News & Events

03-22-23

Professors Aaron Ames, Jane Bae (BS ’11), and Kaushik Bhattacharya are on project teams that have received an award from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Initiative (MURI) Program. 

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Tags: APhMS honors GALCIT MCE Kaushik Bhattacharya Aaron Ames H. Jane Bae

01-30-23

Izzy Ragheb, an undergraduate studying Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been selected for the prestigious Brooke Owens Fellowship. The Brooke Owens Fellowship is a nationally-acclaimed nonprofit program recognizing exceptional undergraduate women and gender minorities with space and aviation internships, senior mentorship, and a lifelong professional network. As part of her fellowship, Ragheb will intern with Amazon Prime Air this summer. 

Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Izzy Ragheb

01-03-23

In January 2023, the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) is poised to launch into orbit a prototype, dubbed the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD), which will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth. [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS EE GALCIT Harry Atwater Ali Hajimiri Sergio Pellegrino SSPP

11-15-22

Caltech’s BIG Idea Challenge Team is presenting its final concept at the NASA Big Idea Challenge Forum at 11:25 PDT on November 15, 2022. [Tune in!]

Tags: GALCIT MCE CMS Soon-Jo Chung

09-21-22

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation has announced the 25 winners of its 2022 undergraduate scholarships and graduate awards. Undergraduate Kaila Coimbra has received the 2022 David and Catherine Thompson Space Technology Scholarship.

Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Kaila Coimbra

08-17-22

A new control algorithm for wind farms that alters how individual turbines are oriented into the wind promises to boost farms' overall efficiency and energy output by optimizing how they deal with their turbulent wake. "Individual turbines generate choppy air, or a wake, which hurts the performance of every turbine downwind of them," says John O. Dabiri, Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering. "To cope with that, wind farm turbines are traditionally spaced as far apart as possible, which unfortunately takes up a lot of real estate." [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights GALCIT MCE John Dabiri alumni Michael Howland

07-26-22

Graduate Student Conor Martin has received the best paper award at the 14th International Symposium on Hazards, Prevention, and Mitigation of Industrial Explosions (ISHPMIE). The paper is titled "Thermal Ignition: Effects of Fuel, Ambient Pressure and Nitrogen Dilution."

Tags: honors GALCIT Joseph Shepherd Connor Martin

06-07-22

By simulating earthquakes in a lab, Caltech engineers have provided strong experimental support for a form of earthquake propagation now thought responsible for the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that devastated the coast of Japan in 2011. "Our novel experimental approach has enabled us to look into the earthquake process up close, and to uncover key features of rupture propagation and friction evolution in rock gouge," says Vito Rubino, research scientist and lead author of the Nature paper. The Nature paper is titled "Intermittent lab earthquakes in dynamically weakening fault gouge." Rubino and his co-authors Nadia Lapusta, Lawrence A. Hanson, Jr., Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geophysics, and Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, show that so-called "stable" or "creeping" faults are not actually immune to major ruptures after all, as previously suspected. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights GALCIT MCE Ares Rosakis Nadia Lapusta Vito Rubino

04-21-22

Humans have used windmills to capture the force of the wind as mechanical energy for more than 1,300 years. Unlike early windmills, however, modern wind turbines use generators and other components to convert energy from the spinning blades into a smooth flow of AC electricity. In this video, John Dabiri, Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering discusses the future of wind energy technology. [Caltech story]

Tags: research highlights GALCIT MCE John Dabiri

04-12-22

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) announced the winners at the 2022 Region VI Student Conference at UC Merced. A Caltech team received the first place award in the team category for the region VI student conference for their paper entitled "Design of a Lunar Architecture for Tree Traversal in Service of Cabled Exploration (LATTICE)."

Tags: honors GALCIT MCE CMS Soon-Jo Chung Kaila Coimbra Malcom Tisdale Lucas Pabarcius Calle Junker Sravani Boggaram Nathan Ng Parul Singh Tomas Wexler Robert Daigle