Caltech Fund

11/25/2024

Connection and community are important elements of Caltech’s tight-knit campus. As we celebrate this season of giving thanks, we are grateful for every member of our extraordinary community. Learn how you can directly support a best-in-class student experience through the Initiative for Caltech Students campaign. Make a gift today. https://shorturl.at/eCZC0

Photo: A Thanksgiving meal with students, administrators, deans, and directors in Chandler Dining Hall—a tradition that began in 2010.

11/22/2024

For four decades, Hugh Kendrick (MS '62) has given back to Caltech and his most recent gifts to the International Student Programs office inspired the creation of a student leadership award. "I didn't know anybody," Kendrick recalls of his arrival to the US from the UK. "So, the fact that there was a program for international students that helped us gather, socialize, and acclimate made a big difference."

Photo: Orientation activities hosted by the International Student Programs office
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11/19/2024

It’s National Scholarship Month, and Caltech undergraduates are sharing what drives their dreams and how the generous support of donors helps turn those dreams into reality. Scholarships empower our students to thrive. Discover how you can be a part of their journey:

11/18/2024

How do we learn more about the universe's most extreme objects? On November 20, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. PT in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium, theoretical astrophysicist Katerina Chatziioannou, assistant professor of physics and William H. Hurt Scholar, will describe how she uses gravitational waves to study collisions of neutron stars and black holes. Learn more at caltech.edu.

11/15/2024

The class of 1968 is inspiring young alumni giving through a new gift match. Led by Tom Soifer (BS '68), Caltech's Harold Brown Professor of Physics, Emeritus, graduates from 1968 have established an endowed fund named in honor of Craig SanPietro (BS '68, MS '69) that will match senior gifts for years to come. https://giving.caltech.edu/news/paying-it-forward-sanpietro

11/14/2024

Did you know that the Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC) is home to four research centers with specialized equipment and state-of-the-art facilities? The RSC will pull researchers from across campus and JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, enabling them to imagine and conduct transformational research that can impact sustainability.

11/08/2024

Caltech celebrates National STEAM Day with its first endowment of the theater arts thanks to a generous gift by alumnus and Trustee Taylor W. Lawrence (BS ’86). The million-dollar gift includes a $500,000 endowment for theater arts and creates an endowment for the newly renovated student recording studio. A former student of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, Lawrence also has increased his giving to SURF by supporting a cohort of five students for five years.

Photo: Trustee Taylor W. Lawrence, bottom right, in the student recording studio, credit: Chris Flynn/Caltech https://initiativeforstudents.caltech.edu/story-listings/dr-taylor-w-lawrence-establishes-first-endowment-for-theater-arts-at-caltech/

11/05/2024

November marks National Entrepreneurship Month—and at Caltech, student entrepreneurs are turning ideas into start-ups thanks to broad efforts that empower students’ innovative concepts. Summer internships, a course on entrepreneurship, and the Bill Gross Business Plan Competition are just a few of the ways the Institute is strengthening its entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Pictured: Idealab co-founder Bill Gross (BS ’81) guest lectures at Caltech, fall 2024

Invention and innovation are entwined in Caltech’s legacy, and a new generation of undergraduates is carrying forward that legacy through entrepreneurship. To support students’ interests, entrepreneurs-in-residence Jay Chiang and Julie Schoenfeld and colleagues from the Office of Technology Tran...

11/01/2024

"There is one very basic operation in language that makes it possible for all humans to compute the elaborate structures that exist in a sentence. Our brains juggle the entire structure of a sentence, including all the building pieces, and we are able to manipulate them. This ability for language happens very early on, even when babies are exposed to so few examples."

Using ideas from theoretical physics, Matilde Marcolli, the Robert F. Christy Professor of Mathematics and Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech, has created a new mathematical framework for Noam Chomsky's model of language. Learn more at caltech.edu.

10/30/2024

As a new academic year gets underway at Caltech, part of the excitement on campus centers around the opening of the Institute's newest building: the Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC), which has been five years in the making. The building strives to do something truly unique—to bring the entire campus together to address the warming planet's most pressing problems related to energy and resource utilization.

"It's a truly exciting new hub for bringing the sustainability mission together on campus from all divisions, incorporating both research and education, and bringing our undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staff scientists together in common cause in one space. That's a new approach," says Jonas Peters, Bren Professor of Chemistry and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute, which was established in 2009 with a gift from the Resnicks and a matching gift from Gordon and Betty Moore.

10/25/2024

Help create a vibrant community as curious and creative as our students. Learn how you can directly support a best-in-class student experience through the Initiative for Caltech Students campaign. Make a gift today. https://shorturl.at/eCZC0.

Photos: Students pursue their interests at the 2022 Club Fair and 2023 Discover Caltech Club Fair.

10/24/2024

Fall in Pasadena, California is characterized by warm afternoons, clear skies, and plenty of sunshine. It’s one of the many reasons why our students choose Caltech.

10/22/2024

What if we could use viruses to fight drug-resistant bacteria? On October 23, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. PT in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium, structural biologist Bil Clemons, the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Biochemistry, will explore his lab's work to harness viruses known as phages in the battle against bacterial infections in the first Watson Lecture of the academic semester.

Starting at 6 p.m., members of Clemons's lab will be present to answer questions about their current research. Caltech's Diversity in Chemistry Initiative (DICI) will also have a table where guests can learn about their programs. Learn more at caltech.edu.

10/17/2024

Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Hutchcroft, Professor of Mathematics, for being awarded a 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

10/15/2024

"Shattering boundaries is quintessential Caltech. It makes possible scientific exploits that seem impossible at first,” said President Rosenbaum during this year’s Convocation ceremony, highlighting the Europa Clipper mission that was launched yesterday by JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA. "None of this would be possible without our shared sense of wonder about the universe."

The event brought together faculty, staff, and students to welcome the Institute's incoming cohort of 221 undergraduate students, 251 graduate students, and 99 postdoctoral scholars.

10/10/2024

“My grandpa ran a dairy farm in a small town in Mexico, so from birth until my early teens I’d visit every summer. What I remember most is probably his love for nature and specifically his cows…I want to be that person out there sifting through all of the chemicals that nature produces and finding some that we can benefit from as a society.”

David Delgadillo is a postdoctoral scholar research associate in chemistry. On Friday, November 8, as part of the Science Journeys program, David will share his path to Caltech and explore how humans throughout history have harnessed the medicinal properties of plants. Learn more at caltech.edu.

10/08/2024

Congratulations to Caltech emeritus professor John Hopfield on being awarded the in Physics!

Hopfield is credited with co-founding the Computation and Neural Systems Department at Caltech in 1986.

10/07/2024

Caltech alumna Dayna Salter (BS ’76) has donated $300,000 to support Professor Zhongwen Zhan’s (PhD ’13) groundbreaking research repurposing existing fiber-optic cable networks to continuously monitor seismic activity.

"I was looking for ways to give back to Caltech, since it had opened so many doors for me, and I highly enjoy the reviews of current research," says Salter, a former geophysicist who returned to Caltech as a member of the GPS Chair's Council in 2021. Photo: L. Zhan by Christoper Michel for Caltech, R. courtesy Dayna Salter

https://giving.caltech.edu/news/alumna-gift-advances-innovations-in-fiber-optic-seismology-research