People Spotlights

Professor and department head of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University

Ivett Leyva (BS '94, MS '95, PhD '99) October 04, 2022

Dr. Ivett Leyva (BS '94, MS '95, PhD '99) likes to go fast. Really fast. This need for speed inspired her research interest of hypersonic aerodynamics and has led her to become a professor and department head of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University.

9x builder of early-stage startups

Dave Zito (BS '97)

Dave Zito (BS '97) is a 9x builder of early-stage startups, raising over $30 million in venture capital funding and running consumer software teams with exits exceeding $250 million. Zito's career in startups began at Idealab, where he worked under the guidance of Caltech engineering alumnus and trustee, Bill Gross (BS '81). Since his early days at Idealab, Zito has worked with PayMyBills, Overture/Yahoo, Cramster/Chegg, Miso Robotics, and more.

Roy W. Gould

Roy W. Gould, Simon Ramo Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, passed away on February 19, 2022. He was 94 years old. Gould earned his bachelor's degree from Caltech in 1949, a master's from Stanford University in 1950, and a doctorate from Caltech in 1956. After leaving Stanford, he worked as an engineer on missile guidance and control at JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, and then at Hughes Aircraft. He joined Caltech's faculty in 1955.

Noel Corngold

Noel Corngold, professor of applied physics, emeritus, passed away on January 23. He was 93 years old. Corngold was born in New York City in 1929. He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1949, and earned a master's degree and a doctorate from Harvard University in 1950 and 1954, respectively. He performed his thesis experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, then stayed on as a theorist focused on reactor physics for 12 years before being recruited to join Caltech's faculty in 1966 to help start a program in nuclear energy.

Prineha Narang (MS '15, PhD '15)

Prineha Narang (MS '15, PhD '15) graduated from Caltech with degrees in Applied Physics and joined UCLA's faculty in the College of Physical Sciences as the Howard Reiss Chair. Previously, Prineha has worked as a research scholar in the Department of Physics at MIT, and an Environmental Fellow and assistant professor at Harvard, where she led an interdisciplinary group working on topics at the vibrant intersection of computational science, dynamics in molecules and materials, and quantum information science. In addition to her numerous research awards and recognitions, including being named on Forbes Magazine's "30 under 30" list in 2017, Prineha is also an accomplished triathlete and marathon runner.

CEO, HC SemiTek Corporation

Jianhui Zhou (MS '92, PhD '95)

Jianhui Zhou (MS '92, PhD '95) recently served as the CEO for the HC SemiTek Corporation, which designs, fabricates, and sells LED chips and wafers for use in lighting, LCD and RGB displays, and backlighting. Jianhui was born and raised in China but has recently returned to California (the Bay Area).