Ditch Day, one of Caltech's oldest traditions, is happening today, May 26. During this annual spring rite—the timing of which is kept secret until the last minute—seniors ditch their classes and vanish from campus. Before they go, however, they leave behind complex, carefully planned out puzzles and challenges—known as "stacks"—designed to occupy the underclassmen and prevent them from wreaking havoc on the seniors' unoccupied rooms.

Follow the action on Caltech's Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat (search for "CaltechEdu"), and Instagram pages as the undergraduates tackle the puzzles left for them to solve around campus. Join the conversation by sharing your favorite Ditch Day memories and using #CaltechDitchDay in your tweets and postings.

As a chemistry major at the University of Minnesota, Kelsey Boyle kept a laser-like focus on her core classes, which left little room to explore the life sciences. Despite her interest, during her senior year, "I was afraid to take a biochemistry class because I didn't know if I had the background," she says. Looking back, Boyle—now a fourth-year graduate student in a bioinorganic chemistry laboratory at Caltech—says she wishes there had been more opportunities to explore different fields in college.

Boyle and fellow fourth-year graduate student Rebekah Silva have found a way to offer Caltech undergraduates just that kind of opportunity: a low-stakes way to explore topics in chemistry that pique their interest. The pair, both of whom hold student leadership positions at the Caltech Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach (CTLO), launched a reinvented course this spring: Chemistry 101.

Read more in Caltech magazine.

Caltech will host its 62nd Staff Service & Impact Awards on June 1 to honor more than 300 staff members and the work they do to advance the mission of the Institute. Service awards are presented in recognition of length of service, with the first award bestowed at the 10-year mark. This year's event honors those who have given service ranging from 10 to 45 years. It will also include the presentation of the Thomas W. Schmitt Annual Staff Prize and Team Impact Award.
Thursday, June 1, 10 a.m., Beckman Auditorium 

Caltech senior Andrew Romine isn't just majoring in chemistry and business, economics, and management. He also majors in creativity. Because of Caltech's small size and favorable proportion of graduate students to undergraduates, Romine built a close relationship with the members of a small group of researchers in a lab that was practically his second home.

"In order to do research, you have to be immensely creative because you're thinking of something no one else has thought of before," Romine says. "Once you get someone who's creative enough to break the boundary of knowledge in chemistry, you suddenly have a whole new field. Caltech is one of the best places at doing that."

Romine learned that one of those field-shaping people—Nobel laureate Robert H. Grubbs—was on Caltech's faculty. And he learned Grubbs' door was wide open to him as an undergraduate.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website.

As a gaggle of wide-eyed elementary school students crowd in for a view, first-year geophysics graduate student Celeste Labedz plunges her gloved hands into a basin overflowing with carbon dioxide fog.

With the children's help moments earlier, she had combined ingredients including water and dry ice to demonstrate how comets form. Now she pulls out the finished product: a fist-sized chunk of ice flecked with dirt and trailing streamers of white mist.

"Whoa!" one student cries. "Can we make another one?"

Labedz's visit to Field Elementary School in Pasadena on May 18 was part of the Science Night program that brings more than 30 Caltech volunteers—undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral scholars in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, and engineering—to conduct science demonstrations for students at 11 schools across Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley.

Started in 2013, the program originally targeted three area schools, but grew rapidly as parents and teachers spread the word about the events, and more schools invited Caltech to partner with them, says Mitch Aiken, associate director for educational outreach in Caltech's Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach.

Aiken says the program helps expand Catech's community involvement and provides benefits not only to local schools and their students, but also to the Institute and its students. "Through these events, our students and researchers are contributing to elevating overall science literacy while improving their own ability to explain complex topics to diverse audiences. That's critical to their success as they prepare for careers in industry, research, and academia."

More than 200 parents and students attended the recent event, which also featured hands-on demonstrations of gyroscopes, super-cooled magnets, and gravity-wave detectors.

"Many parents and students told me this was the best night of the year," says Daniel Bagby, principal of Field Elementary. "The presenters were so passionate about their field—and it was contagious. Students wanted to show me what they were learning and the sheer joy they were experiencing was truly palpable."

Arian Jadbabaie, a first-year physics graduate student who says he volunteers for Science Night about twice a month, spent the evening at Field demonstrating how gyroscopes work. Having visitors stand atop a spinnable disk, he invited them to grip a bike tire by handles attached to the sides its center axis. With the wheel spinning, participants tilted it right and left and suddenly found themselves turning on the disk, frequently prompting surprised laughter.

"My favorite part of the demonstrations is the look of amazement on the kids' faces when they see how the world is so much stranger than what they've seen or imagined," he says. "In those moments, I feel like I'm on the same level as they are, regardless of what additional technical knowledge I might have."

Taking a break from her comet-making demonstration, Labedz agrees: "When kids are excited about what they're hearing, you can see it. Sometimes they can't keep it to themselves and start bouncing around. It's awesome to see that learning can have that kind of effect on a kid."

At the 62nd annual Staff Impact Awards on June 1, Caltech honored more than 300 staff members, including Michael Walsh, an engineer in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering who has completed 45 years of service to the Institute.

For the last four decades, Walsh has designed, assembled, and tested electronic and electromechanical instrumentation for the research groups in BBE.

"I enjoy the daily novelty in my job. I seldom find myself doing the same old thing," he says. "I especially enjoy working with the graduate students and postdocs. Their approach to what can be done to succeed in their research seems boundless. Trying to keep up with that attitude has helped to keep my job exciting and fresh."

Walsh, who spent his first five years on campus working as an electronics technician in the lab of Nobel Laureate Max Delbruck, says it has been interesting to watch the campus grow since he started just a few months after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, when Throop Hall was still standing. Back then, for example, San Pasqual ran all the way through campus and Walsh's wife could drop him off in front of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology.

After five years at Caltech, Walsh received a job offer from La Cañada High School to be an electronics teacher. But by then, he says, he had grown fond of the Caltech campus, with its Ditch Days, pumpkin drops, and Rose Bowl scoreboard pranks that "made it fun to be a part of the Caltech family." He instead chose to apply for a position at Caltech as an instrumentation engineer—the job he holds to this day.

Walsh, who lives in West Covina with his wife, Kathy—he married her six months before arriving at Caltech—calls his time working for the Institute "a roller coaster ride" he still enjoys.

"I'm doing what I love to do every day," he says, "and getting paid for it."

Theater Arts at Caltech presents six undergraduate and graduate students telling stories about their personal struggles and their passion for science in an event titled "Telling Tales in Toxic Times." Tickets are free; donations to Theater Arts at Caltech are encouraged. View a brief video sneak peek of the storytellers' preparation for the showcase here.
Friday, June 9, 7:30 p.m., Ramo Auditorium 

Sonola (soon to be BS '17) opted for the bold move and enrolled at Caltech, for both the change of scenery and the academic challenge. Scholarships made that move possible. At Caltech, he found a community of like-minded undergraduate scholars who encourage and motivate one another. And he put his heart into supporting his peers—including serving as president of Fleming House.

"One of the better parts of the house system is that you're surrounded by people who have gone through the exact same thing as you," says Sonola, who pursues an option in chemical engineering with a minor in computer science. "Anytime you face a struggle, odds are someone right next to you has had the same struggle."

Read more on the Break Through campaign website.

When she found out she got into Caltech and received a full scholarship, Bianca Lepe (BS '16) screamed—and her mom cried.

To learn more about Bianca's road to and through Caltech, visit The Caltech Effect, the e-magazine of the Break Through campaign.

Glenn Price joined Caltech last fall as band director and director of performing and visual arts. He came to Pasadena with a resume that included time spent conducting in more than 30 countries as well as full-time positions in both Canada and the United States.

This Friday will be Price's first time conducting the Caltech Convocation Brass and Percussion Ensemble for the Institute's 123rd annual commencement ceremony, held on the lawn in front of Beckman Auditorium.

Several months ago, we caught up with Price to find out his initial impressions of Caltech and his vision for his new role. Hear what he had to say on the Caltech magazine website.

Andrew Howard recently moved from Hawaii to Pasadena to become a professor of astronomy at Caltech. Howard's research focuses on Earth-like planets orbiting stars beyond our sun, as well as on other exoplanets that resemble giant Earths and mini-Neptunes. His team uses telescopes in Hawaii, California, and in space to study the diversity of these exotic worlds and to learn more about their composition and evolution.

Howard earned his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2006. He served as a postdoctoral fellow, and subsequently a research astronomer, at UC Berkeley from 2007-2012. He then worked as an assistant astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa until 2016.

We sat down with Howard to talk more about the search for exoplanets—and any alien life that could be living on them.

How did you get interested in exoplanets?

I thought I was going to be an atomic physicist, and I went to Harvard. After a year of graduate school, I realized I enjoyed that stuff, but it didn't get me up in the morning the way that it should. So, I switched to a wilder research topic called SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. We built experiments to look for signals from other civilizations. The idea is that other civilizations could be transmitting light pulses into the galaxy using lasers as a way to communicate with other intelligent beings. We were some of the first researchers to do a search for this kind of signal. It was a far-out project, and it was also a lot of fun. In the process, I learned a tremendous amount about building electronics, optics, and software.  After that, I decided I wanted more of the back-and-forth interchange that happens in more traditional scientific fields—where you build upon previous discoveries—and I switched to exoplanets.

How is the search for Earth-like worlds going?

If you think of the search for habitable planets as a book, then chapter 1 was about the discoveries of the first exoplanets. In chapter 2, we learned about the planets' demographics—how common are planets of different sizes, masses, and orbits.  We're now on maybe chapter 3. For me, this chapter involves teasing apart the stories of how planets formed and why they're so diverse.

The last chapter of the book is about the habitable planets we hope to discover. Presently, we've got to fill in the details between now and the end of the book.

What are some of the ways you are going to fill in the details?

I'm interested in the diversity, origins, and compositions of planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. We now know from measurements with NASA's Kepler space telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory that these planets are the most abundant planet type in the universe. They also have a level of diversity that we just barely sample in our solar system. Exploring that diversity—and understanding how that diversity is connected to the formation pathways of planets—is one of the overarching themes of my research. Another overarching theme is trying to push toward Earth-like planets, or those that have the right characteristics—temperature, size, composition—to potentially host life.

For the next few years, one of my biggest projects will be building the Keck Planet Finder (KPF) with a team of engineers and scientists. KPF is a Doppler spectrometer and will eventually replace HIRES [the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer], the venerable planet finder currently at the Keck Observatory. KPF will be much more precise, so we will be able to search for smaller planets, and we can better measure the masses, orbits, and compositions of the smaller planets. It will also be faster, so we can measure planet masses in one-sixth or one-eighth of the time. We want to use KPF for large surveys that measure hundreds of planet masses. We also want to search for nearby exoplanets.

How do you like Pasadena?

Southern California is probably in my top five places to live in the world. We live in South Pasadena, and I love it. South Pasadena feels kind of like a small town embedded in a big, huge city with all the opportunities and culture and interesting things that a city environment provides. South Pasadena is also really walkable. I walk to restaurants, the elementary school for my kids is half a block away, the middle school is across the street, and the high school is two blocks away.

What is the top superpower you want? (Question borrowed from Howard's son, who recently asked him this)

To forgo sleep with no mental or physical consequences. It's the ultimate way to achieve work-life balance. 

Break Through, publicly launched just over a year ago, is already the most successful campaign in Caltech's history. In the first year of the public phase alone, gifts exceeded $400 million. And total contributions—over $1.4 billion—have surpassed the goal of Caltech's last campaign.

This support comes from new friends as well as those who know Caltech best: its faculty, trustees, students, alumni, staff, and Associates members. More than 10,000 donors have responded generously to the campaign's message that "a few can change the world."

Go to the Break Through site to see more statistics from the campaign's first anniversary and view a slideshow sampling what people on campus are saying as campaign gifts help Caltech realize core aspirations.

Hall Daily, Caltech's director of government relations, has announced his intention to retire in Autumn 2017. A national search will be conducted to identify his successor.

"Over the course of his 30-year career at Caltech, Hall skillfully established and improved the Institute's relationships with governmental offices and agencies, community groups and neighbors, higher education associations, and the general public," said Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum in a letter to the Caltech community. "We are indebted to him for his tireless efforts to connect Caltech to the broader community and to represent and champion our interests to external entities."

Daily has served as the Institute's primary government relations point person for three decades, managing the Institute's relationship and participation with key governmental offices and agencies, community groups, higher education associations, and the general public. Daily works closely with elected officials and staff in local, regional, state, and federal governments, as well as serves as a key liaison between Caltech and its adjoining neighbors.

Among the significant accomplishments of his tenure were the Institute's successful bid and approval for a 30-year campus development plan, which has enabled the Institute to increase significantly its constructed space, adding facilities that better meet the needs and demands of Caltech's developing community. Daily also helped start and sustain three Pasadena working groups—the emergency coordinators roundtable; Pasadena: City of Learning; and the Pasadena Water and Power large customers group—that have helped strengthen collaboration and communication in the area.

Daily originally joined Caltech in 1987, as the then assistant director of public relations. Before coming to Caltech, Daily was an established journalist, working for 15 years in positions at The Associated Press, the San Jose Mercury-News, and the Pasadena Star-News, where he led a 55-person newsroom. Daily has a degree in communications from Stanford University.

A joint faculty and staff search committee has been appointed to lead the search and make recommendations for Daily's successor. The committee is chaired by Farnaz Khadem, Caltech's chief communications officer, and includes faculty members Joanna Austin, professor of aerospace, Jennifer Jackson, professor of mineral physics, and Jonathan Katz, the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics; as well as staff members Theresa Davis, assistant vice president for engagement and annual programs, Dave Gallagher, JPL's associate director for strategic integration, and Jennifer Lum, deputy general counsel.

Senior Soon Wei Daniel Lim has been named as the winner of the 2017 Library Friends' Senior Thesis Prize. Established in 2010, the Thesis Prize 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 Wednesday, May 24 with students, alumni, Friends of the Caltech Libraries, library staff, and faculty present.

Lim's thesis, titled "Revolution in large-area curved surface lithography: Nanofilm sculpting by thermocapillary modulation," is based on experimental research he conducted over two years in the laboratory of Professor of Applied Physics, Aeronautics, and Mechanical Engineering Sandra M. Troian. The work describes a method he developed to sculpt high-quality microlens arrays and, potentially, other micro-optical components out of polymer nanofilms using laser illumination.

"Writing a thesis was a very cathartic experience," Lim says. "Over time you start to accumulate all of this knowledge in your head, and it's very satisfying and challenging to actually get it all out onto paper. I used basically every library resource. It was particularly liberating to have access to DocuServe, which allowed me to access very uncommon and specialized publications."

"Our group has been working on thermocapillary sculpting of nanofilms for several years now in the hope of designing and fabricating fully integrated, polymeric photonic circuits in a single step via a thermal projection technique," says Troian. "Daniel advanced this concept by demonstrating an inverse projection method, which imbues the sculpting process with far greater versatility. Daniel is an exceptional student—a rare combination of superb talent, tremendous drive, utmost professionalism, and entrepreneurial chops. I have a strong inkling he will someday become one of Caltech's famed alumni. It has been sheer delight working with him."

Earlier this year, Lim received the 2017 American Physical Society Ken Hass Outstanding Student Paper Award in recognition of industrial applications of the laser illumination technique described in his thesis. After graduation, Lim will spend a gap year doing research in his home country of Singapore, after which he will attend Harvard University to begin work on a PhD in applied physics.

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 Adrian Ray Avalani for his thesis in English, Moriah Bischann for her thesis in aerospace, Bella Guo for her thesis in computer science, Shannon Wang for her thesis in physics, and Aaron Young for his thesis in physics.

Mark Kozlowski, a fourth-year graduate student in chemistry, might not sell his soul for science, fame, and fortune—but he has given a lot of thought to why a researcher could be tempted.

Kozlowski collaborated with Theater Arts at Caltech (TACIT) for more than a year to hone a manuscript and then stage a performance of his comedy Faustus, PhD, about a struggling graduate student who makes a deal with the Devil to learn which experiments will bring him success.

Read more in Caltech magazine.

The Farthest tells the story of NASA's Voyager mission and its journey to the outer planets and beyond. Launched 40 years ago, Voyager's twin spacecraft have sent back data and images that revolutionized our understanding of the solar system—and each craft has continued sailing into interstellar space bearing greetings, music, and images from Earth, preserved on two golden records.

Following the screening, join science journalist Miles O'Brien in conversation with Voyager team members

• Suzanne Dodd (BS '84), Voyager project manager and JPL's director for the Interplanetary Network Directorate
• Carolyn Porco (PhD '83), Voyager I imaging specialist and imaging team leader for the Cassini-Huygens Mission, Space Science Institute
• Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist for JPL and Caltech's David Morrisroe Professor of Physics and Vice Provost for Special Projects

Admission is free, but tickets are required.

Please contact the Caltech Ticket Office between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday by calling (626) 395-4652 or visiting the Keith Spalding Building at the corner of California Blvd. and Wilson Ave.

An information technology leader with experience in the research, development, and government sectors has been appointed as Caltech's next chief information officer (CIO).

Jin Chang will start on June 30. Among his priorities will be developing and implementing a strategic plan for technology, with special attention to cloud computing and high-performance computing.

"I am very excited to be part of Caltech's mission of enhancing human knowledge and to be able to support the Institute's world-renowned faculty, as well as students and staff," Chang says. "I look forward to providing robust and efficient computing services, enabling their work."

Chang served most recently as deputy CIO at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a Department of Energy-funded laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. There he led strategic planning for research computing, business computing, cyber security, and other areas. He was also responsible for Fermilab's computing governance processes that support thousands of scientists around the world.  

Prior to joining Fermilab, Chang was CIO for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, one of the nation's largest integrated water and sewer municipal agencies, serving millions of New York City residents. He started his career as a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratory and has also worked for Accenture and the Exelon Corporation.

Chang earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from University of Southern California.

A veteran public safety professional with experience in law enforcement as well as campus and private security has been appointed as Caltech's chief of campus security and parking services.

Victor Clay will start on June 30.

"A safe campus environment is a first step toward ensuring that students, faculty, and staff can confidently pursue the research and innovation for which Caltech is renowned," Clay says. "This is not a job any one individual or department can do alone, and I look forward to working collaboratively so that all members of the Caltech community have the opportunity to work and study in an open—but secure—atmosphere."

Clay comes to Caltech from Occidental College, where he served as director and chief of campus safety, responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive campus security plan, overseeing Clery Act compliance, leading a campus safety advisory committee, and supervising uniformed and administrative personnel, among other responsibilities.

At Occidental, Clay considered himself a "working chief," participating in routine patrols and investigations to help strengthen relationships with students, faculty, and staff.  

Before joining Occidental, he worked for several years in private security and for 28 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, earning a meritorious conduct medal for bravery in 1996. In 2012, he retired from the department as a lieutenant, a position in which he managed the Century Station area, one of the most densely populated policing zones in South Central Los Angeles.

At Caltech, Clay will be responsible for designing and executing a campus safety program that reflects best practices in community policing, campus security operations, and crime prevention education and outreach. He will oversee investigations, trainings on Caltech's campus emergency notification system, and parking registration and enforcement processes. Clay will also build and maintain relationships with external law enforcement agencies, including the Pasadena Police Department.

Campus eateries have switched to new summer hours, and Dining Services officials say they have plans to enliven the dining experience with a varied menu and some literal magic.

Jonathan Webster, senior director of dining services, says the Chandler menu will feature smoked meats, fresh pastas, seasonal vegetables and sides, as well as new dinner specials and varied grill and pizza offerings.

In addition, Chandler will feature Magic Castle magicians performing from 5–7:30 p.m. on Mondays in July starting July 10.

Summer hours (in effect through Sept. 19):

Broad Café: Weekdays, 7:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Red Door Marketplace: Weekdays, 7:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; weekends, noon–10 p.m.

Chandler Café: Weekdays, 7 a.m.–3:30 p.m. and 5–7:30 p.m. (Dinner hours only through Aug. 25)

The Associated Students of Caltech (ASCIT) and Caltech's Graduate Student Council (GSC) on June 14 announced the honorees of their annual teaching awards, celebrating professors, TAs, and mentors for outstanding teaching in the 2016–17 academic year.

Based on voting by undergraduates, the ASCIT Teaching Awards honored professors Paul Asimow (MS '93, PhD '97), the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Geology and Geochemistry; Rob Phillips, the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology; Adam Wierman, professor of computing and mathematical sciences; and Evan Kirby, assistant professor of astronomy. The TAs honored were Chinmay Nirkhe (BS '17) and graduate students Dylan Freas (CCE), Eugene Tang (PMA), and Todd Norton (PMA).

The GSC's Teaching and Mentoring Awards, which honor those who have "made an extraordinary impact on graduate students," went to a professor, a TA, and a mentor; two honorable mentions were named as well.

Xie Chen, assistant professor of theoretical physics, won the teaching award; Michael Wong (MS '14), a graduate student in GPS, won the TA award; and Beverley McKeon, the Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics, won the mentoring award. The two honorable mentions went to Heather Knutson, professor of planetary science; and Laura Flower Kim, associate director of International Student Programs.