Two Caltech faculty members have been awarded Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. Biologist Alexei Aravin and astronomer John Johnson each were awarded $875,000, to be distributed over five years.

"I'm very excited about this fellowship," says Aravin, an assistant professor of biology. "It will allow my lab to pursue new, ambitious goals that are difficult to fund using traditional sources."

Pamela Bjorkman has been studying HIV at Caltech since 2005. In the lab, she has made significant gains in the fight against the virus, developing antibodies that neutralize most strains. But years spent at the bench were beginning to make her feel disconnected from the possible impact of her work. So this summer she visited India, spending time with HIV-positive women and others who are at risk.

As an animal develops from an embryo, its cells take diverse paths, eventually forming different body parts—muscles, bones, heart. In order for each cell to know what to do during development, it follows a genetic blueprint, which consists of complex webs of interacting genes called gene regulatory networks. Now, for the first time, biologists at Caltech have built a computational model of one of these networks.

A new Caltech study suggests that specific changes in an overactive immune system can contribute to autism-like behaviors in mice, and that in some cases, this activation can be related to what a developing fetus experiences in the womb.

Caltech and UCLA have launched highly productive collaborations in cancer research and other areas of biomedicine in recent years, frequently through the Caltech lab of Nobel Laureate and President Emeritus David Baltimore. Now, an endowment established by the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation will strengthen the Caltech-UCLA partnership and advance the Baltimore lab’s interdisciplinary research into areas where mathematics and engineering converge with biology.