Alums gather for reunion weekend

What do you call an extensive get-together, a field trip to JPL, plus a leisurely day of lectures all rolled up together into one weekend package? If you guessed Caltech’s Alumni Weekend and 64th Annual Seminar Day, you’d be right.

The big weekend begins today, May 17, and culminates with Seminar Day on Saturday. In preparation, the campus has been cranking with activity for weeks in advance. The lawns have been manicured, the greenery groomed, and the lecture halls tidied up. The Athenaeum’s 28 guest rooms were booked months in advance, and the Institute’s catering crews have stocked up for the back-to-back feasts scheduled to take place on campus and at JPL. Even a stretch of California Boulevard got a new layer of blacktop.

Second only to graduation in terms of size and prominence, the reunion weekend entices hundreds of visitors to fly in or drive to Pasadena every year. A homecoming of sorts, it is the perfect opportunity for Caltech grads to catch up with former classmates and professors alike.

It’s also an opportunity to take in a variety of seminars and lectures that feature the latest research efforts and their exciting results. Among the many seminars are those with intriguing titles like “Birth of the Universe” and “A 3-D Map of the World,” as well as “Congestion Control on the Internet” and “Designing a Neural Prosthesis to Convert Thoughts to Action.” Participants of the Summer Undergraduate and Research Fellowships will also make oral presentations regarding their summer research projects.

In addition to these seminars, Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, will present the lunchtime General Session talk. His afternoon chat goes by the title “Space-Time Warps and the Quantum: A Glimpse of the Future.”

The weekend includes a special program for alumni who graduated 50, 55, 60, and 65 years ago. In addition to attending sundry fetes in their honor, these hardy individuals are invited to join a Thursday tour of JPL and an evening reception at President Baltimore’s residence.
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