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Vibrations
The Newsletter for the EAS Community
Message from the Chair
EAS Community,
I want to highlight a call for faculty to submit nominations for the Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prizes. These prizes are awarded to PhD candidates in Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Renewable Energy, and Seismo-Engineering, and one additional prize is awarded to a graduating student for entrepreneurship. I urge faculty to nominate students in recognition of their exceptional work, and I encourage graduate students to spur their advisors to submit nominations as well. The prizes are open to the entire Institute and are a great way to showcase the groundbreaking work being done in EAS.
Please note that nominations are due by Monday, May 8, 2023. Nominations from faculty can be submitted to Melissa Hill by sending the name and thesis of the nominee. Nominations for the Entrepreneurship prize should include the name, CV, and business plan of the nominee.
Harry Atwater
Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science
Selected Upcoming Events
April 13, 2023, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Medical Engineering Distinguished Seminar Series: Dr. Jerome Mertz on "Tools for fast, volumetric microscopy in tissue"
Location: Annenberg 105
April 14, 2023, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Conversations on the Quantum World: Building a Quantum Computer featuring Professor Fernando Brandão
Location: Online (Register using the link above)
April 14, 2023, 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Resnick Sustainability Institute Young Investigators Symposium
Location: Chen 100
April 19, 2023, 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Charge Up! Entrepreneurship Series: Alumni Fireside Chat - Scientist Turned Venture Capitalist, featuring Jason Holt (PhD '97)
Location: Online (Register using the link above)
April 20, 2023, 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Charge Up! Entrepreneurship Series: ZAP Lunch & Learn
Location: Jorgensen 224
April 20, 2023, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Caltech Young Investigators Lecture: "Information-preserving Dimensionality Reduction for High-dimensional Small-sample Data" - Aditi Jha, Princeton
Location: Moore B270
April 24, 2023, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Conversations on Artificial Intelligence: Machine Learning for Conversation featuring Professor Pietro Perona
Location: Online (Register using the link above)
May 17, 2023, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Wouk Lecture: "Rethinking Evaporation: Thermal and Optical Evaporation from Pure Water and Hydrogels" - Gang Chen, Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering, MIT
Location: Ramo Auditorium
Spotlight On Our People
David Catherall
Graduate Student, Applied Physics and Materials Science
I am a third-year PhD student in Materials Science working with Dr. Minnich. I started my postsecondary education with an HBS in Chemical Engineering from Oregon State University but decided to pursue materials further. I wanted to get a PhD because I’ve always been driven to discovery, and I chose materials as they, along with processing methods, are critical to the development of new technologies. After all, some important eras of human history are defined by materials. Specifically, I work on first-principles simulation of semiconductor charge transport under large electric fields, and in the development of precision atomic-layer etching methods for nanofabrication. This lets me do both programming work, a favorite of mine, as well as “get my hands dirty” in the cleanroom working with physical systems. Outside of academics I enjoy spending time outdoors hiking in the nearby mountains, fishing along the beach, and cooking at home.
Yiheng Lin
Graduate Student, Computing and Mathematical Sciences
I'm a second-year graduate student in the CMS department, co-advised by Professors Adam Wierman and Yisong Yue. My research interests include online optimization, control, and reinforcement learning. More specifically, I’m currently working on a novel perturbation-based method for analyzing predictive and decentralized online controllers. Intuitively, we ask the question “Can something happen in the far future or can something far away from the agent’s location have a large impact on the agent’s current optimal decision?” If the answer is no, we can show that a decentralized predictive controller achieves a provable good performance guarantee. Our method can be applied to many different problem settings ranging from multi-product pricing in economics to trajectory tracking in control.
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EAS News Highlights
A simulated corona loop in the Bellan Lab
- Laboratory Solar Flares Reveal Clues to Mechanism Behind Bursts of High-Energy Particles
- Caltech's Engineers Without Borders Will Bring Reliable Water Access to Ecuadorian Village
- Anima Anandkumar Named a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow
- Changhao Xu Receives AI4Science Fellowship
- Earth Month: Alumna Gypsy Achong (BS '95) leverages a passion for math toward environmental science and technical advocacy
Calls for Nomination & Funding Opportunities
Caltech’s Office of Foundation Relations maintains an online database and email subscription service of primarily non-federal funding opportunities as a resource for the Caltech community. Opportunities include calls for proposals released by private foundations, public charities, associations, corporations, internal Caltech opportunities and federal limited opportunities.
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation - Matter-to-Life Grant (Faculty)
Sloan's new Matter-to-Life program aims to sharpen our scientific understanding of life by supporting curiosity-driven research falling within three focus areas: Building Life, Principles of Life, and Signs of Life. These areas define a broad scientific scope for understanding the physical principles and mechanisms governing living systems, while also highlighting an openness to exploring life broadly conceived by instantiating the distinctive functions of living systems in entities built using various matter platforms. The program will also support scientific meetings that promote information exchange, the development of collaborations, and self-organizing. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Total Award: $50,000 to $2,500,000
Caltech Center for Evolutionary Science Grant
The Center for Evolutionary Science has a limited pool of funds to support Institute-wide research into evolutionary change via both biotic and anthropogenic forces. The Center supports the investigation of these phenomena at any time scale or level of biological complexity. Applications are open to faculty in all divisions, and may or may not be the product of interactions between laboratories. Applications should include a one-page proposal detailing your project with relevant background information and a short explanation of the work's significance to understanding evolutionary phenomena, a brief budget, and a Division Approval Form (DAF). Submit applications to evolution@caltech.edu by May 5, 2023.
2023 Chapman Memorial Award - Call for Nominations
We are soliciting nominations for the 2023 Richard Bruce Chapman Memorial Award, a $1,500 prize to be awarded at Commencement. The prize is for "a graduate student who has distinguished him/herself in research in the field of hydrodynamics." The original records of the fund mention Chapman’s interests in the fields of "Free-surface phenomena, free-surface waves, cavities and jets, and ship hydrodynamics." Nominations should include a copy of the student’s thesis (electronic version) and a brief letter of support from the thesis advisor. If a student is expecting to finish soon, a preliminary draft can be considered. Please submit the nominations to Melissa Hill in the EAS Division office by Monday, May 15, 2023.
2023 Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prizes - Call to Submit Nominations
The Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prizes consist of four prizes (Biotechnology or Related Fields; Nanotechnology or Related Fields; Environmentally Benign Renewable Energy Sources or Related Fields; and Seismo-Engineering, Prediction, and Protection) are awarded to a Ph.D. candidate for the best thesis, publication or discovery. The prize for Entrepreneurship or Related Fields is awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student for the best business plan, proposal, start-up or related efforts at Caltech. The prizes are open to the entire Institute. Nominations from faculty should be submitted by email to Melissa Hill by sending the name and the thesis of the nominee. The deadline for nominations is Monday, May 8, 2023. For the Entrepreneurship prize, please provide the name, CV and business plan of the nominee. The announcement of the prizes will be included in the commencement brochure. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Melissa Hill with any other questions.
Merkin Institute Grants
Merkin Innovation Seed Grants
These awards provide early support for translational projects, emphasizing partnerships between Caltech labs and clinicians, who will typically be from outside Caltech. Projects developed from the Bob Grubbs Medical Innovation Symposia are encouraged, but projects and clinical partnerships developed in other ways are equally welcome. Funding amount: up to $100k. Submission deadline: Wednesday, May 31, 2023.
Merkin Spark Grants
The project is to be conceived and driven by graduate student applicant(s). It should not be an immediate or obvious extension of ongoing or proposed research in the host lab or labs. Novel applications of methods and variations across labs are encouraged. The project should be designed to generate go/no-go data for an innovative direction or novel technology that will ultimately translate to improve human health. These projects can be at any stage on the path toward translation, as long as the purpose and vision for translation is clearly stated. Collaboration between students in different labs to create project proposals is encouraged, but not required. Funding amount: $10k. Submission deadline: Wednesday, May 31, 2023.
New Horizons DEI Fund
The EAS Division is pleased to solicit small-scale proposals for new initiatives to support diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts by members of the EAS division. Short proposals (1 page with a budget) can be submitted to dei.eas@caltech.edu on a rolling basis and will be reviewed by members of the EAS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. The committee is interested in new projects, such as seeding a new program that supports or impacts the EAS community or exploring a new outreach effort that engages EAS members in the local Pasadena community.
COVID Updates: Visit together.caltech.edu for the latest communications from the Institute.
- As of October 3, 2022, masking is voluntary in all indoor settings, with the exception of instructional spaces. Students in instructional spaces must wear N95 masks, however instructors may elect to remove their masks. If you have been exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID-19, you must wear a high quality mask (surgical mask, N95, KN95, or KF94 respirator) in any indoor space on campus for 10 days after exposure. Read the full update.
Effective Friday, March 17, the last day of winter term, the Institute will close its Caltech-sponsored surveillance testing program, and suspend the current twice-weekly testing requirement for students and employees. Read the full update.
- Voluntary surveillance testing is available to all (more info).
- Masks at no charge are available to persons with a Caltech ID at the Bookstore.
Division of Engineering and Applied Science
