Caltech is a place unlike any other, an Institute that is truly "small but mighty." Its small size and the expertise of its community enable interdisciplinary connections and collaborative projects at all scales, sometimes in rapid response to devastating need. Here, physicists and mathematicians easily and regularly interact with biologists and chemists, astronomers and engineers, […]

Groundwater is a critical resource in Southern California, where long-term drought and climate change place increasing pressure on local aquifers. Some regions, like the Hollywood Basin (a small region in and around the West Hollywood neighborhood), are increasing their reliance on these aquifers in order to reduce the amount of water imported from elsewhere. A […]

They might be tiny "antweight bots," but they are amped up and out to destroy their competitors. They are under-1-pound, 3D-printed, and remotely controlled robots designed and created by the newly formed Caltech Combat Robotics club, and they have started taking on challengers in local competitions. The simple goal of each face-off? Knockout opponent bots. […]

A key discovery from NASA's Cassini mission in 2008 was that Saturn's largest moon Titan may have a vast water ocean below its hydrocarbon-rich surface. But reanalysis of mission data suggests a more complicated picture: Titan's interior is more likely composed of ice, with layers of slush and small pockets of warm water that form […]

When the most massive stars reach the ends of their lives, they blow up in spectacular supernova explosions, which seed the universe with heavy elements such as carbon and iron. Another type of explosion—the kilonova—occurs when a pair of dense dead stars, called neutron stars, smash together, forging even heavier elements such as gold and […]

What can past battles against lead pollution teach us about contamination after wildfires? On January 21, 2026, at 7:30 p.m., Francois Tissot, professor of geochemistry and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, will explain how a historic fight against lead contamination guides his current research on toxic metals affecting his local community.In a public talk called […]

Andrew Sinclair came to Caltech as a visiting assistant professor in 2022. Finding Caltech to be an ideal place to carry out his research on Chinese finance, he has stayed on. Sinclair continues to pursue his research and teach Caltech students about finance through courses titled Hedge Funds, International Trade and Finance, and, of course, […]

The growth of bacterial colonies, the piling up of snow during a storm, and the spread of a wildfire are random, seemingly unrelated events, yet they all follow universal mathematical laws. Caltech's new assistant professor of mathematics Lingfu Zhang wants to elucidate the math behind these growth patterns and understand how and why the math […]

Mansi Kasliwal (PhD '11), a Caltech professor of astronomy, has been named the new director of Caltech's Palomar Observatory, while Dimitri Mawet, the David Morrisroe Professor of Astronomy at Caltech, has been named the new director of instrumentation of the Caltech Optical Observatories (COO), which includes Palomar as well as the W. M. Keck Observatory […]

Hundreds of different types of neurons make up the neural circuits in our brains. Over the years, scientists have discovered many details about those different cell types, including their electrical properties and the early genetic indicators that dictate what type of neuron they will eventually become. Yet combining all of that varied information into a […]