News & Events

04-19-19

Undergraduate students Hongsen Qin, Emma Qian, Thomas Hoffmann, and Alexander Zlokapa (advised by Professors Aaron Ames, Erik Winfree, Jonathan Katz, Maria Spiropulu, and Yaser Abu-Mostafa) have won the Citadel Data Open International Data Science Competition. This winning team chose to investigate the optimal way to spend $1 billion to save lives from malaria and sanitation-related diseases, allocating funds for different prevention methods and optimizing budget breakdowns country by country. To quantify the socioeconomic impacts of their policy proposal, they modeled a variety of aspects from mosquito feeding cycles to climate change using techniques ranging from causal discovery methods to interpretable machine learning. The Caltech team was among 24 teams that were evaluated and questioned by a panel of experts including the former Chief Scientist of AI at Microsoft, a Princeton professor, and the chief of equities at Citadel. The Caltech team was chosen as the first place winner based on the depth, rigor, and comprehensiveness of their analysis.

Tags: EE honors CMS Erik Winfree Yaser Abu-Mostafa Aaron Ames Hongsen Qin Emma Qian Thomas Hoffmann Alexander Zlokapa

12-02-15

Erik Winfree, Professor of Computer Science, Computation and Neural Systems, and Bioengineering, has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) which is the world's largest general scientific society. Professor Winfree was recognized for his "foundational contributions to biomolecular computing and molecular programming." [Caltech story] [ENGenious feature]

Tags: EE honors CMS Erik Winfree

06-09-15

The student winners of the 2015 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at a special luncheon with the Demetriades - Tsafka – Kokkalis family. Alborz Mahdavi received the prize in Biotechnology for his work with David Tirrell developed a set of important new tools for analyzing protein synthesis in complex biological systems. Srivatsan Hulikal was the recipient of the prize in Seismo-Engineering, Prediction, and Protection for his work with Nadia Lapusta on linking macroscopic frictional properties of interfaces to their micromechanics. Lingwen Gan working with Steven Low received the prize in Environmentally Benign Renewable Energy Sources for his work on sustainable power systems and specifically the control and optimization of distributed energy resources in future smart grids. The winner of the prize in Nanotechnology was Niranjan Srinivas  for designing and building a system of DNA machines that, in bulk, implement an oscillator. Niranjan's advisor was Erik Winfree.

Tags: EE honors MCE CMS Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes Erik Winfree Nadia Lapusta Steven Low Alborz Mahdavi David Tirrell Srivatsan Hulikal Lingwen Gan Niranjan Srinivas

05-25-12

Erik Winfree, Professor of Computer Science, Computation and Neural Systems, and Bioengineering, and colleagues including Caltech alumnae Rebecca Schulman, have created a new system to copy sequence information. In their approach, tiny DNA tile crystals consisting of many copies of a piece of information are first grown, then broken into a few pieces by mechanically-induced scission, or force. The new crystal bits contain all the information needed to keep copying the sequence. Each piece then begins to replicate its information and grow until broken apart again—without the help of enzymes, an essential ingredient in biological sequence replication. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: EE research highlights health CMS Erik Winfree Rebecca Schulman

11-21-11

Undergraduate students Zibo Chen, Shayan Doroudi, Yae Lim Lee, Gregory Izatt, and Sarah Wittman have won a gold award at the 2011 International Bio-Molecular Design Competition (BIOMOD). BIOMOD is a competition for undergraduate teams who design research to address the control of biomolecules on the nanometer scale. The Caltech team's challenge was to make a synthetic DNA robot that has the ability to take a random walk —instead of walking on set path or track—on a two-dimensional origami surface that was also made out of DNA. The team is mentored by Professor Erik Winfree and sponsored by the Molecular Programming Project. [Caltech Feature] [Video of Project]

Tags: EE research highlights health CMS Erik Winfree Zibo Chen Shayan Doroudi Yae Lim Lee Gregory Izatt Sarah Wittman

07-21-11

Lulu Qian, Senior Postdoctoral Scholar in Bioengineering; Erik Winfree, Professor of Computer Science, Computation and Neural Systems, and Bioengineering; and Jehoshua (Shuki) Bruck, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Computation and Neural Systems and Electrical Engineering, are the first to have made an artificial neural network out of DNA, creating a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete patterns, just as a brain can. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: EE research highlights Jehoshua Bruck health CMS Erik Winfree Lulu Qian postdocs

06-02-11

Lulu Qian, Senior Postdoctoral Scholar in Bioengineering, and colleagues including Erik Winfree, Professor of Computer Science, Computation and Neural Systems, and Bioengineering, have built the most complex biochemical circuit ever created from scratch made with DNA-based devices in a test tube that are analogous to the electronic transistors on a computer chip."We're trying to borrow the ideas that have had huge success in the electronic world, such as abstract representations of computing operations, programming languages, and compilers, and apply them to the biomolecular world," says Dr. Qian. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: EE research highlights health CMS Erik Winfree Lulu Qian postdocs

08-18-09

The molecular computational research of Erik Winfree, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Computation and Neural Systems, and Bioengineering, focuses on understanding how chemical systems can perform information processing and how to program a set of molecules to carry out instructions. This exciting research was recently featured in Discover. [Discover Interview]

Tags: EE research highlights CMS Erik Winfree