Groundbreaking science and engineering start with people. In this issue of our campaign e-magazine, you will meet bioinspired engineers, earthquake modelers, sustainability scientists, discipline-crossing undergraduates, and donors who propel discovery at Caltech.
On the cover: Conversations spark creativity and collaborations at Red Door Marketplace in Caltech’s Hameetman Center, named for trustee Fred Hameetman (BS ’62) and his wife, Joyce.
The biomechanical fundamentals of flight, new ways to pinpoint brain cells that are linked to disease, and the fate of our private data: These are just a few areas where Caltech’s Break Through campaign fuels groundbreaking research.
Resnick Fellow Kyle Virgil aims to create a more sustainable future. Trustee Stewart Resnick and his wife, Lynda, founders of The Wonderful Company, are helping to make this work possible. In September 2019, they increased their investment in Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute with a new commitment of $750 million.
Caltech’s legacy is built on 100-plus years of achievement by visionary researchers and their supporters. During Break Through: The Caltech Campaign, hundreds of donors have made gifts in honor of Caltech luminaries to celebrate the Institute’s past and help secure a prosperous future.
At the interface of computer science (CS) and other fields (X), Caltech researchers are getting together to radically accelerate discovery.
CS + Astronomy, Civil Engineering, Medicine, Seismology …
Assistant Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering; Rosenberg Scholar
From Fruit Flies to Prosthetics
The human brain contains about 80 billion neurons. The fruit fly’s brain has just 200,000, yet that is enough to control the complex motions required for flight. In Michael Dickinson’s lab, graduate student Alysha de Souza gives flies a genetically encoded marker that causes muscles to light up when they activate. In this way, she can study which muscles fire and when during flight, and which neurons control this process. “We can characterize specific flight motifs, meaning clusters of motor neurons and muscles that are activated consistently,” she says.
De Souza is building a model of flight that could have implications far beyond increasing our understanding of the fruit fly. “We’re able to look at the mechanisms that underlie this transformation from sensory input to motor output,” she says. “Because of the numerical simplicity of the fruit fly, we can really see how the mechanics work, and we can apply that knowledge to other systems.” A deep understanding of flight biomechanics, for example, could help engineers improve the design of prosthetic devices for humans who have lost mobility.
De Souza has made contacts across campus and around the world thanks in part to support from the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech. That funding allowed her to attend conferences where she met other scientists in the field with whom she now collaborates on flight research.
Alysha de Souza is a member of the laboratory led by Michael H. Dickinson, Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering and Aeronautics. The lab is affiliated with the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech and Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST), both of which were established with funding from the Break Through campaign.
***
A Better Way to Pinpoint Brain Cells
Caltech’s Yuki Oka developed Cell-SELECT (short for Cell-type control via Splice-capture of Expressed Locus Effector by CRISPR Targeting), a new technique to target and manipulate specific types of neurons in the brain without affecting others. This approach could lead to effective and safe treatments for neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. The Oka lab has proven the concept by using viruses to deliver DNA constructs to distinct brain targets. “We’ve shown that this process can be done in a very efficient way, much more efficient than any other existing technique,” Oka says.
Biomedical studies with enormous potential—such as this one—often face funding roadblocks, though, because researchers must demonstrate early results in order to secure large federal research grants. That’s where campaign support comes in. In 2019, Oka received funds from the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative and the Associates Provost’s Discretionary Fund created by Caltech Associates members Kim and Ginger Caldwell. “These Caltech funding mechanisms are much quicker, and they fund challenging work that’s high-risk, high-return,” Oka says. “It helps us show that this research is the real thing and that we can take it to the next step.”
Yuki Oka is an assistant professor of biology and a Chen Scholar whose work is part of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.
***
What We Don’t Know about Our Own Data
The influx of big data about human health informs new methods for diagnosis and treatment. But the data revolution has come with downsides for health care, too. When people click on a link to obtain information about a certain disease, for example, they sometimes reveal health data that should remain private. Additionally, medical data sets drawn from incomplete samples of the population can be skewed toward a prevalent race or gender, leading to biased findings or treatments.
Senior Rona Yu, whose future plans include medical school, came to Caltech with the goal of using computer science to understand the technology at the root of these issues. “After I complete my MD, I hope to supplement clinical practice with research that applies my course specialization in machine learning and data science to medical problems,” she says. “Ultimately, I aspire to understand the unintended consequences surrounding the application of novel technologies in the clinical workflow, and how we can address those consequences through public policies.”
Yu designed her own cross-disciplinary course of study, focused on data and privacy. She credits scholarship support for bringing her to Caltech and providing such an opportunity. “The freedom to explore a wide variety of subjects has allowed me to take advantage of Caltech’s uniquely interdisciplinary community through projects ranging from applied physics to public policy to neuroscience,” she says. “This has helped me target the types of questions I get most excited about and meet incredibly successful and supportive mentors.”
Rona Yu (Caltech class of 2020) is a computer science major who received support from the John and Ursula Kanel Charitable Foundation Scholarship Fund and the Michael Mathes Endowed Scholarship Fund.
Receive The Caltech Effect and the Caltech magazine newsletter
