News

03-28-16

Two distinguished leaders in the computing industry—Michelle "Mich" Mathews-Spradlin, and Sabeer Bhatia (BS '91, EE)—have been elected to the Caltech Board of Trustees.  Mich Mathews-Spradlin is an angel investor, primarily in the technology sector. She previously served as a top executive at Microsoft Corp., beginning her career in 1989 as a United Kingdom–based consultant and then joining the company in the United States in 1993.  Sabeer Bhatia, a pioneer of web-based email, is cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Sabse Technologies Inc., a mobile-telecommunications company. He was the cofounder of Hotmail Corporation, guiding that company's rise from a 1996 start-up into one of the world's largest email providers. Microsoft acquired Hotmail in 1998, eventually turning it into Microsoft Outlook. [Caltech story]

Tags: EE CMS alumni Caltech Trustees

03-25-16

Oscar P. Bruno, Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics, has been chosen as a 2016 class of National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow. The program awards grants to outstanding scientists and engineers at U.S. universities to conduct long-term, unclassified, basic research of strategic importance to the Defense Department. Professor Bruno will conduct research in the area of Applied Math/Electromagnetism. [U.S. Department of Defense Press Release]

Tags: honors CMS Oscar Bruno

03-03-16

Thomas Vidick, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, has been awarded the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for his 5-year project, “Interactions with Untrusted Quantum Devices”. The CAREER program is NSF's most prestigious awards for junior faculty members. The level and 5-year duration of the awards are designed to enable awardees to develop careers as outstanding teacher-scholars. Awardees are chosen because they exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Tags: honors CMS NSF Thomas Vidick CAREER NSF

02-23-16

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2016 Sloan Research Fellow in the field of Mathematics for his research in mathematical optimization. The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded yearly to researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. [Caltech story]

Tags: EE honors CMS Venkat Chandrasekaran

02-23-16

Thomas Vidick, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences , has won a 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Award. The objectives of this program are: to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering. Professor Vidick received the award for his proposal entitled, “Towards a secure quantum network.” [AFOSR Press Release]

Tags: honors CMS Thomas Vidick

02-23-16

Venkat Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering, has won a 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Award. The objectives of this program are: to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering. Professor Chandrasekaran received the award for his proposal entitled, “Latent Variable Graphical Modeling for High-Dimensional Data Analysis. [AFOSR Press Release]

Tags: EE honors CMS Venkat Chandrasekaran

02-12-16

The students in the CS/EE/ME 75 class, Introduction to Multidisciplinary Systems Engineering, invited industry experts to their midterm design review on the evening of February 11, 2016. The students are currently in the manufacturing phase and plan to finish the vehicle frame this week and attach the mounting brackets shortly thereafter. They aim to have a running prototype electrical vehicle by mid-March to get early testing data before refining their design for the upcoming Formula SAE competition. The course is co-taught by Professors Guillaume Blanquart, Azita Emami, and Richard Murray as well as the Executive Director for the Resnick Institute, Neil Fromer. Several students in the course are also members of the Caltech Sustainable Vehicle Club led by undergraduate student Robert Anderson. [Huffpost Education Blog]

Tags: EE energy MCE CMS Guillaume Blanquart Richard Murray Rob Anderson Azita Emami Neil Fromer

12-17-15

Caltech’s smart grid team led by Professors John Doyle, Steven Low, and Adam Wierman along with their collaborators have been awarded $3.9 million for an Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) Network Optimized Distributed Energy System (NODES) project entitled "Real-time Optimization and Control of Next-Generation Distribution Infrastructure."  NODES is ARPA-E’s new program focused on enabling more than 50% usage of renewable power on the grid. The Caltech team will develop a comprehensive distribution network management framework that unifies real-time voltage and frequency control at the home/distributed energy resource controllers’ level with network-wide energy management at the utility/aggregator level. [Learn more]

Tags: EE energy CMS Adam Wierman John Doyle Steven Low

12-08-15

Peter Schröder, Shaler Arthur Hanisch Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is being recognized, “for contributions to computer graphics and geometry processing.” ACM, is the world's leading computing society, and Professor Schröder is among 42 of its members who have been recognized for their significant contributions to the development and application of computing in areas from data management and spoken-language processing to robotics and cryptography. [ACM release]

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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]

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