ENGenuity Issue 1: Spring/Summer 2022
– Carver Mead (BS '56, MS '57, PhD '60)
Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus.
Quote as recalled by Phil Neches (BS '73, MS '77, PhD '83).
Welcome to ENGenuity!
Engineering at Caltech remains a frontier for pioneering advances, and a place for exploration and discovery — and we hope to share that with you via our new email newsletter for alumni and friends of the EAS Division. With ENGenuity, we are shining a light on student and faculty news, alumni endeavors, and will let you know of Caltech and EAS public events of interest. ENGenuity is a new channel for communication and dialog, and we seek your input. Please let us know what you think, what you would like to learn more about — and for those of you who are alumni of EAS, please be in touch with the editors if you have a great story to tell.
Harry Atwater
Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science
From Aha! to Commercialization: Cultivating the Thrill of Discovery
Impactful ideas, innovations, and inventions in scientific research are often born from unexpected breakthroughs and a process of discovery. Aha! moments embody the instance when these surprising results become pathways for curiosity and, eventually, opportunities for commercialization. Launch the story.
George Kadifa (MS '82)
ENGenuity sat down with George Kadifa (MS '82) to talk about his career, motivations, and advice for the next generation of EAS alumni.
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Sam Daly (MS '02, PhD '07)
Samantha (Sam) Daly (MS '02, PhD '07) discusses her science inspirations, influences, and the value of exploration.
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Prineha Narang (MS/PhD '15)
Prineha Narang (MS '15, PhD '15) muses on her whirlwind of a career, the great outdoors, and the idea of an academic family.
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Jianhui Zhou (MS '92, PhD '95)
Jianhui Zhou's (MS '92, PhD '95) career has progressed from technical staff to CEO, with an unceasing positive outlook on dealing with challenges.
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Caltech Researchers Help Generate First Image of Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy
The result includes key contributions from an imaging team led by Caltech's Katherine L. (Katie) Bouman (pictured) together with Kazunori Akiyama of MIT Haystack Observatory and José L. Gómez of Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain.
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The 2022 Caltech Space Challenge—to Titan and Back
Two teams of 16 space exploration enthusiasts, including five Caltech students along with university students from around the globe, were given five days to design an autonomous mission to collect three different samples from Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
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Böttger Luster: Solving an Artistic Cold Case
This is the story of how a team of researchers, led by Professor Katherine Faber, solved a centuries-old artistic cold case. Why does one purple glaze appear lustrous while another purple glaze from the same factory shows no sign of metallic iridescence?
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Student-Led Lunar Architecture Team Named Finalist in NASA Competition for Second Consecutive Year
A team of more than 30 Caltech undergraduates in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science is among seven 2022 NASA BIG Idea Challenge finalists.
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ME72: Live and In-Person Once More
Robots from five teams battled one another on the Ramo Auditorium stage on March 10. This was the 37th annual edition of the competition, which—in the years before the pandemic—always drew large crowds of student spectators as well as attention from media outlets.
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Pioneering New Frontiers in Topological Physics
A team of engineers led by Caltech's Alireza Marandi (pictured) recently opened a new frontier in topological physics, which is the field that seeks to understand the topological properties that arise in coupled systems based on how they are organized and coupled.
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Professor Anandkumar Tackles COVID-19 with AI
A pair of papers coauthored by Anima Anandkumar (pictured), Caltech's Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, were selected as finalists for the 2021 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research.
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Rapid Adaptation of Deep Learning Teaches Drones to Survive Any Weather
A team of engineers from Caltech has developed Neural-Fly, a deep-learning method that can help drones cope with new and unknown wind conditions in real time just by updating a few key parameters.
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Noel Corngold
Noel Corngold, professor of applied physics, emeritus, passed away on January 24, 2022. He was 93 years old.
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Roy W. Gould
Roy W. Gould, Simon Ramo Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, passed away on February 19, 2022. He was 94 years old.
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