In a strategic move to strengthen fundamental science and technology and foster transformational advances in renewable energies, the Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) and Caltech have established a $10 million partnership.

This evening at 11 p.m. EDT, a team of students from Caltech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) will start unloading CHIP—or the "Compact Hyper-Insulated Prototype" house, Caltech and SCI-Arc's entry in the biennial Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C.—from a flatbed truck and will begin the time-consuming process of reassembling the structure on the National Mall.

For Andrew Thompson, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering who joined GPS in August, growing up in Rhode Island gave him a natural affinity for the ocean. Now, he studies physical ocean science, focusing on eddies. While Thompson studies the way sea storms move things around, new faculty member and alum Victor Tsai, assistant professor of geophysics, is busy measuring the seismic noise produced by the movements of the ocean—partly from the crashing of waves onto the shore.

A joint team of students from Caltech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) are working 60-plus-hour weeks this summer to complete construction of a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient house for the Solar Decathlon, a biennial competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that will be held from September 23 to October 2 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.