Kimmy Wu and Vesselin Dimitrov honored for physics and math researchTwo Caltech professors were awarded 2026 New Horizons Prizes as part of the Breakthrough Foundation's annual prize ceremony, known colloquially as the "Oscars of Science." Wai Ling (Kimmy) Wu, assistant professor of physics at Caltech, has received a New Horizons in Physics prize for her […]

Melatonin is a naturally produced molecule that has long been suspected to play a role in healthy sleep, but it has been unclear how it does so. Now, Caltech researchers have discovered a mechanism through which melatonin promotes sleep, using zebrafish models in the laboratory.The research was conducted in the lab of Professor of Biology […]

Imaging is a critical technique in biology—from identifying cancerous cells in biopsies to observing how immune cells like macrophages hunt down and destroy pathogens. Traditionally, distinguishing and labeling individual cells in images and videos has been an arduous task done by hand. Now, an interdisciplinary team of Caltech researchers has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm […]

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now on its way out of our solar system, never to return.The comet was only the third-ever detected object to originate from outside our solar system. Traveling at high speeds, it looped around the Sun within 1.5 AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance between the Earth and the […]

In late March, the Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship to 454 third- and fourth-year university students, including four third-year scholars from Caltech: Avni Bansal, Aarya Riasati, Evan Zhang, and Rayhan Zirvi.The scholarship provides each student with up to $7,500 to put toward the cost of tuition and expenses […]

Thin films might not come up in conversation every day, but they are all around us. Take the metallic plastic films of chip bags, for example, or the anti-reflective coatings on eyeglasses. Even the coatings on pills that make them easier to swallow are thin films. Depositing extremely thin layers of materials in a consistent […]

Caltech researchers have identified geological features on Mars that could point to the existence of a long-dried ocean that once covered a third of the Red Planet's surface.The research was conducted by former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Abdallah Zaki and Caltech professor of geology Michael Lamb. The study is described in a paper appearing in the […]

On Wednesday, April 8, the Lynn Booth and Kent Kresa Department of Aerospace at Caltech was formally dedicated in a ceremony held outside the north entrance of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory.Caltech faculty members, students, and staff, gathered alongside the friends and family of Caltech Trustee Lynn Booth and Life Member Kent Kresa, former chair of the […]

The Caltech Space Challenge (CSC) returned to campus March 23–27 after a four-year hiatus, bringing together 32 graduate students from around the world to design a dual-target space mission to visit Venus and a nearby comet.Despite being Earth's nearest twin in size and composition, Venus evolved into a world of crushing pressure and extreme heat. […]

Creative endeavors, like making art, writing music, or penning a poem, require the recall of memories to fuel imagination. Many other human behaviors, including problem solving, also rely on mental imagery to complete tasks, but little was known about how imagery works at the level of single neurons in the brain—until now.Varun Wadia (PhD '23), […]