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2005

Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of JPL and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Planetary Science, is the recipient of the the Space Flight Award of the American Astronautical Society. This award is given annually to the person whose outstanding efforts and achievements have contributed most significantly to the advancement of space flight and space exploration, and is the highest award bestowed by the AAS.

An international team ofscientists and engineers has smashed the network speed record, moving data along at an average rate of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) for several hours at a time. A rate of 100 Gbps is sufficient for transmitting five feature-length DVD movies on the Internet from one location to another in a single second. The extraordinary data transport rates were made possible in part through the use of the FAST TCP protocol developed by Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team.

The 20th installment of the Caltech's ME 72 Engineering Design Contest will be held at 2 p.m. on December 1 outside Caltech's Chandler Dining Hall. Professor Melany Hunt is the instuctor for the course this year. Over the past 10 weeks, the challenge has been to design and manufacture a small Stirling engine-an engine that uses an externally applied fuel or heat source to drive pistons that generate power. If the engines work, they'll pump out about one watt of power that will then juice up gadgets ranging from a fan to a low-wattage laser to a small light-up Christmas tree. The students will be judged on the efficiency and speed of their engine, the creativity of its design, and its overall cost. They will also be evaluated on how well they predicted the performance of their engines.

One of the most elusive questions inscience has finally been answered: How do bees fly? The physics of bee flight has perplexed scientists for more than 70 years. But now, Michael H. Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, and his postdoctoral student Douglas L. Altshuler and their colleagues at Caltech and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, have figured out honeybee flight using a combination of high-speed digital photography, to snap freeze-frame images of bees in motion, and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing. The secret of honeybee flight is the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency.

The Loh Down on Science, hosted by writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh (BS '83), is a witty one-minute daily radio program on science to be launched by KPCC (FM 89.3) and Caltech on December 5. It will air at 9:19 a.m. and 7:04 p.m., and will be available to download or podcast at http://KPCC.org.

Athanassios Siapas, assistant professor of computation and neural systems, has received a McKnight Scholar Award to support his work in "Cortico-Hippocampal Interactions and Memory Formation." This award is given for innovative research in neuroscience as it pertains to memory and, ultimately, to a clearer understanding and treatment of diseases affecting memory.

Professor Yu-Chong Tai, Executive Officer of Electrical Engineering, has been elected an IEEE Fellow for his extraordinary record of accomplishments; in particular, Tai is being cited for contributions to integrated nano/micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nano/micro-fluidics for Lab-on-a-Chip applications. Congratulations!

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has named its 2005 Fellows, selected for their meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications. Among this year's EAS recipients are Mory Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, and Hans G. Hornung, C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus. Also from the Caltech/JPL family are Professor Yuk L. Yung (GPS) and Mitchio Okumura (CCE), and Paul Robert Weissman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A historian with interests as wide-ranging as entomology and Greek astronomy has become the first-ever Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor in the History of Science, a newly established joint program between the California Institute of Technology and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Ido Yavetz, assistant professor at The Cohn Institute for History of Science at Tel Aviv University in Israel, arrived in Pasadena this fall and will remain for the academic year. Yavetz specializes in history of classical electromagnetic field theory, history of electrical technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, history of entomology in the 19th century, and history of early Greek astronomy.

CIMMS/IPAM Workshop on Multiscale Modeling and Computation: Basic Theory and the Geosciences has been jointly organized by Tom Hou (ACM), Nadia Lapusta (ME and Geophysics), Jerry Marsden (CDS) and Tapio Schneider (ESE and GPS). The workshop has two general themes: general mathematical techniques for multiscale modeling and simulation applications in the geosciences. It was held on campus November 17 - 18, 2005.

Biomechanics researchers in EAS have joined a global medical effort to address a number of diseases through the innovative Global Enterprise for Micromechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4). Participation of Caltech researchers, including Professors Mory Gharib and Ares Rosakis, will concentrate on the micromechanics of cells and tissues related to certain diseases.

In recent years, mathematicians have discovered an almost perfect parallelbetween the motion of spacecraft through the solar system and the motion of atoms in a chemical reaction--a hidden unity that has led to innovative new ways to design space missions. Professor Jerry Marsden's research has contributed significantly to this realization, and is highlighted by the NSF.

The National Science Foundation Awards $11.16 Million to the Center for the Science and Engineering of Materials (CSEM). The renewal funding will allow CSEM to continue its work in exotic and futuristic materials applications, such as macromolecular materials, ferroelectric photonics, novel composites of glass and metals, spintronic devices, and fuel cells.

Professor Tracey Ho was just named to the TR35 - innovators under the age of 35 whose work is changing our world. Also among this year's listing of outstanding scientists and innovators are Caltech alumni Helen Blackwell, PhD '99; Narasimha Chari, BS '96; Rajit Manohar, BS '94, MS '95, PhD '99; and Adam Rasheed, MS '98, PhD '01. Congratulations to all!

David Rutledge, the Kiyo and Eiko Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering, has been named chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Rutledge's research group is currently involved in building circuits and antennas for numerous electronic applications. His work on microwave circuits has been important for various advances in wireless communications and has been useful for applications such as radar, remote sensing, and satellite broadcasting. He replaces Richard Murray, Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, who has been chair of the E&AS Division since 2000. Rutledge will begin his term on September 1.

The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded $277,000 to the Caltech to fund two new postdoctoral fellowships for two years. The Clare Boothe Luce Fellowships will be awarded to two women, one in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and the other in the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. The Clare Boothe Luce Program stands alone as the single most significant source of private support for women in science, engineering and mathematics.

Professor James Beck was recently honored by the International Association for Structural Safety and Reliability with with a senior research prize in computational stochastic mechanics. He was recognized for recently developed numerical methods to compute uncertainties and reliabilities of linear and nonlinear systems of large dimensions. In particular, Beck's subset simulation technique is a significant breakthrough that makes him "a pioneer in the implementation of the methods of computational stochastic mechanics in engineering applications." He received the award at ICOSSAR 05.

In a new development that could be useful for future electronic devices, Kerry Vahala, Ted and Ginger Jenkins Professor of Information Science and Technology and Professor of Applied Physics, and colleagues have created a "photon clock" -- a tiny disk that vibrates steadily like a tuning fork while it is pumped with light. This is the first micro-mechanical device that has been operated at a steady frequency by the action of photons alone.

Getting to know Alice couldn't be made easier. Team Caltech, our undergraduate entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge, had a project review, and poster session Wednesday, July 20 in the Dabney Garden. Alice, the 2005 Ford E-350 Sportsmobile 4WD was there enjoying a reprise from challenging desert testing. Sure glad Alice is still under warranty! DARPA has selected 40 (plus 9 alternates) of 198 applicants to participate in the qualifying events coming in September. Then 20 teams will be allowed to go forward to the final race on October 8, 2005.

The most distinguished prize awarded by SIAM went to Professor Jerrold Marsden this year. He won the prestigious John von Neumann prize and gave the corresponding lecture at the SIAM annual meeting held in New Orleans, July 11 -15. Marsden was chosen in recognition of his fundamental contributions to geometric mechanics based on symmetry. He has applied these ideas broadly to the fields of fluid mechanics, elasticity, and control theory. He has also clearly exposed these ideas through seminal research publications and text books. Marsden's lecture was titled "Geometric and Computational Dynamics."

Congratulations are also due to Professor Emmanuel Candes  who won SIAM's 2005 James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing in recognition of his outstanding theoretical and practical contributions to computational harmonic analysis and image processing which includes the development of ridgelets, curvelets, chirplets, and random projections as well as the convergence analysis of these methods and their applications. His lecture was titled "Uncertainty Principles and Signal Recovery from Incoherent and Incomplete Measurements."

Professor Thomas Hou has won the U.S. Association for Computational
Mechanics' Computational Science & Engineering Award. This award is being presented to Hou for his outstanding contributions in
developing innovative
multiscale analysis and computational methods and their applications to flows in porous media and turbulence. Hou will receive the award at the 8th U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics, being held July 25-27, 2005, in Austin, Texas.

Applied Physics Professor Paul Bellan, his graduate student Gunsu Yun, and postdoctoral scholar Setthivoine You devise plasma experiment that shows how astrophysical jets are formed.

John Dabiri and Mory Gharibreport on their work in understanding the fundamental nature of biological fluid transport. The workcould lead to new tools for diagnosing heart disease.

A research team of neuroscientists from Caltech and UCLA have found that a single neuron can recognize people, landmarks, and objects--even letter strings of names ("H-A-L-L-E-B-E-R-R-Y"). "Our findings fly in the face of conventional thinking about how brain cells function," says Christof Koch, the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and Professor of Computation and Neural Systems.

Caltech's 111th Commencement Ceremony was held on Friday, June 10th. This year's address was given by writer, performer, humorist, and Caltech alumna Sandra Tsing Loh. The E&AS Division awarded 99 Bachelor of Science degrees; 69 Master of Science degrees; and 66 PhDs.

Professor Sossina Haile and colleagues have created a propane-burning fuel cell that's almost as small as a watch battery, yet many times higher in power density. The team reports in the June 9 issue of the journal Nature that two of the cells have sufficient power to drive an MP3 player. If commercialized, such a fuel cell would have the advantage of driving the MP3 player for far longer than the best lithium batteries available.

The Society of Experimental Mechanicshas awarded Professor Ravichandran the prestigious Lazan Award for the year 2005. The award recognizes distinguished technical contributions to the field of experimental mechanics. The formal presentation took place at the All Society Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, June 8, 2005, during the SEM Annual Conference held on June 7-9, 2005 in Portland, Oregon.

Professor Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering and Director of GALCIT, received the prestigious Society of Experimental Mechanics 2005 W. M. Murray Medal and deliverd the 2005 Murray Lecture. This award was in recognition of his development and application of advanced methods for accurate measurement of transient, dynamic phenomena. The presentation took place on June 9th, 2005, during the SEM Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics held June 7-9, 2005 in Portland, Oregon.

The Kavli Nanoscience Institute held an informational gathering on May 26 for the campus community to learn about the planned nanoscience facilities, academic activities, and prize fellowship programs that are being launched to nurture Caltech's nanoscience community.

Team Caltech - Caltech undergraduates designing and building the autonomous vehicle Alice - has submitted its application materials for the 2005 Grand Challenge. Check out the demonstration video! This year's race is scheduled for October 8.

John F. Hall, Professor of Civil Engineering and Executive Officer for Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, will begin serving as Dean of Students as of June 20, 2005. Professor Hallcame to Caltech 24 years ago, and specializes in earthquake engineering and structural dynamics, especially of dams, and also of steel and wood frame buildings.

Christopher Brennen has been appointed the Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of MechanicalEngineering. Brennen is internationally recognized for his research in applied fluid mechanics, and more locally famous for his excellence in teaching, and for many years of service to the Institute as Master of Student Houses, Dean of Students, Executive Officer for Mechanical Engineering and Vice President for Student Affairs.

Professor Erik Antonsson gave the inaugural Victor Wouk Lecture at 4 p.m. May 19 in the Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall. Antonsson discussed "Advanced Technology for Space Exploration" and provided an overview of the JPL Strategic Technology Plan, along with highlights of recent successes and future missions.

The Lee Center for Advanced Networking at Caltech hosed its Fifth Annual Workshop on Advanced Networking, May 20, 2005.

William Bridges, the Carl F BraunProfessor of Engineering, Emeritus is among this year's newly elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Also elected from Caltech are Barry Barish, Andrew Lange, Barry Simon, and David Tirrell.

EAS welcomes John O. Dabiri to Caltech as Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering.

Massimo Franceschetti, Shuki Bruck, and Leonard Schulman have won the 2004 S. A. Schelkunoff Transactions Prize Paper Award for "A Random Walk Model of Wave Propagation," (IEEE Trans. on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 1304-1317, May 2004). Motivated the problem of deploying wireless access points in urban environments, and frustrated by the fact that propagation was modeled using heuristic techniques - they ventured (propagated...) to a new territory and solved analytically the propagation problem using techniques from probability theory.

Caltech honored the contributions and celebrated the life of Thomas K. Caughey at a memorial service held on Thursday, May 5, 2005, at 4:00 p.m. at the Athenaeum.

Michael Roukes, professor of physics, applied physics, and bioengineering, and his colleagues have created the first nanodevices capable of weighing individual biological molecules. This technology may lead to new forms of molecular identification that are cheaper and faster than existing methods, as well as revolutionary new instruments for proteomics.

For the second year in a row, Caltech has ranked second in the number of U.S. patents issued to academic institutions. The entire University of California system, with its 10 campuses and five medical centers, was first. The complete list can be viewed online at www.uspto.gov.

A Symposium to honor Professor Amnon Yariv, the Martin and Eileen Summerfield Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, on the ocassion of his 75th birthday was held on April 14, 2005.

An unlikely marriage of medical application and environmental engineering has won Dianne Newman, Luce Assistant Professor of Geobiology and Environmental Science and Engineering, one of this year's prestigious funding awards from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Newman joins Caltech's Linda Hsieh-Wilson and 41 other leading American researchers asthis year's new crop of HHMI Investigators.

Professor Gilles Laurent studies the neuronal mechanisms underlying perception and behavior, focusing on olfactory coding: how are odorsrepresented, learned, stored, and recognized by the brain? On Wednesday, February 23, at 8 p.m., Laurent will summarize some of the recent research advances in his Watson Lecture, "The Sense of Smell: A Window into the Brain and Memory."

Graduate student Robert Walters and Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science Harry Atwater report in the current Nature Materials on the first light-emitting transistor to be entirely based on silicon. Although bulk silicon is a poor light emitter, when it is in the form of isolated crystals of just a few nanometres in diameter; its ability to emit light improves significantly. By incorporating these nanocrystals into a conventional silicon transistor, and applying an alternating voltage, the transistor can be made to light up. The ability to generate light in an all-silicon device opens a range of new possibilities in the field of optoelectronics. Field effect electroluminescence is a new conceptual approach to carrier injection in nanocrystal-based light emitting devices, and represents a significant advance in the search for an efficient silicon light source, one of the perennial "holy grails" of microphotonics.

Professor Tapio Schneider isthe recipient of the first annual James R. Holton Award of the American Geophysical Union. This award was given at the recent AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco and honored Schneider for "outstanding research contributions by a junior atmospheric scientist."

The Shuttle Fleet, Columbia, and Present and Future Space Access is the topic of an Earnest C. Watson Lecture given by Paul Dimotakis, John K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Applied Physics. The lecture is at 8 p.m. on January 26, in Beckman Auditorium.

Professor Wilfred D. Iwan has been appointed by EERI to coordinate the massive tsunami and earthquake investigation being carried out by EERI as part of its Learning From Earthquakes program. Iwan will be working with leading seismologists, tsunami experts, civil and structural engineers, lifeline engineers, and social and policy scientists to compile a comprehensive picture of the events and to extract lessons for research and practice in the U.S. and other countries at risk.