For senior Patrick Rall, a native of Munich, Germany, the summer offers one of the year's few chances to visit home. But for the last two summers, Rall, a Caltech physics major, has been spending his summers on campus, drawn by another opportunity—the chance to conduct cutting-edge research while being mentored by John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, as part of the Institute's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program. Last year, Rall worked in the laser lab of Assistant Professor of Physics David Hsieh on a condensed matter physics experiment. This summer, he switched his attention to quantum information science, a new field that seeks to exploit quantum mechanical effects to create next-generation computers that will be faster and more secure than those currently available.

A key idea in quantum mechanics is superposition of states. Subatomic particles like electrons can be described as having multiple positions, or more than one speed or energy level. This is illustrated by the thought experiment developed in 1935 by Austrian physicist Edwin Schrödinger. In it, a cat is placed into an imaginary box containing a bottle of poison, radioactive material, and a radiation detector. If a radioactive particle decays and radiation is detected inside the box, the poison is released and the cat is killed. But according to quantum mechanics, the cat could be simultaneously alive and dead. Yet if one were to open the lid of the box, the cat would become alive or dead. By opening the box, we have destroyed the quantum nature of the state; that is to say, the observation itself affects the outcome, and yet that outcome is randomly determined.

"Where this gets really interesting is when more than one cat gets involved," Rall says. "Then we can have states where looking at one cat determines the outcome of looking at the other, even if they are on different continents or even different planets. For example, I cannot know if I will see a live or a dead cat upon opening either box, but I can know that the cats are either both alive or both dead."

This "spooky action at a distance"—as Einstein phrased it—is called entanglement, and an entangled state, physicists say, can store information. "When looking at systems with many cats, the amount of entanglement information is much larger than what I can obtain by looking at the cats individually," Rall says. "To harness the sheer quantity of information stored in these so-called many-body systems, we must better understand the structure of these spooky correlations. This is what I worked on this summer."

Quantum many-body systems are difficult to simulate on a computer, but by looking at small-enough systems and using mathematical tools, researchers can study complex entangled quantum states. Physicists have been studying many-body entanglement for a long time because of its importance in understanding certain semiconductors.

"This summer, I had the privilege to work under Professor Preskill, and that was an incredible experience," Rall says. A central interest of Preskill's lab is to design schemes for quantum computation. Modern computers use classical bits—ones and zeroes—to store data. A quantum computer would use quantum bits—or qubits—and use their superposition and entanglement to perform computation. Quantum computers, while still in the experimental stage (with heavy investment from companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google), have been touted for their potential to generate unbreakable codes and to efficiently simulate many complex systems, with implications for computational chemistry and biology.

"The most interesting thing about the quantum computer is that we have no idea what it could be capable of," says Rall. "We know some quantum algorithms that are faster than the best-known classical algorithms. But what are the limits? Nobody knows."

On Saturday, October 17, Caltech students will present the results of their research during SURF Seminar Day. This past summer, students embarked on 10-week research projects under the guidance of faculty mentors as part of the annual Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program.

This summer, 318 Caltech students participated in the SURF program. Of those, 215 will present this Saturday. Projects cover a diverse range of topics, from zebra-fish development to spacecraft design.

Oral presentations will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., followed by poster presentations and a reception from 3:45 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., along the San Pasqual Mall. The full schedule of presenters, times, locations, and abstracts is available at www.sfp.caltech.edu.

Fifty years ago on October 21, 1965, Caltech's Richard Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. The three independently brokered workable marriages between 20th-century quantum mechanics and 19th-century electromagnetic field theory.

Quantum electrodynamics, as this previously reluctant partnership is known, treats the behavior of electromagnetic fields in the same manner as it treats the behavior of the electrons producing them—as particles, whose interactions can be described using probability theory. (In this case, the particles are little packages of electromagnetic energy called photons, which we usually think of as particles of light.) The so-called probability amplitude for anything more elaborate than an isolated hydrogen atom is far too complex to solve directly, so the standard quantum-mechanics approach is to start with a solvable, relatively simple equation and keep adding smaller and smaller corrections to it according to well-defined rules. The solution gets closer and closer to the actual answer as the corrections diminish in size, so you simply decide how accurate you need to be for the task at hand. However, describing an electromagnetic field in such a manner means allowing the photons to carry infinite momentum, and it had become clear by the late 1930s that such equations did not converge on the correct answer—adding corrections merely piled infinities upon infinities.

While Schwinger and Tomonaga used highly mathematical approaches to the problem, Feynman characteristically took a different point of view. He drew pictures of every possible interaction between photons and electrons, including those involving "virtual" particles undetectable by the outside world. For example, an electron can spontaneously emit and reabsorb a photon—a self-interaction that contributes appreciably to the electron's mass. And a photon can transmute into an electron and its antimatter twin, the positron, with the two immediately annihilating each another to produce a new photon and helping to create the so-called vacuum energy that pervades empty space. Far more complex pictures are possible—and usually necessary. These iconic doodles, now called Feynman diagrams, allowed him to calculate each scenario's probability amplitude independently and add them all up to get the correct answer.

Back in the 1960s, Nobel laureates got a congratulatory 9:00 a.m. telegram from Stockholm rather than a 3:00 a.m. phone call. Even so, Feynman was awakened at 3:45 a.m. by a reporter who broke the news to him, then asked, "Aren't you pleased to hear that you've won the prize?""I could have found out later this morning," the groggy Feynman replied. "Well, how do you feel, now that you've won it?" the reporter persisted.

At the customary press conference held at a more reasonable hour at Caltech's faculty club, the Athenaeum, a reporter asked, "Is there any way your work can be explained in layman's terms?""There certainly must be," Feynman replied. "But I don't know what it is."

Feynman was a master teacher with a flair for showmanship, and for him to be at a loss for words—even in jest—may have been a first. The final installment of his textbook The Feynman Lectures on Physics had come out that June. Distilled from the Physics 1 and 2 course sequence he had taught to 180 Caltech freshmen in 1961–62 and to the same group as sophomores the following year, the work's three volumes appeared in 1963, 1964, and 1965. The lectures, a complete reimagining of introductory physics, had been motivated by the rapid pace of discoveries in the field in the 1950s and by the improvements in high-school mathematics instruction brought on by the space race—which the Soviets were winning in 1961 by a score of three to nothing, having successively put the first satellite, the first animal (Laika the dog), and the first human (Yuri Gagarin) into orbit.

"A substantial number" of Caltech's physics faculty had proffered outlines of topics the two-year course should cover, wrote professor Robert Leighton (BS '41, MS '44, PhD '47) in the foreword to the series. He noted that the hundred-plus lectures were envisioned as "a cooperative effort by N staff members who would share the total burden symmetrically and equally: each man would take responsibility for 1/N of the material, deliver the lectures, and write text material for his part." This unworkable scheme was quickly abandoned after physics professor Matthew Sands volunteered Feynman for the entire job. Feynman agreed—on the condition that he did not have to write anything. Instead, each lecture was audiotaped and transcribed, and every diagram was photographed. "It was expected that the necessary editing would be minor . . . to be done by one or two graduate students on a part-time basis. Unfortunately, this expectation was short-lived," Leighton wrote. In fact, it "required the close attention of a professional physicist for from ten to twenty hours per lecture!" Leighton and Sands worked on it by turn, with Feynman doing the final edit himself.

In the end, however, it was all worth the effort. More than 1.5 million sets of the iconic, bright red volumes have been sold in English alone, and at least a dozen translations into other languages exist. The book has gone through three editions and remains in print to this day; on September 13, 2013 Caltech posted a freely available electronic version whose equations and graphics scale automatically to the reader's device. In the 25 months since then, the site has been accessed more than eight million times by nearly 1.7 million individuals.

Bouncing from the Midwest, to the East Coast, to California, plus running 60 miles per week, senior Aditya Bhagavathi is often on the go—and swiftly. He currently holds Caltech school records in the 8K (approximately five-mile) cross-country event and the 5000-meter (approximately three-mile) track event. Additionally, Bhagavathi was named to the Capital One Academic All-America Men's Track & Field/Cross Country Division III second team, an honor that no other Beaver athlete has ever received.

We recently sat down with Bhagavathi, a computer science major, to talk about balancing a running career with the academic marathon of being a Caltech undergraduate.

What was life like before Caltech?

My family was on the move a lot. I came to the U.S. when I was eight, having lived in India and Toronto before that. Then I spent five years in Michigan, three in Indiana, and my final year of high school in New Jersey, before moving out to California for Caltech.

I guess you could say I started out "on the streets," playing basketball in Michigan and just running to stay fit. I committed to running competitively in high school and I just never stopped.

How would you describe your Caltech experience?

Caltech has been a lot about discovering myself. For example, I discovered computer science during my freshman year. I really love math, and I realized that computer science is like a marriage of mathematics and tangible, real-world applications. Every time I meet someone new, every time I have a new research experience or internship, I feel like new directions are opened up.

I especially appreciate the professors, who not only are brilliant and teach well, but also emphasize the practical, global impact of what we learn. This really inspired me to go into industry, and I got internships at Google and Goldman Sachs. Each step along the way I picked up something new—about problem solving, about business, about industry.

How have you managed to balance the rigor of Caltech with athletics?

It hasn't been easy. There have been many times when I've felt overwhelmed . . . I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now, even! Having to graduate soon, and wanting to leave a good legacy with the team . . . it's a lot. There were times when I just went into machine-mode, working all the time, and I had to sacrifice a lot of other things in my life. Now, I'm trying to have more of a balance, making sure to leave time to hang out with my friends. The way I see it, Caltech is 30 percent about the education, and 70 percent about the people that I get to meet every day. These people—friends, teammates, coaches, professors—they keep me going.

Do you have a favorite moment or race?

My favorite moment was last year when we went to Oregon for the cross-country regionals race. But it wasn't during the race—it was actually the night before. We were all sitting in a motel room, it was chilly and snowing outside, mid-November, and there was this electric feel of Steve Prefontaine in the air—"Pre" was a distance-running idol, born and raised in Oregon, who held every American outdoor track record between 2,000 and 10,000 meters until he died in an accident in 1975.

So here we are, getting ready for the biggest, most important race of the season, and I knew I wasn't going to sleep. So we each went around and verbalized what this season meant to us, why we were going to go out the next day and try our hardest. The essence of what everybody said was this: we were each running not just for ourselves, but for each other. Every person who runs a little bit faster, or tries a little harder, or pushes himself a little farther, was doing it together with everyone else.

That kind of band-of-brothers mentality is really what I'm trying to instill in the team as captain this year.

What are your plans after Caltech?

Well, I know running will always be a part of my life. Professionally, my plans are in development right now. I'm hoping to work in management consulting—a field where companies hire you to solve a problem, and you cycle through cases working with people and traveling a lot. I've picked up a lot of problem-solving skills from my research, as well as leadership and interpersonal skills from internships and cross-country. I'm hoping to live in Chicago—I lived there for a couple of summers, and I just absolutely love that city. It's glamorous and exciting but not that expensive. And I imagine I'll be running quite a bit there.

Chemotherapy is a life-saving medical intervention for millions of cancer patients, but the treatment is often not a pleasant experience. To kill off cancer cells, chemotherapy drugs must directly enter the patient's bloodstream and so they are administered intravenously. But are large, often painful needles the only reliable way to deliver the drugs?

Caltech senior Teo Wilkening, a mechanical engineering major in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, spent this past summer testing the preliminary design of an alternative—and possibly much less painful—method: drug delivery through a patch.

Caltech's Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering, first came up with the idea for the patch several years ago. Gharib's interest in painless drug delivery patches was renewed after a discussion with M. Houman Fekrazad, a cancer specialist at the City of Hope in Duarte, California. When Wilkening joined the Gharib lab in June as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program, Gharib encouraged him to come up with a way to design and test the feasibility of such a patch.

"When we started thinking about designing a chemotherapy patch, we split the project into two main parts," Wilkening says. One part is to create a compartment that holds the fluid or medicine; the second is the design of a needle-like device to physically deliver the medicine into the patient's bloodstream. "Over the summer, I started working on the needles," he says.

Any chemotherapy delivery device must provide a way for the drug to get through the skin and into the blood. To avoid the pain caused by the large needle traditionally used for such an intravenous injection, Gharib envisioned a patch containing hundreds of micrometer-scale needles, too small in diameter to be sensed by the nerves in the skin. Wilkening wanted to test how efficiently the tiny needles could actually deliver a drug.

Skin is made of three layers—the epidermal, dermal, and subdermal layers. For a drug to enter the bloodstream, it must be delivered into the bottom, or subdermal, layer. From there, Wilkening explains, "it can be distributed throughout the body, instead of pooling up and killing the cells around the injection site. We wanted to develop a way for the micrometer-scale needles to routinely deliver medicine to this bottom layer."

Wilkening hoped to exploit the fact that each of the three skin layers has a different resistance level. The outer skin layer, the epidermis, is the stiffest of the three; the middle layer, the dermis, is of intermediate stiffness; and the subdermal layer is the easiest to penetrate.

To test how this resistance would affect the flow of a fluid—like a solution carrying a cancer-killing drug—Wilkening created a large-scale model of the microneedles using a pair of microliter glass pipettes. In the model, liquid flows from a common reservoir and into both pipettes at the same rate. To simulate the resistance to flow that would be present in needles in a patch, Wilkening added viscous materials, such as gelatin, to the end of both of the pipettes and then inserted them into separate gels representing the different layers of skin. By varying the stiffness of the gels, he was able to determine the likely behavior of the flow coming from the patch under the condition that one needle penetrates deep enough to the subdermal layer and the other does not. "The liquid flow penetrated through one needle or the other depending on the difference in the stiffness of the skin-like gels, generally through the less stiff one," he says.

Although he spent the majority of his summer perfecting the setup of this experiment and only a little over a week in the actual testing phase, Wilkening's preliminary results suggest that the concept behind the patch is sound. That is, once the fluid meets resistance in one needle, it will follow the path of less resistance and will flow into the other needle. That means that in a patch composed of many hundreds of needles, a drug should be deliverable directly into the subdermal layer and able to reach the patient's bloodstream precisely because it does not as easily flow into the two layers above the subdermis.

While his SURF project is now technically over, Wilkening—who is also a teaching assistant in the mechanical engineering shop and the captain of the Caltech soccer team—says he will be continuing his work with Gharib during the school year.

"I hope to see this project through a little bit more," he says. "In my two previous SURF projects I worked on existing systems. This year was very different because nobody has done this before. It is kind of cool having a chance to own my own project and to use my own inspiration and ideas to really build it up from the bottom."

For the last three years, Caltech students and staff have been lending a hand at Pasadena City College, providing free tutoring and mentoring to some of the campus's nearly 800 student veterans. This past spring, 19 Caltech community members participated. Their involvement is part of a larger volunteer program, run through PCC's Veterans Resource Center (VRC)—established in 2010 under a grant from the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office—that provides support and guidance to the campus veterans. 

Patricia D'Orange-Martin, coordinator of the VRC, calls the Caltech cohort "the core of our tutoring/mentoring team" and credits it with providing more than 60 percent of the program's support, "particularly for veterans preparing to transfer to four-year colleges and universities." 

Urte Barker, the creator of the tutoring program, started the center with a handful of volunteers. In 2012, she decided she was ready to enlarge the group of tutors and expand academic support, especially in higher-level math and science subjects, and approached Caltech through its Center for Teaching, Learning and Outreach (CTLO) and through the Caltech Y.

The Caltech community responded enthusiastically. Some tutors are undergrads, including Dennis Lam, a junior majoring in computer science. "The veterans I've worked with are motivated, hard working, and have a clear picture of where they want to be in the next stages of their lives," Lam says. Volunteers have also come from the ranks of Caltech's graduate students, postdocs, administrators—even a postdoc's chemistry-teacher wife.

Serving veterans, says Mitch Aiken, associate director for educational outreach at CTLO, "provides our students with the chance to deliver meaningful one-on-one outreach." It also allows them to "give back, expand their own worldview, and get in some excellent real-world teaching experience," he says.

"We're looking for mentors and role models of all ages," says Barker. "Current or recent students are close enough to their own study years to remember the feeling. Older volunteers bring invaluable experience in life-skills development."

"At first, I thought I'd need to be a subject-matter expert," says volunteer Elizabeth DeClue of Caltech Purchasing Services. "But tutoring turned out to be much more about supporting the student and sharing what it takes to be successful."

The need is great, Barker says. "Society has created this huge group of people in their 20s and 30s, dropped them back in school while they're scrambling to gain traction in civilian life and told them to catch up. Some are pursuing careers that will require years of study. Others have memory or health issues." With the military's emphasis on pride and self-sufficiency, however, veterans often resist seeking help, she says. "I keep reminding them: 'What you're learning in college will become your toolbox for your career and your life. Commit to it.'"

Volunteer tutor and former JPL education coordinator Rich Alvidrez understands from personal experience the issues these vets face. "I found myself very rusty in math after I left the Air Force to begin my college education, so I can understand how difficult it is for some vets to get back after being out of school."

Lessons learned extend far beyond the textbook. "Many students' lives prior to military service lacked enrichment opportunities," Barker says. "Now they're picking up valuable life skills: time management, prioritizing school against outside interests, perspective about opportunities they'd never heard of. That's uplifting and empowering."

Although the potential demand for tutors still outstrips the supply, Barker remains optimistic. "So far, we've just been putting drops on a hot stone," she says. "We also lost some wonderful people after graduation this year. But at the Caltech Y's Community Service and Advocacy Fair in October, I met people with phenomenal amounts of heart and energy. This program creates a feeling of effectiveness and personal satisfaction that keeps our volunteers coming back."

For many graduate students, the Caltech doctoral program is not only about producing innovative science, but also about beginning an academic career. To support their peers in their growth as educators, a group of graduate students began the Caltech Project for Effective Teaching (CPET) in 2006. The program's mission is to help members of the Caltech community—including postdocs, undergraduates, professors, and graduate students—become more effective teachers and communicators. To this end, CPET hosts regular seminars and workshops, featuring speakers such as Feynman Teaching Prize winners as well as presidents and faculty from other universities.

"We know that many of the students and postdocs at Caltech will go on to become faculty at some of the top institutions around the world, so we have a chance to help these talented individuals develop not only as researchers but also as educators," says Daniel Thomas, one of the two graduate student CPET co-directors. "We can also help TAs, professors, and postdocs model excellent teaching for the undergraduate and graduate students here at Caltech, creating an effective learning environment that can be emulated elsewhere."

Over the summer, CPET helped plan Caltech's third annual teaching conference, held on September 24, 2015. With sessions led by faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants from Caltech and other local universities, the conference drew approximately 350 participants from across Caltech's divisions and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One subject of the conference was how to create an inclusive classroom. "An inclusive classroom is one in which all students, regardless of their backgrounds, have the support necessary to succeed and feel that their contributions to the class are important," says Kelsey Boyle, CPET's other co-director. "We have to do our best to connect with students and understand their perspective so that unencumbered learning can take place."

A trademark of a Caltech education is weekly problem sets, as well as take-home exams. How to design these assignments in order to effectively measure and challenge student learning has been an ongoing focus of workshops at the annual teaching conference. "It takes a great deal of work to make a problem set that has problems that can pinpoint student misconceptions, avoid confusion, and be completed in a reasonable amount of time," Boyle says.

CPET also provides a certificate program that gives participants an introduction to best practices in the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), as well as opportunities for real-time feedback as they teach. Students can receive a Certificate of Interest in University Teaching by participating in six CPET seminars or workshops and submitting reflective journal entries. Several hundred people participate in one or more of CPET's seminars or workshops each year, and CPET expects to award more than 10 Certificates of Interest in 2015-2016. CPET also offers a Certificate of Practice in University Teaching, in which participants work with CPET and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach (CTLO) on developing and practicing lessons for real Caltech courses. This second certificate program is in its first year and has eight participants.

"The CPET certificate program is one of a very few, if not the only, student- and peer-led program of its kind," says Cassandra Horii, the director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach. "I'm incredibly proud of and grateful to CPET for their innovation and leadership in this area, including adding a Certificate of Practice in University Teaching program for those who want to extend their knowledge and skills of effective teaching even further through experience, feedback, and creation of their own teaching materials."

"We are in an exciting period in the history of STEM teaching, with faculty and education experts across the country realizing that teaching styles that actively engage with students are significantly more effective than traditional lectures," says Thomas. "Using methods such as 'flipping' the classroom—when students read or watch lectures outside of the classroom and do 'homework' problems collaboratively during traditional class time—as well as collecting student feedback during class and incorporating peer tutors, can help students improve their conceptual understanding. We can get students to be more passionate about a class when we engage with them."

The public high school in Blue Springs, Missouri, just outside Kansas City, graduates more than 500 seniors each year. Remarkably, the valedictorian in 2015 was the younger sister of the valedictorian in 2014—who was the younger sister of the valedictorian in 2013.

And all three are now Caltech undergraduates.

These are the Butkovich sisters: junior Slava and sophomore Nina, both majoring in chemical engineering, and freshman Lazarina ("Laza"), currently deciding between chemical engineering and chemistry.

"In the nearly half-century since Caltech began admitting women to its undergraduate program, 2015 is almost certainly the first year we've had three sisters enrolled in three different graduating classes at the same time," notes Barbara Green, interim dean of undergraduate students." The sisters represent "a three-peat," says Caltech admissions director Jarrid Whitney, not a package deal. "All our applicants are reviewed independently and without regard to siblings, parents, or other legacies. For three family members to receive consecutive offers of admission indicates how tremendously talented all three of them must be."

For their part, Slava, Nina, and Laza find their own nearly identical trajectories unsurprising. "We were taught at a young age that science majors can do a lot of good for society," Slava explains. "Anyway," adds Nina, "science is more objective than other things, like English and law. It has right answers."

Instead, they give much of the credit for nurturing their talents to their father, who is a lawyer, and their mother, a chemical engineer. They also single out recently retired Blue Springs High chemistry teacher Evan Manuel. "He's the above-and-beyond teacher," says Nina. "His passion for the sciences inspires his students."

Manuel praises the sisters for having "high expectations—not just of themselves but of others around them. I'm sure it's because of how they were brought up. And they've generously shared that perspective with their peers."

For example, the three young women, whose own heritage is Slavic and Filipino, cofounded their school's Association for Cultural and Ethnic Diversity and hosted its monthly world culture celebrations. That willingness to serve, says Manuel, earned them the respect of their peers. "And it's not a far-removed, no-interaction, pedestal kind of respect," he adds. "They like helping people, so people like them. Their college recommendation letters were some of the easiest I've ever been asked to write."

Even before landing in Pasadena, they had already completed summer research projects in university chemistry labs: Slava at Baylor and Missouri S&T, her sisters at the University of Iowa. They also tutored classmates in a variety of subjects in between sitting for a combined total of almost four dozen AP exams, many in subjects not even offered by their school.

At Caltech, all three Butkoviches will be pursuing summer research opportunities. Slava, who is planning a career in anti-cancer research, was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) fellow last year. They are active in the undergraduate house system (Nina is a member of Ruddock House; Laza and Slava are members of Dabney) and have taken part in yoga, tennis, tai chi, karate, and the NERF club. Their course loads are challenging, but none are carrying an overload. "I don't think extreme units is smart," Nina says.

In fact, according to all three, one of the biggest challenges since leaving high school has been learning to rely on something they had honestly never needed before now: study groups.

Senior Bianca Lepe, a bioengineering major from Granada Hills, California, has been named a Marshall Scholar, winning one of the most coveted fellowships for study in the U.K. The Marshall Scholarship is widely considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world. Approximately 1,000 Americans, mostly graduating seniors, apply for, at most, 40 fellowships awarded each year. The Marshall Scholarship provides funding for two years of post-bachelor's degree study at any university in the United Kingdom. The Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, which oversees the fellowship, provides many cultural opportunities for Marshall Scholars during their tenure as scholars.

Lepe will spend the 2016–2017 academic year at the University of Edinburgh studying for a master's degree in synthetic biology and the following year at Imperial College London, completing a master's degree in science communication.

The Marshall Scholarship was founded by a 1953 Act of Parliament and named in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall. The scholarships "commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan and the fellowships express the continuing gratitude of the British people to their American counterparts."

The British Marshall Commission website says, "As future leaders, with a lasting understanding of British society, Marshall Scholars strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments and their institutions. Marshall Scholars are talented, independent and wide-ranging, and their time as Scholars enhances their intellectual and personal growth. Their direct engagement with Britain through its best academic programmes contributes to their ultimate personal success."

At Caltech, Lepe has participated in research with the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor and Professor of Chemistry James Heath, developing a diagnostic tool to detect a specific protein that causes malaria, and with President Emeritus and the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology David Baltimore, studying RNA and immunology. In 2014, Lepe was a member of the Caltech's undergraduate iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) team, which participated in an international competition to create artificial biological systems from a kit of standard biological parts. "Our project's goal was to implement a nonnative gene circuit system in E. coli to manufacture a biological compound and regulate its concentration outside the cell," Lepe says. "We had the chance to attend the iGEM Jamboree to present our research, for which we received a bronze medal."

Lepe's experiences on the iGEM team spurred her interest in synthetic biology, which she will pursue at the University of Edinburgh during the first year of her Marshall Scholarship. "Edinburgh is unique because it has a research center, called SynthSys, which specializes in translating research into commercial applications—a skill I hope to gain while there," she says.

During the second year of her fellowship, Lepe will delve into the art of communicating science to the public. "When I study science communication at Imperial College, it will be beyond the traditional forms of communication into broader mediums and topics, such as television, ethics, and science policy. The skill sets I will gain at these universities will enable me to be an effective communicator and scientist as I pursue a career in synthetic biology."

"Bianca Lepe has excelled in many areas at Caltech: classes, research, leadership, student government. She has reinvigorated the Caltech Latino Association of Students in Engineering and Sciences, and she chairs the undergraduate student advisory board for Title IX efforts," says Lauren Stolper, director of fellowships advising and study abroad and the Career Development Center. "Bianca's two years in the U.K. will surely be a formative experience as a scientist and as a leader in communicating science to the public. Her Marshall Scholar win is well deserved, and Bianca will take full advantage of the experience."

In May 2015, Lepe received the Caltech Deans' Cup—an award presented to undergraduates "whose concern for their fellow students has been demonstrated by their persistent efforts to improve the quality of undergraduate life and by effective communication with members of the faculty and administration."

"Bianca has been a great student, a real leader with strong values and a wonderful friend to her peers," says Barbara Green, the Interim Dean of Undergraduate Students. "I delighted that she won the Marshall and will miss her next year."

International travel will not be too "foreign" for Lepe—in the autumn of 2014, she studied abroad at University College London. Additionally, she has traveled to India as a part of the Caltech Y's India-Ki-Khoj program in 2013.

Previous Caltech Marshall Scholars include current Marshall Scholar Adam Jermyn (BS '15) now studying for a PhD in astronomy at the University of Cambridge, Emma Schmidgall (BS '07), Wei Lien Stephen Dang (BS '05), Vikram Mittal (BS '03), and Eric Tuttle (BS '01). Other former Marshall Scholars in the Caltech community include Sterl Phinney (BS '80), professor of theoretical astrophysics; Thomas Everhart, President Emeritus; Edward Stolper, the Carl and Shirley Larson Provostial Chair and William E. Leonhard Professor of Geology; Jonas Peters, the Bren Professor of Chemistry and director of the Resnick Institute; and Thomas Miller, professor of chemistry.

Mary Boyajian, a junior majoring in chemical engineering at Caltech, spent her summer as a student in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program trying to trick an enzyme. The enzyme, tRNA synthetase, has a very specific chemical target, and Boyajian wanted the enzyme to ease up a bit on its requirements so that it might also find acceptable a slightly altered version of the target. The work might sound esoteric, but it was Boyajian's piece of a project with an end goal that could benefit millions: devising a faster-acting insulin-replacement therapy for the treatment of diabetes.

A normally functioning pancreas keeps blood sugar within a narrow range by releasing large bursts of the hormone insulin after meals. Insulin helps cells absorb excess glucose and prevents the liver from producing additional sugar. In the case of diabetics, however, either the cells become resistant to the effects of insulin or the body simply cannot produce enough of the hormone, so additional insulin is needed.

In the 1920s, insulin isolated from animals became the first insulin-replacement therapy for diabetics. Forty years later, scientists figured out how to make human insulin in the lab. However, that synthetic insulin behaves a bit differently in the body. For example, it tends to clump up and therefore takes a long time for the body to absorb.

To improve the speed or ease of absorption, chemists have designed replacement therapies that are analogs of human insulin, made by substituting some of insulin's building blocks, or amino acids, with other naturally occurring amino acids. However, there is room for improvement. For example, scientists would like to make therapies that kick in faster, last longer, and offer a longer shelf life.

In all current insulin-replacement therapies, certain naturally occurring amino acids are swapped for other naturally occurring amino acids. But in the lab of David Tirrell, the Ross McCollum–William H. Corcoran Professor and professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at Caltech, chemists are working with what are known as noncanonical amino acids. These variants are designed and made in the lab to have slightly altered chemical structures. If expressed in a protein, these synthetic amino acids can introduce entirely new functions or capabilities. Tirrell's group has the idea to swap out a naturally occurring amino acid from insulin with a noncanonical amino acid to create a replacement therapy that would outperform those on the market today.

Boyajian's role this summer was to introduce specific mutations in the enzyme tRNA synthetase. Each of the 20 amino acids that are expressed naturally in proteins has its own tRNA synthetase that hunts within cells for its specific amino acid target, so that the amino acid can be incorporated in the right sequence to make proteins. Even a small difference in an amino acid's structure will deter its tRNA synthetase.

"When I started this project, I had no idea that changing one amino acid could change so much about a protein, but it can," says Boyajian. "My job is to mutate the tRNA synthetase so that it won't see a modified amino acid—one of our noncanonical amino acids—and say, 'That's the wrong one. Take it out.'"

To get an idea of how she might mutate the enzyme, Boyajian studied the known structures of similar tRNA synthetases and how they interact with their target molecules.

Once she had an idea for a mutation, she introduced the changes into the gene that codes for the tRNA synthetase. Then she used a standard technique in molecular biology called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to make many copies of it. Next she grew cells with the mutated enzymes on media lacking the naturally occurring amino acid—think of it as a type of food for cells. Once the cells ate up any small traces of the amino acid in the media, she fed them one of the noncanonical amino acids. If a mutated enzyme worked, it was able to "eat" the new amino acids; if not, the cells eventually died.

At the end of the summer, one of Boyajian's mutated tRNA synthetases showed promising results in terms of incorporating one of the noncanonical amino acids, and she is now working to scale-up the size of cultures to determine whether the new enzyme can be used to produce proteins for future experiments. In the long term, if the enzyme is found to efficiently incorporate a specific noncanonical amino acid, the Tirrell lab would use the enzyme to produce novel insulins that could be assessed as potential biopharmaceuticals to improve the quality of life for patients.

Boyajian, who also plays basketball and serves as one of the captains of the water polo team, says she learned a lot from her SURF experience. "My grad student mentors, Seth Lieblich and Kat Fang, were great, and everybody in the lab was very welcoming," she says. "It's really nice to see everything you learned in the classroom being applied."

In 1986, Caltech men's water polo player David Bruning (BS '88) set the record for the most goals scored during a season: 117. The record stood until 2014, when it was broken by then-sophomore Chris Bradley, who amassed 134 goals.

Bradley, now a junior, received an Honorable Mention in the All-American Awards for Division III by the Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches for the 2014–2015 season and was named to the Capital One Academic All-District Men's At-Large Team this past spring. "Chris brings passion, competiveness, and leadership to our water polo team," says water polo coach Jon Bonafede. "He demonstrates remarkable athleticism and endurance for one of the most physically demanding sports."

This season, Bradley has once again earned a spot on the all-time top scorers list, notching 88 goals to put him as the fourth highest scorer.

We sat down with Bradley to talk about water polo, academics, and the halfway point in his college career.

What brought you to Caltech?

I was attracted by the school's rigorous academic reputation, and I wanted to study mechanical engineering. I chose Caltech for purely academic reasons, but it's definitely a plus that Caltech is a place where I could continue playing sports.

When did you start playing water polo?

Well, it started because, as a high school freshman, I was cut from the football team! My older sister played water polo, and she encouraged me to try it out. Additionally, I grew up in the Bay Area of California, and California is kind of like the state to play water polo—most collegiate players come from here, so that was a big inspiration. I've been playing at Caltech for the last two years as a perimeter player—sort of a driver or attacker. It's a fluid position, and I get to play both offensively and defensively.

It's really nice that Caltech affords you the opportunity to play sports without really extreme expectations. Last year, the baseball coach asked me to see if I could pitch. I hadn't played baseball before, but I wasn't doing any sports in the spring, so I gave it a shot.

Do you have a favorite match or moment in a game?

We're still sort of looking for that magic moment: getting our first SCIAC [Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference] win. A SCIAC win would be super important to me and my teammates.

Last year, the team went on a trip to Annapolis, Maryland, to participate in a water polo tournament. It was a cool experience because it was one of the only times I was able to just focus solely on the sport—school hadn't started yet so there was no pressure of academics, just hanging out with the guys and playing water polo.

How have you balanced athletics with academics?

I just make the time. Of course, there have been plenty of long nights that probably could have been shorter if I weren't playing sports. But I really enjoy it; it's a great way to release competitiveness and get a good workout for a couple hours each day.

What got you interested in mechanical engineering?

In high school, I really enjoyed science and math. But high school physics is actually more similar to mechanical engineering than the kind of theoretical physics at Caltech. As a junior, I'm taking ME 72—the big design class for all mechanical engineering majors. Every year we participate in a different kind of competition. This year, each team has to design and build three robots to play a kind of soccer-style game against robots from another team. We've already designed the robots, and we're in the process of building the first one. We're pretty busy, but I'm really enjoying it.

What do you do when you are not studying or playing water polo?

I'm a member of Fleming House, and I'm what is called the "cannon master." Several times a year the big red cannon outside of Fleming House fires an explosive charge to mark big events—the end of rotation, the end of every term, and graduation. As cannon master, I'm in charge of buying the powder, making the charge, and keeping things safe.

I'm also a founding member of the Caltech Unmanned Aerial Vehicle club. We work on building drones and quadcopters, and we've gone from five to about 30 members in a year. We're currently talking with JPL about collaborating on a project.

What would you like to do after Caltech?

As I'm still a junior, I've got time to decide. I've been spending my summers exploring both research and industry. In the summer of 2014, I did a SURF [Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship] in Professor Guillaume Blanquart's lab, studying fluid dynamics and combustion, and in 2015, I worked in the Air Force research labs in Ohio studying low-observable materials for stealth. So I'm considering both graduate school and industry after graduation. I'm just going to see what happens in the next two years.

More than 900 students gathered at Chandler Hall on Tuesday night for the Dining Services quarterly Midnight Madness event—a late-night study break meant to provide students with some fun and much-needed sustenance during finals week.

This year's event was themed around Star Wars and drew volunteers from departments across the Caltech community–some of whom even donned stormtrooper costumes. In support of the theme and to help entertain the students as they snacked, the dining service staff decorated the hall with Star Wars-themed murals that represented each house, designed a TIE Fighter-style DJ booth, and played the Star Wars soundtrack throughout the evening.

"I firmly believe there is not another dining department in the country that could pull this off without hiring an art and design company," says Jonathan Webster, the senior director of Dining Services. "This event was a passion project for our group, a complete team effort, a drain on sleep for the last two weeks, and completely worth it to see the students' faces."

The choice of career path—from teacher to musician to engineer—often results from experiences during one's formative years. For children born after 1985, it's likely a certain bow-tied, rumple-haired figure wearing a blue lab coat figured prominently in the lives of those who went on to pursue science and technology.

"I really admire Bill Nye due to his ability to inject a lot of entertainment and fun into teaching," says Caltech graduate student Sho Takatori. He was one of those kids who grew up watching Bill Nye the Science Guy, the long-running and award-winning science education series that originally aired on PBS Kids. "His wacky blend of engaging science concepts, wild experimentation, and humor was very compelling. His enthusiasm really got me fired up about science."

Growing up in Sacramento, California, in the 1990s, Takatori was a loyal fan of the show's fast-paced blend of science and amusement. This appreciation would later inspire him in ways he could have never guessed. After realizing the depth of his zeal for science in high school, Takatori moved on to UC Berkeley to earn a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. While there, he worked with the California Environmental Protection Agency to help draft regulatory policies for the California Green Chemistry Initiative, a regulatory effort to develop safer chemicals and consumer products through the principles of green chemistry.

Takatori now works in the lab of John F. Brady, Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, where his work focuses on the fluid mechanics of particles suspended in liquids.."

Read more on the E&S website

Caltech's students are familiar with hard work. Mastering the intricacies of quantum physics, biochemistry, and other demanding fields of study can be difficult. Being able to apply this hard-won education to make an impact in the business environment outside of academia can be equally challenging—and is not a lesson typically taught inside an academic environment. The Summer Undergraduate Startup Internship program (SUSI) is designed to bridge this gap by placing talented undergraduates in their first or second summer at Caltech into 10-week internships in real-world entrepreneurial environments.

The board of Caltech's Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences worked with Caltech professors and internal departments such as the Career Development Center (CDC) to develop SUSI. The goal was to identify small startup companies that could offer undergraduates the opportunity to see firsthand how bold ideas can be translated into successful businesses or products.

"This was an experiment that has been very successful," says Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, the Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and chair of the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). "Startups, as an idea, are glamorous, but they are also a lot of work. Failure rates are high, and it is a very demanding environment in which you might want some experience before deciding that it's right for you."

"Caltech undergraduates have an excellent range of summer internship opportunities outside of traditional research labs, and many of these positions pay well and come with housing subsidies," says Michael Ewens, an associate professor of finance and entrepreneurship and one of SUSI's creators. "Startups that want to hire our undergraduates as interns often cannot compete with those offerings. The SUSI program steps in to provide a salary and housing supplement to make startup internships a possibility. This allows students to learn about startups while working inside them wearing a variety of hats."

Ewens recruited firms like Idealab, a local tech incubator, and other Pasadena-based startups to participate in the program. "We identified local startups that were associated with faculty and also through contacts at local small-business incubators and the board members of the Linde Institute," he says. "Next, we screened the potential internships to insure that students would be given substantive challenges rather than narrow tasks such as programming and created a website to advertise the positions to Caltech undergraduates. Finally, we placed those students who were selected with companies that were a good fit for their skills and potential."

For this year's inaugural round of SUSI internships, five undergraduates were placed with local companies. Mentors—Caltech faculty or staff—were assigned to each student.

"It was a great experience," says Phillip An, a sophomore majoring in computer science and economics, of his SUSI placement in Idealab, started by Caltech alumnus and current trustee Bill Gross (BS '81). Idealab typically includes about 20 startups working in a supportive and structured environment conducive to success for new small companies.

"In a previous internship, I headed U.S. business development at a startup cofounded by a Caltech alum," An says. "At Idealab, I had the opportunity to start and run a real company. In this experience, I was able to rotate through a variety of functions including product design, project management, raising venture capital funding, and actually reaching out to and interacting with our customers. My tenure at Idealab seemed like a whirlwind, engendering opportunities to get my hands dirty in product management, software engineering, and mobile app creation, to name just a few. I believe this program has given me opportunities few undergraduate students can experience."

SUSI combines the strengths of HSS, the Linde Institute, Caltech's Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships, the CDC, and the Entrepreneurship Club. The Linde Institute provides conduits to startup businesses through its board members. The institute, a hub for interdisciplinary research in business and economics, provided the funding to support the students during their internships.

Ewens is still evaluating the results of the first year of SUSI internships. Tracking the progress of the participants post-graduation helps refine future efforts. But it is clear, he says, that the program worked as planned. "It's still early in the process, but I think the students were provided a unique opportunity to explore the activity of an entrepreneurial firm," he says.

Ewens notes that placing students in the real-world environment of a startup helps them appreciate the broad number of options that they have as Caltech graduates. "I often tell students that a big part of college is simply figuring out what they do not want to do in life," he says. "They can only achieve this goal by trying out as many opportunities as possible while still in school. My hope is that SUSI can enable this for a select group of entrepreneurially inclined students each year."

Science and medicine, it would seem, have always gone hand in hand. But for centuries, they were actually two very disparate fields. Identifying a need for "investigators who are well trained in both basic science and clinical research," the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) in 1964 to help streamline completion of dual medical and doctoral degrees. The purpose of developing this highly competitive MD/PhD program was to support "the training of students with outstanding credentials and potential who are motivated to undertake careers in biomedical research and academic medicine."

Recognizing Caltech's strength in the biological and chemical sciences, UCLA—which first established an MSTP in 1983—formed an affiliation with the Institute in 1997 to offer an average of two students the opportunity to perform graduate research at the partner school through the MSTP; PhD thesis work is done at Caltech for UCLA medical students, and when completed they return to UCLA to finish their MD studies.

The vast majority of alumni who have completed their postgraduate training are actively involved in biomedical research as physician-scientists at outstanding research institutions across the country. Although the MSTP represented the first formal affiliation between UCLA and Caltech, the success of the combined UCLA-Caltech MSTP spearheaded and served as a model for several other joint efforts that benefit from the complementary strengths of the two institutions, including the Specialized Training and Advanced Research (STAR) fellowship program for physician-scientists, and the Institute for Molecular Medicine.

A joint program with the University of Southern California soon followed. In 1998, the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation awarded Caltech funding to support a joint MD/PhD program with the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The grant established the Norris Foundation MD/PhD Scholars Fund, which supports Caltech PhD candidates from Keck. Administered by Caltech in cooperation with USC, the program accepts two students each year. As with the UCLA program, students spend their first two years in medical school, taking preclinical science courses, with summers spent at Caltech gaining exposure to the academic research environment. They then come to Caltech, spending three to five years on their PhDs before returning to their medical school for the final two clinical years.

The late Caltech biologist Paul Patterson, who passed away in 2014, was instrumental in developing the joint degree program. He believed that Caltech graduate students should also have an opportunity to explore their work in a clinical setting.

"Paul showed creativity both in curriculum development, in student mentoring, and in bringing the Caltech faculty together to support a program, which was in collaboration with another major institution," says Richard Bergman, director of the Cedars-Sinai Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, who helped Patterson form the initial collaboration with USC. "His contributions in this regard educated several generations of students who, today, continue to make important contributions to medical science. This was a great legacy of Professor Patterson."

Additional funding for students in the MD/PhD programs has come from a provost-directed endowed fund called the W. R. Hearst Endowed Scholarship for MD/PhD Students; from the Lee-Ramo Life Sciences Fund; and through lab support for medical research from the W. M. Keck Foundation Fund for Discovery in Basic Medical Research. The Division of Biology and Biological Engineering also provides support to students and scholars who are headed for careers in medicine through an endowed fund from the Walter and Sylvia Treadway Foundation.

Since the start of the two MD/PhD programs, 64 students have been accepted to work toward dual degrees, and 40 have received PhDs from Caltech.

This story was reprinted from the Winter 2015 E&S magazine. See the full issue online.

Senior Stephanie Wong became the Caltech women's basketball program's all-time leading scorer as she nearly led the Beavers to their first SCIAC win of the season against Whittier College on Tuesday, February 26.

Wong tied and surpassed the 1,241-point benchmark set by Lindsay King '08 on a pair of free throws just before the end of the third quarter.

Read the full story on the Caltech Athletic's website.

The Student-Faculty Colloquium (SFC) is a forum designed to bring graduate students, faculty, and the administration together to discuss issues they find important. The daylong event, planned by the Graduate Student Council (GSC) and scheduled for February 11, 2016, will begin with a keynote address by Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum, followed by presentations on campus culture, mentoring, diversity, and work-life balance. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Four sessions, each led by two graduate student cochairs and at least one faculty cochair, are planned for the day. "The overwhelming enthusiasm and support of everyone we talk to—the faculty, the administration—speaks volumes to how important people at Caltech think these issues are," says SFC organizer Allison Strom, a grad student.

"What I'm most proud of is that the graduate students have involved faculty in the panels and discussions. They've made it a joint effort. It's not just the graduate students talking to the faculty; it's a dialogue," says Felicia Hunt, GSC advisor, assistant vice president for equity, accessibility, and inclusion initiatives, and Title IX coordinator. "We don't have a class on planning a conference. To be able to pick it up and run with it takes an incredible amount of initiative."

All sessions are centered on discussions for the "sharing of ideas across departments, which goes with Caltech's identity as a collaborative institution," says grad student Natalie Higgins, cochair of the session "Supporting Students through Mentoring Networks."

Grad student Emily Blythe, cochair of the session "Admissions and Recruitment," agrees. "We see the SFC as a really good way to get everyone from different options in a room together. Certainly, options are doing great things the others don't know about," says Blythe.

Students in different departments may also be facing similar problems, as "many of the issues graduate students face transcend departments," says Strom. "The challenges of being a scientist or engineer are pretty universal."

The SFC aims to address these matters by facilitating conversation and opening lines of communication among students and faculty "to create a network of people you can talk to for advice," says Higgins.

The main goals of the discussion in the mentoring networks session include making students and faculty aware of the issues that grad students face and of available resources for dealing with these issues, and attempting to fill any gaps in this system. The session will also provide information about "nonresearch mentoring—mentoring for other aspects of life," says grad student Henry Ngo, Higgins's cochair. "We're not just researchers; there are different worlds we need to seek out."

Similarly, Blythe hopes "to get a sort of best practices guide out of this to make sure everyone feels welcome at Caltech."

The admissions and recruitment session, says grad student Sofia Quinodoz, Blythe's cochair, is a good opportunity to discuss "how each option can recruit the best people." She anticipates that gradstudents sharing their experiences with professors will "show them how they can help with recruitment" by letting them know what has and has not worked at Caltech.

The session "Professional and Career Development," cochaired by grad students Parham Noorzad and Andrew Robbins, will address the development of skills necessary for navigating graduate school and future work and the preparation required to navigate the job market. These discussions are important, especially for grad students, since "just finishing your thesis is not enough to get a job; you need presentation and interview skills," says Noorzad.

Faculty at the professional and career development session will be able to offer "perspective on preparing students for different careers and to share their experiences with students, whether they have gone on to industry or academia," says Robbins.

One challenge of the GSC is "getting people who aren't interested in being student leaders involved in conversations," says Strom. "They don't have to be involved in student government to have their voices heard, so the SFC will hopefully provide them with an opportunity to do that."

Grad students Gina Duggan and Alicia Lanz are organizing a panel of students and faculty for the session "Advisor-Advisee Relationships" to address concerns identified from the Graduate Exit Survey and to answer questions about advisor/advisee styles, methods of communication, and expectations. "As graduate dean," says Doug Rees, Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor of Chemistry and dean of graduate studies, "one thing I've learned is that each lab and option has its own ways of doing things. We won't find just one solution, but we'll find what the basic elements are for a happy and productive relationship."

"I am excited to hear what members of the faculty think about these issues," says Duggan, one of the student panelists. "They've all been grad students also."

Engaging students and faculty in this discussion is one of the main points of the SFC. "Now is a good time for departments; they seem more receptive and open to change," says Lanz, the panel moderator.

"What I want from the day is to give students the confidence to be able to advocate for themselves," says Strom. "With more information, they can be more confident with their identities as scientists and people and figure out what they want to do in the future."

The schedule for the day can be found on the GSC website.

Grant Remmen, a graduate student in theoretical physics at Caltech, and his younger brother, Cole, who majors in theater arts at the University of Minnesota, have long shared a passion for musical theater. For years, they had discussed creating their own work, including songs, lyrics, and script.

Seeking inspiration, Grant, whose work at Caltech involves high-energy physics related to gravity, turned to space. What he found, besides the actual universe, was a version represented by the Star Trek television series of the 1960s.

"The topic of Star Trek was natural for us," explains Grant. "We always loved the show." The result, entitled Boldly Go!, will have its world premiere at Ramo Auditorium on the Caltech campus February 26–28 and March 3–5, 2016. Brian Brophy, a lecturer in theater at Caltech, will direct.

The production features 19 original songs and 20 scenes. Grant describes it as a "loving parody," which he says combines affection for the material with moments of sheer irreverence. Many of the popular characters are included, such as Captain Kirk, Spock, Doctor McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov, plus new ones as well.

By design, Grant says, Boldly Go! features a variety of musical styles, "including classic musical theater, gospel, tango, indie rock, ragtime power ballad, patter song, and more."

"We did this in order to parody musical theater itself, a genre that we enjoy and with which we are very familiar," he adds.

Song titles include "Klingons are Misunderstood,""The Vulcan Way,""Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor," and "Live Long and Prosper."

Since September 2013, when work commenced on the musical, Grant has cowritten all facets while pursuing his doctorate at Caltech under faculty advisors Clifford Cheung, assistant professor of theoretical physics, and Sean Carroll, research professor of physics.

"I'm excited about my work because understanding the high-energy behavior of gravity and the nature of space-time is arguably the ultimate question in physics," he says.

Grant remains "first, foremost, and always a scientist," and spends most of his days doing research exclusively. During the time he spent developing the musical, he allowed himself small breaks to work on the production, writing bits of dialogue and lyrics whenever possible, which he then sent to his brother for suggestions and edits. Cole did the same in return.

Over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in 2013 and 2014, while the brothers stayed at the family home in Minnesota, they spent hours each day alone together in a room, composing melodies like veteran Broadway composers.

The work on Boldly Go! also included what would be a leisure-time activity under different circumstances. To better understand the nuances of the characters, Grant viewed an estimated 500 hours of Star Trek programming, both film and television.

Watching Star Trek has been popular at Caltech since the 1960s. In January 1968, when NBC was threatening to cancel the program, a group of Caltech students protested the planned move. According to a story about the protest that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, "200 chanting, banner-waving Caltech scholars conducted a torchlight procession through the streets of Burbank to carry a protest to the steps of the National Broadcasting Company."

A national campaign succeeded; NBC renewed the series for 1968–69, before canceling it permanently.

In the spring of 2015, Brophy and Grant conducted a five-week rehearsal of Boldly Go!, which culminated in a staged reading at the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Many audience members at the event, which was sold out, wore Star Trek T-shirts. "I was overwhelmed by the reaction," says Kelvin Bates, who is playing the role of Captain Kirk.

"At its core," Grant says, "Boldly Go! is a story about being true to oneself and one's convictions, about friendship and love, about discovery and wonder, about the triumph of the individual over adversity, and about the joy of sharing with each other this vast and mysterious universe."

In the most recent issue of E&S magazine we feature a handful of the more than 1,200 graduate students at Caltech who are creating and discovering new knowledge as they train to become scientific researchers.

Read more on the E&S website about their work building autonomous underwater vehicles and studying supernovae, performing musical spoofs and creating bike-share programs, mentoring women in STEM and playing for Caltech's cricket club.

Today's the day to grab a big piece of π.

In celebration of International Pi Day, March 14, the Caltech community honored the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter with its annual pie-eating event at 1:59 a.m. at the Olive Walk, where 26 each of five different flavors of pie were served (pictured at right). This year, the Caltech bookstore is also in on the action with a Pi Day sale. In previous years, festivities have included building a paper chain with the digits of pi on it and a Pi Day Collage.