A $1 Million Commitment from the W. M. Keck Foundation Fills Funding Gap

With $1 million in support from the W. M. Keck Foundation, five early-career Caltech faculty and their graduate students will continue to pursue fundamental questions at the frontiers of their fields. The support is made possible through the Keck Scholar-Fellow Bridge Initiative, part of the Foundation's larger effort to power basic research and innovation amid uncertainty in other forms of traditional funding.

The Caltech recipients are:

• H. Jane Bae, assistant professor of aerospace and Susan Wu Scholar, and graduate student Mickey Leung. Their project Scientific Artificial Intelligence leverages Bae's machine learning framework to determine optimal sensor placement for highly chaotic dynamical systems. One potential application is improving aircraft stability by helping wings respond more effectively to periodic wind gusts.
• Shasha Chong, assistant professor of chemistry and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, and graduate student Michael Di Martino. Their project Decoding the Composition of Biomolecular Condensates in Live Human Cells uses a new method that the Chong lab developed, Phase‑separation‑induced Interactome Detection (PhaseID). This powerful tool can help elucidate how intrinsically disordered proteins function in cells, leading to a deeper understanding of numerous cellular processes and diseases.
• Nicholas R. Hutzler, professor of physics, and graduate student Yuxi Yang. Their work, Instrument to Study Exotic Nuclei at Caltech, endeavors to build a more advanced radioactive molecule instrument to study rare, short-lived, and unstable exotic nuclei. The Hutzler lab already has demonstrated the ability to synthesize, cool, and precisely study these molecules, helping to advance the field of precision measurement science.
• Smruthi Karthikeyan, Gordon and Carol Treweek Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and William H. Hurt Scholar, and graduate student Grace Solini. The pair's research, Unraveling the Multiscale Mechanisms Driving the Emergence and Spread of Antibiotic Resistance in Complex Microbiomes, investigates the antibiotic resistance development and acquisition mechanisms in complex microbiomes like the gut. New tools will probe in-situ microbial interactions, metabolic activity, and horizontal gene transfer, which play a key role in resistance development and spread.
• Julia Tejada, assistant professor of geobiology and William H. Hurt Scholar, and graduate student Andres Rodriguez. Tracing the Evolutionary Chemistry of Herbivory blends laboratory and field research to uncover the biochemical and evolutionary drivers of herbivory (feeding on plants) and antiherbivory (plant defense) in the Amazon rainforest. By developing new isotopic tools, Tejada and Rodriguez will trace biochemical signatures across living and extinct organisms, providing insights as to how Earth continues to evolve.

A Partnership Spanning Nearly a Century

Launched last year, the Keck Scholar-Fellow Bridge Initiative for California institutions marks a 50 percent increase in the Foundation's annual commitment to basic research. Funds will support doctoral student stipends and tuition for a period of two and a half years.

At Caltech, the investment builds on a longstanding and transformative partnership between Caltech and the Keck Foundation to advance science. In the 1930s, William Myron Keck sought guidance from Caltech faculty on how to apply novel geophysics techniques to oil exploration. In 1959, the Foundation gave its first gift to Caltech: underwriting some of the construction costs of the W. M. Keck Engineering Laboratories.

Today, the Keck legacy can be seen and felt throughout campus and beyond. Its contributions range from the twin Keck telescopes of the W.M. Keck Observatory and the research groups that have received Foundation grants to perform high-risk, high-reward research to funding that launched innovative programs such as the Keck Institute for Space Studies and the creation of a professorship that honored the internationally renowned physicist Edward C. Stone.

"Caltech and the W. M. Keck Foundation share a fundamental belief in the importance of fostering transformative research for the greater good," says Provost David Tirrell, the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering who is also the holder of the Carl and Shirley Larson Provostial Chair. "The Foundation's longtime commitment to investing in research at its earliest stages has made a significant impact on innovation and discovery at Caltech, and we are especially grateful to the Foundation for supporting our early-career colleagues at a time of unusual uncertainty in the American academic community."

A Biochemical Arms Race and the Fight for Survival

Keck Scholar Julia Tejada's research represents a new frontier in paleontology. By incorporating methods and tools in geology, biology, and chemistry, she is offering a more precise depiction of ancient animals' diets. What they did or did not eat millions of years ago offers insights into their habitats, climates, and evolution. This information can also illuminate how Earth's ecosystem will continue to evolve.

Recently, the Tejada lab discovered the complex relationship between plants and herbivores by studying the nitrogen isotope ratio in threonine (Thr), an essential amino acid that animals acquire through consumption. Her findings identify Thr as a marker for herbivory, one that captures the interplay between intestinal nitrogen processing and microbial metabolism, as both are shaped by plant chemistry. Tejada describes this occurrence as a "biochemical arms race recognizable in isotopic form."

Tejada and Keck Fellow Andres Rodriguez seek to uncover the effects of herbivory and antiherbivory activity, including what it means for the type of plants herbivores ate and how extinct animals consumed their food. Rodriguez's skill in silencing genes through RNA interference techniques has been crucial for the lab, Tejada says.

"Andres came in with exactly the right background in molecular biology to design and carry out these experiments," Tejada says. "His work is helping us move from observational patterns to a mechanistic understanding of the underlying biochemistry."

Financial assistance to fund Rodriguez's position will help Tejada as she navigates an uncertain federal funding climate.

"This kind of uncertainty has real consequences," Tejada says. "It makes it much harder to take scientific risks, especially for early-career researchers. When timelines and evaluation processes become unpredictable, there is a strong incentive to default to safer, more incremental projects rather than pursuing more ambitious, higher-risk ideas."

Uncovering the Big Mysteries of the Universe, One Exotic Nucleus at a Time

In the lab of Keck Scholar Nick Hutzler, members are deploying an instrument the size of a mini-fridge that is leading the world in revealing the properties of exotic nuclei.

These odd, pear-shaped nuclei are unstable due to their extremely imbalanced proton-to-neutron ratio, are radioactive, and have brief lifespans. Yet, their existence can help us illuminate the beginning of the universe as well as explore the limits of the periodic table. And as experimentalists like Hutzler continue to interrogate rare nuclei, fields such as nuclear science and quantum computing may benefit from his findings.

"This is essentially an unexplored frontier in precision measurement science that people have wanted to study for a very long time," Hutzler says. "Early on, my team and I decided to take a quantum science approach, instead of a big particle physics approach, and that decision has paid off."

Building on their initial success, Hutzler, Keck Fellow Yuxi Yang, and their fellow lab members are working toward a second-generation tabletop apparatus. With enhanced ability to conduct laser cooling and trapping, Hutzler aims to perform more precise measurements of exotic nuclei and discover new fundamental particles and forces.

Like Tejada, Hutzler has been affected by recent funding reductions, including a 25 percent cut to Hutzler's grant that was earmarked for Yang. A third-year graduate student, Yang has quickly become a leader in the six-member lab, Hutzler says. As the only lab in the world currently capable of performing these measurements, the potential loss of a scientist or reallocation of resources could have affected the group's momentum, he adds.

"Yuxi has made a huge amount of progress in the lab," Hutzler says. "The fact that the Keck Foundation stepped in to help someone who had lost their funding and provide full financial support is deeply appreciated."

About the W. M. Keck Foundation

The W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations, the W. M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering and medical research. The Foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health and community service projects.