Featured Faculty Speakers
Gregg W. Hallinan, PhD
Professor of Astronomy; Director, Owens Valley Radio Observatory
Building the World’s Most Powerful Radio Telescope
Caltech is developing the 2000-antenna Deep Synoptic Array (DSA-2000), a next-generation telescope. Construction will begin in 2026 in a 19 × 15 km radio-quiet valley in Nevada. Funded by Schmidt Sciences, the telescope will feature 2,000 five-meter antennas. Signals will be transmitted via underground fiber-optic cables and combined in a central supercomputer, or “radio camera,” that will process data at a rate of 200 Tb/s, comparable to the total internet traffic in the United States. This unprecedented capability will enable the detection of one billion new radio sources, a hundred times more than all previous radio telescopes combined. The DSA-2000 is expected to drive discoveries across radio astronomy, from identifying exotic neutron stars in the Milky Way to tracking the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes over cosmic time.
Hannah Druckenmiller, PhD
Assistant Professor of Economics; William H. Hurt Scholar
Using Economics and Machine Learning to Quantify the Costs and Benefits of Land Use Regulation
This talk explores how economics and machine learning intersect to analyze the trade-offs of land use regulation. Using deep learning models, I predict the scope of Clean Water Act regulation and demonstrate how these predictions help quantify its economic costs. This approach provides a foundation for assessing the broader economic impact. The analysis highlights four key findings:
- Recent rule changes have altered regulatory stringency by up to 50%.
- Regulations reduce development activity by 20%, as indicated by permitting data and satellite imagery.
- Clean Water Act restrictions lower non-residential property values by an average of 15%.
- The economic costs of regulation exceed $5 billion annually in some regions.
A data-driven framework is also introduced to estimate the benefits of regulation measured through environmental services, enabling direct comparison with economic costs.
Learn more about Hannah Druckenmiller, PhD
Sujit Datta, PhD
Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biophysics
Squishy Engineering: Using Soft Materials to Solve Hard Problems
Soft materials—often called “squishy”—are everywhere. They range from milk (composed of microscopic fat droplets in water) to hair gel (formed by spaghetti-like molecular networks) to dental plaque (which consists of bacteria embedded in a sticky matrix). These materials flow like liquids yet hold their shape like solids, and their properties can change dramatically with slight environmental shifts.
Engineered soft materials can address critical societal challenges: fluid formulations to remove groundwater contaminants and improve water security, gel sorbents that enhance soil water retention for sustainable agriculture, and engineered microbial communities for applications in human health.
This talk will examine experimental, theoretical, and computational methods from applied mathematics, biology, chemistry, engineering, materials science, and physics to study soft materials. It will focus on efforts to predict and control their behavior, establishing principles for designing new materials with tailored properties and advancing solutions to key societal challenges.
Learn more about Sujit Datta, PhD
Xiaojing (Ruby) Fu, PhD
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and William H. Hurt Scholar
Mark Simons, PhD
John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics and Director of the Brinson Exploration Hub
Andy Thompson, PhD
John S. and Sherry Chen Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering; Director, Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science; Executive Officer for Environmental Science
Zhongwen Zhan, PhD
Professor of Geophysics, Clarence R. Allen Leadership Chair of the Seismological Laboratory, and Director of the Seismological Laboratory
Matt Thomson, PhD
Professor of Computational Biology; Investigator, Heritage Medical Research Institute
Azita Emami, PhD
Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering; Director, Center for Sensing to Intelligence
Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Sensing to Intelligence Approach
Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are technologies that establish direct communication between the brain and external devices, offering potential benefits for individuals with spinal cord injuries. Current systems fail to deliver the precision, speed, degrees of freedom, and robustness of natural motor control. To enhance BCI performance and extend the lifetime of the implants, new approaches for recovering functional information from the brain are necessary.
In this talk, we demonstrate that machine-learning-based approaches can map electrical signals to neural features by jointly optimizing feature extraction and decoding. In all human participants, our proposed neural network significantly improved performance across all metrics. We will also discuss software-hardware co-design approaches for energy-efficient implementation of BCI systems towards miniaturized implantable devices.
Learn more about Azita Emami, PhD
Caltech Student Speaker Programs
3MT Challenge: Elevating Science Communication In Three Minutes
Hear remarkable Caltech graduate students take the three-minute challenge: to present their research clearly and concisely against a timer. They will also answer questions about their research. The 3MT Talk is part of a global competition designed to encourage young academics to explain their research so that it is accessible to a non-specialist audience. It is a great opportunity to see these talented students demonstrate their communication skills and explain their fascinating research. Learn more
Everhart Distinguished Graduate Student Lecture
Hear from a 2025 Everhart Finalist in this modified lecture for the Caltech community! The Everhart Lecture Series is a forum to encourage interdisciplinary interaction among graduate students and faculty, to share ideas about recent research developments, problems and controversies, and to recognize the exemplary presentation and research abilities of Caltech’s graduate students. Lecturers discuss topics at a level suitable for graduate students and faculty from all fields, while addressing current research issues.
Perpall SURF Speaking Competition
In 1993, Robert C. Perpall (BS ’52 ME, MS ’56 ME) established the Doris S. Perpall SURF Speaking Competition in memory of his late wife as an incentive for Caltech students to give excellent oral presentations. He believed that effective communication skills were critical to one’s future success. Over the course of thirty-one years, the Perpall SURF Speaking Competition has developed into an incredible force for improving the oral presentation skills of Caltech undergraduates.
Hear from a recently named Perpall SURF Speaking Competition winner selected from a field of 194 students who presented their research findings on SURF Seminar Day in October 2024 and advanced to this prestigious competition.