He also received Japan's Kodansha Prize for Science Books for his popular Introduction to Superstring Theory in 2014.

Ooguri will receive the Chunichi Award at a ceremony to be held in Japan on June 3.

Yuki Oka, assistant professor of biology, has been named one of six recipients of the 2016 McKnight Scholars Award. The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience awards $75,000 per year for three years to support young scientists who are establishing their own laboratories and research centers. The award is only available to researchers in the first four years of a tenure-track faculty position.

"A McKnight Scholar Award is one of the most prestigious early-career honors that a young neuroscientist can receive," said Anthony Movshon, chair of the awards committee and professor at New York University, in a press release. "This year's Scholars are a superbly talented group, with as much promise as any selected in the past. … Their work will help us to understand the brain's function in health and in disease, and will shape the neuroscience of the future."

Oka studies the neural mechanisms controlling thirst. These mechanisms help the body maintain a healthy balance of water and salt. He is attempting to isolate exactly which circuits in the brain regulate thirst and to determine how those circuits are triggered by external signals. Understanding these key brain functions may lead to new treatments for appetite-related disorders.

The McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis, Minnesota has supported neuroscience research since 1977. It created the Endowment Fund in 1986 in honor of William L. McKnight, an early leader of the 3M Company who had a personal interest in neurological diseases and wanted his legacy to help find cures. Previous awardees from Caltech include Athanossios Siapas, professor of computation and neural systems, and Kai Zinn, professor of biology.

Frances Arnold, the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, has been awarded the Millennium Technology Prize for her "directed evolution" method, which creates new and better proteins in the laboratory using principles of evolution. The Millennium Technology Prize, worth one million euros (approximately $1.1 million), is the world's most prominent award for technological innovations that enhance the quality of people's lives.

Directed evolution, first pioneered in the early 1990s, is a key factor in green technologies for a wide range of products, from biofuels to pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, paper products, and more.

The technique enlists the help of nature's design process—evolution—to come up with better enzymes, which are molecules that catalyze, or facilitate, chemical reactions. In the same way that breeders mate cats or dogs to bring out desired traits, scientists use directed evolution to create desired enzymes.

"We can do what nature takes millions of years to do in a matter of weeks," says Arnold, who is also director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at Caltech. "The most beautiful, complex, and functional objects on the planet have been made by evolution. We can now use evolution to make things that no human knows how to design. Evolution is the most powerful engineering method in the world, and we should make use of it to find new biological solutions to problems."

Directed evolution works by inducing mutations to the DNA, or gene, that encodes a particular enzyme. An array of thousands of mutated enzymes is produced, and then tested for a desired trait. The top-performing enzymes are selected and the process is repeated to further enhance the enzyme's performance. For instance, in 2009, Arnold and her team engineered enzymes that break down cellulose, the main component of plant-cell walls, creating better catalysts for turning agricultural wastes into fuels and chemicals.

"It's redesign by evolution," says Arnold. "This method can be used to improve any enzyme, and make it do something new it doesn't do in nature." 

Today, directed evolution is at work in hundreds of laboratories and companies that make everything from laundry detergent to medicines, including a drug for treating type 2 diabetes. Enzymes created using the technique have replaced toxic chemicals in many industrial processes.

"My entire career I have been concerned about the damage we are doing to the planet and each other," says Arnold. "Science and technology can play a major role in mitigating our negative influences on the environment. Changing behavior is even more important. However, I feel that change is easier when there are good, economically viable alternatives to harmful habits."

"Frances is a distinguished engineer, a pioneering researcher, a great role model for young men and women, and a successful entrepreneur who has had a profound impact on the way we think about protein engineering and the biotechnology industry," says David Tirrell, the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. "The Millenium Technology Prize provides wonderful recognition of her extraordinary contributions to science, technology, and society."

Arnold received her undergraduate degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University in 1979. She earned her graduate degree in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1985. She arrived at Caltech as a visiting associate in 1986 and became an assistant professor in 1987, associate professor in 1992, professor in 1996, and Dickinson Professor in 2000.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including in 2011 both the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the engineering profession's highest honor, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Arnold is one of a very small number of individuals to be elected to all three branches of the National Academies—the National Academy of Engineering (2000), the Institute of Medicine (2004), and the National Academy of Sciences (2008)—and the first woman elected to all three branches.

"I certainly hope that young women can see themselves in my position someday. I hope that my getting this prize will highlight the fact that yes, women can do this, they can do it well, and that they can make a contribution to the world and be recognized for it," says Arnold.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every two years by Technology Academy Finland (TAF) to "groundbreaking technological innovations that enhance the quality of people's lives in a sustainable manner," according to the prize website. The prize was first awarded in 2004. Past recipients include Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web; Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of bright blue and white LEDs; and ethical stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka. Arnold is the first woman to win the prize.

This year's Shaw Prize in Astronomy, worth $1.2 million, has been awarded to the trio of researchers who founded LIGO: Caltech's Ronald W. P. Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; and MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus.

According to the prize announcement, the LIGO founders are being honored "for conceiving and designing the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), whose recent direct detection of gravitational waves opens a new window in astronomy, with the first remarkable discovery being the merger of a pair of stellar mass black holes."

The existence of gravitational waves was predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity, but it was not until the 1960s that technological and theoretical advances made detection even possible to consider. In the 1970s, Thorne founded a research group at Caltech to study the theory of gravitational waves. Weiss had developed a design for a gravitational wave detector; he and Thorne recruited Drever, one of the leading creators of gravitational-wave interferometer prototypes, to lead what would become LIGO. On September 14, 2015, during the first observations with the newly upgraded Advanced LIGO interferometers, LIGO detected the first signal of gravitational waves—the result of the collision of two black holes to form a single, more massive black hole. The detection was announced on February 11, 2016.

Drever, Thorne and Weiss have also jointly received the 2016 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize and the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their contributions to LIGO.

The Shaw Prize, established in 2004, is awarded annually in three categories: Astronomy, Life Science and Medicine, and Mathematical Sciences. It "honors individuals, regardless of race, nationality, gender and religious belief, who have achieved significant breakthroughs in academic and scientific research or applications and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind," according to the Prize website.

The Shaw Prize is an international award managed and administered by The Shaw Prize Foundation based in Hong Kong. Mr. Shaw has also founded The Sir Run Run Shaw Charitable Trust and The Shaw Foundation Hong Kong, both dedicated to the promotion of education, scientific and technological research, medical and welfare services, and culture and the arts.

The 2016 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics has been awarded to the three founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO): Caltech's Ronald W. P. Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; and MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus.

The $1 million prize, presented once every two years, honors the three for their instrumental role in establishing LIGO, an effort that led to the direct detection of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time predicted a century earlier by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. On February 11, 2016, the international LIGO team announced the first observation of gravitational waves arriving at Earth.

The waves were generated 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes spiraled around each other and ultimately merged to form a single, more massive black hole. The twin LIGO instruments—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—detected the waves by measuring changes to the lengths of their 4-kilometer-long arms as small as one one-thousandth the width of a proton.

"The detection of tiny ripples in space and time, set up when two black holes merged more than a billion years ago, is one of the most amazing feats of the century," says Fiona Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. "The LIGO project is a marvel of precision measurement, engineering, and technical ingenuity. Its founders, Kip, Rai, and Ron, and the entire LIGO team, deserve credit for this amazing discovery."

The existence of gravitational waves was predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity, but it was not until the 1960s that technological and theoretical advances made detection even possible to consider. In the 1970s, Thorne founded a research group at Caltech to study the theory of gravitational waves. Weiss had developed a design for a gravitational wave detector; he and Thorne recruited Drever, one of the leading creators of gravitational-wave interferometer prototypes, to lead what would become LIGO.

On September 14, 2015, during the first observations with the newly upgraded Advanced LIGO interferometers, LIGO detected the first signal of gravitational waves.

"The lion's share of the credit for LIGO's gravitational wave discovery belongs to the superb 1000-member LIGO team, who pulled it off," said Thorne. "They have made Weiss, Drever and me look good.  And my deep thanks go out, also, to the succession of outstanding LIGO directors who provided the leadership required for success—Robbie Vogt, Stan Whitcomb, Jay Marx, David Reitze, and especially Barry Barish. Barry designed and led the transformation of LIGO from the small R&D project that Weiss, Drever and I created into the wonderfully successful big-science project that it is today."

According to the Kavli award citation, "the direct measurement of the tiny space-time ripples required the sustained vision and experimental ingenuity of Drever, Thorne and Weiss, spanning most of the last 50 years, as individual scientists and later as intellectual leaders of a team of hundreds of scientists and engineers."

The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and MIT. The LIGO discovery team consists of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the European Virgo Collaboration. The NSF leads in financial support for Advanced LIGO. Funding organizations in Germany (Max Planck Society), the U.K. (Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC) and Australia (Australian Research Council) also have made significant commitments to the project.

The Kavli Prizes, established in 2008 and awarded every two years, recognize scientists for their seminal advances in three research areas: astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. Each prize consists of a scroll, a medal, and a cash award. The Kavli Prizes are presented in cooperation and partnership with the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Past Caltech winners of the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics include Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor and Professor of Planetary Astronomy, who received the Kavli Prize in 2012 for work that led to a major advance in the understanding of the history of our planetary system, and Maarten Schmidt, the Frances L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, who was awarded the prize in 2008 for his seminal contributions to our understanding of the nature of quasars. Other Kavli Prize recipients include alumni David C. Jewitt (MS '80, PhD '83), cowinner of the 2012 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics; James Roger Angel (MS '66), cowinner of the 2010 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics; and Caltech trustee Richard H. Scheller (PhD '80), cowinner of the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.  

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

In the fall of 1994, Eric Betzig contemplated what he thought might be the end of his scientific career. He had an intriguing idea of how to capture images at incredibly small scales that were beyond the limits of what was then possible—but, having left a successful research position at Bell Labs to focus on raising his newborn child, he lacked the resources to pursue it.

"I decided to publish the idea, just put it out into the scientific world," Betzig said. "And I thought that would pretty much be the end of it. I thought I was done with science."

Hardly. Twenty years later, Betzig's paper, along with a number of significant achievements afterward, was cited in his being awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website

Caltech celebrated its 61st Annual Service & Impact Awards on June 2, 2016, honoring more than 300 staff members—with service ranging from 10 to 50 years—for their on-the-job excellence and commitment to the Institute.

Among the honorees was Mary Webster, executive assistant to the president and secretary of the Board of Trustees, who was recognized for her 50 years of service to the Institute.

The event was kicked off with remarks from Vice President for Business and Finance Dean Currie, who is retiring at the end of the month. Currie talked about the key role staff play in creating Caltech's innovative environment.

The 2016 Thomas W. Schmitt Annual Staff Prize went to John Henning, senior research engineer at the Palomar Observatory. The award celebrates staff members "whose contributions embody the values and spirit that enable the Institute to achieve excellence in research and education." In nominating him for the honor, Henning's coworkers lauded him for "being the 'go-to guy' for almost everything. He is soft-spoken and humble and universally respected." The Schmitt Prize was established in 2007 in honor of Thomas W. Schmitt, former associate vice president for human resources, and funded by Ted Jenkins, Caltech alumnus (BS '65, MS '66) and trustee.

The inaugural Team Impact Award was given to the staff of Caltech's Center for Teaching, Learning, & Outreach (CTLO). The award was created this year to honor teams that make significant contributions to the work and mission of the Institute. The CTLO was chosen from among eight nominated teams from across campus for working "tirelessly to increase teaching and communication engagement within the Caltech community," in the words of one nomination.

Laura Shou, a senior in mathematics, has received a Graduate Study Scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to pursue a master's degree in Germany. She will spend one year at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Technische Universität München, studying in the theoretical and mathematical physics (TMP) program.

The DAAD is the German national agency for the support of international academic cooperation. The organization aims to promote international academic relations and cooperation by offering mobility programs for students, faculty, and administrators and others in the higher education realm. The Graduate Study Scholarship supports highly qualified American and Canadian students with an opportunity to conduct independent research or complete a full master's degree in Germany. Master's scholarships are granted for 12 months and are eligible for up to a one-year extension in the case of two-year master's programs. Recipients receive a living stipend, health insurance, educational costs, and travel.

"As a math major, I was especially interested in the TMP course because of its focus on the interplay between theoretical physics and mathematics," Shou says. "I would like to use mathematical rigor and analysis to work on problems motivated by physics. The TMP course at the LMU/TUM is one of the few programs focused specifically on mathematical physics. There are many people doing research in mathematical physics there, and the program also regularly offers mathematically rigorous physics classes."

At Caltech, Shou has participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program three times, conducting research with Professor of Mathematics Yi Ni on knot theory and topology, with former postdoctoral fellow Chris Marx (PhD '12) on mathematical physics, and with Professor of Mathematics Nets Katz on analysis. She was the president of the Dance Dance Revolution Club and a member of the Caltech NERF Club and the Caltech Math Club.

Following her year in Germany, Shou will begin the mathematics PhD program at Princeton.

Caltech's Mikhail Shapiro, assistant professor of chemical engineering, has been selected as a 2016 Pew scholar by the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. As a Pew Scholar, Shapiro will receive $240,000 over the next four years in support of his research program to image the location and activities of microbes in the body using ultrasound.

Our guts, or intestines, are alive with colonies of bacteria. Some species are good for us but others are bad and can lead to medical conditions, such as food poisoning and irritable bowel disease. Observing these bacteria in action is difficult because they are hidden deep inside the body. Typically, researchers culture the microbes outside the body to learn more about them, but this does not reveal where the bacteria are in the gut, or how they interact.

Shapiro plans to solve this problem with bacteria genetically engineered to be visible to ultrasound. The same ultrasound imaging techniques used by doctors to take pictures of a developing baby could be used to visualize communities of bacteria in the gut.

"Imaging techniques that rely on photons, such as fluorescence or luminescence, don't penetrate very deeply into the body," says Shapiro. "We are developing proteins that cells can make that will allow them to interact with sound waves and magnetic fields, which can penetrate more deeply."

The key to the approach is a unique class of proteins normally employed by certain photosynthetic, single-celled organisms to control how much they float, a trait needed to regulate access to light and other nutrients. The proteins form gas-filled structures that, Shapiro's team discovered, can scatter sound waves in a manner that makes them detectable by ultrasound. The researchers plan to genetically engineer bacteria to produce the proteins, then image them in mice.

The technique could ultimately lead to better ways to diagnose conditions such as irritable bowel disease.

Shapiro came to Caltech from UC Berkeley in 2014. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, and earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences, according to their website, "provides funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The program makes grants to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding individuals who are in their first few years of their appointment at the assistant professor level."

In addition to engineering bacteria, Shapiro's lab works on other methods to image and control cells deep in our body—such as tumor cells, immune cells, and neurons—with ultrasound and magnetic resonance.

Senior Ayush Gupta has been named as the winner of this year's Library Friends' Senior Thesis Prize. The Thesis Prize, established in 2010, is intended to encourage undergraduates to complete a formal work of scholarship as a capstone project for their undergraduate career and to recognize sophisticated in-depth use of library and archival research. For their achievement, recipients of the $1,200 prize are listed in the commencement program. This year's prizes were announced and awarded at a reception at Alumni House on Tuesday, June 1, with students, alumni, Friends of the Caltech Libraries, library staff, and faculty present.

Gupta's thesis was titled "Noncovalent Immobilization of Electrocatalysts on Carbon Electrodes via a Pyrenyl Ligand" and he completed the work under the supervision of his advisor, Harry Gray, the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and Founding Director of the Beckman Institute. Gray remarked that Gupta "has developed into an independent investigator, cleverly and adeptly using library resources."

"I began my research in Harry Gray's group during the spring of 2013 and I quickly became interested in looking into catalysis for the production of solar fuels," Gupta says. "My first project expanded into what I have been working on for the past three years, focusing on attaching molecular catalysts to graphitic electrodes. Attaching catalysts to electrode surfaces is one route to easily assemble devices that can convert renewable energy, like solar, into chemical fuels."

"Writing a thesis that encompasses all of my research at Caltech was a daunting task," he says. "Luckily, I was able to combine many of the smaller reports I had completed as a part of the SURF program and then further elaborate on those topics in my thesis. Another challenge was finding ways to blend in all the various parts of my research into a cohesive narrative, but I was able to get a lot of help both from my advisor Harry Gray and my supervisor James Blakemore."

Gupta will be attending the University of Chicago in the fall to begin work on a PhD in chemistry.

Caltech faculty nominate seniors whose theses they deem to be deserving of the prize. Nominated students then supply a research narrative that explains their research methodology, detailing not only the sources they used but the way they obtained access to them.

Other finalists for the prize were Kurtis Carsch, nominated by Professor Theodor Agapie for his thesis in chemistry; Harinee Maiyuran, nominated by Professor Steven Quartz for her thesis in history and philosophy of science; and Monica Li, nominated by Professor Beverly McKeon for her thesis in aerospace.

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

When Janet Campagna arrived at Caltech in 1983, she had already taken the unexpected path. First, she had come to study social science in a department that was still a young, small island within a campus devoted to science. She was also the only woman in her class. 

Thirty years later, Campagna is still charting new territory. As the founder and CEO of QS Investors, she is among a very small group of women who lead investment firms. 

She is also the first social scientist from Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award, which was presented for her contributions to quantitative investment and for her leadership in the financial industry.

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website

Caltech undergraduate and graduate students have collected an array of awards this year, including a Fulbright grant, two Hertz Fellowships, a Marshall Scholarship, and 20 National Science Foundation Fellowships.

Fulbright Fellowship

Senior Soumya Kannan was selected as a Fulbright Scholar. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Seniors and graduate students who compete in the U.S. Fulbright Student Program can apply to one of the more than 160 countries whose universities are willing to host Fulbright Scholars. The scholarship sponsors one academic year of study or research abroad after the bachelor's degree. Kannan will be studying next year at the Technical University of Denmark, developing a mathematical model for promoter activity—promoters are a class of genetic elements that initiate transcription of a gene—in Saccaromyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast. Additionally, she will be pursuing master's coursework in bioinformatics and systems biology.

Hertz Fellowships

Caltech seniors Kurtis Carsch and Paul Dieterle were selected to receive 2016 Hertz Fellowships. Selected from a pool of approximately 800 applicants, the awardees will receive up to five years of support for their graduate studies. According to the Hertz Foundation, fellows are chosen for their intellect, their ingenuity, and their potential to bring meaningful improvement to society. Carsch will begin PhD work in inorganic chemistry at Harvard University in the fall; Dieterle will also attend Harvard University, pursuing a PhD in quantum physics.

Marshall Scholarship

Senior Bianca Lepe was selected to receive the 2016 Marshall Scholarship and will spend the 2016–2017 academic year at the University of Edinburgh studying for a master's degree in synthetic biology and the following year at Imperial College London, completing a master's degree in science communication. Funded by the British government, the Marshall Scholarship provides support for two years of post–bachelor's degree study—covering a student's tuition, books, living expenses, and transportation costs—at any university in the United Kingdom.

German Academic Exchange Service Scholarship

Senior Laura Shou has received a Graduate Study Scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service to pursue a master's degree in Germany. She will spend one year at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Technische Universität München, studying in the theoretical and mathematical physics program. The Scholarship supports highly qualified American and Canadian students with an opportunity to conduct independent research or complete a full master's degree in Germany. 

NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected 20 current Caltech students and 13 alumni to receive its Graduate Research Fellowships. The awards support three years of graduate study within a five-year fellowship period in research-based master's or doctoral programs in science or engineering. Caltech's awardees for 2016 are seniors Kurtis Mickel Carsch, Webster Guan, Soumya Kannan, Emil Timergalievich Khabiboullin, Laura Shou, and Karthik Guruswamy Siva; and graduate students Hannah Marie Allen, Charles H. Arnett, Sarah Michelle Cohen, Heidi Klumpe, Rachel Ann Krueger, Usha Farey Lingappa, Joseph P. Messinger, Andres Ortiz-Munoz, Shyam M. Saladi, Lee Michael Saper, Nancy Helen Thomas, Annelise Christine Thompson, Elise M. Tookmanian, and Jeremy Chi-Pang Tran. Caltech alumni in the 2016 class of Graduate Fellows are Sidney Douglas Buchbinder, Kaitlin Ching, Katherine Jennie Fisher, Emmett Daniel Goodman, Edward W. Huang, Jacqueline Maslyn, Misha Raffiee, Connor Edwin Rosen, Nicole Nisha Thadani, Malvika Verma, Eugene Aaron Vinitsky, Yushu Joy Xie, and Doris Xin.

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships

Graduate students Preston Kemeny and Kirsti Pajunen have been named recipients of three-year Department of Defense (DOD) National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships. The NDSEG award is given to applicants who have demonstrated the ability and special aptitude for advanced training in science and engineering, and who will pursue a doctoral degree in, or closely related to, an area of interest to the DOD.

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

Every day or so, unseen by your eyes, a bright burst of light explodes in the sky. These bursts shine in gamma rays, the most energetic kind of light that's way beyond the visible part of the spectrum. Among the most explosive and violent events in the universe, these gamma-ray bursts produce as much energy in a few seconds as the sun will during its entire 10-billion-year life.  

And for decades, Neil Gehrels has been a pioneer in understanding these bursts and in exploring the gamma-ray universe. He's helped lead teams of researchers on multiple projects and missions, including as the principal investigator of NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, which has solved long-standing mysteries about the powerful blasts. 

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

Larson grew up on Mercer Island in Lake Washington, at a time when it was only accessible by ferry and there were about 300 residents. "It was incredibly isolated and quiet," Larson recalls. He arrived at Caltech in 1948 with the intention of studying chemistry, but switched to mechanical engineering. 

"I had the utmost respect for the theorists, but soon learned I wasn't one of them," Larson laughs. "Maybe it was survival. I figured, 'Better to graduate as an engineer than flunk as a chemist or theoretical physicist.'" After graduation, Larson joined the military, serving three years as a meteorologist stationed in South Korea and Japan.

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

Every time you use a credit card to make a purchase, there's a strong chance that you're interacting with one of Tim Litle's products or companies. Over his five-decade career, Litle has been responsible for a number of major innovations in marketing and financial services, new methods that include making credit-card transactions more secure. The next time you enter that three-digit code on the back of your card, or your zip code at a gas pump... thank Litle.

Litle grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. At a time when the automotive industry was at its peak in the city, he learned how to take apart car engines, which fostered an interest in mechanics. Litle recalls his father, who worked for Time Inc., one day dropping a copy of Time magazine in front of him. "My dad pointed to the cover, which showed [Caltech's then president] Lee DuBridge and said, 'This school is the perfect place for you,'" Litle says.

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website

Anton Kapustin (PhD '97), the Earle C. Anthony Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, and Vladimir Markovic, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics, have been named Simons Investigators. These appointments are given annually to "support outstanding scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions," according to the Simons Foundation, which grants the awards. Investigators receive $100,000 annually for five years.

Kapustin studies mathematical physics, particularly dualities—relations between two superficially very different models of quantum fields, which help scientists study the behavior of strongly interacting elementary particles.

"Recently, my research has focused on the classification of exotic states of quantum matter," Kapustin says. "Such states have been proposed to be useful for building a quantum computer. Surprisingly, it turns out that the classification problem can be attacked using methods of topology, a branch of geometry which studies properties of geometric shapes which are not affected by continuous deformations."

Markovic focuses on various aspects of low-dimensional geometry, which is the study of shapes and forms that certain topological spaces can take.

"The main themes of my research are manifolds—a particular kind of topological space—and more generally groups, and their geometric, topological and dynamical properties," says Markovic. "Beside this, I have been very interested in certain partial differential equations and geometric flows including harmonic mappings and heat flows."

"I am excited to be named Simons Investigator," he adds. "This award will enable me to have more time to focus on my research, learn new fields, and test and develop my mathematical ideas."

The 2016 Distinguished Alumni Awards were presented on Saturday, May 21, during the 79th annual Seminar Day. Each week, the Caltech Alumni Association will share a story about a recipient.

In early March of this year, Ellen Williams stood before an audience of more than 2,000 researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss the future of energy. 

"We are living in a time as dynamic as when Thomas Edison and his contemporaries experimented with electricity," she declared as master of ceremonies for the Energy Innovation Summit, a conference that included as speakers luminaries such as former Vice President Al Gore and U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. "Drawing upon the science and engineering developments of recent decades, and supported by stunning advances in computational capability, today's innovators are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with energy."

Williams should know. As the director for the Advanced Research Project Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), which hosted the summit, she heads an organization that has invested more than $1.3 billion in hundreds of energy-related projects. Her position at the forefront of energy research is the culmination of a long career at the intersection of cutting-edge science, industry, and public policy.

Read the full story on the Caltech Alumni Association website