Young Investigators Lecture Series
Caltech’s Young Investigators Lecture Series (YILS) and Young Investigator Forum (YIF) in Engineering and Applied Science showcase selected outstanding early career researchers who advance the frontiers of research and invest in diversity, equity, and inclusion in their communities. PhD students, postdoctoral scholars, and researchers in industry who are within 3 years of receiving their PhD are eligible to apply. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates from groups historically underrepresented in STEM, regardless of sex or race/ethnicity.
Young Investigator Lecturers, typically postdoctoral scholars or senior graduate students, are invited to give a seminar to a Caltech department audience.
Candidates for the Young Investigator Forum are typically mid- and early-career graduate students. Selected YIF nominees are invited to present a short conference-style talk in a forum event.
These programs are hosted by the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) at Caltech and provide research exposure and networking opportunities with our faculty and the Caltech community.
» Deadline to apply was November 1, 2022. The new cycle will open in January 2023.
» Further nominations will be reviewed on a quarterly basis.
» Questions should be directed to yi-lecturecaltech.edu.
2022 Young Investigators Lecture Series
Title:
Decarbonizing Ammonia Using Plasma Catalysis and Electrochemical Reduction of Nitrate in Wastewaters
Date: February 2, 2022, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Lea R. Winter, Yale University
Title:
Integrating Machine Learning With Scientific Spatial and Temporal Modeling
Date: March 9, 2022, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Aditi Krishnapriyan, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Title:
Learning Under Requirements
Date: April 7, 2022, 12:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Luiz Chamon, University of California, Berkeley
Title:
Stable Self-organization Arises for Schooling Swimmers Through Hydrodynamic Interactions
Date: April 8, 2022, 3:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Melike Kurt, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Title:
Dynamics of Predictions and Decision-Making
Date: April 11, 2022, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Tijana Zrnic, University of California, Berkeley
Title:
Adaptive and Sensory Machines: From Active Foam to Swimming Rheometers
Date: May 5, 2022, 11:00 am
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Laurel Kroo, Stanford University
Title:
Rapid Breast Cancer Pathology Tissue Evaluation Using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
Date: May 25, 2022, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Diana Mojahed, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2022 Young Investigators Forum
Date: April 21, 2022, 12:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Title:
Mechanistic Understanding of Metal-coordination Bond Dissociation in Biological and Synthetic Materials for Tunable Mechanical Properties
Speaker:
Eesha Khare, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Velocity Fields of a Non-Equilibrium High Reynolds Number Turbulent Boundary Layer Over Rough and Smooth Surfaces
Speaker:
Vidya Vishwanathan, Virginia Tech
2021 Young Investigators Forum
Date: June 3, 2021, 12:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Title:
Formal Behavior Synthesis Applied to Managing a Team of UAVs for Fighting Fires and Specification Inference Applied to Human Prediction
Speaker:
Estefany Carrillo, University of Maryland
Title:
Trustworthy Machine Learning: On the Preservation of Individual Privacy and Fairness
Speaker:
Xueru Zhang, University of Michigan
2021 Young Investigators Lecture Series
Title:
Atomic-scale Understanding of the Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Materials
Date: January 27, 2021, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Salva Salmani-Rezaie, University of California, Santa Barbara
Title:
Experimental Fluid Mechanics with Machine Learning
Date: March 4, 2021, 11:00 am
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Isabel Scherl, University of Washington
Title:
Identifying New CFC Emissions Through Joint Inference of Banks and Lifetimes, with Impacts on the Ozone Layer and Climate
Date: March 10, 2021, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Megan Lickley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
A Networked Systems Approach to Engineering Synthetic Biological Patterning in Theory and Practice
Date: April 5, 2021, 11:00 am
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Melinda Perkins, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany
Title:
Decentralized Multi-Robot Active Search and Rescue
Date: April 8, 2021, 12:00 pm
Location:
Join Zoom event
Speaker:
Ramina Ghods, Carnegie Mellon University
Title:
Coping with Trauma: Noninvasive Technologies for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Date: April 15, 2021, 4:00 pm
Location:
Join Zoom event
Speaker:
Nil Gurel, University of California, Los Angeles
Title:
Shock Generated Vortex Rings Drive Entrainment and Cooling in Flow Induced by a Spark Discharge
Date: April 16, 2021, 3:00 pm
Location:
Join Zoom event
Speaker:
Bhavini Singh, Purdue University
Title:
Provable Representation Learning: The Importance of Task Diversity and Pretext Tasks
Date: May 3, 2021, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Qi Lei, Princeton
Title:
Simulation of Quasi-static Folding and Deployment of Tape Spring Flexures Using an Efficient Geometrically Nonlinear Unified Beam Formulation
Date: June 4, 2021, 3:00 pm
Location:
Join Zoom event
Speaker:
Zahra Soltani, Imperial College London
2020
Title:
Emergent Ferromagnetism in Twisted Bilayer Graphene
Date: February 11, 2020, 4:15 pm
Location:
106 Spalding
Speaker:
Aaron Sharpe, Stanford University
Title: Laser Based New Materials Design and Manufacturing: Integration of Nano/Micro Functional Structures
Date: April 16, 2020
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Xining Zang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: Vortex-wall interactions of spatially and temporally evolving vortex pairs
Date: April 24, 2020, 3:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Sarah Morris, Cornell University
Title:
Atmospheric Aerosols with Different Origins: Cities, Forests and the Oceans
Date: September 30, 2020, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Qing Ye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Engineering Glucose-Responsive Insulin Delivery across Length and Time
Date: October 8, 2020, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Lisa Volpatti, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Title:
Intratumoral Collagen-retained Immunotherapy
Date: October 22, 2020, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Noor Momin, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT
Title:
Topological Tools for Understanding Complex Systems
Date: October 26, 2020, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Michelle Feng, California Institute of Technology
Title:
Growing the Nearly Impossible: Routes to Stabilize Metastable Phases
Date: November 11, 2020, 4:00 pm
Location:
Online Event
Speaker:
Lauren Garten, Naval Research Lab (NRL)
2019
Title:
Designer Matter: New Frontiers in Wave Interactions with Meta- and Nano-structures
Date: March 5, 2019, 4:00 pm
Location:
Annenberg 105
Speaker:
Nasim Mohammadi Estakhri, University of Pennsylvania
Title:
Chip-Scale Nonlinear Photonics and its Applications
Date: March 13, 2019, 4:00 pm
Location:
106 Spalding
Speaker:
Mengjie Yu, Harvard University
Title:
Engineering Breath Biomarkers for Detecting and Monitoring Respiratory Disease
Date: April 4, 2019, 4:00 pm
Location:
105 Annenberg
Speaker:
Leslie Chan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Spatio-Temporal Pricing for Ridesharing Platforms
Date: April 8, 2019, 4:00 pm
Location:
Annenberg 105
Speaker:
Hongyao Ma, Harvard University
Title:
Phononic Memories for Superconducting Quantum Processors
Date: April 16, 2019, 4:00 pm
Location:
106 Spalding
Speaker:
Patricio Arrangoiz-Arriola, Stanford University
Title:
Reduced-Order Model Framework for Thermochemical Non-equilibrium Hypersonic Flows
Date: April 26, 2019, 3:00 pm
Location:
Guggenheim 133 (Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall)
Speaker:
Robyn Macdonald, University of Minnesota
Title:
A Scalable Monolithic Computational Framework for Large-scale Simulation of Hydraulic Fracture
Date: May 3, 2019, 3:00 pm
Location:
Guggenheim 133 (Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall)
Speaker:
Bianca Giovanardi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Bubbles as Leaky Pistons: Particle Separation by Size from Suspensions
Date: May 30, 2019, 11:00 am
Location:
Gates-Thomas 135
Speaker:
Estella Yu, Princeton University
2018
Title:
Bioinspired Algorithmic-driven Design of Additively Manufactured Materials
Date: January 11, 2018, 11:00 am
Location:
135 Gates-Thomas
Speaker:
Grace Xiang Gu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
How Vegetation Impacts Erosion
Date: February 8, 2018, 4:00 pm
Location:
365 South Mudd
Speaker:
Judy Yang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Learning Versatile Behavior and Reusable Models through Real-World Interaction
Date: February 12, 2018, 4:00 pm
Location:
105 Annenberg
Speaker:
Chelsea Finn, University of California, Berkeley
Title:
Scalable Solid State Quantum Information Processing
Date: February 13, 2018, 3:00 pm
Location:
106 Spalding
Speaker:
Sara Mouradian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title:
Machine Learning-based Microchip Platform for the Diagnosis of Disease
Date: March 8, 2018, 4:00 pm
Location:
105 Annenberg
Speaker:
Jina Ko, University of Pennsylvania
Title:
Molecular Understanding of Oxide Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion and Storage
Date: April 4, 2018, 4:00 pm
Location:
106 Spalding
Speaker:
Kelsey Stoerzinger, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Title:
Low-Complexity Modeling for Visual Data: Representations and Algorithms
Date: May 23, 2018, 4:00 pm
Location:
B280 Moore
Speaker:
Yuqian Zhang, Columbia University
2017
Title:
Bioelectrochemical Systems (BESs) for Energy Recovery from Wastewater
Date: March 8, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
365 South Mudd
Speaker:
Christine Dykstra, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Title:
Graphene Intercalation: A Pathway Towards Stabilizing New Two-Dimensional Crystals
Date: April 5, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
106 Spalding (Hartley Memorial Seminar Room)
Speaker:
Zakaria Al Balushi, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University
Title:
Hypervelocity Impact Flash and Plasma on Electrically Biased Spacecraft Surfaces
Date: April 14, 2017, 3:00 PM
Location:
133 Guggenheim (Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall)
Speaker:
Monica (Yayu) Hew, Stanford University
Title:
The Transport of Heat by Charge Carriers, Lattice Vibrations, and Spin Waves in Complex Materials
Date: April 19, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
106 Spalding (Hartley Memorial Seminar Room)
Speaker:
Annie Weathers, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
Title:
Breaking Lorentz Reciprocity: From Physics to New Wireless Communication Paradigms
Date: April 21, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
B280 Moore
Speaker:
Negar Reiskarimian, PhD candidate, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
Title:
Next-Generation Computing Using Spin-Based and 2D Materials
Date: May 11, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
106 Spalding Laboratory
Speaker:
Jean Anne C. Incorvia, Stanford University
Title:
Short-Wavelength Infrared Photon Detector Based on Charge Injection
Date: May 12, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
B280 Moore
Speaker:
Vala Fathipour, Electrical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley
Title:
Machine Learning + Physics
Date: May 18, 2017, 11:00 AM
Location:
135 Gates-Thomas
Speaker:
Julia Ling, Princeton University
Title:
A Dynamical View of Optimization Algorithms
Date: May 22, 2017, 4:00 PM
Location:
105 Annenberg Room
Speaker:
Ashia Wilson, University of California at Berkeley
Title:
High‐Fidelity Probabilistic Model Identification and Monitoring of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
Date: May 23, 2017, 11:00 AM
Location:
135 Gates-Thomas
Speaker:
Audrey Olivier, Columbia University
Title:
Pressure and Velocity Fluctuations in Wall-Bounded Turbulent Flows
Date: June 2, 2017, 3:00 PM
Location:
133 Guggenheim (Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall)
Speaker:
Angeliki Laskari, University of Southampton
We are seeking applicants regardless of age, sex, race, ethnicity, or any other characteristics protected under Federal or State law.