News & Events

10-22-12

Caltech clean-energy research is accelerating thanks to the renovation of the Earle M. Jorgensen Laboratory. Transformed into a cutting-edge facility for energy science, the lab unites two powerhouse programs: the Resnick Sustainability Institute and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). "Our researchers are working with Caltech's chemists and chemical engineers to challenge the status quo and translate scientific discovery into clean-energy innovations that will directly benefit society for generations to come," says Chair Ares Rosakis. [Caltech Release]

Tags: energy research highlights Caltech infrastructure Jorgensen Renovation

10-04-12

For the third year the Times Higher Education world university rankings has ranked Caltech as number one in engineering and technology. [View Rankings] [Caltech Feature]

Tags: APhMS EE GALCIT MCE CMS ESE Graduate school rankings

09-27-12

Pietro Perona, Allen E. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering, and colleagues have shown that the distance at which facial photos are taken influences perception. Their study found that close-up photo subjects are judged to look less trustworthy, less competent, and less attractive. [Caltech Release]

Tags: EE research highlights Pietro Perona

06-26-12

Changhuei Yang, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering, and colleagues Ying Min Wang and Benjamin Judkewitz have developed a new method to focus light inside biological tissue. "It enables the possibilities of doing incision-less surgery," says Professor Yang. "By generating a tight laser-focus spot deep in tissue, we can potentially use that as a laser scalpel that leaves the skin unharmed." [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: EE energy research highlights Changhuei Yang MedE health Ying Min Wang Benjamin Judkewitz

06-18-12

Mohammad Amin Khajehnejad and Ching-Chih Weng are the winners of this year's Charles Wilts Prize. The Charles Wilts Prize is awarded every year to one EE graduate student for outstanding independent research in electrical engineering leading to a PhD.

Tags: EE honors Wilts Prize Mohammad Amin Khajehnejad Ching-Chih Weng

06-13-12

Applied Physics graduate student, Peter Hung, along with Electrical Engineering undergraduate students Julie Jester, Jeff Sherman, and Sean Keenan, worked with a team of engineering students from across the country to create a one-of-a-kind machine for sharing a Coke.

Tags: APhMS EE Peter Hung Julie Jester Jeff Sherman Sean Keenan

06-04-12

Michelle Effros, Professor of Electrical Engineering, and information theorist colleagues have begun to tackle the difficult problem of calculating capacities for large communication networks such as the internet and mobile phone networks. In two recent publications, they introduce techniques useful for improving the performance of current communication networks and for designing the networks of the future. By demonstrating where current technology falls short of what's possible, these techniques provide a new tool for strategically guiding research and development. [Read the Publications]

Tags: EE energy research highlights Michelle Effros

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

04-13-12

Pietro Perona, Allen E. Puckett Professor of Electrical Engineering, and colleagues including graduate student, Peter Welinder, have been selected for the Innovation Corps (i-Corps) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The aim of the i-Corps program, which was highlighted by the NSF Director at a recent Wouk Lecture, is to guide promising research with commercial potential out of university laboratories. The winning Caltech proposal is entitled "Combining Machine Vision and Crowdsourcing for Convenient and Accurate Image Annotation." The team has proposed to combine the complementary strengths of human annotators and machines into a hybrid system that would annotate a large body of images which would be a valuable in scientific, medical, as well as many commercial applications. [Video of Wouk Lecture]

Tags: EE research highlights health Pietro Perona NSF Peter Welinder

04-13-12

Telle E. Whitney, Computer Science alumna (MS '81, PhD '85) and member of the IST Advisory Council, will be the featured speaker at Claremont Graduate University's 85th commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 12, 2012. Dr. Whitney is currently the president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology which seeks to increase the impact of women on all aspects of technology, and increase the positive impact of technology on the world’s women. [Learn More]

Tags: EE CMS Telle E. Whitney