Caltech

Articles tagged with "engineering"

05/22/2013

Kimm Fesenmaier

Caltech's Class of 2013 is a group of passionate, curious, and creative individuals who have spent their undergraduate years advancing research, challenging both conventional thinking and one another.

10/29/2012

Julia Greer Wins Grant, Awards

Brian Bell

Julia Greer is going to need to find space in her office for all of the awards, medals, and grant acceptance letters she has been receiving lately.

10/25/2012

Progress for Paraplegics

Michael Rogers

Caltech engineers, who last year helped enable a paraplegic man to stand and move his legs voluntarily, have developed a new method to automate the system, which provides epidural electrical stimulation to people with spinal-cord injuries. This advancement could make the technology widely available to rehab clinics and thousands of patients worldwide. It would also reduce the system's training time and costs for hospitals and clinics and make it easier for patients to continue their rehabilitation at home.

10/23/2012

Reconsidering the Global Thermostat

Kimm Fesenmaier

Many ideas have been floated about how to potentially manipulate the planet's climate in order to counteract the effects of global warming—a concept known as geoengineering. But because some of these efforts could affect areas of the planet inequitably, geoengineering has often raised an ethical question: Whose hand would control the global thermostat? Now a team of researchers from Caltech, Harvard, and the Carnegie Institution says there doesn't have to be just a single global control.

10/21/2012

Clean-Energy Research Accelerates

Ann Motrunich

Caltech clean-energy research is accelerating thanks to the renovation of the Earle M. Jorgensen Laboratory. Transformed into a cutting-edge facility for energy science, the lab unites two powerhouse programs: the Resnick Sustainability Institute and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis.

10/17/2012

Developing the Next Generation of Microsensors

Kimm Fesenmaier

Setting the stage for a new class of motional sensors, Caltech researchers have developed a new ultrasensitive, microchip-scale accelerometer that uses laser light to measure displacement.

10/10/2012

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Douglas Smith

Last summer, Caltech junior Julie Jester worked on a project that might one day partially counteract blindness caused by a deteriorating retina.

10/02/2012

Houses that Build People

Ann Motrunich

For the second time, a SCI-Arc–Caltech team has won a spot in the Solar Decathlon, a biennial Department of Energy–sponsored competition to design and build a solar-powered house with the ideal blend of affordability, market appeal, design excellence, energy production, and efficiency.

10/01/2012

Caltech Faculty Members Honored by Popular Mechanics

Kimm Fesenmaier

Caltech engineers and scientists often work at the frontiers of science—pushing the limits of what is known and what is possible.

09/22/2012

A Worthy Endeavor

Douglas Smith

The space shuttle Endeavour's final flight ended Friday, September 21, when it landed at Los Angeles International Airport en route to its new life as an exhibit at the California Science Center. But without Caltech professors Christopher Brennen and Allan Acosta and alumnus Sheldon Rubin, the entire endeavor might not have been possible.

08/15/2012

Caltech Wins Toilet Challenge

Marcus Woo

Caltech's solar-powered toilet has won the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge issued by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Caltech engineer Michael Hoffmann and his colleagues were awarded $100,000 for their design, which they demonstrated at the Reinvent the Toilet Fair, a two-day event held August 14–15 in Seattle.