Just over 20 years ago, Caltech was a rarity among top research institutions: it had innovative ideas pouring out of its labs, but it lacked a dedicated team to help scientists and engineers transfer their big ideas to the marketplace.

Tech transfer was nothing new at the time—MIT and Stanford had run tech transfer offices for decades. But Caltech's humble culture of hard work that eschewed flashy rewards had a way of stifling the entrepreneurial spirit, says Richmond Wolf, director of what was originally called Caltech's Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) from 2004 to 2006. "We were always the premier science institution. But tech transfer was kind of like an afterthought," he says.

That changed with Larry Gilbert, the founding father of technology transfer at Caltech, who passed away in November of 2016 at the age of 84.

In the 1990s, Gilbert was already a star in the world of tech transfer. He started in the field in the early 70s at MIT, home to one of the first in-house tech transfer offices; created Boston University's office of tech transfer in 1976; and co-founded the Association of University Technology Managers, a national organization now with more than 3,200 members at 300 universities, research institutions, and teaching hospitals.

At the time, patents and licensing at Caltech were handled through the Office of the General Counsel. The need for a dedicated and nuanced approach became apparent to David Goodstein, the Frank J. Gilloon Distinguished Teaching and Service Professor and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Emeritus, and Thomas Everhart, president emeritus and professor of electrical engineering and applied physics, emeritus. They recruited Gilbert from Boston University to build an office of technology transfer from scratch.

Under Gilbert, the office became the campus hub for receiving and evaluating invention disclosures, working with the U.S. Patent Office, negotiating licenses with outside companies, and developing commercialization strategies for faculty and students interested in launching startups.

"Larry Gilbert came and took the campus by storm with tech transfer," Wolf says.

The first thing Gilbert did was to start meeting with as many professors as possible, one by one. Rather than give presentations, he sat down for informal chats with the faculty members to learn more about what they were doing. 

Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering and director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, was among those who sat down with Gilbert and vividly remembers the gruff but knowledgeable man and his ever-present baseball cap.

"He had a deep understanding of technology. I was amazed when he showed up in my office and started talking about my own research and seemed to know even more than I did," Gharib says.

After months of faculty meetings, Gilbert launched a tech transfer office based on four core principles, says current director Fred Farina, chief innovation and corporate partnerships officer: create and maintain trusting relationships with faculty and other researchers; utilize a robust patenting strategy; focus on startups; and always understand that tech transfer gives Caltech two bites at the apple—one through equity from successful companies and the other through supporting tomorrow's philanthropic leaders.

By all measures, the effort was a runaway success. Before OTT was formed in 1995, Caltech annually received an average of 36 invention disclosures—informing the Institute of potentially patent-worthy developments—from Caltech scientists and engineers. Last year, that had jumped to 229, with 196 patents issued, nine start-ups launched, and 1,922 total active patents.

"When I came here in 1995, any entrepreneurial activity that was done at all was done out the back door," Gilbert told a Caltech publication in 2001. With OTT's guidance, Caltech initiated a number of new programs—including the Caltech Innovation Initiative, a fund that helps provide resources to early-stage projects with commercial potential and shepherds new ideas across the "Valley of Death" that separates the lab from the marketplace.

"It's amazing that as a small institute we have such output," Gharib says. "Before Larry, some faculty didn't even know that their ideas could have a use."

Colleagues credit the success of tech transfer at Caltech to Gilbert's policy of developing and maintaining trusting relationships with faculty-inventors and minimizing bureaucratic hurdles to transferring technologies to the marketplace. To secure the future of OTT itself, Gilbert made a point of filling his office's staff with scientists and engineers who have a deep technical knowledge who also have an inclination toward business; he also established a line of succession for the smooth transition of leadership in the office.

Three years ago, Caltech's corporate partnerships office was merged into OTT, creating the Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships (OTTCP) and expanding its mission to include management of Caltech's collaborations with established businesses.

Since its founding, the office has helped launch over 240 startups, 25 percent of which have had successful exits (meaning that they were acquired by a larger company or had an IPO), and 40 percent of which remain active, viable companies. Add those to the more than 1,000 technology licenses that have been granted, and the office has helped generate $395 million in gross revenue for Caltech.

In 2015, Gilbert retired to Florida, but remained in touch with his colleagues in the office that he built from the ground up.

"Larry was a mentor and a friend to many people in OTT, including his successors, Rich Wolf and me," Farina says. "He taught us everything we know about tech transfer."

Anatol Roshko (MS '47, PhD '52), Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on January 23, 2017. He was 93 years old.

Known for his research in several areas of gas dynamics and fluid mechanics, Roshko made contributions to problems of separated flow, bluff-body aerodynamics, shock-wave boundary-layer interactions, shock-tube technology, and the structure of turbulent shear flows. With pioneering aerodynamics researcher Hans Liepmann, he coauthored the widely used textbook Elements of Gasdynamics, published in 1956.

Born on July 15, 1923 in Bellevue, Alberta, Canada, Roshko received a BSc degree in engineering physics from the University of Alberta in 1945, and, after a brief tour in the Royal Canadian Artillery, came to what would later be known as the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), where he earned his MS (1947) and PhD (1952) degrees. He spent the rest of his professional career at the Institute, first as a research fellow (1952–54) and senior research fellow (1954–55), then as an assistant professor (1955–58), associate professor (1958–62), and professor (1962–85). He was named von Kármán Professor in 1985, and retired in 1994. From 1985 to 1987, he served as acting director of GALCIT.

Roshko was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Physical Society (APS), and the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute; and an honorary member of the Indian Academy of Sciences. His many awards include a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta, the Reed Aeronautics Award and the Fluid Dynamics Award from the AIAA, the APS's Fluid Dynamics Prize, and the Timoshenko Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

A full obituary will follow at a later date.

Harold Rosen (MS '48, PhD '51), the father of geostationary satellite communications, passed away on January 30, 2017. He was 90.

Modern communications technology relies on a fleet of hundreds of satellites orbiting in fixed locations above the earth's surface. These geostationary satellites, as they are known, act as communications relays, allowing for near-instantaneous signal transmission across the globe without the need for wired networks. And without Harold Rosen, they would not exist.

Harold Rosen was born on March 20, 1926, in New Orleans and graduated from high school at age 15. He showed an early fascination with science and engineering and, as a teen, was an amateur radio operator. Near the close of World War II, the 18-year-old Rosen—by then a senior at Tulane University studying electrical engineering—joined the Navy as an electronics technician. He completed his undergraduate studies when the war ended and in 1947 began graduate research at Caltech under rocket telemetering pioneer Bill Pickering (BS '32, MS '33, PhD '36).

During his graduate years, Rosen took a part-time job at Raytheon Company, where he was tasked with improving antiaircraft guided missiles and radar; he continued full time at the company after receiving his doctorate in 1951. His Caltech education, he told a Caltech publication in 2012, "gave me such a good grounding in the fundamentals" that he felt capable of attacking any technical problem in almost any field.

"Harold Rosen was an illustrious alumnus who was ahead of his time in promoting interdisciplinary thinking," says Guruswami Ravichandran, the John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. "The impact of the interdisciplinary fundamental education he received at Caltech is illustrated by his transformational thinking in the field of satellite communications."

Spurred on by the launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, Rosen set out to one-up the Soviets. While Sputnik was only capable of transmitting beeps back to the earth, Rosen—who had been hired a year earlier by Hughes Aircraft Company—envisioned placing a full communications relay in space.

At the time, long-distance telephone calls were both expensive and difficult, since any call needed to be routed over the limited number of telephone lines that stretched between various locations.

The idea that geostationary satellites could overcome these limitations dates back to the late 1920s and was popularized by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in a paper written in 1945. But the proposal faced significant challenges. Engineers at the time worried that such a satellite would either be too heavy to launch or would not survive long enough in orbit to be commercially worth the expense.

Collaborating with engineers Thomas Hudspeth and Don Williams, Rosen designed a lightweight cylindrical solar-powered satellite that spun like a gyroscope and used small pulses of thrust to remain stable in orbit.

His design convinced the initially reluctant management at Hughes to greenlight the development of a 55-pound prototype. With that prototype in hand, he was able to enlist the support of Caltech alumnus John Rubel (BS '42), then deputy research director at the U.S. Department of Defense. At the time, Rubel was overseeing an attempt by the Pentagon to build its own communications satellite—but the design had a projected weight of thousands of pounds. Rubel convinced NASA to instead fund Rosen's Syncom ("synchronous communication satellite") program.

The first Syncom satellite was launched in February 1963 but failed because of a problem with one of its motors. A second attempt in July 1963—with a redesigned motor—was successful, and the satellite soon became operational. In August, President John F. Kennedy used Syncom 2 to telephone the Nigerian prime minister in what was the first live two-way call via satellite between heads of governments. In 1964, Syncom 3 was launched, allowing the transmission of live television signals from Tokyo during the Summer Olympics.

"There have been many great engineers but few with Harold's imagination and even fewer who could fulfill their dreams," says his brother, Benjamin (Ben) Rosen (BS '54), chairman emeritus of the Caltech Board of Trustees. 

Rosen eventually directed the development of more than 150 communications satellites—first with Hughes, then with Boeing after it acquired Hughes—before retiring in 1993. Even in retirement, Rosen continued to consult for Boeing and gave periodic lectures to engineering students at Caltech. Along with his venture capitalist brother Ben, whose fund financed Compaq Computer Corp. and who was its first chairman and CEO, Harold started Rosen Motors, which developed a hybrid-electric automotive powertrain with a microturbine engine and a magnetically suspended very-high-speed flywheel. 

Later, Rosen and his wife, Deborah Castleman (MS '86), collaborated with JB Straubel of Rosen Motors in a venture called Volacom that specialized in the design of high-altitude, hybrid-propulsion aircraft with the dream of someday providing wireless Internet access to cities via a fleet of circling drones. Castleman managed the business end of the operation while Rosen and Straubel patented a new long-endurance hybrid-propulsion system that they later licensed to Boeing. 

"It was an innovative and audacious plan," Castleman remembers. "We even invested some of our own funds to work closely with Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites to design this specialized high-altitude aircraft platform that used a novel hydrogen-powered electric power plant." Ultimately, however, Volacom was unable to obtain venture funding and shuttered—after which Straubel became a co-founder and chief technology officer at Tesla Motors.

In recognition of his groundbreaking work, Rosen received the National Medal of Technology in 1985, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, and was the recipient of the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy from The National Space Club in 2015, the Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award from Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine in 2014, the Communications and Computing Prize from NEC in 1985, and the first L. M. Ericsson International Prize in Communications in 1976, among other honors. He was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the recipient of its Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1982; a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and recipient of its Charles Stark Draper Prize in 1995. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Caltech in 1976.

Rosen is survived by his wife Deborah; sons Robert and Rocky Rosen; grandchildren Josh, Hillary, and Stephanie Rosen; and his brother Ben. 

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.

Neil Gehrels, a Caltech Distinguished Alumnus who earned his PhD in physics in 1982, passed away on February 6, 2017, at the age of 64.

Gehrels, a friend and colleague to many scientists at Caltech, was a pioneer in the study of gamma-ray bursts, which are blasts of high-energy radiation that come from deep space. Based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Gehrels was the principal investigator for NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, which has solved many mysteries about gamma-ray bursts. He was also the project scientist for NASA's upcoming Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a large infrared-based space telescope that will search for planets beyond our sun as well as study the mysterious repulsive force in our universe dubbed dark energy. Additionally, Gehrels was a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the group that directly observed, for the first time, ripples in space and time called gravitational waves.

"Neil was a pioneering astronomer, a great instrumentalist, and the leader of astrophysics missions spanning from gamma rays to the infrared," says Fiona Harrison, the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics and the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech. "He was also a mentor and friend to many, including myself. The entire astronomical community is mourning his loss."

In a statement from Goddard, Chris Scolese, the center's director, said, "Our center has lost a dear friend and astronomy pioneer, and his spirit will always live on in our work. Those of us who were fortunate to work with Neil know of his unwavering enthusiasm for science and unselfish generosity in mentoring others."

Gehrels' early passion was music. He played clarinet, guitar, and piano. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, he studied to be a classical-music composer. Later, he decided to add an undergraduate physics degree, and ultimately followed his newfound passion to Caltech. As a graduate student, Gehrels worked under physicists Robbie Vogt, the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of Physics, Emeritus; and Ed Stone, the David Morrisroe Professor of Physics and the project scientist for NASA's Voyager mission. One of Gehrels' first projects was to calibrate a cosmic-ray instrument on Voyager. Much later, in 2012, Voyager 1 entered the uncharted territory of interstellar space, where this instrument detected the full intensity of cosmic rays. In 1979, when the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft flew past Jupiter, Gehrels discovered speeding particles of oxygen and sulfur, the origins of which turned out to be volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io. The discovery remains one of Gehrels most-cited papers and was the topic of his Caltech PhD.

While at Caltech, Gehrels met his wife Ellen Williams (PhD '82), who serves as the director of the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and as a professor of physics at the University of Maryland. Gehrels and Williams—who were both named as Caltech Distinguished Alumni in 2016—were married in Caltech's Dabney Gardens in 1980 and later moved to Maryland, where Gehrels began work at Goddard.

It was at Goddard that Gehrels started studying highly energetic gamma rays that come from space. In the late 1980s, he developed balloon experiments to study gamma rays from the center of our Milky Way galaxy and from supernovas in other galaxies. From 1991 to 2000, he was the project scientist for the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, which began unraveling the mysteries of gamma-ray bursts. He served as the principal investigator for Swift, the successor of Compton, from 1999 until his death. Swift revealed that gamma-ray bursts likely come from tremendous supernova explosions as well as collisions between neutron stars.

"Neil built great missions so that astronomers like us can make discoveries about our universe," says Shrinivas (Shri) Kulkarni, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science and director of Caltech's Optical Observatories. "Neil was an exceptional leader. He led in a harmonious fashion; he was everyone's friend and yet at the same time saw missions go from concept to very productive facilities. Swift is one of most heavily used missions and made fundamental discoveries."Kulkarni and Gehrels recently shared the prestigious Dan David prize along with Andrzej Udalski of Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory.

Gehrels was also the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and Goddard's John C. Lindsay Memorial Award. He and the Swift team received the 2007 Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society and the 2009 Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010.

In his free time, Gehrels liked to climb mountains; in 2006 and 2015, he climbed the Nose route on El Capitan in Yosemite in six-day solo ascents. He and his family were active volunteers in disadvantaged communities around Goddard. In 2005, he helped develop an internship program that allowed local high school students with hardships to work in his labs.

He is survived by his wife Ellen and two children, Thomas and Emily.

Chemical engineer and philanthropist Warren G. Schlinger (BS '44, MS '46, PhD '49), a pioneer in the development of processes to produce clean energy from traditional fossil fuel sources, passed away on February 10, 2017. He was 93 years old.

Schlinger was born on May 29, 1923, in Los Angeles. He earned his BS in applied chemistry from Caltech in 1944, and then MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering in 1946 and 1949, respectively.

He stayed at Caltech for another four years, teaching graduate students, and then, in 1953, took a position at Texaco Inc. Over the next four decades at Texaco, Schlinger developed pioneering technologies for processing oil shales and for oil recovery, coal desulfurization, and coal gasification—the process of converting coal, water, and air or oxygen into syngas, a "clean energy" mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor. He was awarded more than 60 patents over his lifetime.

"Warren Schlinger always talked about how much Caltech and the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering had done for him, but it was really Warren and his wife Katie who did so much for CCE," says Jacqueline Barton, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry and Norman Davidson Leadership Chair in CCE.

While a student at Caltech, Schlinger met his future wife, Katharine (Katie) Stewart, who worked in the chemical engineering department. They married in 1947; she passed away in 2015.

Caltech's Warren and Katharine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, dedicated in 2010, was named in honor of the Schlingers, who were benefactors to the Institute for more than six decades. "Warren and Katie supported Caltech and the Division in many ways," says former CCE division chair David Tirrell, Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. "They were regulars at divisional events and always asking how they could help Caltech."

Among other honors, Schlinger was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and and a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, which gave him the Lawrence B. Evans Award in Chemical Engineering Practice. He was named a Caltech Distinguished Alumnus in 2008.

Schlinger, who was also preceded in death by a son, Michael Schlinger, is survived by his children Sarah (Schlinger) Chrisman and Norman Schlinger, as well as other family members.

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.

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.

Anatol Roshko (MS '47, PhD '52), Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on January 23, 2017. He was 93 years old.

Roshko was known for his research on fluid and gas dynamics, in particular his identification—through high-speed photography—of discrete structures in turbulence.

"His talent was to look at a problem and see what the main fundamental issues were that needed to be addressed," says Roshko's former graduate student Mory Gharib (PhD '83), Caltech's Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering. "It wasn't that suddenly he built a new telescope that no one else had. No, he did things with tools that everyone else had access to—but he would see the whole thing. He could put it all together."

An accomplished theorist, modeler, and experimentalist, Roshko made contributions to problems of separated flow, bluff-body aerodynamics, shock-wave boundary-layer interactions, shock-tube technology, and the structure of turbulent shear flows. With pioneering aerodynamics researcher Hans Liepmann, he coauthored the classic textbook Elements of Gasdynamics, published in 1956.

Born on July 15, 1923 in Bellevue, Alberta, Canada, Roshko received a BSc degree in engineering physics from the University of Alberta in 1945, and, after a brief tour in the Royal Canadian Artillery, came to the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT, what is now known as the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology), where he earned his MS (1947) and PhD (1952) degrees. He spent the rest of his professional career at Caltech, first as a research fellow (1952–54) and senior research fellow (1954–55), then as an assistant professor (1955–58), associate professor (1958–62), and professor (1962–85). He was named von Kármán Professor in 1985 and retired in 1994. From 1985 to 1987, he served as acting director of GALCIT.

At the time of his passing, Roshko had been teaching a course at Caltech with his longtime collaborator and friend, Garry Brown of Princeton University, currently a visiting professor of aeronautics at Caltech. "One of the things that we shared in common was that we had somewhat similar backgrounds," says Brown, a native of Australia. "He had grown up in Canada, and his father had worked in a coal mine. My father trapped rabbits as a boy to earn extra money. So we didn't come from privileged backgrounds, and I think we both felt that we'd been extraordinarily fortunate in life."

Their first paper together, published in 1974 in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, became the most widely cited paper in the history of the journal. The paper, "On density effects and large structure in turbulent mixing layers," announced the finding of large structures in turbulence.

"Before his work with Garry Brown that discovered the large coherent structures, turbulence was a featureless subject," Gharib says. "Everyone thought it was totally random; totally unrecognizable. And they showed that not to be the case." Indeed, through high-speed photography, Roshko and Brown proved that turbulence actually has an internal organization, a discovery that proved crucial to generating a more accurate understanding of aerodynamics.

Roshko's and Brown's class, Technical Fluid Mechanics, offered Caltech students a rare opportunity to be taught by two well-known figures in a field of fluid dynamics. Now taught by Brown alone, the course, while designed for just seven students, typically draws a crowd of more than 20 students, postdoctoral researchers, and interested faculty members. The two decided to teach the course after writing an updated textbook on the subject, which is scheduled to be published later this year. Their hope, Brown says, was to generate feedback from Caltech students that would inform future revisions.

Despite his high-profile success as an engineer, Roshko was always approachable and good-natured, both Gharib and Brown say.

"You could trust him. You could go confide to him. And he would equally trust you, and share with you issues that he had. Professors like to always lecture you, and he wasn't that way," Gharib says. "Your students are your best products, so it is important to pay attention to their education. That was really his academic objective."

Gharib notes that Roshko had a talent for encouraging students gently to solve problems creatively. He remembers an occasion when, as a graduate student, he needed a water tunnel to complete his thesis about flow over cavities, so Roshko challenged him to build one of his own.

"He made it such a challenge for me to prove it to him that a lack of resources was not going to stop me," Gharib says. "We sat down together and he helped with the design. And it turned out so well that we brought it from JPL to the subbasement of Kármán Laboratory, where it has been used for more PhD theses than any other tunnel we have. Just because he challenged me to do something that we don't have a million dollars to do. To just start thinking."

Roshko was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Physical Society (APS), and the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute; and an honorary member of the Indian Academy of Sciences. His many awards include a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Alberta, the Reed Aeronautics Award and the Fluid Dynamics Award from the AIAA, the APS's Fluid Dynamics Prize, and the Timoshenko Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

In response to the international travel restrictions, more than 500 people gathered at Millikan Pond on Wednesday afternoon to express support for the international members of the Caltech community.

Michael Roukes, spokesperson for the concerned faculty who organized the event, kicked off the gathering by noting recent federal policies potentially threaten foreign-born community members' status as legal residents. "Many now feel uncertain, even fearful," he said.

Roukes, the Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering, says the collective sense of unease over the new policies prompted faculty members to organize the gathering, the largest of its kind on campus in more than 40 years.

The event featured comments from 15 additional faculty and students—including two Nobel Laureates—addressing the uncertainty and difficulty that travel restrictions have caused and highlighting the important contributions of scholars from abroad.

In her remarks, Dianne Newman, the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, emphasized to the audience that freedom of travel is crucial both personally and professionally.

"I'm alive today because my grandparents and great grandparents came to America fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century," she said. "My PhD mentor is French and my postdoctoral adviser from Guatemala. Many of my postdoctoral scholars and graduate students are from overseas or are first-generation Americans."

Listing 20 countries from which students and colleagues supporting her work hail, she added, "My research would not have been possible, much less successful without the contributions of these people. In my opinion, any policy that limits the ability of talented individuals to come to the United States to pursue the American Dream is a betrayal of our country's most noble principles."

Throughout the event, members of the audience crowded around a poster-sized scroll to sign their names to a statement of support for "the international members of the Caltech community who have been affected by travel restrictions." Several dozen signatures in various colors had already covered the scroll as the last speakers came to the podium.

In her comments to the crowd, Giuliana Viglione, a geological and planetary sciences graduate student, said that with nearly half of graduate students being international students, the campus is necessarily affected by changes in federal travel policy.

"The bubble that insulates us from the world beyond has burst," she said. "We cannot afford to remain silent as members of our own community are detained without cause. ... We cannot afford to remain silent as the very basis for higher learning is threatened.

"Our diversity should be celebrated, not castigated," she added. "Our international students should be championed, not condemned."

Alumnus and senior trustee Stephen A. Ross (BS '65), whose work shaped the development of the field of financial economics, passed away on March 3, 2017. He was 73 years old.

Ross was perhaps best known for his arbitrage pricing theory and agency theory. The first—considered a cornerstone of modern asset pricing theory—holds that price changes of all assets are driven by a limited number of underlying influences, such as gross domestic product, inflation, and investor confidence.

Agency theory applies to situations that involve a principal—for example, an investor or a stockholder—who has employed an agent to make decisions on their behalf. Since the agent might be motivated to make different decisions than the principal would, the theory involves creating incentives that make it more likely that the agent will make decisions that are desirable from the principal's perspective. This theory is particularly appropriate for large corporations where executives often make decisions on behalf of shareholders.

Ross also helped develop techniques for pricing derivatives that are widely used on Wall Street and other financial centers for determining the value of complex financial instruments.

"Steve Ross unstintingly applied his deep knowledge of financial economics and complex organizations to help guide Caltech," says Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "We will sorely miss his keen insights, his generous spirit, and his infectious sense of humor."

Ross was first appointed to the Caltech Board of Trustees in 1993. At the time of his death, he was a member of the Investment Committee, which he formerly chaired. He also served on the Executive Committee and was on visiting committees for the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

"As Steve was the chair of the Investment Committee when I arrived at Caltech, I had the honor and privilege of working closely with him," says Scott H. Richland, chief investment officer. "Steve had a rare combination of brilliance, kindness, and humor.  His devotion to Caltech and his contributions to guiding the endowment will be greatly missed."

For his contributions to finance and economics, Ross was the recipient of the 2015 Deutsche Bank Prize, given biannually to "internationally renowned economic researchers whose work has a marked influence on research concerning questions of financial economics and macroeconomics, and has led to fundamental advances in economic theory and practice," according to the Center for Financial Studies, which awards the prize in partnership with Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany.

Ross was born on February 3, 1944 in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his BS in physics with honors from Caltech in 1965 and his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1970.

At the time of his passing, he was the Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at MIT and a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He previously held faculty positions at Yale University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition to his academic positions, Ross worked as an adviser to various government departments, including the U.S. Treasury, the Commerce Department, and the Internal Revenue Service, and the EXIM Bank, and as a consultant to a number of investment banks and major corporations. He was a former chairman of the American Express Advisory Panel and served previously as director of Gen Re, Freddie Mac, and CREF.

Ross was a cofounder and principal of Ross, Jeffrey & Antle LLC, an investment advisory firm specializing in using options to enhance the performance of institutional portfolios.

Ross was the president of the American Finance Association in 1988. He was widely published, authoring more than 100 articles and coauthoring an introductory textbook on finance. He was also an associate editor of several of the field's journals.

In addition to the Deutsche Bank Prize, Ross was the recipient of the Morgan Stanley Prize (2014), first prize in the Roger F. Murray Prize Competition (2013), the Onassis Prize for Finance (2012), and the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize (2007), among other honors. He was a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Carol Ross, his children Katherine Ross and Jonathan Ross, and other family members.

Ronald William Prest Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on March 7, 2017, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was 85 years old.

Drever was co-founder of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), along with Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), Caltech's Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, and Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus, at MIT. On September 14, 2015, LIGO made the first-ever observation of ripples in the fabric of space and time called gravitational waves, arriving at Earth from a black hole collision in the distant universe. The detection provided astronomers with an entirely new tool with which to study the universe, ushering in the field of gravitational-wave astronomy.

"Ron was one of the most inventive scientists I've known, and his contributions to LIGO were huge," says Thorne. "His approach to physics was so different from mine: intuitive rather than analytic. He could see things intuitively, quickly, that would take hours for me to understand in my more mundane way with mathematical calculations."

"Ron was enormously curious about everything," recalls Fiona Harrison, the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy and the Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics at Caltech. "When I first came to Caltech, Ron would make the rounds, dropping in on the postdocs to find out what we were up to, always full of questions. Ron had great intuition, and I usually came away with something new to think about."

Drever was born on October 26, 1931, in Bishopton, Scotland. As a school boy, his family recalls, he built "a rudimentary television out of surplus items from the war and pieces of junk he found in the family garage. The Drever family watched Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on his invention in 1953." He received a bachelor's degree in pure science with honors in 1953 and a PhD in natural philosophy in 1958, both from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

He began his career working at the University of Glasgow, where he performed a fundamental experiment with P.W. Dougan that set a limit on the mass of the electron neutrino. In another notable experiment, he used Earth's magnetic field to test whether matter out in our Milky Way galaxy would generate an anisotropy of space on Earth, thereby affecting the inertial masses of atomic nuclei. That experiment—named the Hughes-Drever experiment because another scientist, Vernon Hughes of Yale University, performed a similar experiment independently—found the answer to be no, with a level of precision that was unprecedented. In addition, Drever participated with physicist Robert Pound in measurements of the gravitational redshift of photons while visiting at Harvard University.

In 1970, Drever and a young colleague, James Hough, created a research group at Glasgow University working on gravitational-wave detection. Their group built a clever variant of the bar detectors invented by Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland. Bar detectors were the first experiments to attempt to detect gravitational waves. The idea was that the waves would drive the bars to vibrate as they passed by. The bar experiments proved unsuccessful, and Drever's group, in 1973, began building in Glasgow a prototype gravitational-wave interferometer of the sort first envisioned by LIGO co-founder Weiss but with significant changes devised by Drever.

In 1979, Thorne and colleagues recruited Drever to Caltech as a professor of physics to initiate a Caltech research group in gravitational-wave experiments. In 1984, this group teamed up with Weiss's group at MIT and Thorne's Caltech theory group to create LIGO.

Drever made several major contributions to the design of LIGO. As conceived by Weiss, LIGO consists of two 4-kilometer-long arms shaped like an "L" with mirrors at the corner and at the end of each arm. A gravitational wave stretches and squeezes the space between the mirrors, causing their separation to increase along one arm and decrease along the other, and vice versa, in an oscillating fashion. This mirror motion is measured by a laser beam that is split in two at the L's corner. Each of the two new beams enters an arm, bounces back and forth hundreds of times between the arms' mirrors, then recombines with the other beam, producing an oscillating light with an intensity proportional to the arms' motions.

Drever modified the way the light was trapped between the mirrors of each arm: he trapped it resonantly, so the arm functioned as a so-called Fabry-Pérot cavity, an improvement on Weiss's original way of trapping the light with hundreds of discrete bounces on the mirrors. He invented a way to recycle unused light back into the interferometer and a way to tune the interferometer to detect gravitational waves with different characteristics—those with very constant frequencies or those with rapidly changing frequencies, for example.

Relying on earlier ideas of Robert Pound at Harvard, Drever invented a method to make the laser light highly stable in frequency and perfected it in collaboration with John Hall at the University of Colorado. This method, now called Pound-Drever-Hall laser stabilization, has come to be used widely in other areas of science and technology. These various inventions were tested in prototype interferometers that were built at Caltech and in Glasgow under Drever's leadership, and variants of them are now incorporated into LIGO.

Drever retired from his Caltech professorship in 2002.

He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and also served as vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He held advisory positions to government funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the United Kingdom's Astronomy Policy and Grants committee.

In addition to the 2016 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology, and the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, all earned with Thorne and Weiss, Drever was awarded the American Physical Society's 2007 Einstein Prize with Weiss.

Drever, who was "unique and unconventional but very caring with a strong sense of humour," according to a statement from his family, suffered from dementia and passed away after a rapid deterioration in his health. "Ronald dedicated his lifetime to researching gravitational wave detection through LIGO and despite the fact dementia featured in his latter years, he was still aware of the global recognition that he and his colleagues at Caltech … and also the University of Glasgow had achieved," the family said.

"I spent a wonderful hour talking with Ron last September in Edinburgh after receiving our Kavli Prize," says Thorne. "He was remarkably clear-headed, reminisced with me about our years working together on LIGO, and expressed pleasure in LIGO's success."

He is survived by his brother Ian Drever, niece Anne Walter, nephews John and Douglas, and other family members.  

The Winnett Student Center—home to the Red Door Café, the Caltech Store, the Ticket Office, a recording studio, and a variety of other multiuse meeting and event spaces—has served as a central gathering place for Caltech's community for more than 50 years. Now, the Institute is poised to break ground on the construction of a new campus hub to be called the Hameetman Center.

Named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, who made a $6.2 million lead gift to renovate Winnett in 2012, the Hameetman Center will provide a redesigned flow that will make the building more versatile and functional for today's campus community. A gift from emeritus professor of theoretical physics Steven Frautschi and his wife, Mie will enable the center to also include a rehearsal hall for the music programs.

A committee was established in the fall of 2012 by the then Vice President for Student Affairs Anneila Sargent to solicit input from the center users and campus community. The committee developed a program plan in 2013-14 that would serve the changing needs of the campus, add the music rehearsal hall and provide better use of the interior space as well as bring the building up to date in terms of technology. Following these discussions and extensive consideration of rehabilitating the existing structure by the architects, the decision was made to demolish the above ground portion of the existing building and construct an entirely new structure. "With this new structure, we will be able to remedy the many limitations of Winnett to provide an attractive and inviting community gathering center as well as provide much needed rehearsal space for our very popular music programs," says Vice President for Student Affairs Joe Shepherd.

In preparation for the initial demolition of Winnett, which is currently scheduled to begin in late June, the Institute will soon begin relocating many of the services offered in the current building.

The first scheduled relocations, according to Dimitris Sakellariou, assistant vice president for student affairs operations, are the Red Door Café and the Ticket Office.

• The Red Door will temporarily move, for the duration of the project, to share space with the existing campus convenience store, or C-store. To accommodate this change and upgrade the space to serve these two functions, the C-Store will close for renovations beginning on March 17. The Red Door Café itself will remain open through March 31 and will reopen within the C-Store as soon as the joint renovated space receives city approval. The two facilities will move to a permanent and expanded space within the Hameetman Center when the construction project is finished.
• The Ticket Office will move permanently to the Keith Spalding Building of Business Services, next to the Post Office Center. The Ticket Office will remain open in its current location until the new facility is ready in early April.

Future temporary relocations will include the Caltech Store, which sells Caltech apparel, memorabilia, technology, and supplies, among other items. According to Sakellariou, the Caltech Store will likely move to the first floor of Millikan Library soon after Caltech's Commencement ceremonies in June. Planning continues on the logistics and timing associated with relocating many of the other services currently housed in Winnett.

Student Affairs is working with the current users and members of the community in finalizing some aspects of the design, Sakellariou says. The new center will include as an open, versatile lounge and common area on the first floor; a new music rehearsal room, conference room and multipurpose area on the second floor; a recording study, club rooms and storage for the Caltech store on the basement level. An enlarged outdoor space will be provided adjacent to Red Door, which will be located near its present location on the north side of the building.

According to Greg Norden, the project manager for the Hameetman Center, "the key historical elements, of the current building will also be preserved and repurposed." These include the bricks into which alumni have carved their names and initials and the brass T currently outside the Caltech Store.

The new Hameetman Center is scheduled to open in fall 2018.

For the Cherngs, making a $30 million gift to name and endow the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering at Caltech was a matter of heart and mind. During more than four decades working as business owners and entrepreneurs in Pasadena, they have developed a strong appreciation for the institutions and people who call this city home.

"We always thought of Caltech as a shining star of Pasadena," says trustee Peggy Cherng, cochair and co-CEO of Panda Restaurant Group, Inc.

The Cherngs have a keen interest in the pioneering work of Caltech's scientists and engineers, from planetary explorations conducted in partnership with JPL to climate dynamics research using robotic ocean gliders. But the couple elected to focus their personal philanthropy on medical engineering because, as Peggy Cherng explains, "In between the sky and the sea, Caltech is also uniquely positioned to make a difference for humans on earth."

Caltech's medical engineers apply multidisciplinary engineering principles in the health sphere to design and fabricate devices and systems for translational medicine—including diagnostics, therapeutics, implants, and non-invasive imaging—that will lead to cheaper, more effective, and more accessible health care.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website

The life of long-time Caltech professor John (Jack) D. Roberts was celebrated Friday, March 31, 2017, in a memorial sponsored by the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Roberts, who passed away on October 29, 2016, at the age of 98, became a professor of organic chemistry at Caltech in 1953 and spent the next 60 years actively engaged in chemistry research and teaching students. He was a pioneer in physical organic chemistry and introduced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to the field, which allowed chemists to determine the structures of complex natural molecules and characterize chemical reactions.

"To meet Jack was to be bowled over by his enthusiasm, captivated by his stories, impressed by his openness, and awed by his commitment to science," said Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum, Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "Like the microscopic spins that Jack cajoled to reveal the chemical mysteries, we all responded to his personal magnetism."

In addition to Rosenbaum, other speakers included: Robert's son Allen Roberts and granddaughter Heather Roberts; Caltech faculty members Harry Gray, Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry, and Peter Dervan, Bren Professor of Chemistry; George Whitesides (PhD '64), a former student and now chemistry professor at Harvard; UCLA chair of organic chemistry Ken Houk; and other friends and colleagues.

Gray, who joined Caltech as a professor in 1966, said that Roberts is the reason he ultimately came to Caltech. Roberts had invited him to visit Caltech and give talks beginning in 1964, and they soon became lifelong friends. Gray recalled Roberts' enthusiasm for everything he did from tennis to skiing and playing with all sorts of gadgets. "He cared for everybody. He cared for Caltech and he cared deeply for Caltech chemistry," he said. "He loved young people, young people in the division, young investigators, young faculty members. He supported them with all his heart."

Whitesides recalled Roberts' infamous red marks—editorial comments he would make on draft papers. Roberts taught him to write, Whitesides said, noting that his own students now thank him for doing the same. "This is just the extension of Jack into the modern world."

Heather Roberts remembered being both intimidated and in awe of her grandfather. She worked with him at Caltech as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) student in 2009, and has since gone on to become a physician. She described her grandfather as "part bear and part teddy," and "your biggest critic and your biggest champion."

Both Dervan and Candace Rypisi, director of student-faculty programs, described Roberts' unwavering passion for teaching chemistry to students. Dervan said that Roberts felt strongly about getting students out of the classroom and into the laboratory. Even after he retired in 1988, Roberts continued to teach SURF students in the lab. Dervan also talked about Roberts' support of women scientists—Roberts was the first to bring a female graduate student to Caltech, in 1952.

At the end of his talk, Dervan announced the creation of the new Jack D. and Edith M. Roberts Chemistry Center at Caltech, with support from the Jack D. and Edith M. Roberts Memorial Fund, which will "honor the extraordinary contributions of Jack Roberts to chemistry and their commitment to the education of Caltech undergraduate students."

In between listening to the events' speakers, the audience heard from a string quartet with the Pasadena Symphony. Roberts would have been pleased: He and his wife Edith were passionate about the Pasadena Symphony, making generous donations through the years.

For more information about the memorial, visit: https://www.cce.caltech.edu/content/celebration-life-honor-professor-john-d-roberts.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected Caltech trustee Ron Olson as a fellow, one of 228 new members of the 237th class of fellows to be inducted. Founded in 1780, the academy is among the nation's oldest honorary societies, and includes luminaries in academia, the arts, business, and philanthropy.

Olson is a name partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles. He is both a leading trial lawyer and principal spokesman for alternative dispute resolution. In addition, Olson is a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Graham Holdings Company (formerly the Washington Post Company), and Western Asset Trusts. Previously, he has also served in many governance roles, including as chairman of the board of trustees of Claremont University Center and Graduate School from 1984 to 1994, founding chairman of the board of trustees of Southern California Public Radio from 1999 to 2004, a director of Edison International from 1995 to 2014, and a director of City National Corporation from 2001 to 2014. In 1998, he was elected to the Caltech Board of Trustees.

Olson joins fellow Caltech trustees David Lee (PhD '74) and Ron Linde (MS '62, PhD '64), who were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last year. There are also 82 current Caltech faculty members in the academy.

Founded by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy aims to serve the nation by cultivating "every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members "leading thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Woodrow Wilson in the 20th. This year's class of fellows includes philanthropist and singer-songwriter John Legend, actress Carol Burnett, chairman of the board of Xerox Corporation Ursula Burns, mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, immunologist James P. Allison, and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

A full list of new members is available on the academy website at www.amacad.org/members.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This month, we launch Caltech magazine, a new publication for the community featuring a range of stories about the Institute, its people, and its impact on the world.

Caltech magazine replaces E&S magazine, which shared the Institute's transformative research for eight decades. E&S magazine began life in June 1937 as a means for disseminating news to and about Caltech alumni, then morphed a few years later into Engineering and Science Monthly. By the time the magazine carried the E&S logo for the first time in 1967, its focus had broadened to include both alumni and general Institute research.

Over the years, generations of Caltech graduates came to rely on E&S as one of the primary ways to stay connected with their alma mater. Caltech magazine is the next step in its evolution. After months of audience research, discussions with a broad variety of the magazine's readers, and conceptual design work, we have reimagined our publication to become a truly Caltech magazine, one that both embodies the entire Institute and serves all its stakeholders.

In each issue, readers will find a wide variety of stories, targeted toward the many different audiences such a magazine serves. Complementary material, including videos, will be available throughout the year on the magazine's website, magazine.caltech.edu.

We look forward to your thoughts and comments on how we can make Caltech magazine as useful and compelling as possible for you; you can reach us at magazine@caltech.edu.

Taylor Lawrence (BS '86) has been elected to the Caltech Board of Trustees. He is president of Raytheon Missile Systems, a division of the defense contractor Raytheon Company, and a vice president of Raytheon Company.

Prior to joining Raytheon in 2006, he was with Northrop Grumman—first as divisional vice president for products and technology, then as general manager of C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and space sensors.

Lawrence joined Northrop Grumman in 1999 following a career with the U.S. government. From 1988 to 1994, he held several positions dealing with advanced technology development with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1994, he was named director of advanced technology for the defense airborne reconnaissance office at the Pentagon and, in 1996, he was appointed deputy director of the Information Systems Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He also served as staff director of the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Lawrence serves on the Space Innovation Council and as vice chairman of the Air Force Studies Board of the National Academies. He is a fellow and lifetime member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Lawrence serves on Raytheon's Executive Diversity Leadership Team as well as Raytheon's Hispanic Organization for Leadership Advancement as a senior leader advisor. In 1996, Lawrence was recognized with the Secretary of Defense's Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service.

He holds a BS in physics from Caltech and an MS and PhD in applied physics from Stanford University.

The Board of Trustees is the governing body of Caltech. The Board is led by Chair David L. Lee (PhD '74) and Vice Chair Ronald K. Linde (MS '62, PhD '64). It is currently composed of 40 trustees, 28 senior trustees, 19 life members, and one honorary life member.

David Chavez (BS '96) has been elected to the Caltech Board of Trustees. He is a principal investigator and project leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico.

Growing up in a rural community in Taos, New Mexico, Chavez found few outlets for his interest in mathematics and astronomy. But that changed during high school, when Chavez was chosen to take part in a summer science program at LANL through the American Chemical Society's Project SEED I and II program. It was there that he first heard of Caltech and made up his mind about where he wanted to study. He graduated with honor in 1996.

Chavez received a PhD in chemistry from Harvard in 2003 and returned to LANL for postdoctoral work in 2003 as a Frederick Reines Distinguished Fellow. He became a staff member in 2006.

Mindful of the opportunities offered to him by the SEED program, Chavez is involved in science outreach throughout Taos. He acts as a mentor for students of all ages and serves on the local board of education to set math and science curriculums.

Chavez is now a principal investigator at LANL and a project leader in the Department of Energy (DOE)/Department of Defense Joint Munitions Program. He uses principles of organic chemistry to synthesize new kinds of high-energy molecules—such as fireworks that are brighter and produce less smoke, and compounds that can be created using environmentally friendly methods.

Chavez received Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2014 and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the DOE in 2011. He is an invited professor at the École normale supérieure in France and an adjunct chemistry professor at the University of New Mexico-Taos.

The Board of Trustees is the governing body of Caltech. The Board is led by Chair David L. Lee (PhD '74) and Vice Chair Ronald K. Linde (MS '62, PhD '64). It is currently composed of 40 trustees, 28 senior trustees, 19 life members, and one honorary life member.

Caltech celebrated its 20th annual Take Your Children to Work Day on April 27, giving community members an opportunity to "introduce their children to the exciting things that go on at Caltech and to interest them in science, research, and possibilities for the future."

Pictured is Jason Marshall, a senior postdoctoral scholar in mechanical and civil engineering, showing off an experiment that he took up in a zero-gravity airplane to find out how sand behaves in such conditions.

Marshall and other Caltech students and postdocs volunteer in K–12 outreach programs through Caltech's Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach. Children at today's event also took part in a scavenger hunt around campus and beat the heat with ice cream on the Beckman Institute patio.