Caltech

2009 at Caltech: Looking Back (Part 1)

Happy Break!

Ahhh, I've had a busy long weekend. Between Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and a day trip to Atlantic City with my family, the last thing on my mind has been school and schoolwork. But now that things have calmed down before ringing in the New Year, I figured now is as good a time as any to think about what has happened in this year of my life. It's the last full year that I'll be a student at Caltech! Never thought of it like that before, but now I'm getting a bit anxious about graduation in 6 months! So here are some of my highlights from this year:

Rose Parade: I rang in the New Year in Pasadena! My family and I wanted to see the Rose Parade, since I go to school just around the corner! So we talked to my friend, Diane, who has lived in Pasadena all of her life, and got our seats for the parade. It was so exciting to be in such a familiar place, but see it in a whole new light.

Wow, I remember when 2009 sounded weird. How 'bout 2010?! 

We were so close! And this float's so fun!

If you know "Sex and the City", you'll know who this is! Cynthia Nixon AKA: Miranda 

Ski Trip: My House (and some others at Tech, too!) go on an annual Ski Trip. Ours is to Mammoth Lakes, about 6 hours away. What a difference from sunny SoCal! I love to ski, so I'm glad I have the opportunity to ski with my Caltech friends! Look at us, all bundled up :).

At the top of the mountain. It's so steep going down!

After a long day on the slopes, it's so nice to go back to a warm fireplace in the cabin. 

My freshman year roommate, Brian, and I ready to ski down the slopes!

Go Karts: Another House event, this was another fun one! We drove to a local Go Karts place, and I had a BLAST showing off my NJ driving skills to my friends and beating them down in our races!

VROOM VROOM!! 

Between rides, waiting for me to DESTROY them on the track! 

Dim Sum: Pasadena is conveniently located near some hot spots for Asian food. As a food reviewer, this is of course very exciting to me, so I definitely was pumped up for my friend's birthday, when we brought her to a local Dim Sum restaurant! Delicious!

Since I don't know what's good, I relied on Brian and Lisa to order for the table!

Brian and Esther going in for a bite of our delicious spread! 

Shopping!: One day, Dannah and I decided to take a Saturday off, and took the express bus (for $1.25 each way!) for 30 minutes to Glendale, to have an afternoon of shopping. Between the Glendale Galleria and The Americana At Brand, it was a great (and not too expensive) day!

The Americana has a beautiful fountain display in the center of the outdoor shopping area! 

Taking a break from our heavy shopping!

Well, I'm already having fun remembering all that happened so far! But...I'll save the rest for another time, and another post. Till then!

Christmas Card Lane

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

One of the things my family takes for granted here in SD during the holidays is the popular Christmas Card Lane. We live less than a mile away---and have to drive right past it to get out of our neighborhood...so we see it everyday, every holiday season..so to us, it's nothing super extraordinary anymore. But for you all who aren't from here...:)

Christmas Card Lane is a holiday light display that snakes through a bunch of residential neighborhoods in Rancho Penasquitos in SD. People come from all over SD county (and out of town too!) to walk the streets and see the beautifully decorated houses with large (plywood) Christmas cards on every front lawn. It is really a spectacular sight to see...There are many people walking the streets, caroling, and even horse drawn carriages that are brought out at night.

So if you're ever in SD during the holiday season...definitely see it---it's up usually right after Thanksgiving until New Year's!

Here are some pics of some of the houses (good quality ones are from other ppl's Flicker albums--blurry ones are from mine....I was riding in the car!)



 

Happy Holidays!

Hello! ,

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday break and having a chance to relax.  From watching the news on TV and online, it looks like much of the country is going to have a white and cold Christmas.  Here in Pasadena, it will be a typical SoCal winter day, about 65 degrees, with a lot of sun and a few clouds.

For those of you who will be applying Regular Decision, please remember that the deadline is January 4, 2010.  The Admissions Office will be closed beginning @ 12 noon today (December 24) and will reopen on Monday, January 4 @ 8 a.m.  If you have any questions regarding the application process, please go on to our website www.admissions.caltech.edu where we have posted our most recent webinar session, held on December 21, entitled "Application Axioms".  This session covered the application process in detail.  Also, we will be monitoring our e-mail account, so if you do have questions, please send them to [email protected] and a staff person will get back to you.

Finally, for those of you who applied Early Action, making the final decsisions was tough.  We had 25% more applicants this year and the pool was very impressive.  For those of you who were admitted, congratulations!  For those of you who were held for Regular Decision, the admissions committee looks forward to seeing you in the next round.  And for those who we could not continue with the process, I do want to let you know that all of you are excellent students.  While this may not satisfy a lot of you, please know that the admissions committee was extemely impressed with the quality of EA applicants this year. You and your parents should be very proud of your many accomplishments

Well, that's about it for 2009.  I'm looking foward to the start of a new decade!  See you next year!!

Ray

Celebrating the Holidays at Tech

Hi Everyone!

I am really enjoying my well-deserved break after term ended....San Diego is absolutely GORGEOUS during the wintertime (as always!). There is definitely no snow, but there is a change in the winds and it gets a bit chilly at night. This past week and weekend, I've been just hanging out with the family, doing some shopping, and enjoying all the downtime.

I wanted to take this post to reminisce about the past holiday seasons I've spent with my friends at Tech right before we go off to break. Andrew threw this small celebration our Sophomore year... a Christmas party with a secret Santa gift exchange and lots of holiday treats!! That was so much fun...and really got me in the holiday spirit!

Here are some pictures----(We all look so YOUNG!)

Andrew created such a yummy spread!

Present time!!----my favorite :)

Everyone SQUEEZE IN!

Ladies love Santa....lol

Anyway...I hope you all are enjoying your holiday season with your families and staying warm no matter what part of the country you're in. And Andrew....(all the way in NJ) I miss you best friend! Hope you have a Very Merry Christmas with your family!

Saying Bye to DC

On our last morning in DC we met Michael Ledford, the lobbyist for Caltech, right after breakfast. Unfortunately some of our group members had to leave early, and so they missed the talk. It was interesting talking with Michael, learning the ins and outs of his lobbying. He is a very practical person and explained his perspective on how scientists differ from policy makers. Michael's rational way of thinking definitely made his talk stand out, despite being the last one of our trip.

Afterward, we were supposed to go on our Super Shuttle to fly back to LA. However, the Super Shuttle was actually booked for an hour later. I finally had the chance to visit the Folger Shakespeare Library! (just down the street from the Hostel).

To put it simply, it was an absolutely AMAZING experience. Right when we walked in, the docents offered us a tour, customizable to our limited time frame. Our lovely docent explained the origins of the library inside the Elizabethan style theatre, where the stage was set up for a later performance. She showed us the reading room, the only location where scholars could read the old books when removed from their protective vaults. Particularly interesting was the current exhibit on how Renaissance Europe viewed the Chinese. I had just finished a class in Chinese Art and a class on Shakespeare's tragedies the past term, so this exhibit was an intersection of my two classes! The highlight of the tour was a copy of one of Shakespeare's first folios. In case you don't know, the folios are the first publications of all of Shakespeare's plays in print. Prior to the folios, all we had were the quartos of individual plays or the memories of the actors of the plays. The folios were the precursors to today's "Complete Works of William Shakespeare" that seem ubiquitous in any bookstore (and on my bookshelf). Seeing the folio, even if it was behind a display case, was wonderful.

After the library, we got into the Super Shuttle and headed home. We were actually very lucky to fly out when we did. As you all probably know, the Northeast is currently blanketed in snow! So I just missed seeing snowfall for the first time, which is probably good anyway. Who knows when we would've been able to fly out?! Nevertheless, I am glad that I finally got to spend some time in our nation's capitol. Not only touring the major memorials and tourist attractions, but also learning so much about science policy.

So, my favorite touristy things? WWII Memorial, National Art Galleries, and Folger Shakespeare Library.

Favorite science policy educational talks? Definitely NAS and NIH

Biggest regret? Not making it to Vietnam Memorial or Jefferson Memorial, and not having more than 20 minutes to spend in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Thanks for following our blog!

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight

Two bloggers in D.C.!

Sarah rushed over right before we left on our shuttle to the airport, and I'm so glad we got to see her for a bit. Am also thankful that our flights left D.C. on Friday night, because the huge snowstorm that grounded all the planes hit the East Coast on Saturday. Hope all of you on the other coast are staying safe!

After arriving at home and sleeping for a consecutive 14 hours, I'm feeling much more refreshed, but also a bit sad that the week in D.C. has ended. For the photographer in me, the area is absolutely beautiful and I would love to visit again in the future. And as a scientist, I've learned much more information about the regulation and government policies behind the work that we're doing - and that there is a different field of science that we can explore beyond research in graduate school or elsewhere. Walking in a science wonderland has been amazing, but coming home is very much needed.

Now to sort through the hundreds of pictures I've taken...

Relaxing...and Shoveling

Hello, there, from chilly, snowed-in NJ!

If you are in the northeast, you're probably snowed in right now. If you're not...well, then you're probably warmer than I am right now! I'm enjoying the beginning of my break. What have I been doing? RELAXING! After such a busy term and all, Caltech students really enjoy the breaks so they can spend time with high school friends and family over the Holidays. How have I been relaxing? Well, I LOVE Christmas, so I have been busy baking Christmas cookies for my family's Christmas Eve celebration on Thursday! Essentially all of Saturday was spent baking, listening to Christmas music, and watching the snow fall. Such a perfect day!

The day ended with a snowed-in movie night with my parents. We set up a fire in the fireplace, lit up the tree, and popped in my favorite Christmas movie of all time: "The Year Without a Santa Claus." Look it up here! Yes, its clay-mation, but it's SO fun! And it was a nice way to keep me warm on such a chilly night (I think it went down to 20 degrees or something!).

Staying warm by the fireplace! 

Settling in for the movie. Waiting for mom and dad! 

After a toasty night in, I awoke to so much snow around me! It was so beautiful and I was so excited...until my dad asked me to help him shovel. I couldn't say no so I bundled up in my ski pants, hat, and gloves and headed out into the cold!

That first powdery step is always the most fun!

The official Freddo snow report: 13-15" of fluffy powder! 

OK, fun time is over. Time to work! 

It's times like these when I miss the palm trees and warmth of SoCal. Though the snow is beautiful to look at...it's a pain to clean up!

Have a great Christmas (if you celebrate)! Otherwise, enjoy being home with your family! :)

So long, farewell, adieu to D.C.

Apologies to our dedicated readers for the delay of these posts! The internet connection was pretty shaky and I didn't know if things were loading on the server, because they certainly weren't loading on my laptop. I'm currently sitting at Dulles Airport, happily connected to their free wifi.

Where have we been? The comprehensive list is as follows: Wednesday was our free morning/noon, and many of us went to see the monuments and memorials. In the afternoon, we headed over to the Department of Energy to talk with Steve Koonin, who actually was at Caltech to give a talk earlier during this term. The National Academy of Sciences was next, and there were equations carved into the floor:

 

and where there was an amazing DNA staircase [extrapolate the double helix]...

 

and the equally amazing reflecting mirror.

 

Thursday was the busiest day, we woke up and had breakfast at 8 in order to get to NIH around 10:30. As Elaine wrote earlier, we met with Jim Battey who spoke to us about stem cell research and policy.

Group picture in front of the Supreme Court

 

The National Institutes of Health

After the NIH, we took the metro to the Metro Center for lunch, and then walked to AAAS for a meeting with Dan Poux and AAAS fellows who are Caltech alumni:

Off to the Pentagon! Five floors, five sections, five sides in a pentagon. Brilliant.

Dinner was on our own, so some of us ended up walking into Jaleo, an extremely popular Spanish restaurant and tapas bar. Might as well enjoy the last night in D.C., right?

 

Time to get daily exercise [as if we haven't walked enough over the past week already]!

We walked to the Jefferson Memorial over the Potomac River:

  

You can probably tell that I went very camera-happy on this trip...

The entire D.C. area is beautiful, and though the monuments trick you by being so huge that it seems that they're in line with each other and closer together than it seems, every trek was worth it.

As our Danish friends would say, farvel!

A Packed Day...

Firstly, pictures from yesterday:

 

In front of the capitol...

 Washington Memorial!

 A tree from the sculpture garden

 

With Jan Van Eyck's Annunciation
 
 
 Da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci

 

Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi
  

The Magna Carta!
 

Unfortunately, no time for tourism today! As soon as we finished breakfast we were out the door, headed to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There we met with Dr Battey, Vice Chair of NIH's stem cell task force. He went over the new stem cell policy under the Obama Administration and the regulations for derivation and use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). For those of you who are unfamiliar with stem cell research, here's a brief overview. Human embryonic stem cells are immortal cell lines derived from fertilized human eggs, now known as a zygote. At the stage when the zygote is still a mass of identical cells, known as a trophoblast, the cells are harvested and used to create cell lines for use in research. Stem cells are useful because of their ability to differentiate into any type of cell in the human body. Clearly, the methods of obtaining human stem cells have ethical concerns and are quite controversial, resulting in this hot debate in science policy.

It was particularly interesting when the conversation turned to induced pluripotent stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) were developed in 2007. Basically, an already differentiated cell from an adult human is injected with four genes with a virus. These four genes make the cell undifferentiate and become a stem cell again, which now has the ability to differentiate into one of many cell types. The methods for obtaining iPSCs are clearly much less ethically debatable than those for obtaining hESCs. However, iPSCs and hESCs have different capabilities and applications in research. 

The differences between the two cell types was something I never knew and I truly enjoyed the entire discussion. I've only gone over what I found most interesting here; I'm sure nobody's interested in the entirety of my barely legible notes.

Next was the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where we met with Daniel Poux. He explained some of the fellowships that AAAS provides in order to bridge science/technology and policy. We also got insight from some current fellows of the program: how they came to be involved in the program, what they've done so far, what they plan on doing afterward. It was great and we got information on many other science policy fellowships that we could explore after completing a PhD.

Today concluded with a visit to the Pentagon! This is the first time the DC Science Policy Trip has gone to the Pentagon, so it was an exciting experience. We got great views of the courtyard, saw Ground Zero Cafe, and were allowed to take pictures in front of a podium, with the Pentagon logo behind us. I think that's the one picture that everybody on the trip took. Inside the Pentagon we met with John Andelin, formerly with the Office of Technology Assessment, and Fay Peng, leader of the Biological Threat Reduction Program. Both were Caltech alumni and happy to share their experiences with us. We got a good overview of how each one ended up in Washington DC, their impressions of the system, and advice for getting into science policy.

Clearly, the entire day was full of educational fun! I may have focused on Battey's talk in this post, but that was just because it was the one that interested me the most. I have notes from all sessions, so if anybody's interested in hearing more about something, just leave a comment!

Tomorrow we look forward to meeting the Caltech lobbyist, Michael Ledford, and then flying home!

Not THAT Cold...

Looks like I won't be experiencing my first snowfall in DC. Most of yesterday was flying, which was about as interesting as a 5 hour flight can be. The thing that stands out most to me was the fact that there were no foot rests! Although we got to DC safe and sound, so I guess it's not too much of a loss.

We're staying in a Quaker hostel, and it's actually quite nice. We've rented out the entire house for these 4 days and there are enough beds, linens, bathrooms, plus a free breakfast every morning. The best part is that it's only about a 10 minute walk to the Capitol Building. We were able to go monument hopping immediately after the alumni dinner scheduled for Tuesday night.

It was fascinating talking to area alums and learning about what they did after Caltech. Having been through Caltech and pushed into the real world, I feel that they give valuable insight into what we should be trying to gain from our experience here. In particular, I remember one alum who cited a Caltech Y sponsored trip to Mexico as the reason for his interest in development as a career. 

Our monument hopping that night started as "Let's go to the Capital," became "Let's go to the Washington Monument," which soon turned into "Ooo World War II Memorial!" and finally "Lincoln Memorial's this close, it'd be such a shame to miss it." So we ended up walking the entire length of the National Mall in horrendously cold wind. Nevertheless, it was worth it. The memorials are beautiful at night, despite the light pollution blocking out all of the stars. Debbie probably posted all the pictures, but here is one of me in front of a building I wish we had the time to go into:

Hehe. And this morning was more tourism, of course. Highlights from the White House Visitor center, National Art Galleries, National Archives, and Air and Space Museum follow in tomorrow's post.

The afternoon and night consisted of visiting Steve Koonin at the Department of Energy, then Bill Colglazier and Mike Nelson at the National Academies of Science. Steve didn't have much time, but he was still able to give us a good overview of his job in advising politicians how to vote on science related programs. At NAS, Bill introduced the group to the history of NAS, its expansion, and the research reports that NAS members write and publish to educate both politicians and the public. Mike followed with his impressions of how the government works and a myriad of communication tips that apply not only when working in science policy, but also in daily interactions with people. 

Thus the past two days contained both touristy fun and policy education. Tomorrow is packed with AAAS, NIH, and a visit to the Pentagon. Can't wait, although I have concluded that I must come back to DC someday when I have time to spend one day in each separate museum.