News & Events

05-15-13

Katrina Ligett, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Economics, has been awarded the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for her 5-year project, “The Value of Privacy”. The CAREER program is NSF's most prestigious awards for junior faculty members. The level and 5-year duration of the awards are designed to enable awardees to develop careers as outstanding teacher-scholars. Awardees are chosen because they exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

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05-06-13

Donald E. Coles, Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, passed away on May 2, 2013 at the age of 89. Professor Coles made pioneering contributions towards our understanding of boundary layers, turbulent shear flows, bluff-body aerodynamics, and novel experimental methods in fluid dynamics. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Physical Society. In 2011 he was honored with the Donald Coles Lecture in Aerospace. He remained active till his passing, working on a book on Turbulent Shear Flow that is very near completion. [Caltech Obituary]

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05-03-13

Professor John H. Seinfeld has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. His research has revealed the role of organic species in aerosols and the process by which vapor molecules become incorporated into particles. Currently his work focuses on the effects of aerosols on cloud formation and Earth's climate. [Caltech Release]

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05-01-13

Erik K. Antonsson, member of the MCE External Advisory Board and Caltech faculty in Mechanical Engineering from 1984-2009, has been named the Corporate Director of Technology for Northrop Grumman.

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04-23-13

Aerospace alumnus (MS ‘78) and Caltech Board of Trustee member David W. Thompson and his team at Orbital Sciences Corporation successfully launched the first Antares Rocket on Sunday April 21, 2013. With this rocket Orbital is introducing USA's newest medium-class space launch vehicle. When asked about the experience Thompson commented, "next to GALCIT exams, launching big rockets for the first time is about as hard as things get!" [ENGenious Profile] [Caltech Feature] [Orbital Release]

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04-22-13

Graduate students Matt Faulkner and Annie Liu's paper relating to the Community Seismic Network Project has won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN). [Read the paper]

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04-10-13

At a recent ceremony held in the Theodore von Kármán Conference room of the Guggenheim Building, École Polytechnique president Yves Demay, Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau, EAS Chair Ares Rosakis and Professor Patrick Le Tallec of École Polytechnique signed an agreement for a Master's Education Exchange Program in Aeronautics/Space Engineering and Mechanics. The objective of the master’s degree program is to foster the development of a long-term cooperation on basic research topics of interest to the Aerospace and Aeronautical Sciences community between Caltech and École Polytechnique. [Press Release]

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04-02-13

This year's Caltech Space Challenge was led by Aerospace graduate students Nick Parziale and Jason Rabinovitch. The competition divided 32 students from 21 different universities into two teams: Voyager and Explorer. The teams had to devise a detailed plan to send astronauts to one of Mars' two moons, Phobos or Deimos. Team Voyager was announced as the winner at a reception at the Athenaeum after each team presented their plan to a jury of space experts. [Space.com article] [Pasadena Star-News article] [Pasadena Sun article]

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04-01-13

Dennis Kochmann, Assistant Professor of Aerospace, is one of two recipients of the 2013 Richard von Mises Prize of the International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM). The prize recognizes excellent scientific achievements in the area of applied mathematics and mechanics and Professor Kochmann received it in appreciation of his contributions to the understanding and use of mechanical instabilities in composite materials.

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03-29-13

Kaushik Bhattacharya, Howell N. Tyson, Sr., Professor of Mechanics and Professor of Materials Science, and Oscar P. Bruno, Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics, have been elected to the 2013 class of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) fellows. They were nominated for their exemplary research as well as outstanding service to the community. Through their contributions, SIAM Fellows help advance the fields of applied mathematics and computational science.

Tags: Kaushik Bhattacharya Oscar Bruno