Since 1979, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program has allowed undergraduate students to apply the theories they've learned in the classroom to address real-world research problems at Caltech, JPL, and a variety of other institutions. It is, says Candace Rypisi, director of the Student-Faculty Programs Office, a true career-shifting opportunity for students as well as a chance for today's scientists, engineers, and graduate students to pass the proverbial torch to the next generation of researchers.

This past summer, 306 Caltech undergraduates participated in SURF. On October 15, students will present their research at the annual SURF Seminar Day.

For more on the origins and history of Caltech SURF program, including stories from former SURFers, read "Passing the Torch" from the Fall 2016 issue of Caltech's E&S magazine.

Institute arborists recently treated the ancient Engelmann oak tree adjacent to Millikan pond for a fungal infection that has left it struggling to take in water and nutrients. 

The condition of the tree, which is estimated to be more than 400 years old, has been exacerbated by the recent drought; as a result, the oak is now severely weakened, according to Delmy Emerson, director of buildings and grounds. The treatment to save the tree is considered the last resort.

Before Alice Michel began her senior year at Caltech, the Wikipedia page for her major, geobiology, was a short and rudimentary entry—"woefully incomplete," according to Michel's academic advisor, Professor of Geobiology Alex Sessions. "It was a bit of an embarrassment to be part of a scientific field that couldn't even manage to explain itself on Wikipedia," he says.

Michel needed to fulfill Caltech's scientific writing requirement, so she and Sessions decided to expand the Wikipedia entry for geobiology—a relatively new discipline that works at the intersection of life and Earth sciences. The project and article have drawn attention from the Los Angeles Times and the WikiEdu Foundation. We sat down with Michel and Sessions to discuss this unusual project, how it came to be, and its importance for inspiring and educating future geobiologists.

How did you come up with the idea of rewriting the geobiology Wikipedia page?

ALEX SESSIONS: The idea sort of emerged spontaneously one day when we were talking about her courses, and Alice was saying that she was not so excited about taking the required technical writing class because it was focused on engineering. Earlier that week I had noticed that the geobiology Wikipedia page was very brief and focused heavily on just a few idiosyncratic ideas, the kind of thing that makes you think nobody had put much effort into writing. I suggested that Alice could take three units of independent study with me and rewrite the geobiology Wikipedia page to fulfill the technical writing requirement.

ALICE MICHEL: I thought it was a great idea, having seen before that the article was really short and described something a bit different from my impression of geobiology. The article's "major geobiological events" section jumped from bacteria's role in the rise of oxygen to dinosaurs' role in shaping rivers. We felt it needed a bit of filling in with more attention to all of life's inventions throughout Earth's history, such as the role of the vast diversity of microbial metabolisms that alter the geochemical environment and affect elemental cycles. Still, it was nice to have the basic framework, and we kept the major events section. One reason I was drawn to geobiology originally was because it is a field encompassing evolution, the history of the earth, the rise of oxygen, and so many more fascinating topics. I think I kind of lost sight of this big picture as I took more focused classes, so it was really good to use this project to take a step back again.

You both have extensive backgrounds in geobiology. Was it challenging to write for a general audience?

MICHEL: It was fun to try to write for the public. Writing a Wikipedia article requires a different tone than your average term paper, one that I hadn't used probably since high school, so that was simultaneously relaxing and challenging. But at the same time it was intimidating because anyone can read Wikipedia. The hardest part was figuring out what to include and highlight. Hopefully it's a helpful starting place for the general public and for other geobiologists to add to.

SESSIONS: Geobiology is a relatively new field, and to many outside the field it is not entirely clear what it is all about. People intuitively understand geology, or astronomy, but… geobiology? This is exactly what Wikipedia is so useful for, that quick reference to orient and educate yourself about a subject. One of the biggest challenges Alice faced, though, was that not even the experts agree on what exactly geobiology is. For example, paleontology—the study of fossils—is a clearly related but much older and bigger field. Is geobiology a part of paleontology, or vice versa? So in addition to the challenges of translating scientific concepts for the non-expert reader, there was an important element of trying to find some consensus in a lot of diverging viewpoints, as well as being diplomatic. We didn't want to alienate anyone in the field.

What was your process in writing the article?

MICHEL: We had weekly meetings to go over the plan, what I had written, or the figures I was thinking about including. It was a great opportunity to get to talk to Professor Sessions about what geobiology means to us and to try to come to some clear definition that captures what geobiology accomplishes as a whole, even though in practice it is a really varied field.

All the professors in the geobiology department helped. To pick which things to include I went back through my notes from Ge 11b (Intro to Geobiology), taught by Professors Fischer and Kirschvink [Woody Fischer, professor of geobiology, and Joseph Kirschvink, Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen Professor of Geobiology]. Delving deeper into each section, I drew on summaries of classes and conversations with everyone in the department and the books that Professor Sessions lent me. The pictures that I used as figures were provided by Professors Sessions and Grotzinger [John Grotzinger, Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology; Ted and Ginger Jenkins Leadership Chair, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences]. Also, other undergraduates in the division helped me think about parts of geobiology that I wanted to include but didn't know much about, like geochemistry-relevant aspects, and others helped me proofread it. So it really was a group effort!

What did you learn from the experience?

SESSIONS: For me, there were a couple important lessons learned. First is the true importance of motivation. Alice immediately saw and embraced the benefits of writing an article for public consumption, versus a term paper that only her teacher would read. My sense is that she went far above and beyond the bare minimum effort needed for this assignment, precisely because she was so motivated by the value of what she was producing. Second was how difficult it can be writing about a scientifically technical subject for consumption by a general audience. The cliché really is true, that you don't realize how little you know until you have to teach it to someone else.

I think this is a great example of just one of the benefits of having such a low student-to-faculty ratio at Caltech. These kinds of direct and creative learning interactions are much more feasible. The whole exercise worked out so well that word spread, and this term I have another GPS student signed up to write another Wikipedia page.

MICHEL: Writing the article was a really fantastic opportunity to get a broader sense of geobiology. I had the chance to think about parts of it that were new to me and revisit which aspects I like the best. 

It also got me to consider science in general from the perspective of an outside public who is unaware of what goes on in the basements of these universities, and to try to reason why geobiology might matter. This is hard because it's always tricky to think about why theories about ancient history are relevant to the public. But I guess I do think they're relevant. It is important for society to understand a little of what scientists do, and Wikipedia is a nice platform to bridge that gap. It would be really cool if our article helps some high schoolers who are, like I was, confused about but interested in geobiology. I'm really happy and lucky that I got the chance to work on the Wikipedia page, and I hope future students will also get on Wikipedia and make the geobiology article, and others, better! 

Anybody can smash a pumpkin, but students at Caltech do it on a grand scale, dropping liquid-nitrogen-frozen pumpkins from the tallest building on campus—Millikan Library—to shatter on the ground below. Over the decades the ritual—begun by undergraduates from Dabney House in 1972—has become a festive annual event, complete with a cordoned-off safety zone for spectators and even a light show.

On Halloween this year, one Dabney student offered her summation of the event: "We just dropped a bunch of frozen pumpkins nine stories off the top of Millikan and they are frozen so they exploded in a billion pieces—and it's awesome. Pumpkin drop is super fun!"

You can see a video about the event here.

Every year, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program allows undergraduates the opportunity to conduct independent scientific research with a professor. SURF projects cover a broad range of disciplines and fields at Caltech, and this past summer, 321 of Caltech undergraduates SURFed. Two of them sat down with us to discuss their research.

Teaching computers to play games

Jagriti Agrawal, senior in computer science

Yisong Yue, assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences

Jagriti Agrawal's SURF research aimed to discover whether or not a method called imitation learning could be applied to "teach" a computer how to play a 1984 Atari game called Montezuma's Revenge.

"Computers are really good at playing games in which you perform an action and get an immediate reward, such as chess," Agrawal says. "In Montezuma's Revenge, you have to take actions that will reward you in the long run, such as taking detours to pick up a key that you will later use to open a door. Computers that have tried to play this game have used a technique called random exploration, which looks at rewards and takes the best action at each step and is exponential in time. We hope that through imitation learning—learning through human demonstration—the computer can mimic human play and achieve a better play-through more efficiently."

Imitation learning hinges on a person recording their completion of a complicated task, such as playing a game or guiding a robotic arm to move like a real human arm and giving the so-called "training data" to a computer. The computer should then "learn" which actions are optimal in different scenarios.

"Humans learn first by imitation of others and then by self-guided exploration," says Yisong Yue, assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences and Agrawal's SURF mentor. "In artificial intelligence, the latter has been the predominant approach. But our thought is that in the case of more complicated games, the computer can first learn from the experts—us."

During Agrawal's play-through of the game, she created a series of paired images and commands. "Given any image of a point in the game representing the current game state, I recorded the corresponding best action to take—move left, right, up, down, and so on. So if the computer sees an image of a ladder, it will look at what I did when I encountered this ladder, and it will perform the action that I did."

Their findings are still preliminary. "Given the current amount of data collected, we find that our convolutional neural network tends to over-fit and not generalize well to new game scenarios," Agrawal says. "For example, the network tends to output the 'do nothing' action a disproportionate fraction of the time. Further investigation and data processing will need to be done to address this issue."

Agrawal plans to continue to work on the project throughout the school year. "The next step will be to collect a more diverse set of gameplay from a wider range of human demonstrators," Yue says. "Over the summer, Jagriti developed a pipeline to collect and process human demonstration data, and she will be deploying this at scale during the school year—we may even hold a pizza party so Caltech undergrads can play video games for science!"

Agrawal was a 2016 Rose Hills Foundation SURF Fellow. The Rose Hills Foundation SURF supports 15 Southern California students each summer.

Domestic violence in 19th-century English literature

Grace Lee, senior in applied mathematics and English

Kevin Gilmartin, professor of English and dean of undergraduate students

Grace Lee, a senior double majoring in applied mathematics and English, studied the shifting attitudes toward spousal abuse in 19th-century Britain for her SURF project.

The mid-1800s in England, during the Industrial Revolution, was a period of rapid cultural development, particularly in the area of women's rights. "As a modern woman and feminist, I was interested in learning more about women's rights of the period and, to an extent, what kind of legal changes took place to progress toward the rights women enjoy today," Lee says.

During this period, it was taboo to publicly discuss domestic violence, so authors and illustrators had to communicate their views on the topic symbolically through their publications. By studying works of fiction and satirical newspapers from the 19th century, Lee aimed to understand attitudes toward domestic violence in England.

"Fiction couldn't be published if its focus was solely domestic violence, that would be too controversial," she says. "Violence was often portrayed in a foil character to the main character, such as the character of Isabella in Wuthering Heights or Nancy in Oliver Twist. The gender of the authors is interesting to consider as well. While they both portray domestic violence as wrong, Charles Dickens portrays Nancy as a kind of martyr, he glorifies her subservience and sacrifice. Emily Brontë, on the other hand, shows Isabella as having accidentally entered into an oppressive marriage but still finding her own voice and power."

Violent, sardonic comics in satirical magazines played a role in illustrating the problem of domestic violence to the public. The idea evolved that domestic violence was contradictory to the English ideal of a gentlemanly person.

"To understand the feminist movement of the time, I had to understand its counterpart—what Victorian people thought to be masculine," Lee says. "The public's perception of masculinity underwent a change in the mid-1800s. This made it possible for women's rights under the law to change and expand as well."

The experience of doing research into English literature and history was new and challenging to Lee.

"This SURF was a great opportunity and a lot more challenging than doing a paper for a class because I had so much freedom to explore supplementary materials," she says. "I think the background that I gained in doing independent research will really help in writing my senior thesis."

Lee was the 2016 J. Kent Clark SURF Fellow. This particular endowment was established to support research in the humanities and is named after the late J. Kent Clark, Caltech professor of literature.

Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Amgen Scholars Program, the Amgen Foundation has highlighted 10 program alumni—including two with Caltech ties—viewed as "especially poised to impact the future of science and medicine."

From more than 3,000 program alumni who represent 700 colleges and universities across 42 countries, the Amgen Foundation selected Caltech alumnus Todd Gingrich (BS '08) and Michelle Vaisman, who studied at Caltech for three months as part of her Amgen scholarship, as two of its "Ten to Watch."

Gingrich, a Physics of Living Systems Fellow at MIT, conducts research in theoretical chemistry, specifically using mathematical and computational models to understand how molecular motions are affected under dynamic conditions. As an Amgen Scholar in 2007, he worked with Nate Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry, on the screening of metal oxides for the catalysis of water photoelectrolysis.

Vaisman, now a PhD candidate and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow at Yale University, is developing lower-cost, higher-efficiency photovoltaics in an effort to make solar energy competitive with fossil fuels. Vaisman came to Caltech as an Amgen Scholar in 2010 in her junior year at Bryn Mawr College and worked under the mentorship of the late John D. ("Jack") Roberts, Institute Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, analyzing the structure of a biologically important chemical.

The Amgen Scholars Program gives talented undergraduates a chance to participate in cutting-edge research opportunities at world-class institutions across the United States, Europe, and Japan. The program runs for eight to 10 weeks every summer. As part of Caltech's participation in the program, the Institute provides 20 students a year with research opportunities in biology, chemistry, and biotechnology and related fields. 

Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates blogged on November 30 about his recent visit to Caltech and his thoughts on the pioneering research being done here.

Gates visited the campus on October 20 to learn about research being conducted in several labs on campus, to catch up with former Harvard classmate Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum, and to participate in a question-and-answer session with Caltech students moderated by Professor of English and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kevin Gilmartin.

"We all want to be young again, but I've rarely been as envious of young people as I was during my recent visit to Caltech," Gates wrote in his blog, GatesNotes. "Touring the campus, I was struck by what an amazing time it is to be a student at an institution like Caltech. In every field—from engineering and biology to chemistry and computer science—I learned about phenomenal research underway to improve our health, find new energy sources, and make the world a better place." 

Caltech's reputation is built, in part, on 125 years of scientific and engineering breakthroughs in the lab, some of which have led to important products that we use every day. However, helping those discoveries and innovations reach the marketplace in the first place can prove challenging.

To inspire the next generation of Caltech innovators, Caltech held Innovation Week 2016 from November 28 through December 2, inviting a dozen alumni entrepreneurs and investors to share their experiences.

"Caltech has a long history of innovation in science and engineering. However, when it comes to proactively working on taking these ideas to market in the form of new products and services, Caltech got a late start," said Fred Farina (MS '92), Caltech's chief innovation and corporate partnerships officer, on Innovation Week's opening night. "Nonetheless, we caught up very quickly to our peers, and now we have a very dynamic commercialization program here on campus."

Despite its smaller size, Caltech is granted twice as many patents per researcher as MIT, and three times as many as Stanford. Two notable successes include the automated DNA sequencer that enabled the completion of the Human Genome Project, and the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) image sensor—which was the tiny chip that underpins current digital photography—developed at JPL. In the last 22 years, technology created by Caltech researchers has formed the basis of 238 new companies.

"We want to continue to create an environment here on campus that encourages and fosters innovation and the transfer of ideas from labs to the commercial sector, and this Innovation Week is one of the many steps we're taking to foster this environment," Farina said at the event. "My hope is that during this Innovation Week you, the students who are here, will learn about how to take an early stage idea into the commercial sector, but also see the number of paths that a Caltech degree can take you on—and there are many."

Farina introduced former astronaut Garrett Reisman (MS '92, PhD '97), who delivered the keynote address. After graduation, Reisman joined NASA and logged a total of three months in space on two separate mission. He then shifted gears and transferred to the public sector, where he currently serves as SpaceX's director of crew operations.

Reisman described the culture of SpaceX as one unfettered by conventional thinking and bureaucracy, allowing it to be nimble and creative. A key component of that, Reisman said, is that SpaceX hires young engineers—like the ones in the audience at Innovation Week—who are not afraid to try new ways of solving problems.

"The whole lifeblood of the place is innovation and disruption. If you've been doing it one way for a long period of time, there's got to be a way of doing it better—you just haven't thought of it yet," Reisman said. "The status quo has got to be the enemy. If it's not—if the status quo is a nice comfortable friend—then you're not going to have an innovative culture in your organization."

The week's speakers—which included alumni who now work at Genalyte, aeroMana, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google, and others, and also featured Caltech Entrepreneur in Residence Dave Licata—addressed questions about founding startups, commercialization and investment, fundraising, and venture capital.

Innovation Week was sponsored by the Caltech Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships and The Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences.

Thanks to a gift from the class of 2016, there are now charging stations at nine strategic locations on campus where users can plug in their phones and laptops.

Emblazoned with a cartoon beaver offering power-ups "Free of Charge" to all members of the Caltech community and visitors, the stations come as either a stand-up version, which includes charging cables fitting most phones and tablets, or a smaller tabletop version that also offers standard electrical outlets for laptops.

The stations are located inside Chandler Café as well as around other high-traffic areas such as the Red Door Café, Winnett Lounge, and Baxter Auditorium. Additional stations are available at the Millikan Library 9th floor study area, the Caltech Center for Diversity, the Sherman Fairchild Library, and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

The critically acclaimed television series The Mechanical Universe… And Beyond, created at Caltech and broadcast on PBS from 1985-86, is now available in its entirety on YouTube thanks to the efforts of Caltech's Institute's Information Science and Technology initiative.

The series was based on the Physics 1a and 1b courses developed by David Goodstein, the Frank J. Gilloon Distinguished Teaching and Service Professor and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emeritus. It covers topics spanning the scientific revolution begun by Copernicus through quantum theory.

Each episode opens and closes with Goodstein lecturing to his freshman physics class in 201 E. Bridge, providing philosophical, historical, and often humorous insight into the day's topic. The show also contains hundreds of computer animation segments, created by JPL computer graphics engineer James F. Blinn, as the primary tool of instruction. Dynamic location footage and historical re-creations are also used to stress the fact that science is a human endeavor.

Mathieu Desbrun, the John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, says Caltech was eager to feature the course on its YouTube site because it has been used for decades around the world as a teaching aid, underscoring one of the ways the Institute continues to have an impact disproportionate to its size.

Although the series was designed as a college-level course, "thousands of high school teachers across the US came to depend on it for instructional and inspirational use," Goodstein says. "The level of instruction in the US was, and remains, abysmally low, and these 52 programs filled a great void."

The show retains its impact and relevance, partly because "Newton's three laws are still the law of the land," he says—as are other subjects addressed in the series such as relativity, electromagnetic theory, and quantum mechanics.

Blinn says the series was designed to be rigorous and engaging and used computer animation in a groundbreaking way to visualize mathematical manipulations. Creators of the series referred to the animation as "algebraic ballet," with terms and visual metaphors dancing around the screen to show operations like cancellation and differentiation. "The availability of technology made it so that the developers of the series could see their ideas realized," he says.

The use of Blinn's computer animations—a rare and expensive technology at the time—made it "legendary," Desbrun says. "The Mechanical Universe is a piece of Caltech history and a source of pride."

The series can be found online at http://bit.ly/2gvNAA3.

Caltech's Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach (CTLO) will host its second annual TeachWeek program from January 17–23. The event celebrates the impact of teaching, featuring events and discussions with Caltech faculty, alumni, TAs, and staff as well as open classes, workshops, and talks with guest presenters.

TeachWeek, whose theme this year is "Empowering Learning," focuses on Caltech's recent efforts to create an innovative learning environment that changes the world through unique teaching techniques. "Year round, Caltech faculty and teaching assistants are investing time and energy in teaching not for its own sake, but to empower students to learn and do more—to go further with their passion, research, and creativity," says CTLO director Cassandra Horii. "That's where our theme, empowering learning, comes from; during TeachWeek, you get a glimpse of the variety of ways Caltech is empowering learning today, as well as new ways we might do so in the coming years."

Caltech faculty, teaching assistants, and others are featured in the opening panel, titled "Empowering Learning through Teaching at Caltech and Beyond," and the closing event, "Ignite Your Teaching: Ideas and Practices You Can Use," with introductory remarks by Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum.

Guest presenters will include Mary-Ann Winkelmes, a senior fellow of the Association of American Colleges and Universities from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who will give the keynote talk about and lead a workshop in "Teaching with Transparency: Empowering Equitable Learning." In addition, John Pollard, associate professor of practice in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona and co-author of the nationally recognized Chemical Thinking curriculum and book, will present a talk titled "Questioning Why and How We Gather Students Together: Empowering Changes in Curricula and Teaching."

The event is open to the entire Caltech community. Visitor seats in open classes may be limited due to space and activities; you can reserve space online as well as get more information about the week's slate of activities at teachweek.caltech.edu.

Among the classes a Caltech freshman can take, Physics 11 stands out on the list. For one thing, even to gain entrance to the popular seminar, students must jump through a series of intellectual hoops. Those few who make it through then embark on a unique classroom experience with no set curriculum or exams and without strict adherence to any single scientific discipline—despite the course's name. Thinking outside the box is the norm in this class, and thus it may not be surprising that those who have taken it have gone on to garner prestigious fellowships and spots in the most competitive graduate programs.

"I had been hearing about the course and its 'hurdles' ever since my first visit to Caltech as a senior in high school," says Charles Tschirhart (BS '15), now a graduate student in physics at UC Santa Barbara, "and I was excited to try my hand at the hurdles and see if I could make it into the course."

Those "hurdles" are the two open-ended problems freshmen aspiring to take Phys 11 must tackle during the fall quarter. They are given four weeks to complete each. Of the 30 to 50 students who apply annually, around half a dozen "pass" the hurdles and are accepted into the class, which starts in January of freshman year, continues through fall of sophomore year, and includes funded summer research with a professor.

The late Caltech physics professor Thomas Tombrello, who created the class almost 25 years ago, came up with the basic framework for the hurdles, which take the form of questions that have no right answer and often appear to have little to do with physics. A typical hurdle from Tombrello's era:

In the words of a song from my childhood:

"Mares eat oats, and does eat oaks, and little lambs eat ivy."

Considered in an ecological sense, we have three species each of plant and animal life that interact in a finite geographical area. Supposing that we start out this system with roughly equal numbers of the six species, determine the way the system changes with time.

"The hurdles were designed to test your ability to think creatively and work hard in pursuit of your ideas, without devolving into an achievement test in physics," says Tschirhart. "Most students coming into Caltech know how to deal with the clean-cut, precisely outlined problems you might find in a textbook. The fact that the hurdles are so far outside the mainstream idea of a classic physics or math problem made me feel like I would have a chance if I worked hard enough, and that I would get something out of the course if I got in."

Rob Phillips, the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology, and Dave Stevenson, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Planetary Science, have taught the class since Tombrello's death in 2014. They set similarly enigmatic hurdles. Recently Phillips asked students to consider the logistical problems of bike sharing in Paris, as well as to figure out the likelihood of running into someone you know at a restaurant or airport. "What's cool about Physics 11—and why I feel passionate about it—is that we're challenging students by giving them things we don't know the answers to and not being so focused on making them into technicians, but teaching them how to ask questions, how to wonder," Phillips says.

The class gathers once a week for two hours, without a set agenda. Sometimes Phillips or Stevenson will email the entire class an interesting article or a particularly knotty problem. "We might talk about the science of the movie Interstellar," says Phillips, "or the physics of breaking waves. Or I might say, 'Hey, I saw this truck carrying avocados bouncing along the highway. I'm curious, by the time it gets to the store are the ones on the bottom likely to be damaged?'"

Sometimes the ideas come from the students. "We met once a week on the top floor of Sloan Annex, in the evenings," remembers Michael Woods (BS '08), now a Bay Area principal systems architect. "We would all bring our dinners from the Houses and sit on a trio of couches in front of a big whiteboard in the lounge. There was no syllabus, no midterm, and no final exam. Instead, there was only an expectation that we would have something to talk about on the whiteboard every week. It didn't matter exactly what it was, so long as it was interesting."

The push for evidence made an impression on Adam Jermyn (BS '15), currently a Marshall Fellow at the University of Cambridge. "You could argue any point in Physics 11, no matter how crazy, but you had better be ready to back it up," he says. "If there were any doubt at all, you would be sent up to the board to prove it. You had the freedom to be creative but knew that you had to think carefully if you wanted your idea to be taken seriously."

Jermyn also remembers how Tombrello would regale the class with tales of science history more personal than any you could find in a textbook. "Everyone was always referred to in the first person, so Professor Tombrello would talk about 'that time Carl was in town'—meaning Carl Sagan. As a freshman, this version of science was really important to hear, because it made it human, and something that I could see myself contributing to."

For all the sitting on couches and breaking bread together, the class has serious goals. As Tschirhart puts it, Phys 11 is meant to "train young scientists how to attack the kinds of difficult, poorly defined, open-ended problems often encountered in research." The class, he says, taught him how to deal with questions that appear intimidatingly complicated or impossible to solve precisely. "The process of breaking down complicated phenomena into constituent parts that you can understand individually is a skill that most people aren't very good at until they've had a lot of practice, and Phys 11 definitely helped me think this way."

The interdisciplinary nature of the course has an impact, too. "It is not and never was physics," notes Stevenson. Many of the students attracted to the course are interested in physics, he notes, but former students are spread wide, working in biology, biophysics, computer science, and on Wall Street.

"It exposed me to a broad range of ideas not as separate fields, but as just different aspects of the world," says Jermyn. "It really encouraged me to look for connections between fields, and to find places where methods in one could help me understand questions in another."

Phys 11 students, Phillips says, "have this playful and curious attitude that's really the basis of science." It also seems to be a basis for accomplishment: Phys 11 graduates have secured Hertz, National Science Foundation, and Marshall fellowships, as well as Goldwater scholarships and entrance to top graduate schools.

Is it fair to call the course a springboard to success? "I don't know how you would decide that," says Stevenson, "since I think these students are destined to excel anyway. But when you talk to them you see that this was a very significant experience for them, an important part of the Caltech experience. For the small subset of students who take this course, it's something very special."

Stressed by drought, windstorms, and a systemic fungal infection, the 400-year-old Engelmann oak tree treasured by generations of Institute staff, faculty, and students has died.

The oak, located between Dabney Hall and Parsons-Gates Hall of Administration, had been in declining health for more than a decade despite repeated efforts by campus arborists and outside consultants to prolong its life, says Delmy Emerson, director of buildings and grounds.

"People are shocked and sad," she said about the loss of the oak. "People are so attached to that tree. It's seen the growth of this Institute."

The tree had already exceeded the usual lifespan of an Engelmann oak—about 350 years—and had been stressed by a large and growing cavity in its trunk, possibly the result of physical damage it suffered more than 50 years ago. In the 1990s the tree lost several large branches, necessitating the addition of three structural supports; soon after, it began to require regular delivery of fungicides to its roots to stave off an infection by an incurable soil fungus. Emerson says the loss of another major branch in 2006 eliminated much of the tree's canopy, leaving it vulnerable to additional stress from the sun's heat; to help keep it cool, campus workers painted parts of the tree white.

"A lot of arborists would have removed the tree then, but we decided to let it live as long as it could," she says. "We take our trees seriously, and we only remove one when there's nothing left we can do."

The weather in early 2016 brought rainstorms followed by heat—conditions that favored fungal growth. They also triggered a burst of new green-leaf growth, which, paradoxically, indicated that the tree was burning through its nutrient reserves at a time it should have been dormant, Emerson says. Tree samples taken soon after showed widespread necrosis of its bark and roots, and a last-ditch effort to save the tree using 23 injections of fungicide failed.

In the Institute's early years, the oak provided shade to students and spectators at graduation ceremonies in front of Throop Hall. In more recent years, it has served as a backdrop for countless wedding photos and also served as a subject of portraits drawn by students from the ArtCenter College of Design.

The tree, which once stood as high as 80 feet and spread its branches as wide as 75 feet, will need to be removed. The Institute, however, is investigating ways to salvage some of the wood for use in artwork or furniture as a way to commemorate an oak that has always been a key part of the Caltech campus.

A town hall meeting will be held at noon on Wednesday, February 15, at Avery Dining Hall to discuss proposed plans to commemorate the tree and solicit suggestions for the future use of both the tree's remains and its location.

Caltech recently spoke with Jennifer Howes, the campus's director of health and counseling services, to discuss what her office offers students and her goal of addressing students' counseling needs.

What types of services are available at the Caltech Counseling Center, and who can access them?

Our services are free, confidential, and available to all enrolled Caltech students. We offer brief individual psychotherapy, couples counseling, psychiatry, and crisis intervention, as well as outreach and training on a variety of mental health topics, such as suicide prevention. We also have a range of groups and workshops to help build resilience and coping skills as well as our mindfulness-based cognitive therapy class designed to help prevent depression relapse. And if a student needs open-ended therapy or a higher level of care, we can help find a provider in the community who will be a good fit.

There's a new development I'm really excited about. We recently hired a staff clinician who has a specialty in alcohol and other drug treatment and outreach. We are now able to offer individual and group interventions for substance use as well as provide education to students to help reduce high-risk behaviors.

Incidentally, Student Health Services—located at the same site as the counseling center—offers routine and episodic illness care to enrolled Caltech students, regardless of which health insurance plan they carry. Most basic health care needs can be met on campus, but if a student needs a specialist, radiology, or other services not provided on-site, we help students with referrals and follow-up.

Tell us about yourself and how you landed in your current role.

I'm a clinical psychologist, and I grew up here in Pasadena. I did my training in Southern California, and I was a staff psychologist at the Claremont Colleges before coming to Caltech in 2011. When the former director retired last year, I was asked to step in to this role on an interim basis and then given the permanent appointment in August 2016. I've had a lot of support from the vice president for student affairs, Joe Shepherd, and we've been able to develop and launch quite a number of new initiatives.

Why are these services so important at Caltech?

About 75 percent of mental illness presents before age 24, so, in general, the emergence of mental health issues is a concern with this age group. If we can intervene and help students build skills and address any issues they might be having related to their mental health, it can have a significant positive impact on their future success. There's no question that being a Caltech student is an intense experience, so we aim to make help easily accessible and effective.

What advice would you give to people who are wrestling with a personal issue but aren't sure whether or not they would benefit from counseling?

We always emphasize two things—that our services are confidential and that there really isn't an issue that's too big or small to address in counseling. We want all students to feel comfortable walking through our doors. We certainly do work with students who are struggling with serious concerns, but we see many students who just need to talk through a specific issue, learn how to help a friend, need connections to other resources, or want to find better ways to manage stress. We also work hard to meet students where they are and to create individualized ways to approach whatever concern is bringing them in.  

What are some common misconceptions about counseling or the people who seek it out that you'd like to clear up?

I think one of our biggest challenges is the stigma around mental health issues and help seeking. Even though we see about 20 percent of Caltech students each year, there are some folks who are afraid to seek help. This fear can be based in a number of things. Sometimes it is worry about being viewed as weak, family disapproval, or cultural considerations. We want students to view coming to the Counseling Center as a natural step in their process to solve problems and to know that reaching out for help is actually a sign of strength.

What can people expect when they reach out or visit you for the first time?

Students can call, stop by the office, or send us a secure message to make an appointment. Our initial appointments are usually available within one to three days and are focused on identifying what a student needs and connecting them to the right resources. We are committed to seeing a student in crisis on a same-day basis to make sure that we can address whatever immediate needs that person might have.

How can people reach you and when?

We're open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we have extended hours on Monday and Wednesday until 7 p.m. Students can contact us by phone or via secure message through their student health portal. We also have after-hours support available during evenings, weekends, and whenever the office is closed. This is a service staffed by off-site licensed clinicians, and students can call (626) 395-8331 and press "2" to be connected.

For information, visit counseling.caltech.edu. The center is located at 1239 Arden Rd., Pasadena, or by calling (626) 395-8331.

The Staff and Faculty Consultation Center is available for all nonstudent members of the Caltech community. It can be reached at (626) 395-8360 or sfcc.caltech.edu.

Since first light in 1993, the twin Keck Telescopes at Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory have produced images of stars, nebulae, and massive galaxies in unprecedented detail. However, bright objects like these represent only a small fraction of the total mass in the universe. Most regular matter exists in faint, long filaments stretching between galaxies to form the cosmic web—a vast, dim structure.

The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI), designed and built at Caltech, is a highly sensitive instrument capable of imaging the cosmic web with more precision than any other cosmic web imager. It is currently being installed onto the Keck II telescope.

The goal of KCWI is to understand the origin of galaxies, in particular, the physics of how they form within the cosmic web. Two Caltech graduate students, Donal O'Sullivan (MS '15) and Prachi Parihar (MS '16), worked on the instrumentation and observational aspects of KCWI. We sat down with them to discuss what it's like to build a brand-new instrument and what they hope it will discover.

What are your specific roles in the mission?

Donal O'Sullivan: I work on both the instrumentation and observational sides of KCWI. Obviously we haven't observed with KCWI yet, but I've spent a lot of time with its less-sensitive prototype, the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager at Caltech's Palomar Observatory. I built a small but vital component of KCWI—the module that houses the arc lamps used to spectrally calibrate the instrument—and helped the engineering team run data analysis to verify its performance.

Prachi Parihar: I have helped with the instrumentation side of KCWI and have observed with its prototype at Palomar, but my main research work is on the theoretical side. KCWI is a complex instrument and one of the very few of its kind. We are observing parts of the cosmic web that have until now been invisible to astronomers. Given the uniqueness of these observations, it is critical that we understand how to analyze and interpret them. Simulations can be very helpful in this area because we can compare them with observational predictions for the same galaxies, providing both more guidance and confidence in our interpretation of the data.

What kinds of challenges have you faced during this process?

DO: One of the biggest challenges I think I faced was learning that "good enough" is "good enough." I think a lot of scientifically minded people have a natural desire to find the optimal solution to every problem, but there are some tasks where optimizing the solution becomes a big time-sink that costs more than it is worth. Identifying how good you really need a solution to be and taking the most time-effective approach instead is a really valuable skill.

What discoveries are you looking forward to?

DO: I am most excited about the potential to discover more examples of the protogalactic disks my adviser, Chris Martin [professor of physics], discovered with the Palomar Cosmic Web Imager. Currently, we believe that galaxies form when the dark matter in the universe gravitationally collapses to form dense regions that we call dark matter halos. These halos gravitationally pull "normal"—not dark—matter like hydrogen toward their centers. This gas spirals inward and forms a disk at the center due to the conservation of angular momentum, which eventually leads to disk galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda. Among other things, we are trying to image this happening in the early universe.

PP: KCWI will go deeper and collect higher-quality data for more galaxies. So far, we have detected interesting structures ranging from large gaseous disks to clumps of gas. Each observation is unique, and each galaxy environment is different. I am looking forward to getting a larger statistical sample so we can determine the prevalence of different kinds of objects and piece together a more complete picture of galaxy environments during early galaxy formation. 

How did you become interested in astronomy?

DO: I've always been very widely interested in science—every field has such fascinating stories and discoveries. It was genuinely hard to decide in which direction to go when I was in school. I took every subject I could and eventually became fascinated with two main areas—astronomy and neuroscience, because I thought they were the fields that contained some of the most profound questions about the universe we observe. Astronomy looks at everything we observe in the cosmos and tries to understand it. Neuroscience looks inward at how we perceive the world and breaks that down.

I get the best of both worlds with astronomical instrumentation. We are in the most exciting time ever for opening up new windows on the universe. We have ultraviolet telescopes, X-ray telescopes, global-scale radio interferometry, and now even gravitational-wave observatories! I feel insanely lucky to be right in the middle of it all at Caltech.

PP: There is something really compelling about using the modern telescopes and instruments of today to study the same skies that have fascinated both laypeople and scientists for thousands of years. As an undergraduate physics major, I realized that my physics electives happened to all be astrophysics classes. Since that time, I have had a special fondness for galaxies because I have been amazed by the way these objects seemingly self-assemble into organized structures. KCWI is particularly exciting for me because it allows us to look at how galaxies are born.

On a sunny Tuesday outside of Caltech's Red Door Café, two women with brightly dyed hair are deep in conversation. The two—Giuliana Viglione, a fourth-year graduate student in environmental science, and Alicia Lanz, a sixth-year graduate student in physics—are part of Caltech's Women Mentoring Women (WMW) program. They are discussing a topic both are passionate about—the representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

"There's definitely a numbers problem," says Viglione. "In a field where labs might only have three students and a postdoc, it's common for you to be the only woman. WMW has really helped me connect with others in my field and given me an avenue to talk about issues I can't necessarily bring up with my male colleagues."

The WMW program began in 2002 as a way to connect female postdoctoral scholars and graduate students looking for career advice. It has since grown to include staff members and undergraduates. To become a mentor or mentee, women fill out an application that includes a short biographical section and questions about priorities—such as wanting to be matched with someone in the same field or with common outside interests. The applications are reviewed by an advisory board made up of staff, faculty, and graduate and undergraduate students. In its first year, the program matched 11 graduate students with postdoc mentors. Today, the program has grown to 89 mentor-mentee pairs.

"The foundation of WMW is the individual, one-to-one connection that is fostered between mentor and mentee," says Erin-Kate Escobar, assistant director of Women's Services and Programs for the Caltech Center for Diversity and director of the Women Mentoring Women program. "These individual mentoring meetings are where the matches discuss academic, professional, and personal issues; set and work toward goals; problem solve; and celebrate successes."

Additionally, the program hosts a monthly faculty lunchtime series as well as workshops on topics such as body language and confidence, which are open to the campus community. WMW participants are also invited to participate in work-life balance activities such as hikes and a book club.

"For me, having a mentor is about representation—seeing people who I could imagine being, doing things that I might imagine myself doing," says Lanz. "Seeing people who are similar in age to me was really helpful and gave me the sense that I, too, can do this. There's also an unexpected benefit of being part of the program—you get really good friends out of it."

Women Mentoring Women accepts applications year-round and uses an inclusive definition of "woman," welcoming transwomen, genderqueer women, and nonbinary people.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet and the former CEO of Google, foresees a time very soon when artificial intelligence will become dramatically more capable and useful, impacting how we live our lives and how we understand the world around us.

"The biggest shift of all will be moving up the scale of information understanding," he said, noting that such a shift will provide the ability not just to deliver search results, but useful personalized suggestions. For example, a speaker coming to campus might receive suggestions about what to say, or what topics to avoid—"the kind of things that a good adviser would give. And we're on the cusp of being able to do that."

Schmidt provided this glimpse into the future during a Q&A with Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum on February 17 at Ramo Auditorium. About 150 students, faculty, and staff members attended the event to hear Schmidt field questions from Rosenbaum and members of the audience about the future of technology, the value and importance of the internet as a forum for a free exchange of ideas—and how to get hired by Google. Their session was the capstone of a visit to campus in which Schmidt learned firsthand about some of the research conducted at the Institute.

During the public event, Schmidt said the areas where he sees advances happening most quickly are biology—specifically personalized medicine, treatments for cancer, and our ability to understand the brain—information science, and, of course, artificial intelligence. 

Of particular note to the Caltech community, though, was Schmidt's suggestion that artificial intelligence could transform the way science is done by allowing researchers to conduct "hypothesis-free" investigations of massive amounts of data.

Traditionally, he said, scientists "have a hypothesis, and they build algorithms and test it and so forth and they eventually get the Nobel Prize. So, good job. [But] there's a new model for how to do science that we are trying to propose . . . which has a different starting point. It's get as much data as possible, and then without too much of a theory, begin to analyze the data."

Schmidt then added: "There are many very difficult problems in science that might be solvable through our kind of machine learning approach that have not been solvable in a hundred years by your traditional approach."

He said he envisioned a scenario in which a chemist or physicist with a hunch submits his idea to an artificial intelligence system with a deep understanding of the related field: "He types, 'My hunch is A-B-C-D' and then the computer, with its vast knowledge of physics, can begin to do reinforcement learning and other approaches, [and respond], 'Your hunch is probably not true,'" while suggesting a related alternative to investigate.

"This symbiosis between this incredibly disciplined thinker and the ability to look through vast amounts of knowledge and data is the future," he said.

Schmidt speculated that artificial intelligence is likely to be socially and economically disruptive, replacing repetitive, low-value-added jobs now performed by people in the same way that robotics displaced manufacturing jobs in the last few decades. But, he posited, as a result, "people will spend more time doing things that are uniquely human."

He added that technological change would elevate the importance of education and globalization and increase job growth and global income, but acknowledged that the question of who benefits from the increase in wealth remains a thorny issue.

In discussing the future of artificial intelligence, Schmidt did take a moment to address concerns that machines might become super intelligent and subsequently "self-modify to become evil."

"That's not real, okay?" he said. "That's just a movie script."

Watch the full Caltech event here.

Freshman Thomas Gallup will be Caltech's first representative at the NCAA National Swimming & Diving Championships in more than three decades after claiming two individual titles in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) February 17 and 18.

Gallup, a member of Caltech's men's swim and dive team, won individual conference titles in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke. His times earned him invitations to compete in the NCAA National Championships, which runs from Mar. 15–18, in Shenandoah, Texas, just outside his hometown of Houston. The last time the Beavers sent a representative to the championships was in 1983, when 2016 Hall of Honor inductee Chris McKinnon competed in his third straight meet. Caltech's best finish as a team at the championships was in 1981, when the Beavers placed 26th in the nation.

In addition to the sense of achievement he receives from achieving personal athletic goals and overcoming strong competition, Gallup says that swimming for Caltech has been especially rewarding. "When I committed to swim at Caltech, some people questioned my decision, saying that it was a 'shame' that I had chosen a school that wasn't known for its swimming program. To show that we can balance both our academics and achieve at the highest level athletically makes me really proud to be a Techer!"

He adds, "All members of the swim team have a vision of turning our program into one of the best in SCIAC, and I'm proud to do my part in getting us there."

Read more about Gallup's achievement here.

If you can dream it up, you can probably print it out.

Since 2015, the TechLab at Sherman Fairchild Library has been offering the tools, training, and materials to allow members of the Caltech community to get started in 3D printing. Aucoeur Christine Ngo, TechLab manager, says more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff members have registered to use the 3D printers, producing items including models of chemical compounds, human brains, and robotics hands, as well as crucial spare parts for out-of-production lab equipment.

"The response has been really enthusiastic," Ngo says. "We have our TechLab power users, but others initially come in with little more than a rough sketch idea.  It's a pretty versatile technology: users from any discipline can find something to print that will be useful for their labs or relevant to their research."

The lab, located in Room 131 of the Sherman Fairchild Library, is free to use and provides desktop equipment related to prototyping and modeling, including a variety of 3D printers, scanners, and microcontroller and mini-computer circuit boards that enable electronics prototyping. Library staff members provide training classes and on-site orientation and guidance in the use of the equipment. Workstations throughout the library provide access to SolidWorks, the main campus software used to create and manipulate 3D images for printing. Anyone with a Caltech ID can register to use the lab, which was established with support from the Moore-Hufstedler Fund.

Several undergraduates in the ME 14 class "Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design" recently used the lab to create flexible tentacles for a prototype of an artificial autonomous jellyfish. The finished product is on display on the second floor of Parsons-Gates, Ngo says.

During a presentation held in Millikan Library's 9th floor Lookout, Russell Singer from Makeit, Inc.—an Alhambra-based 3D printing company—described advanced methods for 3D printing and featured 3D printed items such as flyable drones, furniture components, and handmade stereo speakers. Afterward, as the Caltech community members in attendance examined the finished products, Ngo noted the lab is designed "to provide users the freedom to experiment and tinker around."

More often than not, the "tinkering" is directed to educational ends. For example, TAs have used the equipment to create molecular orbital models for chemistry class demonstrations. But lab staffers have also seen their share of whimsical tchotchkes—plastic pangolins are in vogue at the moment.

"While the priority is on projects related to their research, we recognize learning sometimes happens peripherally, so users have the flexibility to print almost anything," she says. "Our role is making sure they are comfortable operating the machines, then off they go."

The TechLab is available for use by anyone with a Caltech ID. The Lab is open to registered users 8 a.m.– 10 p.m., Mondays–Thursdays, and 8 a.m.–5 p.m. on Fridays, and by key checkout all other hours SFL is open. TechLab staff are available for assistance, training, and registration Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 3–5 p.m., and Tuesdays and Thursdays 1–5 p.m and other times by appointment.

The Caltech Pipettes—the Institute's 14-member, all-female, all-student a cappella group—performed to their biggest audience yet during a show at the Disneyland resort February 18. After submitting audition videos from their YouTube channel, the Pipettes were competitively chosen to perform at Disney's California Adventure (DCA).

"I figured it was worth a try," says Preethi Periyakoil, a Caltech junior and president of the Pipettes, who says she thought performing at Disneyland would be "a wonderful experience" for the group. After doing some research online, Periyakoil had discovered there was a way for the group to both perform and visit the park—through the Disney Performing Arts Onstage program, which puts student performers "in front of an international audience," according to the program's website. She submitted three songs from a performance the Pipettes had done during Caltech's "Love Sucks" 2016 winter concert; the next thing she knew, she and the Pipettes were on their way to Anaheim.

The group performed a 30-minute set of six songs on DCA's Hollywood Backlot Stage to a dozen faculty members, their families, and about 50 of their own friends, as well as a nearly full house of park-goers. The performance included the songs "Mercy," by Duffy and "Send My Love," by Adele, among others. And because the group was in tune with its audience, they also performed "I Won't Say I'm in Love," from Disney's 1997 movie Hercules and "Le Festin," from 2007's Ratatouille. (You can see the entire performance on the group's Facebook page.)

"Performing at DCA was so cool. We were all pretty nervous at first, but once we started singing all that fear just sort of melted away," says Periyakoil of the day's performance. "And it helped a lot to see our friends and faculty there to watch and support us."

The group normally performs one concert per term that includes these same songs, Periyakoil says; nevertheless, the time commitment to prepare for the show was great, as they suddenly had to perfect six songs in six weeks. The advantages, though, were significant, she adds. As the Performing Onstage program website notes, singing at DCA exposes artists to "the highest level of performance" at a "high-profile venue." Periyakoil says, "I am truly amazed by how our team came together—their tireless enthusiasm and hard work was very humbling and inspiring. It hasn't been the easiest few weeks, and we couldn't have done this without the help and support from each and every Pipette."

The Pipettes formed in 2014 and is Caltech's fourth—and newest—a cappella group: there are also two co-ed groups and one all-male group at the Institute. The Pipettes' 14 student members study everything from computer science, bioengineering, and applied and computational math to chemistry, mechanical engineering, and biology. Still, each week, they come together from houses all over campus to indulge in their shared passion for music. "It also helped me understand the value of teamwork, as each of us have different strengths and riff off each other. Being in the Pipettes helps us all relax because we're doing something that we care about deeply," Periyakoil says. "It keeps you from getting bored, it diversifies your portfolio, and helps you find your niche in a high-stress environment like Caltech. "