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1- u.. 1- 1- u.. en The campus community biweekly May 31, 2001, vol. 1, no. 11 H2 0 commandos! Royal honors bestowed on Zewail, Kulkarni Bjorkman elected to NAS Caltech's Pamela Bjorkman, professor of Ahmed Zewail Shrinivas Kulkarni and executive officer for biology, is one of 72 American scientists elected this year to Joining the distinguished company of membership in the National Academy of science greats Isaac Newton, Charles Sciences (NAS). The announcement was Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen made at the academy's 138th annual meet Hawking, Caltech's Ahmed Zewail and ing this month in Washington. Shrinivas Kulkarni have been elected to Bjorkman, who has been on the Caltech the Royal Society, one of the oldest and faculty since 1988, is the Institute's first female most prestigious international scientific faculty member to be elected to the NAS. She societies. focuses much of her research on molecules Nobel Prize winner Ahmed Zewail, the involved in cell-surface recognition, particu Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics larly molecules ofthe immune system. Inves and professor of physics at Caltech, was tigators in her lab use a combined approach, elected as a foreign member of the Royal including X-ray crystallography to determine Society for his pioneering development of three-dimensional structures; molecular bio a new laser-based field that, as recog logical techniques to produce proteins and to nized by the Nobel Prize, caused a revolu modify them; and biochemistry to study the tion in chemistry and adjacent sciences. proteins' properties. see Royal Society. page 6 Much of the Bjorkman lab's efforts have involved proteins known as class I MHC, as Students boldly go where decades of Caltech undergrads have gone before, commandeering the campus on the Institute's annual Ditch Day. It was May 17th, frosh! well as very similar proteins that have a number of functions aside from an immu The world will nological role. In a 1999 study, for ex Biochemical A little help from ample, Bjorkman and her colleagues soon be their lab determined the three-dimensional struc II on-off" switch Caltech friends ture of a protein that causes cachexia, a wasting syndrome in cancer and AIDS Caltech students with an interest in marine discovered patients. The discovery provided the scien Last fall, 32 students at Littlerock High science will soon be conducting research tific basis for possible future strategies for School, east of Lancaster, weren't think aboard the rolling deck of a Boston whaler Proteins are the cell's arbiters. In a com controlling cachexia and/or for the treat ing about their new textbooks and teach at sea, or while kneeling in the wet sand of plex and still largely mysterious cascade ment of obesity. ers. Instead they were focused on the a Southern California estuary. Such real of events, proteins tell a cell when to A native of Portland, Oregon, Bjorkman satellite they had to finish building world learning will be part of a new Envi divide and grow-and when to die. To earned her bachelor's degree from the before June. ronmental Science and Engineering properly control cell behavior, proteins University of Oregon in 1978 and her doc With the help of Caltech postdoctoral program funded by a five-year, $700,000 need to be turned on when they are torate from Harvard University in 1984. scholar Ravinder Bhatia, the students grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. needed, and turned off when they are Afterward, she held postdoctoral positions designed and built a satellite mock-up Intended for both graduate and under not. Now a Caltech biologist and his at Harvard and the Stanford University that, if deployed, would observe strato graduate students, the ESE program will colleagues have shed important new School of Medicine. She is an investigator spheric ozone depletion in the northern be interdisciplinary in its approach, span light on how this takes place in animals with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute hemisphere over a three-year period. ning the fields of geology, engineering, and plants. and has been a Pew Scholar in the bio see Satellite, page 6 and chemistry. For the graduate students, In a paper published in the May 18 medical sciences, an American Cancer the goal is to unify and enlarge environ issue of the journal Science, Associate Society Postdoctoral Fellow, and an Ameri mental teaching and research at Caltech. Professor of Biology Raymond Deshaies can Society of Histocompatibility and Im Undergraduates will have the opportunity and his graduate students show that an munogenetics Young Investigator. to take a lab class in environmental analy assemblage of proteins known as CSN Bjorkman has also received the William sis. "The students here have a ton of skills may serve as a kind of biochemical on B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in mathematics, biology, chemistry, and off switch for other proteins. in Fundamental Immunology, the Gairdner physics," says Jess Adkins, a Caltech In plants, research done in the labora Foundation International Award for assistant professor of geochemistry and tory of Deshaies's collaborator, Xing achievements in medical science, and the global environmental science, "and a Wang Deng of Yale University, has Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter number are interested in the environment, shown that CSN prevents photomorpho Award. but don't quite know what direction to go genesis (roughly, the growth of plants Bjorkman's election to the National in with that interest." The ESE program controlled by light) when light is absent. Academy of Sciences brings to 67 the num will help provide that direction, he says. CSN is widely distributed in animals as ber of living Caltech professors and profes The laboratory class will immerse well, but until now no one knew what sors emeritus who have earned the undergraduates in field-based research. any of its functions were. Now Deshaies's prestigious honor. The National Academy, Typically, Adkins says, the lab experience research shows that CSN may be linked established in 1863 by President Lincoln, in many classes is limited to textbook to a recently discovered protein modifi- Ravinder Bhatia and Brian Keating help students acts as an advisory body for the federal problems and off-the-shelf samples that display their satellite mock-up. government on scientific matters. see Switch, page 6 see Grant, page 6 • 2 Caltech 336, May 31,2001 A whirlwind of McCallan bids NewsBriefs commencement adieu events The activities offered for Caltech's 107th commencement are designed to give fami lies and friends a snapshot of the singular world in which their graduates have been living for the past several years. Beginning on Thursday, June 14, visi tors may enjoy a welcoming buffet lunch at Avery House. In addition to taking self guided tours that are available through out the day, visitors may go to Ramo Auditorium at 1 p.m . to watch a video of the design contest entered by students in Mechanical Engineering 72. It will be followed by presentations made by SURF award winners and by student videos of Senior Ditch Day activities. The stacks left standing in the student houses will be Take a stroll down one of the leafy paths available for tours immediately following. that wind through campus, or step inside Visitors may accept President Baltimore one of the buildings. Chances are that and Dr. Huang's invitation to a reception in Mike McCallan had a hand in the design the President's Garden from 4 to 6 p.m. and construction of the structure in which Graduating seniors and their families are you find yourself and the path you took also invited to a banquet, beginning at to get there. In fact, a great part of the 6 p.m. at the Athenaeum. The day will campus looks and feels the way it does wrap with a concert featuring the Caltech because of him. Chamber Singers at 8:30p.m . in Dabney As Caltech's associate director of engi Lounge. neering and construction management Commencement exercises will begin for more than two decades, McCallan has at 10 a.m. on Beckman Mall. This year, wielded tremendous influence steering Gordon Moore, one of the fathers of the the design and ensuring the structural modern microprocessor and a Caltech integrity of dozens of lecture halls, labs, Caltech's Paul Messina, right, received the Distinguished Associate award from David Crandall of the alumnus (class of 1954), will deliver the and office buildings. U.S. Department of Energy on May 25. The citation commends Messina for his achievements in commencement address. He and his staff see to it that, from computational science and for his contributions to the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship program, Early numbers indicate that the pool of concept to ribbon cutting, construction designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. graduates includes 207 candidates who projects are completed with the best will be eligible for their bachelor's degree, materials, on schedule, and within their allotted budgets. 83 for their master's degree, and 157 for Now, after an impressive 45 years Honors and awards Media minute their PhD. A noontime reception for the gradu spent building a career distinguished by a remarkable climb from carpenter to the Mory Gharib, professor of aeronautics and fac Associates celebrate 75 years ates will follow on the Athenaeum lawn. ulty member in bioengineering, was invited by the top management post in his department, A May 19 Pasadena Star News article covered • American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) he will retire at the end of June. highlights from the Caltech Associates' recent to give the Honored Speaker address to the 81st 75th anniversary celebration dinner, which McCallan first stepped foot on campus annual AATS conference on May 8 in San Diego.