The Making of a President. Clockwise from left, Chameau as a pensive youngster in his native Normandy; as a young Purdue University professor in the 1980s; and as a newly appointed president waiting to be introduced to the Caltech community last summer.

“A New Kind of World”

Growing up in northern France, in the province of Normandy, Jean-Lou Chameau seems to have discovered his principal affinities early in life: hard work, working with people, new experiences, and, last but not least, mathematics and science. He brought this outlook with him when he left the Old World for the new in 1976 to pursue graduate work in engineering at Stanford, and it has served him well throughout a career that has included faculty positions at Purdue University and Georgia Tech, time spent running a company, and, over the last decade, a move into the upper echelons of academic administration. In 1997, he was appointed dean of the college of engineering at Georgia Tech, and four years later he became the university’s provost. Last summer, he was named the ninth president of Caltech. Chameau assumes the job at a time when issues that he has long championed—forging interdisciplinary and institutional collaborations and promoting global sustainability, to name two—have emerged as major themes on both the national and international stage. It’s an environment in which, as he says, scientists and engineers have an increasingly complex and vital role to play, and to which Caltech, through its faculty, students, staff, and graduates, is poised to make unique and far-reaching contributions. He talked about these topics, and a variety of others, in an interview with Caltech News editor Heidi Aspaturian.

You gave a speech in 2000 in which you said that you thought the 21st century would constitute a Renaissance period for engineers. What did you mean by that?

Basically, I think it’s simple. We live in a world that is being driven more and more by science and technology. That means that people educated in those disciplines have and will continue to have an advantage in life, as well as crucial opportunities to influence the world positively. I focused on engineering in my original lecture, because I was the dean of engineering at Georgia Tech at the time, but I think the comment applies equally well to people working in the sciences. We are dealing with very difficult, very complex problems. Recently, we had [New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author] Tom Friedman on campus talking about energy and how it relates to an amazing range of issues, including economic development, quality of life, health policy, and national and international security. It’s so clear that we are really at a critical juncture for global society in the next 50 to 100 years, and that dealing with most of the critical issues facing us will require a very deep understanding of science and technology and how best to apply that knowledge. I think you can draw some valid parallels here with the Renaissance era, when Western Europe emerged from the Middle Ages to face a new kind of world. The issues today are very different, but we are once again finding ourselves at a unique inflection point in history. The forces shaping it are such that I think that scientists and engineers are likely to play an unusual, unprecedented role. And I hope that will be the case.

You’ve been on campus for just over six months now, so—here comes the inevitable question—how would you describe your initial impressions of Caltech? Has anything come as a particular surprise to you?

I had a good feel for what Caltech would be like before I started as president. I knew a number of faculty members, and I was well prepared by the faculty and trustee search committees when I arrived on campus last summer. Since then, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time getting to know students, getting acquainted with staff, and meeting one-on-one with each faculty member, so every day I’m learning more. If there has been one big discovery—and a very positive one—it is that I have found Caltech’s students to be even more exciting and stimulating than what I had in mind. I knew they would be very smart, but they are so much more. They are irreverent, they are eccentric, they are dynamic, they are interested in all kinds of things, and I think that Caltech is perhaps unique in the concentration of talented and unusual people that make up its student body. At most universities, you expect to find a wide range of capabilities among the students, and here that range is very narrow—they are all extraordinarily capable. The chance to be with them and to experience that pleasure is very interesting and rewarding.

I think too that there is an outside perception that Caltech students for the most part are only interested in science, math, and engineering. I shared that idea to some extent before I came, so it has also been a wonderful surprise to find that this campus also has outstanding musicians, and people who love sports and the theater and many other activities. What I like is that Caltech provides extracurricular opportunities for them that are in many respects as good as what they would have at a larger university. In fact, they’re likely better, because they are all available on a smaller scale, which makes for closer and more meaningful interactions. That, too, is a very positive thing.

At Frosh Camp in September, Chameau indulges in one of his favorite activities: spending quality time with students. Dean of students and acting vice president for student affairs John Hall is seated to his left.

How are you going about meeting students?

My first sustained encounter was at Freshman Camp, and since then I have tried to find ways to interact with both undergraduate and graduate students as much as I can, and to make sure that students have opportunities to communicate easily with me, both formally and informally. I’ve been to dinners at the student Houses, attended musical and sports events, a meeting of the Caltech Entrepreneur’s Club, and this year’s Theater Arts production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, among many other activities.
Overall, it is very simple for me: if you are in academia, it is because you have an interest in students. Otherwise there is no reason to be here! I have spent more or less time with students at different stages of my career, but the opportunity to spend time with them has always been a driver—a strong motivating factor, if you will—for me. Caltech offers some great advantages here because, while you will never get to know all of the students, the Institute’s small size makes it possible to establish genuine connections with many of them. Georgia Tech is not a huge university, but it was large enough that it was hard for me to actually know many students. Here at Caltech, I expect that the numbers will be much larger, and that I will also have a chance to get to know what some of their interests are, and what’s important to them. I will get to know some of their families too. I find it to be a wonderful new opportunity.

Has there been anything else about the environment here that came as a particular surprise to you?

Learning the extent to which Caltech historically has been and still is engaged in ambitious, very large-scale projects has been somewhat surprising. Again, it’s a case in which appearances are deceptive. From the outside, you wouldn’t necessarily think we would be involved in projects with the scope of the Keck and Palomar Observatories, or LIGO, or managing the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There is, I think, a particular excitement that goes along with being able to accomplish so much while appearing from the outside to be relatively small. To me, it’s an especially interesting aspect of the Institute.

The Evolution of an Engineer. Above, Dean of Engineering Chameau works with Georgia Tech students in 1999, and, below, ponders a problem in Lego design with Caltech undergraduates at Frosh Camp ’07.

You spent ten years in high-level academic administration at Georgia Tech. What are you bringing from that experience to this job at Caltech?

In my job as dean of engineering and then provost at Georgia Tech, I think I was always a person who got considerable satisfaction and motivation out of the fact that I was always working with and helping smart people. I enjoyed dealing extensively with faculty, staff, students, alumni—all of the university’s stakeholders—and fostering relationships, developing new initiatives, seeking consensus, and being a bit of a cheerleader for the institution as well. I think that at different times in their evolution, organizations need different people to lead them, and that Caltech was looking for a person with those kinds of skills and qualities at this stage in its development. It didn’t have to be me, but I’m happy that it is. And overall, I am a person who tries not to look back too much. My inclination is to look ahead and move forward, and I am approaching Caltech in the spirit of seeing it as a new adventure, a new realm. I tend to believe that whatever earlier experiences you have had will, ideally, prepare you well for whatever new challenges you undertake, and that is essentially the perspective I am bringing to this job.

Would you say then that you find the dealing-with-people aspect one of the most rewarding parts of being an administrator?

It is, definitely. I always say to people: if you do not find this kind of interaction rewarding, do not get into a leadership position. If you want to take a leading role in an organization, and especially in a university environment, you have to be willing to serve and be comfortable with being rewarded by the accomplishments of other people and the institution, rather than by your own achievements. Sometimes, people who seek these leadership roles tend to forget that. There is a bit of glory that comes with such positions, but they basically consist of hard work and serving people. And if that isn’t in your mind or in your way of enjoying life, you should not do it.

This idea of working hard, and enjoyment of working with people, came early in my life. I come from a relatively modest family and background, and I was taught from a young age that hard work was expected of me. This applied to school too: My parents did not themselves have a higher education, but they always pushed me toward getting a good education.

Were you interested in math and science from a young age?

In high school and early on in college, I really loved mathematics. My dream would have been to be a mathematician, but I felt I was not quite good enough, and also my parents told me that I would make more money as an engineer. And then I did well on the entrance exam for an elite engineering school in France, and was offered admission. It was one of those offers you just don’t refuse, so I became an engineer—not by design, but without regrets.

How did you happen to come to graduate school in the United States?

It was totally, purely by accident. When I was an undergraduate, I happened to hear a talk by a former student—a Frenchman—who had received his PhD from Caltech. He described how you could get fellowships to study in the United States. This was the first time it had occurred to me that such a thing was possible, and I thought, “Well, why not?” I looked into it, and I ended up going to Stanford. At the time I thought I might be in the United States for one year at the most; now it has become a lifetime.

Looking back, was there any sense of culture shock when you encountered the United States?

If I had landed in the middle of Kansas or South Dakota—and I have since been to these places—there would probably have been more of one. But, you know, I started in the Bay Area, near San Francisco, and there was not much sense of dislocation. I think for some people there is—I had friends who came at the same time that I did, who never really adjusted well and, in fact, did not stay. But I think I am the type of person who enjoys new situations—getting to know new people, places, and ways of doing things, and encountering different cultures, so it was never an issue for me. The West Coast and Northeast regions of the United States are really areas where Western Europeans in particular quite quickly feel at home. Other parts of the country might require more time to adjust to, but I think it also depends on the person.

Have you personally ever found it a disadvantage to be foreign-born and to have come to America as a young adult? Some parts of this country are still pretty insular.

I will say no. You will always find a person here and there, from time to time, who has, let’s say, some reluctance to interact with someone of foreign origin, but this can occur anywhere in the world. It happens here, it happens in France, in China. On the rare occasion when this has happened to me, I don’t pay much attention to it, and I don’t view it as reflecting what the majority of people think or do. Some people do get sensitive when they encounter these attitudes and, especially since 9/11, some people have told me that they have felt less welcome in the United States—but this has never been true in my case, and I think that I have almost always found my background to be an advantage. I think that fundamentally your success with people is not a function of where you come from. If you can relate well to people and be open with them, then they will react well to you.

You were certainly a strong proponent of overseas study programs for students at Georgia Tech and active in establishing new exchange programs there. Would you like to do more of this at Caltech?

The Institute already has a number of such programs with different universities, and I think there is a desire among faculty to respond to the rising level of student interest. I don’t know exactly what the numbers should be yet, but I definitely want to encourage it. As you can imagine from my own history, I’m a strong believer in the idea that it’s advantageous for young people to have the opportunity to experience at least two different cultures, particularly in our increasingly global society. At the same time, I think it has to be a meaningful experience. Going overseas for a few weeks on vacation is fun and enriching, but what you want to offer students is enough time to appreciate other cultures and discover for themselves how people in other parts of the world act, think, and behave, and how they might approach and solve problems differently. Georgia Tech was different from Caltech in that it has the largest engineering program in the country, graduating almost 1,300 undergraduate engineers a year. Many of them, especially those with bachelor’s degrees, will go into industry, and it is very important for such students to have overseas experience, because that is what their employers will expect from them. At Caltech, we are talking about much smaller numbers, and a good number of our students will be going on to advanced degrees and research positions. I still think it is very valuable for them to benefit from cross-cultural experiences, but there are different ways to achieve that, depending on the university. Our small size is an advantage for developing deep and meaningful experiences. Conceivably, we could see students spending six months or a year doing research in a lab in England or Hong Kong, or whatever environment is most appropriate to them. That would be one of several possible ways to offer the experience.

Promoting and sustaining collaborations—with industry, across disciplines, and with other universities—has figured prominently in your administrative and academic career. Can you talk about how they emerged as interests for you?

My interest in industrial collaborations partially came about because I left academia to become president of a private company in the mid-1990s. It was also in part because cultivating relationships with industry is natural for engineers. Without citing specific names, I think one of our successes at Georgia Tech was to help forge relationships with corporations and industry that were designed to be long-term. I don’t think that universities should be extensively involved in short-term projects with the public sector. It is not what we do: we are here to educate, to do research, and to look at issues and trends over a long time-horizon. To do that well, I think it is best if you develop relationships with corporate partners that will last for a number of years, and show these partners how their competitiveness will benefit over time from a long-term partnership and outlook. That’s what I promoted the most at Georgia Tech, and we had good success on that front with a number of large companies.

That’s one end of the spectrum. At the opposite end, of course, is the fact that universities are getting more and more involved in the commercialization of their research and discoveries. They must make sure that the process is as effective and painless for the faculty as possible, and that it is also an intellectually and personally enriching experience for them. This is something that Caltech already does very well. The Office of Technology Transfer, led by Fred Farina, who is a Caltech alum, and prior to him, Larry Gilbert, has been a great model for how this kind of thing should be done. It was very pleasing to see an article in the New York Times in January where Caltech’s program was singled out as being among the best of its kind in the country.

Interdisciplinary and institutional collaborations were efforts that I helped to initiate because, again, they seemed like both the right and the logical thing to do. Dealing with my colleagues in the 1980s and the 1990s, I started to realize—and it is even more true now—that the most effective way to approach many of the issues we were facing was to bring people from many disciplines and perhaps from different institutions together, and that historically universities were not necessarily well organized to facilitate research along these lines. So a number of us began to think about how best to engender and promote that kind of environment and how to get things moving in the right direction. That’s basically the way it happened. There is always in life a bit of vision, a bit of strategy, and a bit of simply reacting to needs and opportunity. Very often you will develop a strategy or put something into place simply in response to a need, and after it works, people will ask, “How did you happen to have that grand vision?” But it was no grand vision: it was a need, and what you’ve actually done is to meet it.

One very useful thing I have learned from these experiences is that all these types of collaborations work best when they are driven by faculty interest. The administration should support, promote, and facilitate these partnerships and programs, and work to remove hurdles that might exist, but I think the main movers should always be the faculty.

Global sustainability has been another of your ongoing research and administrative interests. This area is on everyone’s radar screen now, but when you first got into the field in the early 1990s, that was not the case.

Chameau, who began his academic career as a professor at Purdue, is shown here (right) in 1986 with fellow civil engineering professor Robert Holtz (left), and graduate student Siva Sivakugan.

What motivated you, and how did your involvement come about?

I did get interested in this area early, although others were certainly thinking about it too. That was less a case of being driven by need and opportunity and more a matter of really believing in something. I was a civil engineer at Purdue University in the 1980s, a time when civil engineers were starting to get more and more involved in environmental issues. Part of my research involved working with firms that had some activities in those areas, and at some stage, I started to feel that basically we were addressing the wrong problems. We were trying to solve the problems after the fact, rather than trying to prevent them from arising in the first place. You’re polluting something, you create an environmental hazard, and then you try to clean it up. So out of this came the idea—and for me, initially, it came in an educational context—that we ought to try to educate scientists and engineers to think more broadly about these types of challenges, and encourage them to see if they can design systems and processes that are a bit easier on the environment, that use less energy, fewer resources, and so on. Although I approached it from the engineering standpoint, I realized that there were people in areas like ecology, and in particular, architecture, who were also seriously thinking about and working on these questions. The 1992 International Environmental Summit in Rio de Janeiro also helped focus global attention on these issues, and so you had all these factors beginning to come together at the same time. By this time I was at Georgia Tech, and talking to colleagues there as well, and we got the idea of starting a university program—the Center for Sustainable Technology—to look at those issues. I left soon after that to take a job in industry, and when I returned to the campus in 1995, the center and its programs were really in the process of taking off, and had become quite significant—it’s now the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development. Once I became dean of the college of engineering in 1997, my role became very much more that of a facilitator to keep promoting the ideas, while there were lots of more talented people who got directly involved in doing the research and educational aspects of these programs.

How did you and your colleagues go about generating interest in the field at Georgia Tech?

Talking about it! Well, as you might expect, there were initially some arguments as to whether it was a worthwhile idea. You fast forward to 2007, of course, and even the president of the United States is finally acknowledging that we have issues to deal with. But this was not the case 10 or 15 years ago. Even in the early 1990s, we had many more skeptics than supporters, so keeping attention and discussions focused on the many positive and pragmatic reasons why we should be looking seriously at these questions turned out to be very important. I recall several corporations, including a few based in Atlanta, who were initially not happy with having a local university initiate a program along those lines. But here we are now, more than a decade later, and I know that at least from a marketing standpoint, they have become supporters. For me, I think there was also some appeal in doing something positive and productive that ran a bit counter to the usual thinking. In life you always like to do things that are a little bit at odds with what other people think, and it was nice for a while to be engaged in something that was not in the mainstream.

Not in the mainstream. Would you say that you consider yourself a bit of a contrarian?

I have to say—well, I don’t see myself quite in that light. Part of having French roots—the French culture—is that we like to question things and be skeptical (very often, too much!). I always like to try to look at the opposite side of the coin. It doesn’t mean that I will end up on that side but I like to know what is over there. You frequently learn a lot by playing the devil’s advocate: there is usually information that comes out as part of that discussion that is useful to a decision.

Sustainability has gone from being a tough sell to a universally acknowledged hot-button issue. What role do you envision playing at and with Caltech in helping to keep the current level of interest alive?
I think that our role here is to keep raising the flag—to make sure that this area remains a priority for the Institute in our scientific undertakings, in our education, and also more and more in the way we run our campus—the way we develop new facilities, maintain existing ones, use energy, and take care of our physical plant. We are very good at preaching in academia, and I think we should keep being good at it through our research and education. At the same time, in an area like this, especially, you are not very credible if you don’t also try to practice what you preach.

On the day he was named Caltech’s president (left), Chameau was welcomed to campus by members of the presidential search committee, including Atkins Professor of Chemistry and Nobel Laureate Bob Grubbs and Professor of Physics Nai-Chang Yeh. A few months later, at his first Caltech convocation, it was his turn, along with Pauling Professor of Chemical Physics and Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail, to welcome entering students.

Is there a scientific or historical figure you particularly admire? Or both?

There is one scientist whom I never met—obviously, since he died in the early 19th century—who has always greatly appealed to me. That is the French mathematician Évariste Galois, who is viewed as one of the founders of modern mathematics, particularly modern algebra. He died at the age of 20 in a duel over a young lady. He was a mathematical genius, and the legend—which seems to be a bit
exaggerated—is that he wrote down a major part of his most important work in the night before he died. He was my hero for a while when I was young, partly because of my early ambition to be a mathematician and partly because when you’re very young you think that dying in a duel is a kind of romantic ideal. More seriously, or maybe just more maturely, I have always greatly admired Albert Einstein as someone who was never afraid to think differently, both as a scientist and as a human being. Being at Caltech, where he spent some time and where his influence can still be felt, has been very exciting and inspiring.

Historical figures I am drawn to? There is one in particular—the French leader and politician Charles de Gaulle. I was born in 1953, so I did not live through the period when he rallied France and the French Resistance during World War II, but of course I grew up knowing about the heroic role that he played. The fact that he had the courage and the strength to go against the ruling establishment during World War II and to say that the real France was not the one being led by the government in Vichy, and that he was going to embolden the French people to fight on—there are few people in the world who demonstrate that kind of guts and vision and sheer determination under any conditions. So while I am far from agreeing with some of the things he did when he went on to serve as France’s president, I admire some of the politically risky actions he took then as well. He was willing to stand up and say it was time to disband France’s colonial empire. These qualities of his have always impressed me.

How about ideas or books that may have had a strong influence on you? What have you read recently?

I am fairly eclectic in terms of what I read, but I haven’t had that much time to read books lately! I really like Tom Friedman, and have recommended his book The World Is Flat to others. I also like very much Jared Diamond’s books, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Collapse, about the conditions under which societies ultimately succeed or fail. I am really delighted that he will be giving the graduation address for my first commencement at Caltech.

As for novelists, I would say the Russian writer Dostoevsky, and the French novelist Émile Zola. My favorite Dostoevsky novel is The Gambler, which perhaps says something about me.

That would be the one he dictated to the stenographer he later married—as with Galois, another real-life romantic tale.

Ah yes, well, perhaps that says something about me, too.

Chameau and his wife, Carol Carmichael, met when both were working at Georgia Tech.

The Pasadena Weekly has reported that both you and your wife, Carol, are Grateful Dead fans. Did you ever attend one of their concerts?

Yes, I did once in Chicago, as a matter of fact, in the early to middle 1980s.

What are some of your other extracurricular interests?

I love cooking, and in fact for a while I considered a career in restaurant work, but it’s just too hard. It’s easier being an academic! But I’m finding outlets for my culinary interests on campus. One of my most enjoyable informal venues for meeting students has been at the cooking classes organized by Caltech’s office for student affairs. The olive oil concession is going well. [See UpFront, page 2.] This fall we will have a harvest festival with this project as a centerpiece. I love skiing too. I haven’t done any this year, but I am definitely planning to next year.

By then you will have spent more than a year at Caltech. Looking ahead, where would you like to see the Institute, if not in the next year, in, say, the next ten years?

First I should say that I am not the type of person who comes to a new place and position with “the grand vision.” Usually, it does not work, and it would be very foolish at a place like Caltech with a great history of success. So, at the moment, like any Caltech student, I am learning, trying to get to know the outstanding people we have on campus and getting acquainted with their accomplishments. I have also been devoting quite a bit of time to understanding the Institute’s finances. We must
ensure that our faculty and students have the support they require to fulfill their aspirations, and to do so we need to manage our resources better. In particular, I think we should increase our focus on building the Institute’s endowment, and I intend to be very consistent about this in our development plans. In these efforts, we will need the help of all our friends and alumni.

When I think about Caltech a decade from now, I keep coming back to a remark that Professor Ahmed Zewail made at this year’s Freshman Convocation, when he described the Institute as “a place where we dream with focus and freedom.” For me that comment summarizes very well what Caltech is about and where it should be in about ten years. Now, even more than in the past, the Institute needs to keep its emphasis on doing big things—making the significant discoveries and contributions that can change the world. This goal should be driving us, but achieving it is getting to be a more and more difficult task in the current environment. I would like Caltech to have the resources it needs to ensure it can continue doing those unusual and outstanding things regardless of the national situation.

I also see us doing more and more work across disciplines, in both fundamental and applied scientific areas because, as I mentioned earlier, the crucial issues facing our nation and the world are less and less likely to be problems that can be addressed without bringing together insights, techniques, and expertise from different research fields. We should continue to capitalize on Caltech’s historic strengths in pursuing fundamental science, but with connection to the issues the nation and the world are facing. In addition to our continued leadership in areas like space exploration, geophysics, astronomy, engineering, physics, biology, and others, I think we will be talking more about energy, the environment, scientific medicine, bioengineering, and so forth. Now, trying to address these critical issues for society doesn’t imply that you are addressing them for tomorrow morning. We work on long-term problems, but it is important to show the public and all of our stakeholders that what we do has a relationship to the world at large and to the issues societies and the world are facing. This is a message that we have to find new ways to articulate, and it has to be delivered consistently, by the president, by the faculty, as well as by students and staff who are involved in such efforts.

We also need to provide a “Caltech experience” to our students that reflects the uniqueness of the Institute and leverages its strengths. Caltech is small, and our “smallness” should lead to an experience on campus that clearly differentiates us from other universities, including the opportunity for one-on-one interaction between faculty and students. Our students’ opportunities for growth and personal development, academic and nonacademic, should be unparalleled. We can develop a true community of scholars and leaders who care about the world. I also hope that this community can become more diverse. This can only enhance our culture and future opportunities as we prepare for a more and more complex and global world.

Finally, I would like Caltech to have an organ-izational infrastructure that operates at the same level of excellence as its educational and research programs. No university can currently make that claim, and I see no reason why the Institute, which has achieved so many scientific breakthroughs in its history, should not be a pioneer in this realm as well. Achieving this objective can only further the ability of our faculty and students to “dream with focus and freedom.”