News & Events

02-24-15

John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering as well as the Caltech Dean of Undergraduate Students, has been named fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) for his exceptional contributions to physics. The APS Division of Fluid Dynamics nominated Professor Dabiri for his contributions to "vortex dynamics and biological propulsion, and for pioneering new concepts in wind energy." [Caltech story]

Tags: honors GALCIT MedE John Dabiri

03-14-14

John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, will become Dean of Undergraduate Students, effective July 1, 2014. Professor Dabiri was suggested for this position by several Institute constituencies and enjoys the confidence and respect of students and faculty alike. He is particularly committed to enhancing faculty-student interactions.

Tags: GALCIT MedE John Dabiri

02-04-14

John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, recently delivered the Roddam Narasimha Distinguished Lecture at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinaga. His lecture was entitled Bio-inspired Wind Energy: From Fish Schools and Seagrass to Better Wind Farms. The Roddam Narasimha Seminar Series honors one of India’s eminent scientists and engineers. It provides a forum for young professionals to present their work in a topical area of Indian national importance.

Tags: energy GALCIT MedE John Dabiri

08-21-13

John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, has been selected by the editors of MIT Technology Review as one of this year's Innovators Under 35. He joins a group of exceptionally talented young innovators whose work is believed to have the greatest potential to transform the world. Professor Dabiri was chosen for his bioinspired engineering work on wind farms. [MIT Technology Review Article]

Tags: GALCIT MedE John Dabiri

06-14-13

The student winners of the 2013 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at a special luncheon with the Demetriades - Tsafka – Kokkalis family.

More »

Tags: APhMS EE honors GALCIT Changhuei Yang John Dabiri CMS Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes Frances Arnold Kanianthra Mani Chandy Guoan Zheng Axel Scherer Janna Nawroth Pedro Coelho Michael Olson James McKone Harry Gray Aditya Rajagopal

06-10-13

John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, has big plans for a high school in San Pedro, military bases in California, and a small village on Bristol Bay, Alaska. "We have been able to demonstrate that using wind turbines that are 30 feet tall, as opposed to 300 feet tall, could generate sufficient power for wind-farm applications," Dabiri says. "One of the areas where these smaller turbines can have an immediate impact is in the military." The Office of Naval Research is funding a three-year project by Dabiri's group to test the smaller vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) and to further develop software tools to determine their optimal placement. "We believe that these smaller turbines provide the opportunity to generate renewable power while being complementary to the ongoing activities at the base," Dabiri explains. [Learn More]

Tags: research highlights GALCIT John Dabiri

07-23-12

Graduate student Janna C. Nawroth, working with Professor John Dabiri and colleagues at Harvard, has turned solid element—silicon—and muscle cells into a freely swimming jellyfish.

"It is fascinating to witness the evolution of the Dabiri group's research from their initial ground-breaking work in understanding the fluid dynamics of jellyfish propulsion to the building of these complex engineered systems using biological materials," says Chair Ares Rosakis. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: research highlights GALCIT health John Dabiri Janna Nawroth

09-22-11

The research of John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, on visualizing flow fields around jelly fish and ocean circulation is featured in the recent issue of the National Geographic Magazine. [Excerpt from magazine]

Tags: energy research highlights GALCIT John Dabiri

07-13-11

Field tests of John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, and colleagues' vertical-axis wind turbines have shown that the power output of wind farms can be increased by an order of magnitude—at least tenfold— by optimizing the placement of turbines on a given plot of land. "Dabiri's bioinspired engineering research is challenging the status quo in wind-energy technology," says Ares Rosakis, Division Chair and Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. "This exemplifies how Caltech engineers' innovative approaches are tackling our society's greatest problems." [Caltech Press Release] [Videos of Turbines]

Tags: energy research highlights GALCIT John Dabiri

03-29-11

Students in Ken Pickar's course Entrepreneurial Development (E 102) have the opportunity to identify a technology currently under study at Caltech and develop a business plan for it. The ideas used by the students this year included a solid-state memory technology developed by Jehoshua (Shuki) Bruck, Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Computation and Neural Systems and Electrical Engineering. In this business plan the students proposed targeting Netflix and other high-volume streaming content providers. Another team pinpointed a new market for the vertical wind turbines of John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering. A third team pitched a noninvasive method for breaking up arterial plaques using the concentrated-acoustic-pulse technology developed by Chiara Daraio, Professor of Aeronautics and Applied Physics. [Caltech Feature]

Tags: APhMS EE research highlights Chiara Daraio GALCIT Jehoshua Bruck John Dabiri Ken Pickar