ENGenious: A publication for alumni and friends of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science of the California Institute of Technology
January 22, 2020
More than a century ago, scientists exploring phenomena at exceptionally minute scales began reporting strange results that seemed to contradict the established laws of physics: Particles that behaved like waves. Waves that behaved like particles. Discrete values of quantities that surely should instead be continuous, like energy. The implications of these new discoveries were so bizarre, so far-removed from everyday experience, that even one of the “fathers of quantum theory,” Max Planck, initially wondered whether they were purely mathematical tricks with no basis in physical reality.
January 22, 2020
When you think about sensing, you might imagine a fairly passive process in which information is picked up by a sensor and dutifully passed on to a centralized system. Examples abound: sensors in your home trigger an alarm when smoke is detected, an accelerometer provides movement data to your smartwatch which is then processed to indicate how many steps you’ve taken, and your car can sense and give warnings as you get too close to nearby objects.
October 11, 2017
Resilience is the capacity to endure and recover from stress, to bend and not break. Caltech engineers and scientists have a long track record of studying the resilience of materials and structures, from geological strata to material alloys. The Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) has decided to further build on this body of research by identifying “resilient megacities” as one of five future research thrusts.
October 10, 2017
The interwoven, interdisciplinary culture of Caltech has inspired two significant gifts that are elevating and intensifying biological and medical engineering research across campus. Andrew and Peggy Cherng have endowed the medical engineering department in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen have endowed the Chen Institute for Neuroscience, which finds its home in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering.
November 5, 2018
Drivers, pilots, and households are routinely able to set increasingly sophisticated systems on autopilot, thanks largely to the layering of multiple breakthroughs in separate domains like voice recognition, image classification, and sensors. The conversation about how to carry autonomous technology forward across disciplines and applications has had a natural place in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. The question has been how to best approach autonomy from the start.
November 5, 2018
Computational thinking is becoming increasingly essential to the academic experience in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and at Caltech more generally, with the challenges brought by a rapid increase in the availability and volume of data across disciplines and applications. The Institute not only has one of the leading computer science programs in the country, but it has also recently added a new major in information and data sciences to build on that area of strength and maximize its reach and impact.
The Caltech Division of Engineering and Applied Science consists of seven departments and supports close to 90 faculty who are working at the leading edges of fundamental science to invent the technologies of the future.
