Caltech Magazine

10/10/2025

On September 24, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida carrying three new NASA missions into space. One of them, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), was led in part by Caltech staff scientist Christina Cohen from the Institute’s Space Radiation Laboratory, who was on hand to watch the launch at Kennedy Space Center.

According to a NASA press release, “The IMAP mission will chart the boundary of the heliosphere, a bubble inflated by the solar wind that shields our solar system from galactic cosmic rays—a key protection that helps make our planet habitable. In addition, the spacecraft will sample and measure solar wind particles streaming outward from the Sun, as well as energetic particles streaming inward from the boundary of our solar system and beyond.”

Cohen told Caltech magazine that seeing her mission head toward the heavens was a moving experience. “The sight and especially the sound of the rocket launching were just incredible,” she says, “particularly knowing it was not only the successful accumulation of so much work but also the beginning of the great science to come. Totally worth waking up in the middle of the night to be there!”

09/10/2025

“The entire school—everyone from the janitors, the support staff, the teachers, all the children and the headmaster—they were all there. School canceled for the afternoon. Standing room only. And I was responsible for presenting the LIGO mosaic and saying something memorable and lasting, so that was pressure.

“I told the kids about the enormous number of questions I would ask at that age at that school—and telling the kids how important the teachers were in my journey because of the time they would take to answer those questions.

“And, of course, I told them that I failed in my first career—which was to become a professional soccer player. The kids found it hilarious that here was me as the deputy director of LIGO, working at Caltech, and that was my second-choice profession.

“The framed version of the LIGO mosaic that the kids helped create is now in an area where they pass by it all the time. I guess it's guerrilla marketing: having the kids seeing this scientific mosaic again and again. Maybe it will spark them into doing something fantastic.”

—Calum Torrie is the head of system science and engineering for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), and the LIGO associate director for Caltech. In June, he visited Cardonald Primary School, his childhood school in Glasgow, Scotland, to talk about his work and present a framed mosaic of 1,156 science-themed pictures made by the pupils, each placed so as to represent the historic gravitational-wave signal picked up by the twin LIGO observatories a decade ago. The visit was organized by researchers from the University of Glasgow, where Torrie is also an honorary research fellow. LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation and operated by Caltech and MIT, which together conceived and built the project.

01/10/2025

"At first, the club members wanted to break the world record for fastest couch by going 70-plus miles per hour. But then they considered the inherent dangers of breaking the speed limit on a piece of furniture. So, couch 1.0 putters around campus at a genteel 10 miles per hour, tops. Seatbelts are coming soon. Lu says the team drove for an hour on the maiden voyage and did not deplete the on-board battery."

by Andrew Moseman It started, as many great student projects do, with a determination to outdo a rival. Undergraduate Donny Lu and other members of the Caltech Robotics Club had heard about a project in which engineering students at Stanford had affixed two electric skateboards to the bottom of a

25/09/2025

Veronika Voss, a rising second-year from a rural area without many STEM opportunities, knew she wanted to find mentorship the moment she joined Caltech.

Fortunately, during Voss’s first year, the Institute’s Career Achievement, Leadership, and Exploration (CALE) office launched a new initiative: the CALE Alumni Mentoring Program (CAMP). This six-week virtual experience connects Caltech alumni with current students and fosters weekly conversations designed to accelerate career readiness. Voss was part of CAMP’s inaugural cohort in winter 2025.

“Joining CAMP gave me the chance to connect with mentors and to build and maintain a meaningful mentor–mentee relationship,” Voss says.

To facilitate CAMP’s success, the Caltech Alumni Association (CAA) and CALE launched a new platform, the Techer Professional Network (TPN), to optimize alumni and student connections. Formerly known as the Alumni Portal, TPN now hosts CAMP; features a robust job board curated by CALE for Caltech alumni, students, and postdocs; and organizes opt-in regional groups for pilot areas such as Seattle, Silicon Valley, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Singapore to support localized networking.

Learn all about CALE here!
https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/in-motion-cales-new-mentoring-program

18/09/2025

Caltech stage technician Veronica Mullins Bowers is a former Disney Imagineer with extensive experience in sound design, theatre, and themed entertainment, all of which she brings to her work at the Institute.

“I have this personal philosophy of wanting to find the magic in everything, to see the beauty in all the little things that often go overlooked. Being able to see people experience something I made—maybe a fleeting hour and a half of a magical play or the five minutes they’re walking through an alleyway at Disneyland, and they hear this soundtrack that just brings them into the moment. That has always been the absolute best part of what I do, and I like being able to bring the magic of science to people—especially through our Watson and Science Journey lectures.

“Imagineering had been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. I remember seeing some of the first showings of Fantasmic at Disneyland, and when I saw that I thought, whatever that is, that’s what I want to do.

“That really carries over to my job at Caltech. Everything that's magical in this world can be explained by science, and I think that's an incredible thing. It's one of the big things that drew me to Caltech, that emphasis on making our science accessible.

“I like that my job isn’t the same thing every day. One day, I could be running lights, or the sound board, or helping speakers get oriented. With Science Journeys, I might help speakers set up their PowerPoints and displays and make sure they have a venue full of people to share that with. The important thing is creating an event that connects people at Caltech with each other—and the larger community—in a fun way.”

03/09/2025

“I jokingly say that the reason I got added to the Physics Olympiad as a coach was because the head administrator, Tengiz Bibilashvili, was the first professor that ever gave me an F in an undergraduate class. I would like to think that going from failing a physics class under him to studying physics at Caltech ingratiated me in his eyes, and he added me to the Olympiad team as somebody who can represent all types of students.

“As a coach, I took part in the selection of the team, which is a process that includes two exams and a 10-day training camp, after which we determine who will be the five members to travel and represent the U.S. At the camp, I helped to head the experimental side, which is a big distinguishing factor because most of the students do not have experience in labs, which makes up 40 percent of the scoring for the olympiad. They can study in advance for theory, but in terms of labs, you could have somebody who’s totally wicked smart, getting the top scores on every single written exam, but the moment you get them into a lab, they can have literally no idea what they’re doing.

“I found out about the team’s win alongside everyone else. I was watching the award ceremony on the livestream from France at 7:30 in the morning, Pacific time. We already had an indication they were going to all place gold. The students were phenomenal. The real shocker was not that we got first; it was that we were the definitive first place team. That means it was a challenging olympiad, and we still won.”

—Kellan Colburn is a fourth-year doctoral student studying photonic integrated circuits in the lab of Kerry J. Vahala, Caltech’s Ted and Ginger Jenkins Professor of Information Science and Technology and Applied Physics. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from UC Santa Barbara. Colburn has served as a coach for the U.S. Physics team for three years and is preparing for a fourth. This summer, the 2025 U.S. Physics Team was the only team to achieve five gold medals at the International Physics Olympiad held in July in Paris, France. This was the first time the U.S. achieved such a feat in over 30 years of participating in the event.

26/08/2025

When Europa Clipper launched in October 2024, the spacecraft began one of the most ambitious planetary science missions in history. Its destination—Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons—shows evidence of liquid water under its icy shell, which makes scientists wonder if there could be conditions like the deep-ocean environments on Earth that can support life. The mission, run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, will help scientists better understand the potential for habitability beyond our world. But before Clipper could even begin its scientific quest, the engineers and scientists involved in the mission had to face down an array of technical and environmental challenges that pushed the limits of spacecraft design.

In her May 2025 Watson Lecture, Tracy Drain, Europa Clipper chief engineer in operations, shared stories from the mission’s development, launch, and its continuing journey to Jupiter. Here she describes 10 of the most formidable obstacles they navigated along the way: https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/go-big-and-go-to-jupiter-10-engineering-challenges-europa-clipper-had-to-overcome

21/08/2025

“Because I was a bit less outgoing compared to my twin sister, people always thought I would be the one to stay in Switzerland. But I found that I wanted to see more of the world and get out of the Switzerland bubble. I wanted a new challenge, so I applied to Caltech for its unique undergraduate research and learning opportunities and got accepted.

I had never been to the US before coming to Caltech. Adjusting to the language was difficult at first. The only time I talked in English was during my English lessons in high school, so switching to having every conversation and lecture in English was a big change. All my other subjects, including math and physics, had been taught in German, so it took me a few lectures to get used to all the technical terms.

Everything was new, but it didn’t take long until I felt at home again, because it’s such a welcoming community with kindhearted people here at Caltech. I found friends really fast, and I didn’t expect it to be so easy to transition. Now, when I go to Red Door to get coffee, the staff know my order. I walk in three or four times a day, and they already know what I'll ask for. It's a small thing that makes you feel very welcome, and I think it wouldn’t be like this at a larger university.”

—Hannah Ramsperger is a third-year undergraduate majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in aerospace. This summer, she interned in the Engine Performance Department at MTU Aero Engines in Munich, Germany. During the academic year, she conducts research in the Explosion Dynamics Laboratory, which is led by Joseph Shepherd, C.L. “Kelly” Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus. Her go-to order at the Red Door is a large iced Americano.

13/08/2025

“I started tutoring with the Caltech Y’s Rise Program, which pairs Caltech students with local Pasadena middle and high school students, because I wanted to give back to my community. In my own academic journey, I feel like I received so much help from mentors and others, and tutoring just felt like a good way to give back. Being at Caltech—one of the greatest academic institutions in the world—why not use my privilege to help local students? Especially when many of them are from low-income backgrounds and might be the first generation in their families aspiring to go to college.

“Sometimes, we’d have sessions where it felt like I didn’t have enough time to tutor them that day. In subjects like math, if they didn’t learn a fundamental concept three years ago, and something they’re learning now builds on that, I can’t bridge that gap in a two-hour weekly session. So, it sometimes feels like I’m trying my best but not able to do enough. But even then, you can see students improve over time—even if the changes aren’t always quantifiable. For me it’s about seeing that they’ve become more confident, that they can solve problems faster, or that they’re no longer relying on their classmates’ help to do their homework. That feels very rewarding.”

—Manisha Kapasiawala is a bioengineering graduate student who has been active in Caltech Y programs including the RISE tutoring program and Student Activism Speaker Series.

is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to [email protected] or comment on this post.

07/08/2025

What about you? How do you think AI will affect your job or research field?

If all we know is to pursue research productivity, or practical solutions and products that come from research, then yes, AI will do this better than us very soon. But if we also keep in mind why we do science in the first place, then AI can actually allow us to have more time for the uniquely human

04/08/2025

Computer scientist and engineer Pietro Perona, right, with graduate student Suzanne Stathetos, getting up close with the Caltech turtles. Image: Steve Babuljak

31/07/2025

Franklin Stahl, who passed away this year age 95, enjoyed a decades-long career as a researcher in molecular biology and genetics. But he will live on in the history books for an insightful project he worked on as a Caltech postdoc in the 1950s—one dubbed “the most beautiful experiment in biology.”

https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/franklin-stahl-most-beautiful-experiment-dies-at-95