News Archive

2008

Alexei Kitaev, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Computer Science, has been named a MacArthur Fellow, winning one of the five-year, $500,000 grants that are awarded annually to creative, original individuals and that are often referred to as the "genius" awards. Kitaev explores the mysterious behavior of quantum systems and their implications for developing practical applications, such as quantum computers. He has made important theoretical contributions to a wide array of topics within condensed-matter physics, including quasicrystals and quantum chaos. Read more...

Professor Adam Wierman has been named a recipient of the 2008 Okawa Foundation Research Grant. This prize honors top young researchers working in the fields of information and telecommunications. The grant awardees will be honored by the Okawa Foundation on October 8 in San Francisco.

The National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing program has awarded $10 million to the Molecular Programming Project, a collaborative effort by researchers at Caltech and the University of Washington, led by Professor Erik Winfree, to establish a fundamental approach to the design of complex molecular and chemical systems based on the principles of computer science. Read more...

CS grad student Dave Buchfuhrerand his advisor Chris Umans were awarded the Track A Best Paper Award at the 35th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2008), for their paper "The complexity of Boolean formula minimization." Also at ICALP, Caltech postdoc Shengyu Zhang and coauthors Sean Hallgren, Alexandra Kolla, Pranab Sen won the Track C Best Paper Award for their paper "Making classical honest verifier zero knowledge protocols secure against quantum attacks."

Fedor Manin won this year's Bhansali Prize. The prize is awarded to an undergraduate student for outstanding research in Computer Science. Fedor settled the computational complexity of the problem of "nonrepetitive graph edge coloring," in work that that began as a SURF project two summers ago.

Two of our faculty members, Professor Mani Chandy and Professor Mathieu Desbrun, were recognized as exceptional instructors for the 2007-2008 ASCIT Teaching and Staff Awards, after a selection made by the undergraduate Academics and Research Committee (ARC) and the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology (ASCIT). Given that this award is bestowed upon only 5 faculty members each year, having two in CS is cause for celebration.

CS undergraduate Kevin Dick has been selected as a winner of the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2008. This award recognizes the top undergraduate students in North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Kevin was recognized for his achievements on several summer research projects (algorithms that take advantage of hardware prefetching; approximation factors for problems related to DNF minimization), coauthoring a conference publication, and maintaining an outstanding academic record.

2007

Building on six years of record-breaking developments, an international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by Caltech joined forces to set new records for sustained data transfer among storage systems during the SuperComputing 2007 (SC07) conference. By combining FDT with FAST TCP, developed by Professor Steven Low, together with an optimized Linux kernel known as the "UltraLight kernel," the team reached an unprecedented throughput level of 10 gigabytes/sec with a single rack of servers, limited only by the speed of the disk systems. Read more...

A ground-breaking ceremony for the new Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology will be held on Friday, December 7, 2007 at 11:00 am (site is just east of the Moore Laboratory). The Caltech community is invited.

Caltech undergraduates Euiwoong Lee (class of '09), Seungwoo Shin (class of '10), and Ben Zax (class of '10) have won the ACM Southern California Regional Programming Contest. Coached by Donnie Pinkston, the team was the only team to solve all six problems of the challenge. Caltech has won the regionals for the last 6 years straight - and eight years out of the last nine. Kudos programmers!

Congratulations to two new Caltech MacArthur Fellows: Michael Elowitz, Assistant Professor of Biology and Applied Physics, and Paul Rothemond, Senior Research Fellow in Computation and Neural Systems and Computer Science. The MacArthur Foundation supports highly creative individuals and institutions with the ability and the promise to make a difference in shaping and improving our future. Read more...

Adam Wierman has joined EAS as Assistant Professor of Computer Science.

Congratulations are due to Caltech's Programming Team - the team placed 12th in the 31st Annual World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), winning a Bronze medal. Caltech's team consisted of Hwan-seung Yeo, Paul Nelson, and Po-Ru Loh, along with coach Eric Stansifer. The teams were faced with solving eight highly complex computer programming problems, modeled on real-world business challenges, in only five hours. This is equal to a semester's worth of curriculum. Only one other U.S. team made it into the top 12; and only one team actually solved all eight problems - Warsaw University, the winner. More details...

Dr. Ron Ayres (1953-2007), former Lecturer in Computer Science at Caltech, and Computer Scientist at the University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute, passed away in his home on January 9, 2007. A Memorial to celebrate his life will be held at 2:00 p.m. on February 18, 2007 in Santa Monica, California. Please click here for Dr. Ayres obituary and details on joining the Memorial.

Professor Mathieu Desbrun is featured in Technology Review for his unique approach to modeling fluid flow for animation applications. Read more...

2006

Professor Erik Winfree and his group have created DNA logic circuits that work in salt water, similar to an intracellular environment. Such circuits could lead to a biochemical microcontroller, of sorts, for biological cells and other complex chemical systems. The lead author of the paper is Georg Seelig, a postdoctoral scholar in Winfree's lab. Read more...

SISL Fellow A. Kevin Tang (PhD '06) has won the the first prize of the George Dantzig Dissertation Award given by INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). The award is given for the best dissertation in any area of operations research and the management sciences that is innovative and relevant to practice. He finished his dissertation, "Heterogeneous Congestion Control Protocols," in the Networking Lab with his advisor, Professor Steven Low.

Professor Chris Umans has been named a recipient of the 2006 Okawa Foundation Research Grant. This prize (which carries a $10,000 award) honors top young researchers working in the fields of information and telecommunications. The grant awardees will be honored by the Okawa Foundation on October 5 in San Francisco.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded $1.5 million to Caltech for support of interdisciplinary undergraduate science education programs. The funding will be used to pioneer several new programs, including a training program in synthetic biology (the application of engineering design principles to the construction of biological systems), a course- and lab-development assistance program in science and engineering, a series of interdisciplinary undergraduate lab courses, and a precollege outreach program directed at local public schools. The program will be co-directed by Christina Smolke, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Douglas Rees, Dickinson Professor of Chemistry. EAS faculty who will be involved in these programs include Richard Murray, Everhart Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, Michael Elowitz, Assistant Professor of Biology and Applied Physics, Erik Winfree, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Computational and Neural Systems, and Rob Phillips, Professor of Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering. Read more...

Peter Schröder, Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics, has been recognized with a Humboldt Foundation Research Award. The award is given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and recognizes outstanding international scientists with substantial career achievement.

Dr. Paul Rothemund, senior research fellow in computer science and computation and neural systems, has devised a way of weaving DNA strands into any desired two-dimensional shape or figure, which he calls "DNA origami." This new technique could be an important tool in the creation of new nanodevices. (Hear NPR's interview with Dr. Rothemund.) Reporting in the March 16th issue of Nature, Rothemund describes how long single strands of DNA can be folded back and forth, tracing a mazelike path, to form a scaffold that fills up the outline of any desired shape. To hold the scaffold in place, 200 or more DNA strands are designed to bind the scaffold and staple it together. Read more...

Daniel I. Meiron has been appointed the Fletcher Jones Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Computer Science.

2005

An international team of scientists and engineers has smashed the network speed record, moving data along at an average rate of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) for several hours at a time. A rate of 100 Gbps is sufficient for transmitting five feature-length DVD movies on the Internet from one location to another in a single second. The extraordinary data transport rates were made possible in part through the use of the FAST TCP protocol developed by Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team.

Professor Tracey Ho was just named to the TR35 - innovators under the age of 35 whose work is changing our world. Also among this year's listing of outstanding scientists and innovators are Caltech alumni Helen Blackwell, PhD '99; Narasimha Chari, BS '96; Rajit Manohar, BS '94, MS '95, PhD '99; and Adam Rasheed, MS '98, PhD '01. Congratulations to all!

Po-Shen Loh has been selected by the AMS, SIAM and MAA for an honorable mention for the Morgan Prize. The Morgan prize is the highest award in the US for undergraduate research in mathematics. Po is being recognized for his work on the expansion of random Cayley graphs.

For the second consecutive year, the "High Energy Physics" team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers have won the Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge with a sustained data transfer of 101 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. This is more than four times faster than last year's record of 23.2 gigabits per second, which was set by the same team. The extraordinary achieved bandwidth was made possible in part through the use of the FAST TCP protocol developed by Professor Steven Low and his Caltech Netlab team.

EAS welcomes Mathieu Desbrun to Caltech as Associate Professor of Computational Science and Engineering and Computer Science.

K. Mani Chandy, Simon Ramo Professor and Professor of Computer Science, has received one of the coveted ASCIT Teaching Awards this year. This award is presented annually to several instructors who "the students feel have shown exceptional enthusiasm, dedication and clarity of teaching, as well as genuine interest in students".

Caltech's ACM Programming Team placed 7th internationally at the world finals in Prague, Czech Republic! First place went to the St. Petersburg School of Fine Mechanics and Optics; MIT just edged out Caltech for top honors in North America. The competitors this year were Po-Shen Loh (senior, mathematics), Jacob Burnim (sophomore, CS/math), and Adam D'Angelo (sophomore, CS/math). More information and final standings.

2004

Connections, Foundations, and Edges: Connecting Theory & Applications Across Complex Systems, a Celebration to Mark John Doyle's 50th Birthday, July (14) 15-16 (17), 2004. This two-day symposium is designed to bring together experts in mathematics, physics, biology, and networking in an interactive exchange of ideas on the design, analysis, and control of complex systems. The symposium is preceded by a one-day tutorial (Wednesday, July 14), given by Professor Doyle, consisting of his first attempt to present a new unified theory of complex systems and networks that builds on and integrates methods from controls, dynamical systems, information theory, computational complexity, optimization, and statistical and quantum physics. It will be followed by a day of student talks (Saturday, July 17). Full details and registration information may be found on the website.

Computing Beyond Silicon Summer School was held June 14 – July 9, 2004. Deadline for Applications was March 1, 2004. Pasadena Star New Article (pdf)

Professor Peter Schröder has been named this year's winner of the Computer Graphics Achievement Award by the Association for Computing Machinery and the Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technology (ACM SIGGRAPH). He is being recognized for his achievements in the field of multiresolution modeling and the more general field of digital geometry processing. This work has important consequences ranging from special effects to engineering design.

2001

Professor Jason Hickey wins an Okawa grant from the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications for studies and analyses in the fields of information and telecommunications.

We are celebrating our 25th Anniversary this year.

2000

Congratulations to Erik Winfree for being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship!

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