In late June, CaltechAUTHORS—the Institute's repository for research publications authored by Caltech faculty and affiliated researchers—reached a landmark 10 million downloads since tracking began in July 2008.

CaltechAUTHORS offers a searchable and open repository of the scholarly output of the Institute, granting users access to the most definitive versions of research that Caltech is permitted to distribute. It contains over 50,000 articles, 8,000 books or book chapters, and 3,300 Caltech technical reports.

"Researchers are only able to stand upon the shoulders of giants when those shoulders can be reached. CaltechAUTHORS provides both visibility and access to allow researchers to build upon the groundbreaking work performed at the Institute," says engineering librarian George Porter.

Reaching 10 million downloads is a significant achievement: in comparison, Harvard University's DASH repository has had 11.7 million downloads, while MIT's DSpace repository has logged 7.8 million. 

That CaltechAUTHORS contains over 65,000 research publications is the result of effective collaboration between the faculty and the Caltech Library. The faculty has embraced the repository's role in increasing the accessibility of scientific research: in 2013, the Faculty Board voted to approve an Institute-wide open-access policy. Seventy-three percent of all materials in the repository are now open access.

Complementing CaltechAUTHORS, the library has just launched CaltechDATA, a service for storing and sharing data files and software associated with Caltech research. Tom Morrell, a Caltech Library research data specialist, notes that traditional publications cannot always effectively handle diverse types of data files or software. CaltechDATA ensures that users can archive and share their data and software. 

Porter says these two digital repositories, CaltechAUTHORS and CaltechDATA, are "key to the library's commitment to preserving Caltech research contributions for the long term—and to increasing the accessibility of Caltech research to a broader audience."

Artworks created by members of the Caltech community will go on display Friday, July 21, at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena to accompany a summer chamber music concert celebrating the nation's immigrants.

Fifteen pieces of art, selected from the 75 pieces displayed in Chandler Café as part of this year's Caltech Art Competition, will be featured on stage during the concert—and in the lobby before and after the performance. They will be displayed for limited periods of time over the weekend before returning to Chandler on July 24.

The artworks—large pieces that include photographs, paintings, and a collage—were created by a diverse group of students, staff, and faculty from countries across the world and echo the theme of the concert, which focuses on inclusiveness and the nation's immigrant community.

The concert highlights European immigrants coming through Ellis Island in the early 1900s and will include performances of chamber music those immigrants would have heard on both sides of their journey, including pieces by Johannes Brahms and American immigrants George Gershwin, Curt Weill, and Irving Berlin.

The event marks the first of several off-campus displays of Caltech art that are being coordinated by the Graduate Student Council's Arts Committee and Caltech Dining, with the aim of building additional support on campus for the arts and better integrating Caltech into the local Pasadena community.

The free concert (donations will be accepted) will take place at Lake Avenue Church, 393 N. Lake Ave. in Pasadena. Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. performance; the exhibit will be on view Friday, July 21 from 7–7:30 p.m. and 9–9:30 p.m.; Saturday, July 22 from 6:15–6:45 p.m.; and Sunday, July 23 from 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Most people think about time throughout the day, but Sean Carroll, research professor of physics at Caltech, notes that very few people appreciate just how "weird" time is.

Carroll points out that in space, for instance, you can go from point A to point B and back again—but once you leave a given point in time, you can never return to that moment. Speaking to a packed Hameetman Auditorium on July 6, he told the crowd, "You could say, 'This is the most boring lecture I've ever heard. I will get up and walk away.' But you cannot choose to have not come to the lecture. Right? You cannot make a choice right now about the past. Why is that?"

Carroll's 45-minute lecture was part of the weekly Innovation Speaker Series science and technology talks presented each Thursday through August 3 by Summer App Space, a summer program that teaches programming to Los Angeles-area students and teachers while at the same time, they get paid to do fun space-related projects. The speaker series, which features entrepreneurs, researchers, and technologists from Caltech and elsewhere, aims to showcase the ways in which people with science- and space-related backgrounds and education can help change the world.

During his lecture, Carroll led an audience that included middle- and high-school students—as well as Caltech students, staff, and faculty, who are welcome to attend these public talks—on a tour of physics, quantum mechanics, and cosmology that examined what science can tell us about the origins of existence. Covering theories that delved into what happened before the Big Bang and what might occur when the universe ends, he also discussed how time might frame our perspective of the universe.

"Is any of this true?" he asked, referring to what happened before the Big Bang. "Who knows? I don't know. That's why we do physics. Physics is not about solving problems that you can see the solution to in the back of the book. It's about asking questions we don't know the answers to, suggesting possibilities, figuring out what those possibilities predict, and going out and collecting data and seeing which one is right."

• • •

The Innovation Speaker Series will feature two speakers each Thursday, one at 8 a.m. and one at 8:45 a.m., in Hameetman Auditorium. The schedule for the remaining lectures is as follows:

Thursday, July 20:

• 8 a.m.: Adam Lichtl, founder and CEO of Delta Brain Inc.
• 8:45 a.m.:  Solange Ramírez, associate staff scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

Thursday, July 27

• 8 a.m.: Theoretical astrophysicist Jorge Moreno
• 8:45 a.m.:  Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Westworld actress Talulah Riley

Thursday, August 3

• 8 a.m.: Caltech postdoc and member of the 2017 NASA astronaut class Jessica Watkins
• 8:45 a.m.: Jessie Christiansen, Caltech astronomer at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

On July 11, workers dissected Caltech's 400-year-old Engelman oak, which died last year. The wood will be preserved for several uses including: research rounds for GPS paleoclimatology research; historic rounds for display of key science and Caltech milestones; construction of a communal table for the new Red Door Café; and development donor gifts and recognition pieces.

The last remaining occupant in the Winnett Student Center—the Caltech Store—will be closing its doors beginning July 17 and relocating to a temporary location on the first floor of Millikan Library. The move is part of a larger, multi-month effort to vacate Winnett so that the existing building can be demolished to make way for the construction of a new campus hub, called the Hameetman Center.

The Caltech Store, which sells clothing, souvenirs, office materials, Apple computers, and computer supplies, is planning to re-open in the lobby of Millikan Library the week of July 24, says manager Karyn Seixas. The store's new operating hours will be 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The Hameetman Center, named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, is scheduled to open in fall 2018. Exterior demolition of Winnett, which has served as the central gathering place for Caltech's community for more than 50 years, is anticipated to begin in mid-August. Over the next month, the building and construction team plans to start clearing and breaking down the interior of the building, in preparation for the complete demolition of the facility, says Greg Norden, the project manager for the Hameetman Center.

The Caltech Store is just the latest of the relocations of offices and services that were once housed in Winnett. This spring, the Red Door moved to share a space with the campus convenience store, creating the Red Door Marketplace, which will ultimately be housed in the Hameetman Center; Caltech's Ticket Office was moved permanently to the Keith Spaulding Building of Business Services, next to the Post Office Center.

While access to areas in close proximity to the building site may be limited throughout the construction process, Norden says that they are working to maintain clear and easy passage for pedestrians. For instance, the pedestrian access along the east side of the building will be maintained to allow movement from the Olive Walk to the Red Door Marketplace, Chandler Dining, and the ATM, which will be relocated in August just south of the Red Door Marketplace. San Pasqual Walk will remain open and the grove of sycamore trees with dining tables will remain available for outdoor seating and use. Similarly, the fire lane along the west of the site will be maintained for emergency access.

Ongoing updates on the construction and its progress will be provided on Caltech Today.

Caltech sustainability efforts paid dividends in fiscal year 2016, cutting water use by 11 percent and trash generation by 5 percent while increasing hazardous material recycling by 11 percent compared to the previous year.

Those highlights, reported by Caltech Sustainability in its "Annual Sustainability Update 2016" report were among dozens of metrics showing the Institute's progress in reducing its environmental footprint. The report also highlighted areas where improvements could be made, such as increasing carpool usage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

John Onderdonk, director of sustainability programs, says that "progress in the last year has been steady and really strengthened long-term positive trends."

For example, he notes that the Institute has made significant progress in reducing demand for and increasing efficiency in energy and water use. Recent achievements in those areas have included: installation of a direct chilled-water loop to connect the campus's central and satellite utility plants to improve cooling in campus buildings; installing dedicated tree irrigation systems; installing low-flow urinals campus-wide; overhauling the 10-megawatt gas turbine in the central plant to bolster efficiency; and upgrading fuel cells providing 2 megawatts to boost their efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Here are some other highlights from the report:

• Caltech now derives 88 percent of its own power needs from on-campus sources—and those on-campus sources are 15 percent cleaner than power provided by the municipal utility;
• Water features including the Gene Pool and the Watson Lab fountain have been outfitted with systems to use recycled water from air conditioning condensation, saving as much as 200,000 gallons of water annually;
• The campus now recycles 34 percent of its waste, a 3 percent increase over the previous year;
• In 2016, the campus installed 61 Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations around campus; the stations are free to use for campus electric vehicle owners as part of a research project led by Steven Low, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, to determine how the Institute can best integrate large numbers of electric vehicles into the campus power grid. The 300-kilowatt stations can fully charge an electric vehicle in about five hours.

Onderdonk says the biggest challenge remaining is further reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which have plateaued—partly as a result of increased energy demands due to new building construction and research as well as from reliance on natural gas combustion to generate electricity and heat on campus. To address that challenge, the Institute approved an energy resource plan in April that aims to significantly decarbonize the campus's electrical supply by 2025 through the deployment of on- and off-site renewable energy projects.

The annual report—which details the goals, successes, and challenges facing the Institute in terms of sustainability—can be found at http://www.caltech.edu/content/2016-report-institute-sustainability-released.

Onderdonk says the report underscores the depth and breadth of the campus's continuing efforts to reduce its environmental impact. "Having detailed metrics and meaningful initiatives across multiple key areas—energy, water, materials, built environment, transportation, and emissions—is rare and certainly shows our commitment to transparency and sustained progress," he says.

The Caltech Store reopened on Monday, July 24, after moving to its new (albeit temporary) location on campus—in the lobby of Millikan Library. The move was made to allow for the demolition of the existing Winnett Student Center and the subsequent construction of a new campus hub, the Hameetman Center, on that same site.

Current plans are for the Caltech Store to be part of the Hameetman Center's retail space when the building opens in the fall of 2018.

"Student Affairs would like to thank the offices of the president and provost, Development and Institute Relations, and the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for allowing us to use their respective spaces during this transition period as well as for their patience during the construction phase," says Joe Shepherd, Caltech's vice president for student affairs.

The Caltech Store's new operating hours will be 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Workers have erected fencing and scaffolding around the Winnett Student Center to prepare for abatement of any hazardous materials in the building before its demolition.

The demolition of Winnett is expected to begin at the end of August, and construction of the Hameetman Center, which will replace Winnett as a new campus hub, should begin as soon as that demolition is complete, says Greg Norden, the project manager for the new Hameetman Center.

Key services previously available at Winnett have been moved to various locations as follows:

• the Caltech SAS Store has been temporarily relocated to the lobby of Millikan Library;
• the Red Door Café is now temporarily located in Chandler Dining Hall, sharing space with the C-Store in what is now called the Red Door Marketplace, and;
• the Ticket Office has been moved permanently to the Keith Spalding Building of Business Services, next to the post office;
• the ATM remains in its current location and is still accessible from a path west of the construction site. The ATM will remain in place until about August 11, 2017, when it will be moved to its new location south of the Red Door Marketplace;
• the prayer room formerly located in the basement of Winnett is now located in the Center for Student Services, Room 248.

The Hameetman Center, named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, is scheduled to open in late 2018. It will feature a large public lounge, an expanded Red Door Marketplace, Caltech SAS Store, music rehearsal facilities, student club rooms, multipurpose room, and conference room.

For questions about the project, contact Dimitris Sakellariou, assistant vice president for student affairs operations, at dimitris@caltech.edu.

The ATM formerly located at Winnett has been installed in its new location on the west side of Chandler, adjacent to the Red Door Café, and is open for business. Meanwhile, interior removals and demolition of Winnett continue through the end of this week, with exterior demolition to follow, pending inspections and issuance of City of Pasadena permits.

The audience inside the Beckman Institute auditorium was almost entirely female. That's rare, physics sophomore Alicia Tirone told the high school students gathered there as part of Caltech's annual Women in STEM Summer Preview event.

"Physics is pretty male-dominated," Tirone said, speaking on a panel of undergraduate women. "You go to a talk and look out into the room, and you can count the number of women on your fingers. That can be pretty daunting."

But at Caltech, she said, she has found a network of colleagues and mentors who are supporting her success.

Close to 450 prospective students and their family members—some from as far away as Beijing and London—attended the sixth-annual Women in STEM program, hosted by Caltech's undergraduate admissions office as part of its Summer Preview series. The series offers prospective applicants a chance to explore opportunities and learn about student life at the Institute.

Women in STEM participants toured labs; met female scientists from Caltech and JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech; and learned about internships with tech firms, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies.

"At Caltech, we care about creating the strongest and most talented pipeline of STEM applicants to the Institute," says Jarrid Whitney, executive director of admissions and financial aid.

Introducing the day's keynote speaker—Fiona Harrison, Caltech's Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy—he said he was eager for students to hear from some of the Institute's female scientists.

Harrison described her work as principal investigator of NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission, and also told students and family members about research opportunities for undergrads.

Later in the afternoon, at a panel called "This is What a Scientist Looks Like," attendees heard from four current students who discussed their own research, and shared how they had found a supportive community at Caltech.

"I am one of two African-American women in the class of 2020," said junior Alyssa Poletti, a planetary science student who is interning at JPL for the summer. She said she had grown accustomed to being one of few women of color in STEM.

Nonetheless, she said, at Caltech she has had many opportunities to connect with other women and scientists of color, starting just before her first year with the Freshman Summer Research Institute, run by the Caltech Center for Diversity. The program offers underrepresented students a five-week summer research experience with a Caltech faculty member, postdoctoral scholar, or graduate student; as well as a four-week introduction to Caltech's first-year math course. "It gave me a community," Poletti said.

The Caltech Archives, which serves as the Institute's collective memory, has long understood the importance of collecting documents and information that not only describe what happened and when, but add dimension and texture to crucial events.

Interviewing the people who lived through those events accomplishes that in a particularly powerful way. Started in 1978, the Archives' oral history program holds personal memoirs and in-depth interviews with distinguished members of the Caltech community. The most recent additions are interviews with Ahmed Zewail, the late Pauling Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics who died in August of 2016, and Harry Gray, the Beckman Professor of Chemistry.

The Zewail interview chronicles his childhood in Egypt, where his hunger for knowledge often led him into trouble. At one point, as a boy, Zewail—who had written "Dr. Ahmed" on his bedroom door—nearly set fire to his mother's rug with a chemistry experiment. In a later episode, young Dr. Ahmed took his uncle's car for a spin and drove it directly into the Nile River. "I knew theoretically what to do," he explains. "I put my left foot on the clutch, and I turn this on. To make a long story short, I tried to apply the theory to the experiment. Well, the car was headed down into the waterway!"

Zewail also describes how his political consciousness took root early on, noting that as a child he wrote a letter to the new Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Zewail recalls writing, "'You are one of us, and in Egypt that's very important, and we are so happy that you are leading the country.' Then I said, 'I pray that you will succeed in your position as the president of Egypt.' These are the three messages that I remember." Nasser sent a gracious response, wishing young Zewail success in the pursuit of knowledge. An image of Nasser's response can be found in the interview transcript.

The interview also covers Zewail's scientific career as well as his many accomplishments and awards. He says that all of his research was "for the love of what [he was] doing."

"This business of the Nobel Prize, it didn't come to my mind, nor did I know any details about it or what it meant," says Zewail. "For me it was the sheer love of whatever we can discover in a small way."

Harry Gray's interview spans his entire life to date—from his childhood in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he was the first boy in his class to ask out a girl, to his time at Caltech. He speaks fondly of his students and the pranks they pulled on him over the years.

One time before class, he recalls, his students unfastened all the desks in the lecture hall and reattached them to face the back of the room. Amused but undeterred, Gray simply carried a blackboard to the back of the lecture hall and taught from there.

"They put all this effort into unscrewing all those chairs and turning them around. Unbelievable. But it's because we had a great relationship," says Gray.

Later in the interview, Gray shares another favorite prank. "They broke into the conference room next door and turned it into a high-tech miniature golf course... They thought I'd be mad. I was happy. I played the golf course for three months. I didn't take it out of here." The full interview with Harry Gray can be accessed here.

To date, the oral histories program has published more than 160 interviews, many of which were recorded over multiple sessions. They can be found at the project's website at oralhistories.library.caltech.edu.

—Andrew Mishin

Forty years ago, on August 20, 1977, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft launched into space on a mission to explore the mysteries of the outer planets. A couple of weeks later, on September 5, its twin, Voyager 1, was launched. Though the spacecraft were designed with the same scientific instruments and both carry a Golden Record of earth sounds, pictures, and messages, they would ultimately take different tours of the solar system.

In 1979, Voyager 1 discovered the first known active volcanoes outside Earth, on a moon of Jupiter called Io. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have flown by all four outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In 2012, Voyager 1, now almost 13 billion miles from Earth, became the first-ever spacecraft to enter interstellar space. Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles from Earth, is heading in a different direction and is expected to reach interstellar space in a few years.

Guiding the Voyagers through all of their adventures—some nail-biting and others filled with the joy of discovering something new—has been the mission's long-time project scientist and Caltech's David Morrisroe Professor of Physics, Ed Stone. In a new video, Stone talks about being a professor at Caltech while serving as project scientist for Voyager at the Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which operates the spacecraft. Stone also reminisces about receiving images and other data about the moon Io and arriving at the surprising realization that it erupts with volcanic activity.

The video can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs-gJs1CKBY&feature=youtu.be.

As the walls of the Bechtel Residence, Caltech's newest undergraduate housing facility, are being erected on the north end of campus, a committee of undergraduates is diligently working to help define its future.

The newly formed 16-student committee, which is known as the Committee on Undergraduate Caltech Housing (COUCH), has been asked by the administration to help explore how best to fill the 212-bed undergraduate residence when it opens in the fall of 2018. COUCH was formed following a series of town halls with the students in the winter and spring of 2017.

"This is something that we take seriously," says senior Timothy Liu, one of the COUCH members. Joining him are all ten members of Caltech's Interhouse Committee and six additional undergrads who were selected through an application process. "The housing system is central to our social life here and, as an upperclassman, I thought it was important to take a lead in helping to shape how this new residence adds to that experience."

The 95,000-square-foot Bechtel Residence, named for Caltech life trustee Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., will be the first new undergraduate housing facility to open on campus in more than two decades. It will also provide the Institute with the opportunity to house all undergraduates on campus for the first time—a longtime goal of Caltech leaders.

"Whatever we do, it will change residential life at Caltech," Vice President for Student Affairs Joe Shepherd says, noting that the students are leading the charge in thinking through all aspects of the new residence, from how it will relate to the existing house system, to who will live there, to what the dining experience will be. "We should be thinking about how we do that, how we make that change, in the most positive way possible."

Bechtel was intentionally designed to provide the community with the greatest flexibility in maximizing space and determining its use. Drawing on input from hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and alumni throughout the planning and design phase, the administration ultimately decided that Bechtel would exist as a set of six distinct units of two to three stories in height, connected around a shared courtyard. Among those units would be a single dining facility that all the residents would share.

Now that construction on Bechtel is fully under way, the students of COUCH are taking the initiative and committing their free time—in between research projects, internships, work, and relaxation—to coming up with options and, ultimately, a suite of recommendations as to who should occupy the new residence.

"This is my opportunity to influence a decision being made that will have an impact on something that I care about," says junior Umesh Padia, who is also a member of COUCH. "I wanted to take part in the decision."

For their part, the students have approached this project much like they would any other research problem—with careful analysis, research, data, and a timeline.

Up first, they say, is researching living environments. Six of the members of COUCH are currently leading separate focus groups, each made up of five to 10 additional undergraduates who are not officially part of COUCH but are interested in evaluating different housing models for Bechtel. Some of Caltech's student leaders asked current undergraduates, in a survey last spring, about their interest in different options for the residence. The results of that survey led to the housing possibilities currently being considered by the focus groups. These include: a freshman residence; a sophomore residence; themed housing in which students are grouped by interests and affiliations; the creation of two to three new houses that would all reside within Bechtel; a system in which the existing eight houses have designated sections of the new facility that serve as offshoots of the houses themselves; or a residence that would not be directly affiliated with an existing house or theme.

As part of their research, the students in the focus groups are looking at other college and university campuses, and interviewing peers, resident associates, administrators, and staff about the pros and cons of their particular models. They have also met or plan to meet with faculty and staff to learn about their personal experiences and perspectives on the living environment they feel would best serve Caltech undergraduates. COUCH and student affairs are also inviting alumni to provide perspective through the Caltech Alumni Association.

"It's been super interesting to see everyone's perspectives," says COUCH committee member and sophomore Sarah Crucilla. "Our goal is to combine the voices of our peers and mentors with statistics to craft a residential experience that helps Caltech thrive."

This fall, the focus groups will be working with student affairs to compile their research into a single comprehensive written report that assesses the opportunities and limitations of various Bechtel options. COUCH has been actively working with student affairs team members to evaluate the practical aspects of various options for Bechtel and the implications for residential life. At the same time, staff in student affairs are also developing their own set of recommendations for how to define the new living and learning space.

Once complete, the students and leadership in student affairs plan to share their findings widely with the Caltech community; they will be leading discussions about the various proposals during campus meetings in the fall of 2017. These gatherings will provide an opportunity to refine the options for occupying Bechtel Residence and any associated changes in residential life at Caltech.  A final decision on Bechtel, which will take the recommendations of all parties into consideration, will be announced in the spring of 2018.

"It's not every day that college students can have the chance to create a living environment for themselves and their peers, so we're making sure that we account for every variable," Crucilla says.

Ongoing updates on the decision process for determining Bechtel's housing model with be provided on Caltech Today.

Demolition of the Winnett Student Center will begin on September 5, temporarily requiring the current fenced-in construction area to expand to the east. This means the area will abut Page House and restricting pedestrian access, says Greg Norden, Caltech Facilities' project manager for the Hameetman Center.

The expansion will prevent pedestrian access to the courtyard of Page, as well as access along that route from the Olive Walk to Chandler Dining Hall. A new walkway along this route will be constructed and is currently scheduled to open on September 20, Norden says. 

The Winnett demolition will continue through September and construction of the Hameetman Center—a 24,000-square-foot, two-story campus hub that is named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, who provided the initial funding to initiate the design—will commence immediately thereafter. The center is scheduled to be completed in late 2018. 

In recognition of the role Winnett and its predecessors have played in campus life, Caltech magazine has created a retrospective of campus hubs throughout the Institute's history. You can also read about Caltech alumni memories of Winnett in the magazine's Endnotes column.

The 2011 Japanese earthquake was a defining moment for Mark Simons. The devastating 9.0-magnitude quake and its subsequent tsunami, which took nearly 16,000 lives, spurred efforts around the globe that will shape how nations predict and prepare for future natural disasters and motivated new approaches to basic earthquake science that are applicable to seismic events large and small.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website.

Richard Andersen has received a grant from the National Science Foundation's Frontier program to develop a brain-machine interface that could translate the neural intention to walk into the movement of prosthetic legs. The work is a collaboration between Caltech, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the University of California, Irvine (UCI). The principal investigator is professor Payam Heydari, UCI professor of electrical engineering & computer science. The technology is still in its developmental phases, but could one day help paraplegics to walk again.

"People with spinal cord injuries do not have sensation in their legs, and must look at their feet when using manually controlled prosthetic legs since they do not receive normal sensory feedback," says Andersen, James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center Leadership Chair, and director of the T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center. "This makes it difficult to use such an exoskeleton. However, the brain-machine interface we are working on will be bidirectional: it allows neurons to control an exoskeleton, and also gives neurons the feedback of sensation in the region of the brain's cortex where the leg is represented. The stimulation-based sensory feedback is the main component of our lab's involvement in the project."

"The present approach develops a technological solution to paralysis by creating a new path for the brain to interact directly with the external environment," says co-investigator Charles Liu, professor of clinical neurological surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of the USC Neurorestoration Center. "This novel approach will synergize with parallel strategies such as neural repair and optimization."

"The goal of this multidisciplinary project is to create an implantable system that can enable patients with spinal cord injury to walk and regain feeling in their legs by circumventing the damaged portion of the spinal cord," says Heydari.

Andersen's lab has worked on similar prosthetic sensory feedback using a robotic arm.

On Sunday, September 17, Caltech extended an official welcome to its new undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and their families and friends, at the 15th annual Convocation Ceremony held in Beckman Auditorium.

In a series of presentations by faculty, graduate students, and a current undergraduate student, Caltech's newest members were encouraged to embrace the Institute's small, diverse research community, and to take advantage of the myriad of opportunities that come with being part of Caltech. They were reminded that students here have the ability to become involved in the arts, athletics, student leadership, and outreach; to lead transformational research projects; and to energize and educate future generations and the broader community by sharing their personal passions for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

"Welcome to one of the great universities of the world," President Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in an opening address in which he provided the audience with a glimpse into the Institute overall as well as advice for getting the most out of their educational experiences.

As the kick-off for a week of orientation activities and events, convocation serves as an official introduction to Caltech and the school year, which begins on September 25. It is an opportunity for the newest members of the Caltech community to meet one another, to experience life at the Institute, and to "set the tone of their personal growth and intellectual journey," said Vice President of Student Affairs Joe Shepherd (PhD '81), emphasizing that these are at the core of the Caltech experience.

Among the undergraduate students joining the community this year are 235 freshmen, one transfer student, and two individuals who have enrolled at Caltech through the 3/2 program—a partnership that invites students at a select group of liberal arts colleges to apply to transfer to Caltech after the completion of their junior year and eventually earn a degree from both institutions. The new graduate student class comprises 247 students from around the world.

The focus of this year's convocation event was outreach—and the impact of such experiences in shaping one's time at Caltech.

In his address, Assistant Professor of Astronomy Evan Kirby, urged the students to take up their "duty of being a science ambassador."

"Science ambassadorship is worthwhile because there is a hunger out there; people really do want to hear about science," Kirby said, going on to highlight a number of different ways Caltech students can become involved with their community—everything from participating in stargazing lectures for the public to volunteering for science fairs and programs at local schools.

Geophysics graduate student Celeste Labedz emphasized the personal rewards of giving back.

"It's addicting to see these kids' minds blown by learning something new," Labedz said of the Science Night program—organized by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach—that brings faculty, staff, and students to local schools to share hands-on science and engineering activities. "There are lots of outreach programs that you can get involved with at Caltech to make a difference in STEM...Caltech provides us with some great opportunities to be able to do so."

Undergraduate Rachael Morton, a senior in computer science, and graduate student Manuel Razo Mejia both noted in their separate remarks the key role that others played in introducing them to science and ultimately inspiring their path to Caltech. Taking part in outreach activities now, they said, is a way to pay that mentoring forward.

"We are hoping to show that to be a scientist…you just have to have passion, you have to have a love of discovery, and you have to be willing to accept the challenges that come with it," Mejia said.

You might be surprised to hear what this year's incoming freshmen have been up to. Learn about the class of 2021 in Caltech magazine.

Caltech senior trustee John Bryson and his wife, Louise, have created the John E. Bryson Fellow endowment at Caltech, which will support 10 Caltech graduate students each year with a focus on sustainable energy research. The couple's $5 million gift to Break Through: The Caltech Campaign was supplemented with additional funds from the Gordon and Betty Moore Graduate Fellowship Match.

John Bryson co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) after graduating from Yale Law School in 1969. He then served as chair of the California Water Resources Board and as president of the California Public Utilities Commission. Bryson went on to champion clean energy at the helm of utility giant Edison International and served as U.S. secretary of commerce under the Obama administration.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website.

Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma and Michael Gibilisco are Caltech's two newest political scientists. From their offices across the hall from each other, they are getting to know the campus and getting to know each other.

Gibilisco received his PhD in political science from the University of Rochester in 2017. Lopez-Moctezuma received his PhD in politics from Princeton in 2016 and then spent a year as a postdoctoral associate at Yale University's Cowles Foundation. Lopez-Moctezuma examines collective decision-making in institutions such as the U.S. Senate and the Federal Open Market Committee (the body in charge of implementing monetary policy in the U.S.). Gibilisco applies game theory to conflict and compromise between groups and studies how minority rights can be effective tools to decrease conflict.

We sat down with them to talk about why they came to Caltech, their first impressions of each other, and what they're learning from today's political environment. 

Political science is maybe not the first thing that comes to mind when one hears "Caltech." What drew each of you here?

Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma [GL]: In fact, Caltech pioneered the use of formal mathematical models to explain political behavior, including models of voting and bargaining. Later, when experimental economics (the use of experiments to test theories in economics) was developed here as a field, it began providing important insights into political science. The research I do would not be possible without these early contributions, so it is a privilege having been invited to collaborate at Caltech.

Michael Gibilisco [MG]:  The research nature of the Institute permeates everything here. Having colleagues, administration, and everyone treat research as their top priority makes this an exciting environment.

Also, all the talk about collaboration is pretty exciting. Here, political scientists are right next door to economists and right next door to neuropsychologists. We often tackle similar problems like voting or bargaining in legislatures, but from very different approaches.

You're both political scientists, but that label doesn't capture the depth of what each of you study. Can you each describe where your research interests lie?

GL: I'm trying to understand the role of political institutions, electoral rules and voting procedures in group decision-making—from small committees of policymakers to large groups of voters such as the U.S. electorate. I use simplified models of the political context, along with data on political behavior to determine the preferences and incentives that lead individuals to take one position over others. 

As an example, I'm trying to understand the effect of deliberation among policy makers on the policies they implement and answer what would happen in hypothetical scenarios where we change the way members communicate.

MG: I study political institutions and constitutions and their effects on group conflict and compromise. Some of the research questions I tackle include how to design constitutions, presidential powers, or political institutions like legislatures in order to decrease conflict and increase compromise among multiethnic groups. 

For example, how do we know when we create rules that they will last over time? We would like to know that if we create some institutional protections for minorities, that in the future, majority groups wouldn't just remove those protections.

Do you have any questions about each other's work?

GL: Mike, I wonder whether you have an example of a conflict that brought you into this particular field?

MG:  What got me started was reading Marxist interpretations of the Basque movement against (former Spanish dictator) Francisco Franco. It's interesting to see how well theoretical models of conflict fit that case. In the future, I'll start fitting more theoretical models to group conflicts and ask what would have reduced the level of conflict. [The Basque separatist movement Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) engaged in armed conflict and terrorism from the 1960s to 2017 when it disarmed] 

MG: Gabriel, there are committees everywhere. How did you become interested in studying the Federal Open Market Committee?

GL: The main reason is that the internal process of decision-making is an understudied topic for this committee and other policy-making bodies. The fact that records of deliberation are publicly available for the FOMC is ideal for understanding the mechanisms through which aggregate choices are made.

MG: When are we going to start co-authoring? (laughter)

GL: Soon, I hope. The thing that is interesting about Mike and I starting this year is that we have overlapping research interests and a similar way of thinking about research in political science. When we talk about potential collaboration at Caltech, hopefully it will start right here with us. 

Politics seem to be everyone's obsession these days. Is there any academic interest in today's politics for either of you?

MG:  As someone who studies political institutions, especially protections for opposition groups, I'm closely following the debates over Senate rules. We've been seeing current leaders tweet or make statements about getting rid of the filibuster or altering protections for the minority party in the Senate. These are very interesting data points because these rules don't usually change. 

GL: It's interesting thinking from an academic perspective about the sequence of choices both candidates made in the recent presidential election and being able to isolate which of those choices actually had the largest impact in the surprising election we observed last year. In the years to come, it's going to be an important research topic.

What is something about you that might surprise people? 

GL:  I don't know if it's surprising or not, but I'm a huge fan of soccer. Growing up in Mexico, you dream as a child to become a professional soccer player. Early on, I realized that was not going to happen, so I just became a fan.

Particularly, I love to watch international matches whenever Mexico plays.

MG:  So, funny story. I applied to Caltech for grad school but I never heard back. I do hope to one day become a Caltech PhD. 

GL:   I didn't hear back either. (laughter)