News & Events

06-17-19

Computation and Neural Systems student Hanwen (Lily) Zhang, advised by Professor Thanos Siapas, is a recipient of the 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. Her research interests include exploring how different brain regions interact to give rise to goal-oriented behaviors and our ability to learn, remember and generalize our knowledge to novel situations. This summer, she will be working as a SURF fellow to explore the hippocampal dependence of auditory associative learning. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.

Tags: honors Henry Ford II Scholar Award CNS Thanos Siapas Hanwen (Lily) Zhang

06-17-19

David Huynh, a graduate student working with Professor Beverley McKeon, is a recipient of the 2019 Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award. His doctoral research investigates the interaction between a turbulent boundary layer and a compliant surface through experiments that employed a unique dynamic roughness forcing. The Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award is given to an EAS graduate student in hydrodynamics who has distinguished himself or herself in research.

Tags: honors GALCIT Beverley McKeon Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award David Huynh

06-14-19

Caltech’s 125th commencement ceremony was held on Friday June 14, 2019. This year's speaker was Dr. France A. Córdova, a distinguished astrophysicist, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Caltech alumna (Ph.D. ’79). “Córdova brings to the Institute perspectives on governmental and academic leadership, grounded in her scientific training at Caltech,” Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in his announcement to the Caltech community. Caltech celebrated the accomplishments of 586 graduates: 240 bachelor's degrees, 139 master's degrees, and 207 doctoral degrees. [Watch the recorded ceremony] [Caltech story]

06-12-19

Meera Krishnamoorthy, a senior in electrical engineering, has received a National Physical Science Consortium (NPSC) Fellowship that will fund up to six years of graduate training. Krishnamoorthy will be enrolling in a computer science PhD program at the University of Michigan, studying artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications for health care, such as turning complex medical data into actionable knowledge that ultimately improves patient care. "Engineering is a great way to solve problems in multiple disciplines," she says. Krishnamoorthy's interest in machine learning was sparked by coursework and a research project she worked with Professor Yisong Yue, and her academic advisor has been Professor Steven Low. [Caltech story]

Tags: EE honors CMS alumni Steven Low Yisong Yue Meera Krishnamoorthy

06-12-19

The student winners of the 2019 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at the end of this academic year. Anupama Lakshmanan, advised by Professor Mikhail Shapiro has received the prize in Biotechnology. Her research is in engineering of acoustic protein nanostructures for non-invasive molecular imaging using ultrasound. Seyedeh Mahsa Kamali, advised by Professor Andrei Faraon has received the prize in Nanotechnology. She focuses on changing paradigms in optical design through engineering materials at the nanoscale. Linqi (Daniel) Guo, advised by Professor Steven Low has received the prize in Environmentally Benign Renewable Energy Source. His research quantifies the impact of transmission network topology in electrical power system robustness against disturbances and failures. Chris Rollins, advised by Professor Jean-Phillippe Avouac has received the prize in Seismo-Engineering, Prediction, and Protection. Chris studies the way that the Earth deforms gradually over periods of years and decades and uses this to shed light on how earthquakes work, where and how often they might occur in the future, and the hazard they may pose. Nicholas Flytzanis, advised by Professor Viviana Gradinaru has receive the prize in Entrepreneurship. His research is in engineering viruses to serve as next-generation gene therapy delivery vehicles for the treatment of human disease.

Tags: APhMS EE honors MCE CMS Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes

06-10-19

Mechanical engineering student Zhong Qian Huang, advised by Professor Guillaume Blanquart, is a recipient of the 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. Zhong has had a hands-on role in many exciting projects, including automated microscopes, spacecraft simulators, amphibious robots, autonomous drones and electric race cars. This summer he will be working for a startup that builds kitchen robots. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.

Tags: honors MCE Henry Ford II Scholar Award Guillaume Blanquart Zhong Qian Huang

06-10-19

Xiaozhou Ruan, a graduate student working with Professor Andrew Thompson, is the recipient of the 2019 Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award. Using a combination of theoretical fluid dynamics, numerical modeling and analysis of observations, he investigated the connection between the small-scale oceanic boundary layer processes and the large-scale ocean circulation and climate. The Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award is given to an EAS graduate student in hydrodynamics who has distinguished himself or herself in research.

Tags: honors Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award Andrew Thompson Xiaozhou Ruan

06-03-19

Applied and computational mathematics student Yanke Song, advised by Professor Peter Schroeder, is a recipient of the 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. He is interested in Numerical Algorithms, Data Science, Learning Theory and Optimization, as well as the application of those to real-world problems. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record at the end of the third year of undergraduate study.

Tags: honors CMS Henry Ford II Scholar Award Yanke Song Peter Schroeder

05-27-19

Electrical engineering student Nikhil Poole, advised by Professor Azita Emami, is a recipient of the 2019 Henry Ford II Scholar Award. He is excited to be a part of ongoing research into low-power biomedical devices and integrated circuits with machine learning applications. In addition to CMOS design, he is also interested in hardware and software development for embedded systems. The Henry Ford II Scholar Award is funded under an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company Fund. The award is made annually to engineering students with the best academic record in their discipline.

Tags: EE honors Henry Ford II Scholar Award Venkat Chandrasekaran Nikhil Poole

05-23-19

Professors Chung, Anandkumar, and Yue have teamed up to develop a system that uses a deep neural network to help autonomous drones "learn" how to land more safely and quickly, while gobbling up less power. The system they have created, dubbed the "Neural Lander," is a learning-based controller that tracks the position and speed of the drone, and modifies its landing trajectory and rotor speed accordingly to achieve the smoothest possible landing. The new system could prove crucial to projects currently under development at CAST, including an autonomous medical transport that could land in difficult-to-reach locations (such as a gridlocked traffic). "The importance of being able to land swiftly and smoothly when transporting an injured individual cannot be overstated," says Professor Gharib who is the director of CAST; and one of the lead researchers of the air ambulance project. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights Morteza Gharib Yisong Yue Soon-Jo Chung Animashree Anandkumar