For Sumana Mahata (BS ’17), there is an invaluable connection between her life as a UC San Diego medical student and her passion for design. “I am finding myself asked to step up to being an artist in medicine. It’s a path that I didn’t really know existed until I started walking along it myself,” Mahata says. “I enjoy portraying STEM disciplines as beautiful and informative, inspiring newcomers and encouraging those already STEM-ing every day… It’s quite powerful, honestly.”

Using folded DNA to precisely place glowing molecules within microscopic light resonators, researchers at Caltech have created one of the world’s smallest reproductions of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, containing 65,536 pixels and only the width of a dime across. DNA origami, developed in 2006 by Caltech’s Paul Rothemund, PhD (BS ‘94), is a technique that allows researchers to fold a long strand of DNA into any desired shape. The process has the potential to influence a variety of applications, from drug delivery to the construction of nanoscale computers.

by Marisa Demers

Her book, Insight into a Bright Mind (Gifted Unlimited, LCC, 2020), weaves personal stories with neuroscience to empower readers to look holistically at intense and creative minds.

“You have a right to be here in the form that you are in,” Tetreault says. “The more you become acquainted with how you process sensory, emotional, and physical information the better.” 

As Tetreault immersed herself into neurodiversity research, she saw a need for other communities to understand their own uniqueness. With support from the Chang Prize, Tetreault created Beyond the Cell, a nonprofit that teaches incarcerated women about the brain and how environmental factors can alter its activity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that anywhere from 25% to 87% of inmates have suffered a traumatic brain injury.

“That is just the physical trauma we are learning about. We are not even talking about the emotional, psychological, and behavioral issues women are experiencing,” says Tetreault, who blends meditation and creative writing into her program. “With greater awareness, they can make better choices when they are faced with reliving their trauma.” 

COVID-19 prevented Tetreault from offering Beyond the Cell in prisons, but she is piloting her program with experts and refining her curriculum. She is also pitching a book about criminal justice reform through a neuroscience lens. 

“I saw the need to deconstruct and help with the language, services, and advocacy of this issue,” Tetreault says. “The Chang Prize gave me an ounce of hope that I could do something a little bit different.”

by Wayne Lewis

The history-making journey was Behnken’s third mission to the International Space Station. He was glad to be taking off from the familiar Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center once again.

“The biggest accomplishment was to return that launch capability to Florida,” says Behnken, a colonel in the Air Force and former chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office. “There was also quite a bit of excitement associated with the commercial partnership between NASA and SpaceX. They definitely ran with a lot of opportunities for innovation.”

Halfway through his first appearance on Jeopardy!, Henry Baer (BS ’18) was in a hole. With a score of $2,600, he was in third place, $4,800 behind the leader. But the Double Jeopardy round began with a promising omen for someone who had recently spent four years at Caltech: One of the six categories was “Astronauts.”

Baer, playing first, went right to the $1,600 clue in that subject and answered correctly, and then found a “daily double” clue in the same category, allowing him to bet any amount of his earnings so far. He wagered it all, answered correctly (“Who is John Glenn?”), and vaulted into first place.

“The questions didn’t cover anything I learned in a course at Caltech, but being in such close proximity to JPL, I was probably more aware of those facts,” says Baer, who majored in computer science but did take an astrobiology class his senior year. “It was definitely in my wheelhouse, so I was really happy when that category came up.”

The rest of the match, which aired Nov. 23, was a back-and-forth affair between Baer and the returning champ. But Baer came out on top, earning the right to defend his title in the next match. Which he did, handily. His performance so impressed Alex Trebek that the show’s legendary host introduced Baer’s third match this way: “Let me tell you something very simple about our champion, Henry. He’s good. So gear up.”

By the time Baer’s episodes were taped last fall, contestants and viewers knew that Trebek was being treated for cancer. Still, Baer says he was struck by Trebek’s enthusiasm. “That first game was so neck and neck, and he genuinely thought it was one of the more exciting games in recent memory. It was fun to know it wasn’t just another game for him.”

Although Baer’s luck ran out in his third match, he says the experience was especially meaningful because Trebek was still hosting the show; Trebek would pass away in early November, weeks after Baer’s games were recorded.

“I’ve been watching Jeopardy! since I was 5, so Alex Trebek was almost mythological to me,” Baer says. “I really felt lucky that I had the chance to play the games with him hosting, and to talk to him. He was extremely kind.”

Baer, now the founding engineer at San Francisco-based Merge, a business-to-business software integration platform provider, said proximity to JPL wasn’t the only way in which Caltech helped prepare him for game show success. During his years in Pasadena, he led the Quiz Bowl Club, which he credits for honing his grasp of the kinds of history, geography, and mythology trivia that are Jeopardy! staples.

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Photo, from left: 1936 Olympic competitors in Berlin, Godfrey Brown, Archibald Williams and James Lu Valle

This summer, the eyes of the world will turn to Japan for a slightly out-of-the-ordinary Olympic Summer Games, offering the perfect opportunity to recall a previous notorious Olympics. After completing two degrees with honors at UCLA, James Ellis LuValle (PhD ’40) competed for the U.S. in track at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, earning a Bronze in the 400-meter event and, along with fellow medalist Jesse Owens, undercutting Adolf Hitler’s misguided concepts of German exceptionalism. In 1937, LuValle won his place in Caltech history as the Institute’s first Black graduate student, earning a double degree in chemistry and physics working with Linus Pauling. Lu Valle had a lengthy career, mentoring more than 900 students; working at places such as the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, Eastman Kodak Laboratories, Smith-Corona Marchant, and Stanford University, and conducting research that resulted in three U.S. patents.

– Based on research by Edray Goins, PhD (BS ’94)

On March 20, 2021, Caltech Alumni faced off against MIT graduates for Match Madness, the Institutes’ first ever virtual chess tournament. Alumni competitors, spectators and chess fanatics watched online matches featuring Techers Jones Murphy (MS ’91), Joshua Gutman (BS ’06), Zach Rivkin (BS ’14), and Oscar Mickelin (MS ’16) take on MIT opponents Philip Rosenbach, Vasik Rajlich, Geoffrey Gelman, and Richard Yi.

The competition consisted of two mini-tournaments, one to determine the “champion” of each institute, before culminating in a final Beaver versus Beaver showdown. During the matches, Caltech Chess Club president, Tony Kukavica, joined MIT Chess Club president Tyrone Davis III and member Will Cuozzo to provide entertaining and enlightening color commentary. Virtual audience members used chat for good-natured heckling as well as to reconnect with old friends and competitors.

During the match, former Caltech competitor and Chess National Master, Jones Murphy reconnected with current MIT student, Tyrone Davis III, during the tournament. The two competed in the New York chess scene around the same time while Davis was only a child and proving himself to be one to watch.

“The world of chess has changed dramatically. A kid can mature in chess faster with today’s virtual resources,” Murphy said during the Zoom event. He also discussed being a part of one of the first ever virtual chess tournaments between Caltech, MIT, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon in 1988. Ultimately, Richard Yi of MIT won the tournament in a heated two-game final match with Caltech’s Gutman, running the clock down to the final second and claiming victory.

by Wayne Lewis

Last year was a time of transition for you, completing a 10-year tenure as chair of the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering (BBE). Then a global pandemic changed everything. What was your 2020 like?

It was certainly a challenging time. In my final months as BBE chair, I oversaw the shutdown of more than 50 labs when local restrictions were imposed, while also addressing the need to keep essential work, such as COVID-19 research, moving forward. After restrictions eased, I helped to ensure that labs reopened in a manner consistent with our COVID-19 protocols, including significantly reduced density of researchers in our buildings.

In my own research, we pivoted our efforts in antibody engineering to COVID-19, working with [Caltech biologist] Pamela Bjorkman [PhD] and Protabit, a Caltech spinout I cofounded a number of years ago. The basic idea is to use computational design to enhance the neutralization potency of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies isolated from recovered COVID-19 patients. With success, we could provide passive immunization at low doses, potentially with an EpiPen-like autoinjector in an outpatient setting.

We’re making progress but still have a way to go. We’ve been fortunate to receive generous support from senior trustee Charlie Trimble [BS ’63, MS ’64].

The Institute tapped you for its COVID-19 vaccine group. Broadly speaking, what are the group’s approaches and goals?

The overarching goal of the Vaccine Planning Working Group is to ensure that Caltech is fully prepared to receive, store, and administer vaccine to our community. As the only faculty member on the committee, my primary role is providing advice on technical issues. There are lots of logistical challenges, such as coordinating with public health authorities, developing vaccination priority lists, and addressing the cold storage challenge.

Your own work has bridged fundamental science to entrepreneurial pursuits translating your discoveries. Can you talk about the importance of connecting the two?

I’ve had several opportunities to translate my work into the real world through Caltech spinouts, as both a graduate student and a faculty member. Doing things that have an impact on real people has always been important to me. I’m happy to say that technology from one of my companies is now in two FDA-approved drugs in clinical use.

Caltech is set up nicely to encourage translational work. After all, our mission statement includes working to “benefit society.” In some sense, translation is part of our DNA. 

Your early work broke new ground in computational protein design when many thought your goals were all but impossible. What kept you motivated?

One part of the answer is that we didn’t know enough to believe what we were doing was impossible. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

The other part is that we were having lots of fun making incremental progress, and we just ignored the naysayers. I had lots of internal moral support from Caltech and super enthusiastic, talented graduate students and postdocs. Of course, competition from other labs working in the same area provided its own flavor of motivation.

Caltech is set up nicely to encourage translational work. After all, our mission statement includes working to ‘benefit society.’ In some sense, translation is part of our DNA.

– Stephen Mayo

What is your wish for the future of Caltech?

My first wish for Caltech, and the rest of the world, is to get back to pre-COVID-19 levels of activity. The social justice movement really blossomed as the pandemic took hold. I certainly hope that we don’t go backward on this, and that Caltech can advance on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in a way that maintains and even expands excellence with the same level of commitment and enthusiasm that it has shown for areas of historic success.

On February 18, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on Mars. The team identified Jezero Crater as an ancient lakebed, illustrated here—as it may have been billions of years ago—filled with water.

“The crater is one of the most promising places to look for evidence of ancient microbial life and to collect samples for future return to Earth,” says Matt Smith,PhD, systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover is the first mission to collect rock and dust particles from Mars, providing insight to the Red Planet’s geology and past climate and opening the door for future human exploration.

by Marisa Demers

The news spread quickly through texts, messaging apps, and email, and, by lunchtime, a large, socially distanced group had gathered near his truck. The turnout surprised Mercado. Long lines had disappeared when the pandemic forced the Caltech community to learn and work from home or have staggered shifts in the labs. 

It is easy to imagine a bigger send-off if the campus had been open, but Mercado has no regrets.

“It was destined to happen this way because it makes saying good-bye less painful,” Mercado says. “I saw my daughter in each and every one of the students and I came to love them, too. I will remember their faces, their smiles.”

“‘Quesadilla con espinaca para el Maestro.’ Music to my ears each time I walked up to the truck. You and Lucy and Delma fueled my PhD. Then part of my postdoc. And now in my current job at Caltech. The yummy-ness of the food was only eclipsed by the warmth and kindness of those who made it. You are a gem of Caltech, and will always be fondly remembered (and missed). I wish you the very very best in retirement and in grandparenthood!”

— JUSTIN BOIS (PHD ’07)

Postdoctoral scholar Ivo Ros and fellow researchers in the lab of Michael Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering and Aeronautics, were regular customers and considered Mercado a friend. To show their appreciation, Ros created an online fundraising page and lab members shared the link with friends and on social media.

In 19 hours the fundraiser surpassed its $2,000 target. By December, 725 people had donated $35,662 and left more than 100 heartfelt comments. Mercado shared the donations with four Ernie’s Al Fresco workers, including cook Lucy.

“Ernie and his team kept me fed at lunch several days a week throughout graduate school. Ernie’s fed me through my early scientific discoveries. I was eating Ernie’s when I felt my first earthquake. Veggie burritos, nopales tacos, and the fish burritos were my common orders. I knew it was avocado season, because everything would be twice as filled with avocados. Ernie is a gentleman, who always addresses you like the King of Spain addresses a grandee, ‘primo (cousin).’ I wish him and his team every joy in their future endeavors.”

— NICK HEAVENS (MS ’07, PHD ’10)