It was the late physicist Gerry Neugebauer (PhD ’60) who offered Tom Soifer his first taste of scientific freedom. When Soifer was a Caltech junior, in 1966, Neugebauer gave him a chance to run the world’s first purpose-built infrared telescope.
Acts of Mentorship
Welcome to the second edition of The Caltech Effect. Explore the unique relationships that inspire Caltech people to achieve the extraordinary. An adviser models unorthodox research. Undergrads evolve from solo stars into team leaders. Postdocs help others at a time when personal achievement is paramount. A junior is encouraged to launch a hedge fund from his dorm room. Real users and industry experts help students invent wheelchair technologies. Astronomers pass the torch of discovery from one generation to the next. Read on!
Have a Mentor, Be a Mentor
At Caltech, one in five undergraduates plays a varsity sport, and many students also find a counterpoint to the academic rigors that come with being a Techer in the university’s more than 100 clubs and organizations. On the field, court, or stage, students find opportunities to be collaboratively ambitious—and ambitiously collaborative. In this video, Mandy Gamble, head coach of the Caltech men’s and women’s tennis teams, joins women’s co-captain Sophia Chen and men’s co-captain Morgan Lebby to reflect on how success comes from knowing how to be both a leader and a team player.

Transcript
SOPHIA CHEN: I started playing tennis with my dad. Basically whenever I was old enough to be able to hold a kiddie racket in my hand.
MORGAN LEBBY: If I could tell anyone one thing about the Caltech men’s tennis team, I’d have to say that we’re just like a single unit.
MANDY GAMBLE: The makings of a good team is really chemistry and it starts with your captains.
MORGAN LEBBY: It’s real easy to get negative but just reinforcing when people do things well instead of reminding them that they did something incorrectly, just helps them get more comfortable and confident in their own abilities.
SOPHIA CHEN: In both academics and athletics at Caltech, there’s this very collaborative environment, and so when you’re trying to get better in academics you’re really also trying to help everybody else become better.
MANDY GAMBLE: Once you see someone compete, it’s not really strategy and game plan. A lot of tennis in a match situation is mental and psychological and this is where a lot of room for growth happens.
MORGAN LEBBY: I would say that tennis has definitely affected how I approach academics here. You can’t sit back and let balls go by you. Whether looking for job opportunities or reaching out to professors, that first step of taking initiative is something that I don’t think I would have done had I not been on the Caltech tennis team.
SOPHIA CHEN: I think being captain of my team really opened me up more to different leadership roles, not just in tennis but also in engineering, in my house, just in general.
MANDY GAMBLE: All of the students are very driven and motivated. One of the really fun parts of being on the team is when we can go on away trips. When you go away and you’re on the road and spending three or four days together the team bonds and there’s no amount of coaching, there’s no amount of teaching or anything you can do to make up for those road trips and the experiences they have. And it wouldn’t be possible without the donors and the alumni support to do that. Our goal on the tennis team—and I’m sure all my colleagues’—is to have our sports teams on par with our academic reputation. And that’s a big lofty goal but I really believe we can do it.
SOPHIA CHEN: I’m Sophia Chen. I’m a senior in electrical engineering and I’m co-captain of the women’s tennis team.
MORGAN LEBBY: I’m Morgan Lebby. I’m a senior majoring in chemical engineering, and I’m co-captain of the Caltech men’s tennis team.
MANDY GAMBLE: My name is Mandy Gamble and I’m the head men’s and women’s tennis coach at Caltech.
MORGAN LEBBY: It’s the best part of my day for sure.
DIY: Two Mentors Create Opportunity
If you want to know what’s special about a Caltech education, talk to Professor Tom Soifer (BS ’68).
“We prize giving students opportunities to do something new—giving them freedom and responsibility,” he says. “Caltech encourages people to do spectacular things.”
Professor Neugebauer in 1965, the year Tom Soifer took his Physics II class and the two met for the first time
Members of Gerry Neugebauer’s “infrared army” build a shed on Mount Wilson to house the new telescope.
Infrared pioneers Tom Soifer (left), Gerry Neugebauer (right), and Keith Matthews (BS ’62), who stayed on to become a staff scientist at Caltech
A portion of an all-sky image created with data from the IRAS mission
Gerry Neugebauer led international projects and the Palomar Observatory, but his roots were in the lab.
A NASA Spitzer Space Telescope image of the core of the Milky Way, which cannot be seen in visible light because of dust between Earth and the galaxy’s center
Soifer co-led a Caltech Associates President’s Circle trip to Hawaii in 2015, offering behind-the-scenes insights at the world-leading W. M. Keck Observatory.
PMA grad students, postdocs, and a visitor (far left) conversing in 2015
Tom and Mary Anna Soifer
A Great Mentorship Begins
Astronomer at 21
In the mid-1960s, Professor Robert Leighton, Professor Neugebauer, and Caltech’s “infrared army”—a group of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars—built a new kind of telescope. It scanned the sky in infrared wavelengths, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum just past the red side of the rainbow, perceptible as heat.
“It was a thrill to be able to operate that telescope,” says Soifer, who was a 21-year-old student at the time. “You ran the sky survey for 50 minutes, calibrated the telescope against well-defined stars for 10 minutes, and did the survey again. An amplifier connected each detector to a strip-chart recorder. Paper streamed out of the recorders, marked with time-stamps and data.”
A New Light
After their nights with the telescope, the students and postdocs brought home data on rolls of paper. The compiled results, released in 1969, rocked astronomy.
The group’s effort, called the Two-Micron Sky Survey, revealed stars and other objects that astronomers working in the visible wavelengths of light had never seen. Infrared astronomy had opened a new window on the universe.
“It was only in retrospect that I really understood what we had accomplished and appreciated how extraordinary the opportunity was,” Tom Soifer says.
Going Fishing
In the late 1970s, Gerry Neugebauer was planning the first infrared space telescope. Called IRAS, it was a project so risky he later called it a fishing expedition. He asked his former student Tom Soifer, then at UCSD, if he would drop his tenure-track position for a “soft-money,” full-time research job.
“When you’re young, you do crazy things,” Soifer says. He moved back to Pasadena.
IRAS, which launched in 1983, identified hundreds of thousands of galaxies, stars, and planetary debris disks. It also revealed the Milky Way’s core.
Neugebauer became chair of Caltech’s Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) in 1988. Soifer joined the faculty the next year, taking on his own students. The two helped generations of scholars participate in spectacular projects.
Learning to Lead
When in 1997 Tom Soifer became the director of Spitzer’s science center, a position he has held ever since, he again found inspiration in Neugebauer. “I watched him close-up and learned how to run a serious project,” Soifer says. “He used his stature and listening skills to keep the IRAS group together. It was an international consortium that often was ready to explode, but he turned it into a marvelous success. I saw how he identified the right path. That shaped my life.”
However, while Neugebauer could be fiery and intimidating—traits that helped him push into new territory—Soifer tries to keep an even keel and an open mind. Those traits have been essential to the Spitzer Space Telescope’s impact.
Telescope Time
As Spitzer Science Center director, Tom Soifer has the final say—after peer-review—on what this magnificent telescope will look at, when. He also oversees the delivery of its data.
“The whole process has to be viewed by the scientific community as beyond reproach,” says Michael Werner, Spitzer’s project scientist. “Tom’s reputation for integrity and fairness made Spitzer tremendously successful. He created a culture of cooperation and responsiveness between the Spitzer users and the staff at the science center. And his open door to new ideas has kept us ahead of the game.”
By devoting telescope time impartially and making data and images easy to get, Soifer made Spitzer valuable to scientists nationwide. Their support and his advocacy helped get the mission extended five times, enabling findings like the recent detection of Earth-size exoplanets.
Opening Doors
Tom Soifer gained a new chance to foster world-class science in 2010, when Caltech asked him to chair PMA. As chair, he championed innovative research, helped to attract millions of dollars in philanthropy to advance important projects, and built recognition of the fundamental research that PMA scientists dedicate themselves to. He reached out to PMA’s physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers as well as potential donors, listening for areas where their aspirations matched. He worked constantly.
Through it all, he talked to his mentor weekly. “I’d call him from work on Saturdays and complain,” says Soifer, laughing. “Gerry usually just said, ‘I understand.’”
Soifer completed his term as division chair in 2015 and is now Caltech’s Harold Brown Professor of Physics.
What Scholars Want
One thing hit Tom Soifer hard when he became chair of PMA: He could not promise prospective students and postdocs the flexibility to take part in adventurous projects like he had done. The budget was too uncertain, meaning that grad student and postdoc support was tied to faculty research grants.
He thought that no-strings-attached fellowships would enable him to make that assurance and attract top candidates to Caltech. So he proved it by experiment: He worked with donors to guarantee outstanding graduate applicants several years of financial support, as other select schools often do.
“We got a much higher yield of the very best students,” Soifer says. “Fellowships also allow the faculty to think bigger—they know they’ve got the grad students and the postdocs covered.”
New Opportunities
Tom Soifer’s proof of the value of fellowships inspired him and his wife, Mary Anna, to endow a fellowship for grad students and postdocs in PMA.
“With our kids grown, we have a window of opportunity,” Soifer says. “Our financial needs are lessened, so we can think about our legacy. We thought, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to do this?’ And then we realized that we could.”
“I hope the recipients will carry on Tom’s commitment to bettering the field,” Mary Anna says, “and that they might feel honored.”
Far into the future, the B. Thomas Soifer Chair’s Fellowship will give scholars the chance to try their hand at something new—just as Soifer did, his students did, and Caltech people always have done. Fishing expeditions. They, too, will change how we see the world.
The Human Side of Engineering
Mentors in the Caltech course Design for Freedom from Disability gave students Stephanie Moon and Lawrence Lee a new view of the power engineers have to benefit others.
Says co-instructor Andy Lin: “It’s gratifying to see that the work I’m helping with is making a difference in students’ lives and the lives of people with disabilities. At the end of the course, I get teary-eyed. I see how the students want to maximize their engineering skills to help people.”

Transcript
STEPHANIE MOON: I took Design for Freedom from Disability last year because I wanted to take an engineering class that was centered on humans.
LAWRENCE LEE: It is taught by Professor Ken Pickar and co-taught by Andy Lin, a rehab engineer at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehab Center. The goal of the class was essentially to make a product that could potentially assist the lives of people….
STEPHANIE MOON: ….who have some kind of discomfort in their lives due to a disability.
LAWRENCE LEE: Professor Pickar is especially good at just kind of motivating us. He kept reminding us every day we have an opportunity to design something that can really help people.
STEPHANIE MOON: You come up with the problem that you want to solve and just… just go and solve it.
LAWRENCE LEE: Professor Pickar was very clear right from the get-go like, “If you want to try something out, don’t be worried about the money, we’ll cover it.”
STEPHANIE MOON: We bought a lot of motors which are not very cheap.
LAWRENCE LEE: But none of this would have been possible without the money that donors have provided for us. We took a class trip over to Rancho and we spent the day chatting with them and talking about some of the struggles that they faced. Really there’s not much storage space in a wheelchair so we thought about creating something that could really help people put their day-to-day items on the wheelchair.
STEPHANIE MOON: In the U.S., there’s more than 318,000 people who have strokes and weakness on one side of their body. Our project involved trying to help these patients move around with ease.
LAWRENCE LEE: A lot of the wheelchair users found the armrest really annoying and they actually just removed them. And we thought, “Okay, well that’s awkward because our entire project was supposed to attach on to the armrest.”
STEPHANIE MOON: We found out there’s this one little company in the U.K. They were creating like a similar project. We talked to Professor Pickar and told them that we were really disappointed but he encourages us to call the company and talk to them. The guy at the company gave us a lot of engineering guidance on what could be better.
LAWRENCE LEE: We initially wanted to make a device that was kind of like a one-size-fits-all. Folks at Rancho just kind of told us, “Narrow it down a little bit, focus in on items that everyone will want.” My biggest takeaway was: Don’t complicate things and just…just keep it simple.
STEPHANIE MOON: There was definitely a lot of collaboration, mentoring, and teamwork that happened. It was a cycle, a continuous cycle of going to the notebook and then prototyping and talking to Andy. He himself is an engineer.
LAWRENCE LEE: So when it came to really learning about the disabilities, he was our go-to guy. I’ve been told by Andy that two of our devices are being used right now at Rancho. That made me very happy to hear that—you know, that we were actually able to make something that could help some people out.
STEPHANIE MOON: And there was one inpatient who got to try our product. He was just zipping through the hallways and afterwards we asked him if there were any improvements we could make and he was like, “It’s perfect. When can I get one of these?”
LAWRENCE LEE: Throughout all my job interviews, a lot of them ask about my learning experience at Caltech and somehow this class always comes up in my answers.
STEPHANIE MOON: Taking this class made me realize how amazing engineers are and how much impact they can have in this society. I’m planning on going into human-robot interactions and human-centric engineering, including surgical robots and prostheses.
LAWRENCE LEE: I think most people get really into their project. They would really fall in love with it. The class really didn’t feel like homework at all but it really just felt more like a passion project.
How was your Caltech experience shaped by a mentor?
We asked some alumni—including fellowship donors and a Nobel laureate—about their faculty advisers.
Professor and Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Chair of Biochemistry, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Caltech adviser: Ray Owen
“Ray Owen gave us the confidence to follow our own ideas. He even allowed us to stumble because he realized that when we recovered, we’d be much better off. I would go to him with any question or idea. Rather than giving a direct answer, he would lead me to figure things out for myself—and he did it in such a subtle way. One suggestion, which came up in casual conversation, led me to start working with another faculty member who had expertise in scanning electron microscopy. Through that collaboration, I was able to visualize my research in new ways. I hadn’t even considered the idea until that conversation with Ray flipped a switch.”
Nobel Prize in Physics, 2015
Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics, Queen’s University
Caltech adviser: Charles Barnes
“Charlie Barnes motivated us to tackle fundamental physics problems using the latest experimental techniques and was uncompromising in his requirement of full accounting for all uncertainties in the result—statistical and systematic. He was a good friend to his students and inspired us with his enthusiastic attitude that physics is fun. He guided us through a series of measurements, giving advice as he hung out at the accelerator in the basement of the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory or as we discussed things in his office, usually with his pipe being kept alit with care. He taught us that it is very enjoyable to know that you have contributed new scientific information that adds to our understanding of the world around us.”
Managing Director, Sumeru Equity Partners
Donor to Caltech’s Middlebrook Graduate Fellowship Fund
Caltech adviser: R. David Middlebrook
“I met Professor Middlebrook on my first day at Caltech. Immediately, he was supportive of my objectives, understood my interests, and helped select my coursework. I really enjoyed attending his lectures in my first quarter. He was an eloquent and logical teacher. Personally, he encouraged me to speak up in class and voice my opinion. I had an opportunity to pursue my doctorate at Caltech but turned down the offer for personal reasons. Professor Middlebrook supported my decision and told me I could come back anytime. I decided to go into industry, and what I learned at Caltech and from him has helped me succeed.”
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles
Caltech adviser: Gerry Neugebauer
“Gerry Neugebauer was the best mentor one could possibly hope for. I learned from him what it means to be a scientist: how to ask good scientific questions, how to design an experiment that can actually answer the question you’ve asked, and the importance of a completely rigorous analysis and communicating clearly what you have done. He held himself and everyone around him to incredibly high standards and was absolutely devoted to the pure pursuit of science.”
Professor Emeritus, University of Florida College of Medicine
Donor of Caltech’s Laipis-Vinograd Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Caltech thesis adviser: Jerome Vinograd
“I was lucky when I walked into Professor Vinograd’s lab one summer asking about undergrad research projects. He had some confusing results studying polyoma virus DNA, and he asked me to image various DNA samples using an electron microscope. The results were surprising and helped him interpret his other data. My images became a part of his influential paper describing supercoiled DNA in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and he included me as an author. The paper became one of the most quoted of the year. The next two summers in his lab helped me decide my future path. I can’t think of a better career than being a university professor and doing research—there isn’t a more interesting way to spend your life.”
The Adventure Continues
You may have heard of Carver Mead. But even if you haven’t, your day-to-day world is shaped by technologies that can be traced back to him and his protégés at Caltech. Such as the device you’re using to read this story.

Carver Mead (BS ’56, MS ’57, PhD ’60)—the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Emeritus—is a forefather of the information age and a self-proclaimed Caltech lifer. He pursues his curiosity and follows his hunches into unknown scientific territory. Again and again, his ideas have evolved from unorthodox to ubiquitous, changing how we live our lives.
Above, a 1971 photo of Mead (far right) with students

For instance, it was Mead who asked how many transistors could fit on one microchip. It turns out the number is nearly infinite—and Mead later delivered on that observation by introducing the method for chip design that led to the smaller, faster devices you use every day.
Once satisfied with his headway in one direction, Mead would set off on a new adventure. So the students he has mentored are as important as the breakthroughs he has created. After he leads them into new terrain and new ways of thinking, he relies on his students to carry on the work and open up their own fields of discovery.
Above, Mead in 1980 designing an integrated circuit

A group of his former students joined together in 2014 to establish the Carver Mead New Adventures Fund at Caltech. In the spirit of Mead’s approach, this endowment provides seed funding in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science for researchers with interesting—perhaps even “crazy”—ideas. Nearly 200 people, about half of whom studied with Mead, have added to the fund, which currently totals more than $2.5 million and is growing.
Already the New Adventures Fund has seeded an interdisciplinary computer science initiative called Caltech Computes, research groups in applied mathematics and machine learning, and a program that supplies all Caltech electrical engineering undergraduates with “hacker kits” to help them get to work right away inventing new devices.
In this story, some of Mead’s protégés who were instrumental in establishing the New Adventures Fund share their thoughts about his influence, marking just a few milestones in his formidable career.
Above, a 1976 photo of Mead in his office
1960s: Starting with the basics

Mead studied how transistors do what they do, proceeding from the most fundamental level—the quantum behavior of electrons. What he learned led him to invent a cornerstone of wireless communication: the gallium-arsenide transistor in your smartphone. More important, Mead chased the question of exactly how small electronics could get. His work produced the basis for Moore’s law, a prediction made in 1965 by close friend and fellow Caltech alumnus Gordon Moore (PhD ’54), who credits Mead with coining the name. This vision of exponential progress has helped drive the ongoing explosion in technology during our lifetimes.
Above, Mead as pictured in the 1965 edition of Caltech’s student yearbook, Big T
“As a senior, I had a tough time in his course on circuits—which pushed from analysis to synthesis—and dropped it for the sake of my GPA. When I returned for my master’s, Carver ‘punished’ me by making me grade that same class. So I learned synthesis. At the time, I didn’t realize that Carver had changed my life, but I found my career in creating things that didn’t exist before, and you absolutely have to have synthesis to do that.”
Charlie Trimble (BS ’63, MS ’64)
Caltech trustee, founder and former CEO of Trimble Navigation, and pioneer of GPS technology
Above, photo from the 1963 Big T

“At Carver’s 80th birthday party I joked that I didn’t think I could have found a better employment agent. Via Gordon Moore, he facilitated my entire career. My technical experience with Carver led to the discovery and a patent for an aluminum-silicon Schottky diode for use in integrated circuits. At Intel I used this to develop the process for our first product.”
Ted Jenkins (BS ’65, MS ’66)
Caltech trustee and former vice president at Intel
Above, a 1969 photo showing Jenkins in an Intel lab where he worked on LEDs in collaboration with Mead and others
“Carver’s curiosity is immense. He has a tremendous ability to see things, explain things, and just explore. When I was at Intel, Carver would visit and come in with 50 new ideas—more than we knew what to do with. Once he figures something out, he moves on to the next fundamental question and leaves the rest of us kind of wondering, ‘Okay, I don’t know what just happened.’”
Gerry Parker (BS ’65, MS ’66, PhD ’70)
Caltech Distinguished Alumnus Award honoree and former senior vice president at Intel
Above, photo from the 1965 Big T
1970s–early 1980s: Designing the future

Mead did more than invent a new model for automated computer chip design—he co-wrote the book on it and helped teach a generation of creators how to use it. Mead and his collaborators unlocked a new level of intricacy in semiconductor design and untethered it from manufacturing. Computer chips became increasingly small and fast, complicated and customized, reliable and inexpensive. Technology moved to the center of culture. Today, Mead’s breakthrough is baked into everything from the workings of the Internet itself to the unseen computers that make your laundry machine more efficient and your car safer.
Above, a 1972 image of Mead and students from his microelectronics course working on integrated-circuit design
“If there’s one person who exemplifies Caltech, it’s Carver Mead: curiosity, integrity, intensity, the focus on what’s most fundamental. Invention and reinvention. Carver would say, ‘I don’t want to compete with my students.’ So he went off and did something else again and again. We wanted to keep that tradition of giving Caltech faculty and students the opportunity to explore and see if there’s something there.”
Phil Neches (BS ’73, MS ’77, PhD ’83)
Caltech trustee and founder of Teradata

“Carver taught us that in the beginning of any breakthrough, you never know when you’re going to see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re stuck in a rut. That’s when he says you have to stick to your own conviction. That opened my mind, and it’s served me well all through life.”
Marina Chen (MS ’80, PhD ’83)
Former professor and chair of computer science at Boston University
Above, Chen (right) on commencement day with her then-housemate, geophysics graduate Hsui-Lin Winkler (née Liu, PhD ’83), who is now a member of the computer science faculty at Pace University

“I feel fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time at Caltech with Carver, the visionary leader and mentor for the whole industry. Our work laid out the foundation to unleash the creativity of every individual. It’s been very significant for my own career designing PCs, smartphones, and consumer devices.”
Tzumu Lin (MS ’81, PhD ’85)
Senior vice president at VIA Technologies Inc.
Above, Lin (far right) on commencement day with Mead (center) and fellow Mead protégé Telle Whitney (MS ’81, PhD ’85), now CEO and president of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
1980s–1990s: Making computers more human

Mead marveled at the brain—its adaptability, its resilience to injury, and its ability to process information in parallel. He used the brain and our senses as models in search of a leap in electronics design. Joining forces with a new Caltech professor, John Hopfield, and a longtime friend and source of inspiration, Richard Feynman, Mead helped start a new Computation and Neural Systems program at Caltech, where computer science intermingled with neuroscience and physics. Mead’s collaboration with Hopfield foreshadowed the neural networks that kick in every time you use Google. From Mead’s work simulating the senses grew companies that have produced powerful digital hearing aids, sensitive digital camera technology, and the tech behind the touch screen that you might be using right now on your phone or your tablet.
Above, an image of a silicon cochlea chip designed to simulate the sense of hearing
“Joining Carver’s research group was life changing. He taught me how to think—how to understand the core of the problem first, rather than ‘following the lemmings’ in the field who focused on incremental improvements on prior research paths. This approach to problem solving—in both technical and non-technical areas—has enabled me to have a very rewarding career and allowed me to pursue interests in multiple industries and across widely varying roles.”
Lounette Dyer (MS ’87, PhD ’91)
Caltech trustee, entrepreneur, and renewable energy consultant
2000s: Rethinking physics

Setting out to find a better way to teach fundamental physics, Mead arrived at a whole new way to understand physics. His theories connect electromagnetism directly to the underlying quantum behavior of matter—which may lead to a refinement of Einstein’s theory of general relativity that simplifies explanations and unifies various fields of study. Looking ahead, do not be surprised if Mead’s approach ends up influencing how your children, and their children, learn science.
Above, a 2002 photo of Mead by Norman Seeff
Training Ground
Newly minted PhDs Jessica Hinojosa and Abigail “Abby” Crites (BS ’06) are traveling to far-flung corners of the world to advance their research and learning how to be leaders in their fields—from running a laboratory to searching for new questions to explore.
In addition to pursuing their investigations, Hinojosa and Crites are committed to helping future generations of scientists. If they’re not offering guidance to Caltech students in the lab or dispensing advice at the campus’s popular Red Door Café, you might find Hinojosa, a geologist, and Crites, an experimental physicist, in Pasadena’s public schools, inspiring children to see themselves as scientists.
It helps that Caltech donors Foster and Coco Stanback and the W. M. Keck Foundation understand the importance of helping early-career scientists. Such generosity has enabled Hinojosa and Crites to receive postdoctoral fellowship support, giving them greater flexibility to pursue their scientific passions—inside and outside of the lab.

Caltech postdoctoral scholars Jessica Hinojosa (left) and Abigail “Abby” Crites (right)
Abigail “Abby” Crites

Abby Crites credits her undergraduate success to her Caltech mentor, the late physicist Andrew Lange, who urged her to persevere when she initially found Caltech challenging. With Lange’s encouragement, she not only persevered but thrived, joining him and his research group to investigate the cosmic microwave background—radiation left over from the Big Bang.
After graduating from Caltech, Crites completed her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. Her research entailed three trips to Antarctica, where she worked on a new polarization-sensitive camera at the South Pole Telescope, an instrument designed to investigate the nature of the Big Bang. The appeal of building and enhancing instruments brought her back to Caltech. First as a W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies Postdoctoral Fellow and later as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics, Crites is continuing to probe the origins of the universe.
Crites is just as passionate about mentoring as she is about her research and taps into her experiences as a student to help others. Today, she guides physics students in the lab and undergrads in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program. An advocate for bringing people from diverse backgrounds into science, Crites also lends support for female scientists at Caltech.
Inspired by Lange and her Caltech experience, Crites offers her mentees her knowledge as well as her empathy.
“It just feels natural for me to help those who are just a few steps behind me in their science careers,” she says.
Jessica Hinojosa

Jessica Hinojosa and Siwen Wang both search for clues in nature to understand climate conditions of the past as scholars in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Hinojosa, a GPS Chair’s Postdoctoral Scholar who studies sedimentary leaf waxes from lakes in New Zealand, was eager to take on more responsibility when Alex Sessions, professor of geobiology, encouraged her to mentor Wang. At the time, Wang was a first-year graduate student at Caltech who was focused on environmental science and engineering.
Teaching is second nature for Hinojosa, who grew up in a family of educators. During her undergraduate studies at Stanford University, her graduate work at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and her time as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, Hinojosa has volunteered as a mentor and tutor to students of all ages. For Wang, Hinojosa supplied lab samples and, along with Sessions’s lab manager, helped Wang use laboratory equipment and interpret her results.
Impressed with Wang’s research, Hinojosa invited her to be a collaborator on a project that explores how climate changed in the Southern Hemisphere near the close of the Ice Age. Along with two New Zealand researchers, the pair hope to publish their findings.
“The opportunity to help Siwen, further my research, and work on my leadership skills—while still having Alex there to guide me—was invaluable for me as a postdoc,” says Hinojosa, who is also a fellow of the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate. “It was like having training wheels on.”
A Head for Math, a Heart for Caltech
An early fascination with mathematics led Sam Barnett (BS ’12) to two unexpected roles: CEO and neuroscience student. At 27, he leads SBB Research Group—an investment firm near Chicago—and is a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University studying the intersection of neuroscience, computation, and marketing. In both roles, he is able to do what he enjoys most—play with large sets of data.
Barnett credits the Caltech community, especially his faculty mentors, for encouraging his curiosity and building his ambitions.

Sam Barnett (BS ’12)
We’ve heard that the early days of SBB Research Group began in your room at Lloyd House. Tell us more.
During my sophomore year, I started doing independent research with Jaksa Cvitanic [Caltech’s Richard N. Merkin Professor of Mathematical Finance] and Peter Bossaerts [visiting associate in finance]. They always made time to discuss papers and ideas with me. This work led me to develop an algorithm for predicting patterns in the stock market.
I didn’t set out to invest other people’s money or start a company, but Jaksa suggested that I approach it as an experiment—and that resonated with me. I enjoy taking the theoretical and putting it into practice.
Jaksa introduced me to my first investor, and the summer after my sophomore year I began managing $2 million. I discovered that I loved the experiment. I launched SBB Research Group the following year and started looking for my first employee.
Today, I have a team of 18 of some of the most talented and dedicated people that I know, and we’re trusted with over $200 million. I’m always looking for ways to replicate Caltech’s environment within my team. When we hire people we emphasize finding people with strong curiosity and a passion to learn more than the skills they have. A lot of times that means we attract people from different disciplines who have never been in finance.
What gave you the confidence to embark on this venture at such young age?
The research done at Caltech borders on the impossible. When you’re in an environment where professors are working toward solving the global energy crisis and curing cancer, it doesn’t seem so crazy to start a business as an undergrad. I also was having a lot of fun, and I kept approaching it as an experiment that I was scaling step by step.
You’ve already used your early success to support the Institute by donating to the Caltech Robotics Team. Why do you choose to give back to Caltech in this way?
The opportunity to help other people work on an interesting project and to remain part of Caltech’s culture of discovery was very rewarding to me. In many ways, I was just like the members of the Robotics Team when I was at Caltech. We share a curiosity to learn and try new things. Whereas I could do most of my research on a computer and collect data from the Internet, the Robotics Team needed physical supplies that required significant investment. It was an easy check to write, and I am proud to support them every year.
Let’s talk more about your Caltech mentors. How have they played a role in your academic and professional pursuits?
Caltech is a place filled with mentors. I think the way the faculty look at it, they’re training their future colleagues, not teaching recent high school graduates. Jaksa was extremely encouraging and supportive of the idea that I could be both a student and a hedge fund manager. My applied math adviser, Niles Pierce [professor of applied and computational mathematics and bioengineering], sets an amazing example for any researcher who wants to apply mathematics to other fields—he applies computation to cancer.
After graduating from Caltech, I pursued a PhD in neuroscience at Northwestern University. My thesis adviser, Moran Cerf (PhD ’09), got his doctorate at Caltech and you can tell he is a Techer because of how supportive he is of my interdisciplinary training. He is also extremely creative, and he is always challenging me to do the seemingly impossible. Since I’m interested in applying theoretical concepts in the real world, a lot of my neuroscience experiments are in the field—at movie theaters, football stadiums, political debates—which lets us capture natural brain responses from people. Moran encourages me to try these different types of experiments and is very excited about our work together.
And, in many ways, Caltech students are mentors to each other. My roommate, Riley Patterson, is a very gifted computer scientist, and he inspired me to take my first programming class at Caltech. Then, once I was writing lots of code, he encouraged me to make my code more efficient. And many other classmates suggested different classes to take or papers to read. The entire environment at Caltech is one of continuous learning and improvement.
The mentors you’ve mentioned appear to share a common trait: high expectations.
Yes. I think having mentors expect a lot from you is a really good thing. I always felt it was a vote of confidence rather than added pressure.
I keep in touch with my Caltech mentors even years after being a student there. They’re kind enough to read drafts of my research papers, and I try to visit them whenever I’m in town. They really want the best for me and I continue to feel their support.
Now that you’re a graduate student who is teaching courses and working with students, do you have a different understanding of the role of a mentor?
First of all, these relationships are individually defined. But I’m always learning from my students just as much as they’re learning from me. I have taught a lot at Northwestern—from finance to neuroscience—and people have different ways of understanding information. I am challenged to explore new ways to explain concepts.
And the more I pursue research and work with my mentees, the more I value how much my Caltech mentors made the journey of research and learning fun. Trying to find new ways to interpret data is challenging, and often you’ll end up with more questions than answers. Even the most serious Caltech professors had a sense of humor and encouraged us to embrace the mysteries of science and math. If I can be half as good a mentor as the ones I had from Caltech, then my students and employees will be very lucky.
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- How was your Caltech experience shaped by a mentor?