Stressed by drought, windstorms, and a systemic fungal infection, the 400-year-old Engelmann oak tree treasured by generations of Institute staff, faculty, and students has died.

The oak, located between Dabney Hall and Parsons-Gates Hall of Administration, had been in declining health for more than a decade despite repeated efforts by campus arborists and outside consultants to prolong its life, says Delmy Emerson, director of building and grounds.

"People are shocked and sad," she said about the loss of the oak. "People are so attached to that tree. It's seen the growth of this Institute."

The tree had already exceeded the usual lifespan of an Engelmann oak—about 350 years—and had been stressed by a large and growing cavity in its trunk, possibly the result of physical damage it suffered more than 50 years ago. In the 1990s the tree lost several large branches, necessitating the addition of three structural supports; soon after, it began to require regular delivery of fungicides to its roots to stave off an infection by an incurable soil fungus. Emerson says the loss of another major branch in 2006 eliminated much of the tree's canopy, leaving it vulnerable to additional stress from the sun's heat; to help keep it cool, campus workers painted parts of the tree white.

"A lot of arborists would have removed the tree then, but we decided to let it live as long as it could," she says. "We take our trees seriously, and we only remove one when there's nothing left we can do."

The weather in early 2016 brought rainstorms followed by heat—conditions that favored fungal growth. They also triggered a burst of new green-leaf growth, which, paradoxically, indicated that the tree was burning through its nutrient reserves at a time it should have been dormant, Emerson says. Tree samples taken soon after showed widespread necrosis of its bark and roots, and a last-ditch effort to save the tree using 23 injections of fungicide failed.

In the Institute's early years, the oak provided shade to students and spectators at graduation ceremonies in front of Throop Hall. In more recent years, it has served as a backdrop for countless wedding photos and also served as a subject of portraits drawn by students from the ArtCenter College of Design.

The tree, which once stood as high as 80 feet and spread its branches as wide as 75 feet, will need to be removed. The Institute, however, is investigating ways to salvage some of the wood for use in artwork or furniture as a way to commemorate an oak that has always been a key part of the Caltech campus.

A town hall meeting will be held at noon on Wednesday, February 15, at Avery Dining Hall to discuss proposed plans to commemorate the tree and solicit suggestions for the future use of both the tree's remains and its location.

Caltech recently spoke with Jennifer Howes, the campus's director of health and counseling services, to discuss what her office offers students and her goal of addressing students' counseling needs.

What types of services are available at the Caltech Counseling Center, and who can access them?

Our services are free, confidential, and available to all enrolled Caltech students. We offer brief individual psychotherapy, couples counseling, psychiatry, and crisis intervention, as well as outreach and training on a variety of mental health topics, such as suicide prevention. We also have a range of groups and workshops to help build resilience and coping skills as well as our mindfulness-based cognitive therapy class designed to help prevent depression relapse. And if a student needs open-ended therapy or a higher level of care, we can help find a provider in the community who will be a good fit.

There's a new development I'm really excited about. We recently hired a staff clinician who has a specialty in alcohol and other drug treatment and outreach. We are now able to offer individual and group interventions for substance use as well as provide education to students to help reduce high-risk behaviors.

Incidentally, Student Health Services—located at the same site as the counseling center—offers routine and episodic illness care to enrolled Caltech students, regardless of which health insurance plan they carry. Most basic health care needs can be met on campus, but if a student needs a specialist, radiology, or other services not provided on-site, we help students with referrals and follow-up.

Tell us about yourself and how you landed in your current role.

I'm a clinical psychologist, and I grew up here in Pasadena. I did my training in Southern California, and I was a staff psychologist at the Claremont Colleges before coming to Caltech in 2011. When the former director retired last year, I was asked to step in to this role on an interim basis and then given the permanent appointment in August 2016. I've had a lot of support from the vice president for student affairs, Joe Shepherd, and we've been able to develop and launch quite a number of new initiatives.

Why are these services so important at Caltech?

About 75 percent of mental illness presents before age 24, so, in general, the emergence of mental health issues is a concern with this age group. If we can intervene and help students build skills and address any issues they might be having related to their mental health, it can have a significant positive impact on their future success. There's no question that being a Caltech student is an intense experience, so we aim to make help easily accessible and effective.

What advice would you give to people who are wrestling with a personal issue but aren't sure whether or not they would benefit from counseling?

We always emphasize two things—that our services are confidential and that there really isn't an issue that's too big or small to address in counseling. We want all students to feel comfortable walking through our doors. We certainly do work with students who are struggling with serious concerns, but we see many students who just need to talk through a specific issue, learn how to help a friend, need connections to other resources, or want to find better ways to manage stress. We also work hard to meet students where they are and to create individualized ways to approach whatever concern is bringing them in.  

What are some common misconceptions about counseling or the people who seek it out that you'd like to clear up?

I think one of our biggest challenges is the stigma around mental health issues and help seeking. Even though we see about 20 percent of Caltech students each year, there are some folks who are afraid to seek help. This fear can be based in a number of things. Sometimes it is worry about being viewed as weak, family disapproval, or cultural considerations. We want students to view coming to the Counseling Center as a natural step in their process to solve problems and to know that reaching out for help is actually a sign of strength.

What can people expect when they reach out or visit you for the first time?

Students can call, stop by the office, or send us a secure message to make an appointment. Our initial appointments are usually available within one to three days and are focused on identifying what a student needs and connecting them to the right resources. We are committed to seeing a student in crisis on a same-day basis to make sure that we can address whatever immediate needs that person might have.

How can people reach you and when?

We're open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we have extended hours on Monday and Wednesday until 7 p.m. Students can contact us by phone or via secure message through their student health portal. We also have after-hours support available during evenings, weekends, and whenever the office is closed. This is a service staffed by off-site licensed clinicians, and students can call (626) 395-8331 and press "2" to be connected.

For information, visit counseling.caltech.edu. The center is located at 1239 Arden Rd., Pasadena, or by calling (626) 395-8331.

The Staff and Faculty Consultation Center is available for all nonstudent members of the Caltech community. It can be reached at (626) 395-8360 or sfcc.caltech.edu.

Since first light in 1993, the twin Keck Telescopes at Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory have produced images of stars, nebulae, and massive galaxies in unprecedented detail. However, bright objects like these represent only a small fraction of the total mass in the universe. Most regular matter exists in faint, long filaments stretching between galaxies to form the cosmic web—a vast, dim structure.

The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI), designed and built at Caltech, is a highly sensitive instrument capable of imaging the cosmic web with more precision than any other cosmic web imager. It is currently being installed onto the Keck II telescope.

The goal of KCWI is to understand the origin of galaxies, in particular, the physics of how they form within the cosmic web. Two Caltech graduate students, Donal O'Sullivan (MS '15) and Prachi Parihar (MS '16), worked on the instrumentation and observational aspects of KCWI. We sat down with them to discuss what it's like to build a brand-new instrument and what they hope it will discover.

What are your specific roles in the mission?

Donal O'Sullivan: I work on both the instrumentation and observational sides of KCWI. Obviously we haven't observed with KCWI yet, but I've spent a lot of time with its less-sensitive prototype, the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager at Caltech's Palomar Observatory. I built a small but vital component of KCWI—the module that houses the arc lamps used to spectrally calibrate the instrument—and helped the engineering team run data analysis to verify its performance.

Prachi Parihar: I have helped with the instrumentation side of KCWI and have observed with its prototype at Palomar, but my main research work is on the theoretical side. KCWI is a complex instrument and one of the very few of its kind. We are observing parts of the cosmic web that have until now been invisible to astronomers. Given the uniqueness of these observations, it is critical that we understand how to analyze and interpret them. Simulations can be very helpful in this area because we can compare them with observational predictions for the same galaxies, providing both more guidance and confidence in our interpretation of the data.

What kinds of challenges have you faced during this process?

DO: One of the biggest challenges I think I faced was learning that "good enough" is "good enough." I think a lot of scientifically minded people have a natural desire to find the optimal solution to every problem, but there are some tasks where optimizing the solution becomes a big time-sink that costs more than it is worth. Identifying how good you really need a solution to be and taking the most time-effective approach instead is a really valuable skill.

What discoveries are you looking forward to?

DO: I am most excited about the potential to discover more examples of the protogalactic disks my adviser, Chris Martin [professor of physics], discovered with the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager. Currently, we believe that galaxies form when the dark matter in the universe gravitationally collapses to form dense regions that we call dark matter halos. These halos gravitationally pull "normal"—not dark—matter like hydrogen toward their centers. This gas spirals inward and forms a disk at the center due to the conservation of angular momentum, which eventually leads to disk galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda. Among other things, we are trying to image this happening in the early universe.

PP: KCWI will go deeper and collect higher-quality data for more galaxies. So far, we have detected interesting structures ranging from large gaseous disks to clumps of gas. Each observation is unique, and each galaxy environment is different. I am looking forward to getting a larger statistical sample so we can determine the prevalence of different kinds of objects and piece together a more complete picture of galaxy environments during early galaxy formation. 

How did you become interested in astronomy?

DO: I've always been very widely interested in science—every field has such fascinating stories and discoveries. It was genuinely hard to decide in which direction to go when I was in school. I took every subject I could and eventually became fascinated with two main areas—astronomy and neuroscience, because I thought they were the fields that contained some of the most profound questions about the universe we observe. Astronomy looks at everything we observe in the cosmos and tries to understand it. Neuroscience looks inward at how we perceive the world and breaks that down.

I get the best of both worlds with astronomical instrumentation. We are in the most exciting time ever for opening up new windows on the universe. We have ultraviolet telescopes, X-ray telescopes, global-scale radio interferometry, and now even gravitational-wave observatories! I feel insanely lucky to be right in the middle of it all at Caltech.

PP: There is something really compelling about using the modern telescopes and instruments of today to study the same skies that have fascinated both laypeople and scientists for thousands of years. As an undergraduate physics major, I realized that my physics electives happened to all be astrophysics classes. Since that time, I have had a special fondness for galaxies because I have been amazed by the way these objects seemingly self-assemble into organized structures. KCWI is particularly exciting for me because it allows us to look at how galaxies are born.

On a sunny Tuesday outside of Caltech's Red Door Café, two women with brightly dyed hair are deep in conversation. The two—Giuliana Viglione, a fourth-year graduate student in environmental science, and Alicia Lanz, a sixth-year graduate student in physics—are part of Caltech's Women Mentoring Women (WMW) program. They are discussing a topic both are passionate about—the representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

"There's definitely a numbers problem," says Viglione. "In a field where labs might only have three students and a postdoc, it's common for you to be the only woman. WMW has really helped me connect with others in my field and given me an avenue to talk about issues I can't necessarily bring up with my male colleagues."

The WMW program began in 2002 as a way to connect female postdoctoral scholars and graduate students looking for career advice. It has since grown to include staff members and undergraduates. To become a mentor or mentee, women fill out an application that includes a short biographical section and questions about priorities—such as wanting to be matched with someone in the same field or with common outside interests. The applications are reviewed by an advisory board made up of staff, faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students. In its first year, the program matched 11 graduate students with postdoc mentors. Today, the program has grown to 89 mentor-mentee pairs.

"The foundation of WMW is the individual, one-to-one connection that is fostered between mentor and mentee," says Erin-Kate Escobar, assistant director of Women's Services and Programs for the Caltech Center for Diversity and director of the Women Mentoring Women program. "These individual mentoring meetings are where the matches discuss academic, professional, and personal issues; set and work toward goals; problem solve; and celebrate successes."

Additionally, the program hosts a monthly faculty lunchtime series as well as workshops on topics such as body language and confidence, which are open to the campus community. WMW participants are also invited to participate in work-life balance activities such as hikes and a book club.

"For me, having a mentor is about representation—seeing people who I could imagine being, doing things that I might imagine myself doing," says Lanz. "Seeing people who are similar in age to me was really helpful and gave me the sense that I, too, can do this. There's also an unexpected benefit of being part of the program—you get really good friends out of it."

Women Mentoring Women accepts applications year-round and uses an inclusive definition of "woman," welcoming transwomen, genderqueer women, and nonbinary people.

Lior Pachter (BS '94) is Caltech's new Bren Professor of Computational Biology. Recently, he was elected a fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology, one of the highest honors in the field. We sat down with him to discuss the emerging field of applying computational methods to biology problems, the transition from mathematics to biology, and his return to Pasadena.

What is computational biology?

Computational biology is the art of developing and applying computational methods to answer questions in biology, such as studying how proteins fold, identifying genes that are associated with diseases, or inferring human population histories from genetic data. I have interests in both the development of computational methods and in answering specific biology questions, primarily related to the function of RNA, a molecule central to the function of cells. RNA molecules transmit information through their roles as products of DNA transcription and as the precursors to translation to protein; they also act as enzymes catalyzing biochemical reactions. I am interested in understanding these functions of RNA through tools that involve the combination of computational methods with sequencing methods that together allow for high-resolution probing of RNA activity and structure in cells.

How did you get interested in this field?

During my PhD studies at MIT, I took a course in computational biology. In the course of working on a final project for the class, I got connected to the Human Genome Project—a large-scale endeavor to identify the full DNA sequence of a human genome—and I found the biology and associated math questions very interesting. This led me to change my intended direction of research from algebraic combinatorics to computational biology, and my interests expanded from math to statistics, computer science, and genomics.

Is it common for mathematicians to become biologists?

It's not very common. However, many prominent genomics biologists have backgrounds in mathematics, computer science, or statistics. For example, one of my mentors in graduate school was Eric Lander, the director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who received a PhD in mathematics and then transitioned to working in biology. His transition, like mine years later, was sparked by the possibilities and challenges of utilizing genome sequencing to understand biology.

While genome sequencing has obviously been useful in revealing the sequences that are involved in coding various aspects of the molecular biology of the cell, it has had a secondary impact that is less obvious at first glance. The low cost and high throughput (the ability to process large volumes of material) of genome sequencing allowed for a more "big-data" approach to biology, so that experiments that previously could only be applied to individual genes could suddenly be applied in parallel to all of the genes in the genome. The design and analysis of such experiments demand much more sophisticated mathematics and statistics than had previously been needed in biology.

A result of the scale of these new experiments is the emergence of very large data sets in biology whose interpretation demands the application of state-of-the-art computer science methods. The problems require interdisciplinary dexterity and involve not only management of large data sets but also the development of novel abstract frameworks for understanding their structure. For example, there's a new technique called RNA-seq, developed by biologists including Barbara Wold [Caltech's Bren Professor of Molecular Biology], which involves measuring transcription—the process of copying segments of DNA into RNA—in cells. The RNA-seq technique consists of transforming RNA molecules into DNA sequences that allow the researchers to identify and count the original RNA molecules. The development of this technique required not only novel biochemistry and molecular biology, but also new definitions and ideas for how to think about transcriptomes, which are the sets of all the RNA molecules in a cell. I work on improvements to the assay, as well as the development of the associated statistics, computer science, and mathematics.

What did you do before becoming a professor at Caltech?

I was born in Israel and moved to South Africa when I was two. I lived there until moving to Palo Alto, California, at 15. After high school, I studied mathematics at Caltech and pursued my PhD in applied mathematics at MIT. I spent time at Berkeley as a postdoc before becoming professor of mathematics, molecular and cell biology, and computer science, and I held the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Chair in Computational Biology. I joined the Caltech faculty in early 2017.

What is it like to be back here?

It's a great pleasure. As an undergrad, I made very strong connections with very special people who just had a pure love of science. I've always missed the unique culture and atmosphere at Caltech and, returning now as a professor, I can feel the spirit of the Institute—an intense love of science emanating from individuals that is unlike anywhere else. It's a homecoming of sorts.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet and the former CEO of Google, foresees a time very soon when artificial intelligence will become dramatically more capable and useful, impacting how we live our lives and how we understand the world around us.

"The biggest shift of all will be moving up the scale of information understanding," he said, noting that such a shift will provide the ability not just to deliver search results, but useful personalized suggestions. For example, a speaker coming to campus might receive suggestions about what to say, or what topics to avoid—"the kind of things that a good adviser would give. And we're on the cusp of being able to do that."

Schmidt provided this glimpse into the future during a Q&A with Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum on February 17 at Ramo Auditorium. About 150 students, faculty, and staff members attended the event to hear Schmidt field questions from Rosenbaum and members of the audience about the future of technology, the value and importance of the internet as a forum for a free exchange of ideas—and how to get hired by Google. Their session was the capstone of a visit to campus in which Schmidt learned firsthand about some of the research conducted at the Institute.

During the public event, Schmidt said the areas where he sees advances happening most quickly are biology—specifically personalized medicine, treatments for cancer, and our ability to understand the brain—information science, and, of course, artificial intelligence. 

Of particular note to the Caltech community, though, was Schmidt's suggestion that artificial intelligence could transform the way science is done by allowing researchers to conduct "hypothesis-free" investigations of massive amounts of data.

Traditionally, he said, scientists "have a hypothesis, and they build algorithms and test it and so forth and they eventually get the Nobel Prize. So, good job. [But] there's a new model for how to do science that we are trying to propose . . . which has a different starting point. It's get as much data as possible, and then without too much of a theory, begin to analyze the data."

Schmidt then added: "There are many very difficult problems in science that might be solvable through our kind of machine learning approach that have not been solvable in a hundred years by your traditional approach."

He said he envisioned a scenario in which a chemist or physicist with a hunch submits his idea to an artificial intelligence system with a deep understanding of the related field: "He types, 'My hunch is A-B-C-D' and then the computer, with its vast knowledge of physics, can begin to do reinforcement learning and other approaches, [and respond], 'Your hunch is probably not true,'" while suggesting a related alternative to investigate.

"This symbiosis between this incredibly disciplined thinker and the ability to look through vast amounts of knowledge and data is the future," he said.

Schmidt speculated that artificial intelligence is likely to be socially and economically disruptive, replacing repetitive, low-value-added jobs now performed by people in the same way that robotics displaced manufacturing jobs in the last few decades. But, he posited, as a result, "people will spend more time doing things that are uniquely human."

He added that technological change would elevate the importance of education and globalization and increase job growth and global income, but acknowledged that the question of who benefits from the increase in wealth remains a thorny issue.

In discussing the future of artificial intelligence, Schmidt did take a moment to address concerns that machines might become super intelligent and subsequently "self-modify to become evil."

"That's not real, okay?" he said. "That's just a movie script."

Watch the full Caltech event here.

Freshman Thomas Gallup will be Caltech's first representative at the NCAA National Swimming & Diving Championships in more than three decades after claiming two individual titles in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) February 17 and 18.

Gallup, a member of Caltech's men's swim and dive team, won individual conference titles in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke. His times earned him invitations to compete in the NCAA National Championships, which runs from Mar. 15–18, in Shenandoah, Texas, just outside his hometown of Houston. The last time the Beavers sent a representative to the championships was in 1983, when 2016 Hall of Honor inductee Chris McKinnon competed in his third straight meet. Caltech's best finish as a team at the championships was in 1981, when the Beavers placed 26th in the nation.

In addition to the sense of achievement he receives from achieving personal athletic goals and overcoming strong competition, Gallup says that swimming for Caltech has been especially rewarding. "When I committed to swim at Caltech, some people questioned my decision, saying that it was a 'shame' that I had chosen a school that wasn't known for its swimming program. To show that we can balance both our academics and achieve at the highest level athletically makes me really proud to be a Techer!"

He adds, "All members of the swim team have a vision of turning our program into one of the best in SCIAC, and I'm proud to do my part in getting us there."

Read more about Gallup's achievement here.

If you can dream it up, you can probably print it out.

Since 2015, the TechLab at Sherman Fairchild Library has been offering the tools, training, and materials to allow members of the Caltech community to get started in 3D printing. Aucoeur Christine Ngo, TechLab manager, says more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff members have registered to use the 3D printers, producing items including models of chemical compounds, human brains, and robotics hands, as well as crucial spare parts for out-of-production lab equipment.

"The response has been really enthusiastic," Ngo says. "We have our TechLab power users, but others initially come in with little more than a rough sketch idea.  It's a pretty versatile technology: users from any discipline can find something to print that will be useful for their labs or relevant to their research."

The lab, located in Room 131 of the Sherman Fairchild Library, is free to use and provides desktop equipment related to prototyping and modeling, including a variety of 3D printers, scanners, and microcontroller and mini-computer circuit boards that enable electronics prototyping. Library staff members provide training classes and on-site orientation and guidance in the use of the equipment. Workstations throughout the library provide access to SolidWorks, the main campus software used to create and manipulate 3D images for printing. Anyone with a Caltech ID can register to use the lab, which was established with support from the Moore-Hufstedler Fund.

Several undergraduates in the ME 14 class "Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design" recently used the lab to create flexible tentacles for a prototype of an artificial autonomous jellyfish. The finished product is on display on the second floor of Parsons-Gates, Ngo says.

During a presentation held in Millikan Library's 9th floor Lookout, Russell Singer from Makeit, Inc.—an Alhambra-based 3D printing company—described advanced methods for 3D printing and featured 3D printed items such as flyable drones, furniture components, and handmade stereo speakers. Afterward, as the Caltech community members in attendance examined the finished products, Ngo noted the lab is designed "to provide users the freedom to experiment and tinker around."

More often than not, the "tinkering" is directed to educational ends. For example, TAs have used the equipment to create molecular orbital models for chemistry class demonstrations. But lab staffers have also seen their share of whimsical tchotchkes—plastic pangolins are in vogue at the moment.

"While the priority is on projects related to their research, we recognize learning sometimes happens peripherally, so users have the flexibility to print almost anything," she says. "Our role is making sure they are comfortable operating the machines, then off they go."

The TechLab is available for use by anyone with a Caltech ID. The Lab is open to registered users 8 a.m.– 10 p.m., Mondays–Thursdays, and 8 a.m.–5 p.m. on Fridays, and by key checkout all other hours SFL is open. TechLab staff are available for assistance, training, and registration Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 3–5 p.m., and Tuesdays and Thursdays 1–5 p.m and other times by appointment.

The Caltech Pipettes—the Institute's 14-member, all-female, all-student a cappella group—performed to their biggest audience yet during a show at the Disneyland resort February 18. After submitting audition videos from their YouTube channel, the Pipettes were competitively chosen to perform at Disney's California Adventure (DCA).

"I figured it was worth a try," says Preethi Periyakoil, a Caltech junior and president of the Pipettes, who says she thought performing at Disneyland would be "a wonderful experience" for the group. After doing some research online, Periyakoil had discovered there was a way for the group to both perform and visit the park—through the Disney Performing Arts Onstage program, which puts student performers "in front of an international audience," according to the program's website. She submitted three songs from a performance the Pipettes had done during Caltech's "Love Sucks" 2016 winter concert; the next thing she knew, she and the Pipettes were on their way to Anaheim.

The group performed a 30-minute set of six songs on DCA's Hollywood Backlot Stage to a dozen faculty members, their families, and about 50 of their own friends, as well as a nearly full house of park-goers. The performance included the songs "Mercy," by Duffy and "Send My Love," by Adele, among others. And because the group was in tune with its audience, they also performed "I Won't Say I'm in Love," from Disney's 1997 movie Hercules and "Le Festin," from 2007's Ratatouille. (You can see the entire performance on the group's Facebook page.)

"Performing at DCA was so cool. We were all pretty nervous at first, but once we started singing all that fear just sort of melted away," says Periyakoil of the day's performance. "And it helped a lot to see our friends and faculty there to watch and support us."

The group normally performs one concert per term that includes these same songs, Periyakoil says; nevertheless, the time commitment to prepare for the show was great, as they suddenly had to perfect six songs in six weeks. The advantages, though, were significant, she adds. As the Performing Onstage program website notes, singing at DCA exposes artists to "the highest level of performance" at a "high-profile venue." Periyakoil says, "I am truly amazed by how our team came together—their tireless enthusiasm and hard work was very humbling and inspiring. It hasn't been the easiest few weeks, and we couldn't have done this without the help and support from each and every Pipette."

The Pipettes formed in 2014 and is Caltech's fourth—and newest—a cappella group: there are also two co-ed groups and one all-male group at the Institute. The Pipettes' 14 student members study everything from computer science, bioengineering, and applied and computational math to chemistry, mechanical engineering, and biology. Still, each week, they come together from houses all over campus to indulge in their shared passion for music. "It also helped me understand the value of teamwork, as each of us have different strengths and riff off each other. Being in the Pipettes helps us all relax because we're doing something that we care about deeply," Periyakoil says. "It keeps you from getting bored, it diversifies your portfolio, and helps you find your niche in a high-stress environment like Caltech. "

In response to the international travel restrictions, more than 500 people gathered at Millikan Pond on Wednesday afternoon to express support for the international members of the Caltech community.

Michael Roukes, spokesperson for the concerned faculty who organized the event, kicked off the gathering by noting recent federal policies potentially threaten foreign-born community members' status as legal residents. "Many now feel uncertain, even fearful," he said.

Roukes, the Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering, says the collective sense of unease over the new policies prompted faculty members to organize the gathering, the largest of its kind on campus in more than 40 years.

The event featured comments from 15 additional faculty and students—including two Nobel Laureates—addressing the uncertainty and difficulty that travel restrictions have caused and highlighting the important contributions of scholars from abroad.

In her remarks, Dianne Newman, the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, emphasized to the audience that freedom of travel is crucial both personally and professionally.

"I'm alive today because my grandparents and great grandparents came to America fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century," she said. "My PhD mentor is French and my postdoctoral adviser from Guatemala. Many of my postdoctoral scholars and graduate students are from overseas or are first-generation Americans."

Listing 20 countries from which students and colleagues supporting her work hail, she added, "My research would not have been possible, much less successful without the contributions of these people. In my opinion, any policy that limits the ability of talented individuals to come to the United States to pursue the American Dream is a betrayal of our country's most noble principles."

Throughout the event, members of the audience crowded around a poster-sized scroll to sign their names to a statement of support for "the international members of the Caltech community who have been affected by travel restrictions." Several dozen signatures in various colors had already covered the scroll as the last speakers came to the podium.

In her comments to the crowd, Giuliana Viglione, a geological and planetary sciences graduate student, said that with nearly half of graduate students being international students, the campus is necessarily affected by changes in federal travel policy.

"The bubble that insulates us from the world beyond has burst," she said. "We cannot afford to remain silent as members of our own community are detained without cause. ... We cannot afford to remain silent as the very basis for higher learning is threatened.

"Our diversity should be celebrated, not castigated," she added. "Our international students should be championed, not condemned."

On February 23, 2017, President Thomas F. Rosenbaum and Katherine T. Faber, Caltech's Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science, hosted a dinner to celebrate the establishment of leadership chairs for Caltech's six division chairs, provost, and president.

"This unprecedented suite of leadership chairs makes a powerful statement about Caltech values," said President Rosenbaum, holder of the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics, in the first announcement of these new chairs. "It challenges our faculty and students to push the boundaries of knowledge and create new fields of inquiry. The visionary philanthropists who created these chairs are some of Caltech's most knowledgeable and dedicated friends. We deeply appreciate the confidence that their generous gifts demonstrate."

Read more here.

Using a combination of light and sound, Lihong Wang is noninvasively peering deeper inside biological tissues than previously possible. Three-dimensional photoacoustic microscopy and functional photoacoustic computed tomography, the technologies first reported by Wang—Caltech's Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering—generate detailed color images of tumors and other structures inside the body. His novel imaging techniques have applications for medical screening, diagnosis, disease monitoring, surgical guidance, and more. Born in China, Wang earned his PhD at Rice University in Houston and until recently held the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professorship of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He and his lab of 30 members moved to Caltech in January. Recently, Wang, Caltech's first full-time medical engineering faculty member, gave a tour of his newly renovated, 8,000-square-foot lab and answered a few questions about his research and his transition to Caltech.

What brought you to Caltech?

Caltech has an amazing engineering school in a top-notch institution. We were attracted by the first-rate faculty, postdocs, and students. We also have high-caliber facilities. Look at this lab! Some of our prospective students were so floored that they commented that they had seen nothing like this. The lab can be reconfigured by opening the movable walls inside so adjacent optical tables can share laser beams easily. The entire lab can share laser beams across both floors as well through an overhead laser conduit. This setting will make our lab's research more efficient. I'm grateful that Caltech has built a dream lab for me.

What do you work on?

We work on biomedical imaging. We can image deeper than any conventional high-resolution optical technique. Optical imaging dates back to 350 years ago, when the first optical microscopy was invented. But that only allows us to image about 100 microns deep, which is why we cut tissue into thin slices for medical histology. Modern microscopy allows us to image up to one millimeter deep [10 times as deep], which has been a long-standing barrier called the optical diffusion limit. 3D photoacoustic microscopy, first demonstrated by our lab, breaks through that barrier. We could initially image multiple millimeters deep and subsequently scaled it up to multiple centimeters for macroscopic imaging. We were also the first to demonstrate functional or in vivo photoacoustic computed tomography, which is now used for imaging of structures as large as the human breast.

How does 3D photoacoustic microscopy work?

We combine optical contrast with acoustic resolution for deep penetration. The original optical microscopy couldn't tolerate any disruption of the light. The technique we developed tolerates scattering of photons. Photons at the right wavelength can go very deep in biological tissue, but not in a straight fashion because they are scattered by the tissue. But if you have a strong optical absorber at a given depth, such as a blood vessel or a tumor, it's going to respond to light excitation with a stronger acoustic signal. So we convert light into sound via the photoacoustic effect, where light absorption generates a small but rapid temperature rise, leading to acoustic emission. Acoustic scattering in biological tissue is about a thousand times weaker than optical scattering. Tissue to sound is like clear water to light. Consequently, sound can allow us to image structures clearly in tissue, but with optical contrast.

How did you get into your field?

After I received my PhD from the Rice University lab that discovered the buckyball (C₆₀), I wanted to switch to something that has more immediate applications. I stumbled on lasers in medicine. My very first project was simulating photon transport in biological tissues. It showed me the difficulty in optical imaging because the scattering was so strong, but also pointed me to some ideas about how to generate sharp images. If you use light only, you face this tremendous challenge to overcome the photon-scattering problem. So, I wanted to focus on something that combines light and sound because both forms of energy have their advantages and they can be coupled through tissue. While light provides molecular information, sound gives you spatial information at depths. But either alone will not do the job right.

Will you be collaborating with other researchers at Caltech?

There are already collaborations going on. Even before I arrived here, we were awarded a grant with Michael Roukes [Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering]. And we have grant applications with other faculty members pending. As photoacoustic tomography is the only technology that allows us to image in vivo from organelles through cells and tissues to small-animal organisms (or human organs), I can see future collaborations with many faculty members.

How have you been enjoying Southern California so far?

Hiking here is great. In fact, my lab already had its first hike, to Echo Mountain. We went to the top of the mountain and shouted COIL, our lab's acronym [for Caltech Optical Imaging Laboratory], in unison, which verified why it's called Echo Mountain. 

Held on Beckman Mall on March 9, Caltech's 32nd Annual Engineering Design Competition featured teams of robots and their handlers battling for the best times navigating a "Robstacle Course."

The V15TA team—Yunsang Choi, Mayra Melendez, Allison Penn, Eduardo Plascencia, and William Yu—won first place by having its robots successfully traverse 27 pylons, a seesaw, and a ramp to deliver a ball into a hole at the end of the course. 

A slideshow of the event can be found here.

Video of the event is online here.

The Winnett Student Center—home to the Red Door Café, the Caltech Store, the Ticket Office, a recording studio, and a variety of other multiuse meeting and event spaces—has served as a central gathering place for Caltech's community for more than 50 years. Now, the Institute is poised to break ground on the construction of a new campus hub to be called the Hameetman Center.

Named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, who made a $6.2 million lead gift to renovate Winnett in 2012, the Hameetman Center will provide a redesigned flow that will make the building more versatile and functional for today's campus community. A gift from emeritus professor of theoretical physics Steven Frautschi and his wife, Mie will enable the center to also include a rehearsal hall for the music programs.

A committee was established in the fall of 2012 by the then Vice President for Student Affairs Anneila Sargent to solicit input from the center users and campus community. The committee developed a program plan in 2013-14 that would serve the changing needs of the campus, add the music rehearsal hall and provide better use of the interior space as well as bring the building up to date in terms of technology. Following these discussions and extensive consideration of rehabilitating the existing structure by the architects, the decision was made to demolish the above ground portion of the existing building and construct an entirely new structure. "With this new structure, we will be able to remedy the many limitations of Winnett to provide an attractive and inviting community gathering center as well as provide much needed rehearsal space for our very popular music programs," says Vice President for Student Affairs Joe Shepherd.

In preparation for the initial demolition of Winnett, which is currently scheduled to begin in late June, the Institute will soon begin relocating many of the services offered in the current building.

The first scheduled relocations, according to Dimitris Sakellariou, assistant vice president for student affairs operations, are the Red Door Café and the Ticket Office.

• The Red Door will temporarily move, for the duration of the project, to share space with the existing campus convenience store, or C-store. To accommodate this change and upgrade the space to serve these two functions, the C-Store will close for renovations beginning on March 17. The Red Door Café itself will remain open through March 31 and will reopen within the C-Store as soon as the joint renovated space receives city approval. The two facilities will move to a permanent and expanded space within the Hameetman Center when the construction project is finished.
• The Ticket Office will move permanently to the Keith Spalding Building of Business Services, next to the Post Office Center. The Ticket Office will remain open in its current location until the new facility is ready in early April.

Future temporary relocations will include the Caltech Store, which sells Caltech apparel, memorabilia, technology, and supplies, among other items. According to Sakellariou, the Caltech Store will likely move to the first floor of Millikan Library soon after Caltech's Commencement ceremonies in June. Planning continues on the logistics and timing associated with relocating many of the other services currently housed in Winnett.

Student Affairs is working with the current users and members of the community in finalizing some aspects of the design, Sakellariou says. The new center will include as an open, versatile lounge and common area on the first floor; a new music rehearsal room, conference room and multipurpose area on the second floor; a recording study, club rooms and storage for the Caltech store on the basement level. An enlarged outdoor space will be provided adjacent to Red Door, which will be located near its present location on the north side of the building.

According to Greg Norden, the project manager for the Hameetman Center, "the key historical elements, of the current building will also be preserved and repurposed." These include the bricks into which alumni have carved their names and initials and the brass T currently outside the Caltech Store.

The new Hameetman Center is scheduled to open in fall 2018.

This spring, Israeli programmer, poet, and new media artist Eran Hadas will be teaching at Caltech as an artist-in-residence through the Israel Institute. Hadas, who is based in Tel Aviv, combines poetry and computer science, creating software that writes poetry and text with input from the Internet. His Wikipedia entry describes him as "an Israeli poet, software developer, new media artist, and the author of seven books"—a set of titles he embraces.

"I always joke that I consider myself a poet, but in order to be taken seriously, other people should consider me as a software developer," Hadas laughs. "I once heard the saying, 'Poetry is the R&D department of humanity.' I wish to augment it to 'the R&D department of post-humanity,' but at the core of either is the decision to step out of our particular selves and raise questions about our being."

Hadas will be introducing his Caltech students to computational literature, covering the evolution of poetry and poets from the end of the Romantic era until 2045, when futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted the singularity—the point at which artificial intelligence and technology surpasses human capabilities. Hadas has no concerns about the students' receptiveness to this new field.

"Poetry means different things to different people," Hadas notes, "and I'm not going to impose my own views on the students but rather try to embrace their feelings and backgrounds, and bind them to a poetic path. Having said that, I find many similarities between poetry and coding. Poetry can be viewed as a series of rewritings that modify form but preserve content. This process bears resemblance to code refactoring, which is a process that coders often experience as an impulse, much like an urge a poet might have.

"Caltech is globally known for its spirit of academic excellence, as the home of many of the world's brightest researchers and students," he adds. "I think it will be the first time I am going to be out-geeked not by just one or two students but by the entire class."

Hillary Mushkin, research professor of art and design in mechanical and civil engineering, orchestrated Hadas's visit to Caltech. "This is the first class that's cross listed between computer science and humanities," she says, "and that's really exciting." Mushkin looks forward to the different perspective on computing that Hadas will bring to Caltech as well as the questions his class will raise about the purpose of computing and the relationship between computing and poetics.

For Hadas, the biggest draw is the Caltech community. "The most important thing in every experience is the people," he says. "I have met Hillary Mushkin, who introduced me online to other faculty and staff members, and I was deeply impressed. I have learned from every teaching activity in which I was involved and from every interaction with people, especially coming from different backgrounds. In the context of Caltech, it will be a challenge for me to identify the DNA of the Institute and adapt so I can keep some of it with me when my stay is over."

Hadas is equally excited by the opportunity to "have even the slightest effect on the way the students view their world," he says, "To look at data not only as raw data but also as information, always unnatural, always involving a certain level of bias. I would like my students to be committed not to the data but to the people who are affected by it. I want them to realize what power they have in their hands and what responsibilities come with it.

"I hope the students come up with new ideas. Many times in history, people approached things that were difficult to model formally and tried to go by reverse engineering. An airplane is actually an attempt to remodel a bird. It gives me the hope that reverse engineering poetry can come up with surprising results. It's going to be fun."

When you walk into Maura Dykstra's new office at Caltech, one of the first things you notice is a table covered in scrolls, brushes, and calligraphic Chinese characters. For Dykstra, a new assistant professor of history, calligraphy is not just a hobby—it is practice to help her read and analyze historical documents. Dykstra is a historian studying the policies, government, and everyday life in China during the last dynasty—from the 17th to the early 20th century. We sat down with her to discuss Chinese history, calligraphy, her hobbies, and the importance of teaching history to science students.

What is the focus of your research?

I'm interested in how people are governed and how policy decisions—made in order to help society flourish and keep people from doing bad things—produce opportunities for cheating, produce opportunities for beauty, and produce unexpected consequences. I'm interested in how all of the institutions that we live with today are a combination of incredible human invention and sometimes strange circumstance.

What led you to study history?

I dropped out of high school when I was 15—partly because I hated history. I hated the expectation that I was supposed to listen to what teachers were saying and look for clues about how they understood reality in order to present those things back to them as answers about universal truths. I really didn't like this vision of how knowledge worked. It involved generalizations about complicated historical truths and it demanded the student's acquiescence to the instructor's view of how the world worked. It didn't encourage the student to wonder about the world of the past or the future.

My mother's condition for letting me drop out was that I continue my schooling, so I took some classes at City College of San Francisco. I dabbled in philosophy and film, only to drop out after three semesters to join an internet company back when that was the fashionable thing to do. I taught myself programming and HTML, and dreamed about the way that these new tools of communication and exchange would revolutionize the world by facilitating the transfer of information.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, that new world I had expected to emerge seemed far away. Foolish, even. I realized that I wasn't interested in spending the rest of my life chasing around people's HTML problems. I was actually interested in trying to do something that would make the world a more bearable place for myself and for the other people around me. Something that could bring people closer together and allow them to express their differences in productive ways as a more immediate goal for those of us who had been dreaming of a global information society but woke up in a divided world.

I went back to school to take some history classes out of curiosity and, in the course of doing that, I developed the conviction that history can actually help us solve problems today. History gives us a perspective on the questions of the present day that requires us to expand our point of view beyond the most obvious parameters. A careful attention to how things came to be imbues us with an appreciation for the possibilities of what might have been and opens us up to questions that people caught up in the current moment might forget to ask. I believe that historical inquiry can offer insight not only into specific problems in the current day but also into the assumptions behind those problems and the world that exists beyond them. I decided to commit myself to the study of history when I realized how powerfully it can redefine the way that we ask questions about our lives today.

What's it like to be a historian at Caltech?

In general, the link between humanities learning and practical problems in the current day is an extremely tenuous and sometimes problematic one. The lessons that we learn from humanities are often several steps removed from current problems. The important thing becomes attention to how those intermediate steps between research and theory and then application both within and beyond the humanities disciplines can be navigated. What is uniquely wonderful about working at Caltech is that I get to be in the same place as people who are working on the problems of today and in a community where a conversation across disciplines is encouraged.

If I am puzzling out a problem about contracts and the game theory around contract enforcement, or if I'm interested in the political implications of a certain legal system, or if I'm curious about information policies and their influence on democratic institutions, I can actually go find someone here who studies that subject. More likely than not they will agree that conversations about shared subjects across disciplinary boundaries are opportunities for exploration. The collaborative, cross-disciplinary profile of Caltech's faculty makes these conversations not only possible, but genuinely exciting.

Why is history important for STEM students?

I believe the best way to contribute to the knowledge of this generation, and to make the best possible future for the world, is to expand our imagination of what's possible. One of the things you often find in history is that people make choices that turn out to be not very beneficial for them because at the time they were facing a problem, they couldn't imagine anything other than a binary option, or they couldn't draw on other traditions and ways they translate into their own problem.

It's important for people who will go on to become political leaders or intellectual figures or innovators to understand some of the complexity involved in operating across systems with very distinct historical characteristics. I think many people who get involved in the humanities in general and in history in particular do it because they want to find a better way to have a conversation about things that matter with people they don't already agree with. When we simply discuss the things that are in front of us with our own perspective as the guiding compass, we miss a lot of opportunities for thinking outside of ourselves.

What do you like to do in your free time?

There are all sorts of things I do to make sure that I don't just stay in my head. In addition to doing calligraphy, I am a potter, so sometimes I do ceramics. I enjoy cooking. I am a fencer and a martial artist. When I was doing postdoctoral research at Harvard, I worked at a press that used 19th-century technology to print things. I learned how to set type. I learned how to carve plates to make intaglio prints.

Of course, I love to travel. That's one of the best parts of the job. I get to go all over the place chasing down materials. I get to visit all sorts of beautiful, interesting places. When you're a historian, your laboratory is the world—and the more you study it, the more interesting it becomes.

Humans have set foot on the moon and may one day walk on Mars, but to push farther into space we will likely need a pit stop. With that in mind, 32 students from around the world will meet up at Caltech from March 26–31 for the 2017 Caltech Space Challenge, a competition to design a launch-and-supply station—dubbed Lunarport—for future space missions. The event is organized by the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) to help mentor the next generation of aerospace engineers.

During the weeklong biennial event, the students—a mix of graduate and undergraduate—are divided into two teams, each of which has just five days to create a fresh design to tackle an upcoming space-exploration challenge. At the first Caltech Space Challenge in 2011, the teams were tasked with exploring an asteroid and returning with a sample of rock or ice. In 2013, the teams designed campaigns to land humans on a martian moon. That year, the winning team proposed a robotic precursor mission followed up by a three-astronaut exploration of both of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos. And at the most recent Caltech Space Challenge, in 2015, the students planned a mission to an asteroid that had been brought into lunar orbit, to extract its resources and demonstrate how they could be used.

The goal of every competition is to present students with a challenge that humanity is expected to face in the not-too-distant future. For example, a station like the Lunarport, if constructed someday, would provide a staging facility for heavy payloads, at which rockets could be refueled to continue their journey to deep space.

While working on the challenge, the students will also receive expert guidance via lectures from engineers at Orbital ATK, Blue Origin, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA), and other organizations. At the end of the week, each team will present its solution, and a winner will be selected by a jury of industry experts.

This year, 806 students applied to participate in the event—more than the combined number of applicants for the three prior Caltech Space Challenges. The 32 successful applicants come from 14 different countries on four continents.

This year's Caltech Space Challenge is being organized by Caltech graduate students Ilana Gat (MS '14) and Thibaud Talon (MS '14). The Caltech faculty advisers are Paul Dimotakis (BS '68, MS '69, PhD '73), the John K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics and professor of applied physics; Jakob van Zyl (MS '83, PhD '86), senior faculty associate in electrical engineering and aerospace, lecturer in electrical engineering, and director for solar system exploration at JPL; and Anthony Freeman, lecturer in aerospace and manager of the JPL Innovation Foundry. The event is supported by Caltech and its Division of Engineering and Applied Science, JPL, the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and Caltech's Moore-Hufstedler Fund. Its corporate sponsors include Airbus, Microsoft, Orbital ATK, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Schlumberger, and Honeybee Robotics. 

For the Cherngs, making a $30 million gift to name and endow the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering at Caltech was a matter of heart and mind. During more than four decades working as business owners and entrepreneurs in Pasadena, they have developed a strong appreciation for the institutions and people who call this city home.

"We always thought of Caltech as a shining star of Pasadena," says trustee Peggy Cherng, cochair and co-CEO of Panda Restaurant Group, Inc.

The Cherngs have a keen interest in the pioneering work of Caltech's scientists and engineers, from planetary explorations conducted in partnership with JPL to climate dynamics research using robotic ocean gliders. But the couple elected to focus their personal philanthropy on medical engineering because, as Peggy Cherng explains, "In between the sky and the sea, Caltech is also uniquely positioned to make a difference for humans on earth."

Caltech's medical engineers apply multidisciplinary engineering principles in the health sphere to design and fabricate devices and systems for translational medicine—including diagnostics, therapeutics, implants, and non-invasive imaging—that will lead to cheaper, more effective, and more accessible health care.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website

This year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected 20 current Caltech students and eight 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.

The NSF notes that the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) "is a critical program in NSF's overall strategy to develop the globally-engaged workforce necessary to ensure the nation's leadership in advancing science and engineering research and innovation." The selection criteria used to identify NSF fellows reflect the potential of the applicant to advance knowledge and benefit society.

Caltech's awardees for 2017 are seniors Alexander Anferov, Daniil Lukin, Stephanie Moon, Anjali Premkumar, Gerri Roberts, and Sasha Zemsky; and graduate students Mary Arrastia, Stephanie Breunig, Ivanna Escala, Riley Galton, Phillip Helms, Kari Hernandez, Celeste Labedz, Ethan Pickering, William Poole, Alexander Sorum, Alvita Tran, Krystal Vasquez, Zachary Wu, and Lealia Xiong. The graduate student awardees join 135 current NSF fellows enrolled at Caltech.

Caltech alumni in the 2017 class of Graduate Fellows are: Oliver Chen, Linda Chio, Anne Davis, Connie Hsueh, Anna Liu, Aleena Patel, Madeleine Youngs, and Leonardo Zornberg.

In total this year, the NSF selected 2,000 GRFP recipients from a pool of more than 13,000 applicants. Caltech's Fellowships Advising and Study Abroad office works with current students and recent Caltech graduates interested in applying for an NSF fellowship; sponsoring a panel discussion of previous winners each fall and offering one-on-one advising.

Mentors in the Caltech course Design for Freedom from Disability gave students Stephanie Moon and Lawrence Lee a new view of the power engineers have to benefit others.

Says co-instructor Andy Lin: "It's gratifying to see that the work I'm helping with is making a difference in students' lives and the lives of people with disabilities. At the end of the course, I get teary-eyed. I see how the students want to maximize their engineering skills to help people."

Read more.