PASADENA, Calif.--The end of the academic year means one thing to 350 undergrads at the California Institute of Technology: time to SURF. The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program is less lackadaisical than it may sound. Now celebrating its 30th year, SURF gives students the opportunity to create their own scientific research projects. And the program has yielded extraordinarily successful Caltech alumni, including a leading Major League Baseball (MLB) analyst and technologist whose work stemmed directly from his SURF project; the cofounder of Hotmail; and a current Caltech astrophysics assistant professor who began his undergraduate work at the Institute at the young age of 14.
Ari Kaplan has worked with Major League Baseball teams since 1989. During that year, under the direction of Rod Kiewiet, professor of political science at Caltech, Kaplan conducted a SURF project entitled "How Do You Spell Relief? An Analysis of Baseball Pitching, 1876-Present." His research led directly to working with MLB. While he was giving his SURF presentation as a sophomore, sitting in the audience was the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He hired Kaplan on the spot. Kaplan later landed on NBC's Today Show, which put him in touch with former Dodgers general manager Fred Claire. His early work with MLB focused on individual players, analyzing reliever effectiveness and other common statistics. Now he works on game-based strategies, like determining the best batting order.
In addition to continuing his work with teams, for the past three years Kaplan was president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, a 22,000-member professional technical association for the Oracle Corporation, one of the world's largest software companies--second only to Microsoft. He was awarded Caltech's prestigious Alumni of the Decade distinction for the '90s. In 2001, he was included in Crain Communications' "40 Under 40" profile of business leaders.
Another successful SURF alumnus is Sabeer Bhatia (BS '91), cofounder of Hotmail and now the chairman of Nanocity. During the summer of 1989, Bhatia was the Hugh F. and Audy Colvin International SURF Fellow under the tutelage of Roddam Narasimha, director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies in India. Bhatia studied high-speed phase detection at the National Aeronautical Laboratory in Bangalore, India. He says his SURF project provided his first experiences working outside academia.
"The skill set that I acquired, most important of which is to ask the right questions, has led me on an exciting path of creating companies that solve problems through the use of technology," Bhatia says.
Bhatia's quest following SURF started with creating Hotmail, which solved the problem of universal e-mail access, and continued guiding him in all of his technology ventures. Bhatia says, "I think the SURF program is one of the most meaningful aspects of the education at Caltech."
An equally impressive alumnus came to Caltech in 1997, at the mere age of 14. Chris Hirata spent his undergraduate years studying physics while maintaining an active social life, spending all four years on the varsity swim team, for instance. During the summer of 1999, Hirata conducted his first SURF project with research advisor Fiona Harrison, professor of physics and astronomy. It involved designing an X-ray imaging system for a satellite. This was Hirata's first research project. And, he says, being so young then, the most important part of his experience with SURF was the research group itself.
"Seeing the processes and sociology of how a research group operates helped convince me that I wanted to continue doing research," says Hirata. "I wouldn't have found that in the classroom."
Hirata's research experience was just beginning. The following summer he conducted a second SURF project with Peter Goldreich, Lee A. DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics, Emeritus. It involved studying turbulence in a conducting magnetized fluid-research to be used in interstellar space.
After graduating from Caltech at 18 with his bachelor's degree in 2001, Hirata flew to the East Coast to earn his PhD in physics at Princeton University. In the fall of 2007, Hirata returned to Caltech as an assistant professor of astrophysics.
His current projects at the Institute include cosmology--the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe. He is involved in large research collaborations, making observations that help test cosmological models. Other work involves determining how to analyze current and future cosmological data sets.
Throughout the SURF program's operation, six SURFers have gone on to become Caltech faculty members.
This year's 2008 SURF research includes a project measuring Caltech's carbon footprint from 1990 until now and considering future campus energy consumption; a project studying electron transfer in a protein that spans membranes; and a unique project looking at the influence that royal patronage had on the works of Machiavelli, Bacon, and Galileo, among others.
In addition to conducting research, SURF participants attend weekly seminars led by Caltech faculty and JPL technical-staff mentors. Students learn public-speaking skills as well as techniques for delivering a technical talk and for creating visual aids. Workshops are held regularly on issues students will face as they prepare for their professional careers. Workshop topics include the role of communication in scientific careers; applying to graduate school; and career planning.
At the end of their projects, the students present oral reports at a one-day conference modeled after a professional technical meeting. SURF Seminar Day this year will be held on October 18. Typically about 20 percent of the students eventually author or coauthor articles published in professional scientific journals, contribute to significant reports, or give conference presentations based on their SURF research.
