(L-R) Saul Teukolsky, Andrea Ghez, and Charles Rice (Photos – Caltech, Mario de Lopez, Christopher Dibble/UCLA)
It’s been a busy week for Caltech in the news of science and technology.
By News Desk
– Alumna Andrea Ghez Awarded 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
Andrea Ghez (MS ’89, PhD ’92), the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics at UCLA, has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for pioneering research that helped reveal a supermassive black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. She shares half the Nobel Prize with Reinhard Genzel of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. (Read more).
– Alumnus Charles M. Rice Wins 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Charles M. Rice (PhD ’81), the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor in Virology at The Rockefeller University, has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Harvey J. Alter of the National Institutes of Health and Michael Houghton of the University of Alberta, Canada. The three were honored “for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.” (Read more).
– Saul Teukolsky Awarded 2021 Einstein Prize
Saul Teukolsky (PhD ’73), the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech, has received the American Physical Society’s (APS’s) 2021 Einstein Prize, a biennial award for accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics, first granted in 2003. He will share the prize with Clifford Will (PhD ’71) of the University of Florida. The award comes with $10,000, and Teukolsky will deliver a prize lecture at the next APS meeting in the spring of 2021. (Read more).
– Four Caltech Faculty Receive High-Risk, High-Reward Grants
Four Caltech faculty members have been named as recipients of grants from the High-Risk, High-Reward Research (HRHR) Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The program aims to fund “highly innovative and unusually impactful biomedical or behavioral research proposed by extraordinarily creative scientists,” according to the program’s press release. (Read more).
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz: Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering, is a recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Zernicka-Goetz studies the processes that guide early embryonic development.
Kaihang Wang, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering, is a recipient of an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Wang’s research focuses on how to create artificial life forms in the laboratory by designing and building genomes from scratch.
Lu Wei, assistant professor of chemistry, is also a recipient of an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Wei works on developing new spectroscopy and microscopy techniques to track molecules in real time inside cells and to visualize them with high precision and information throughput.
Mitchell Guttman, professor of biology and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, is a recipient of an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award. Guttman studies how a certain class of genes called lncRNAs play a role in genome regulation and cellular organization.
– Caltech Researcher Unveils Sensor that Rapidly Detects COVID-19 Infection Status, Severity, and Immunity
Caltech researchers have developed a new type of multiplexed test (a test that combines multiple kinds of data) with a low-cost sensor that may enable the at-home diagnosis of a COVID infection through rapid analysis of small volumes of saliva or blood, without the involvement of a medical professional, in less than 10 minutes. (Read more).
Source: Caltech
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