2012-13 Catalog

Weekly seminar by a member of the EAS faculty to discuss his or her area of engineering and group's research at an introductory level. The course can be used to learn more about different areas of study within engineering and applied science. Graded pass/fail.

Guidance and practice in organizing and preparing topics for presentation and in speaking with the help of visual aids, including whiteboards, overhead projectors, and video projectors.

This class provides the opportunity for students to gain experience in technical writing in engineering and applied science. Students will choose a technical topic of interest, possibly based on a previous research or course project, and write a paper in a form that would be appropriate as an engineering report, a technical conference paper, or a peer-reviewed journal paper. The topic of ethical considerations for engineers and scientists as they arise in the publication and peer review process will also be discussed. A Caltech faculty member, a postdoctoral scholar, or technical staff member serves as a technical mentor for each student, to provide feedback on the content and style of the report. Fulfills the Institute scientific writing requirement.

This course will examine artists' work with new technology, fabrication methods and media from the late 19th Century to the present. Major artists, exhibitions, and writings of the period will be surveyed. While considering this historical and critical context, students will create their own original new media artworks using technologies and/or fabrication methods they choose. Possible approaches to projects may involve robotics, electronics, computer programming, computer graphics, mechanics and other technologies. Students will be responsible for designing and fabricating their own projects. Topics may include systems in art, the influence of industrialism, digital art, robotics, telematics, media in performance, interactive installation art, and technology in public space. Artists studied may include Eadweard Muybridge, Marcel Duchamp, Vladmir Tatlin, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Stelarc, Survival Research Laboratories, Lynne Hershman Leeson, Edwardo Kac, Natalie Jeremenjenko, Heath Bunting, Janet Cardiff and others.

An introduction to the basics of getting a high-technology business started, including early-stage patent, organizational, legal, and financing issues; growing a company; taking a company public; and mergers and acquisitions. Lectures include presentations by invited experts in various specialties and keynote guest lecturers of national stature in technology start-ups.

This course emphasizes products for the Developing World - for those people at the bottom of the pyramid. The current focus is on India. The class teaches product design methodologies informed by the special circumstances of the customers. Technologies are often indigenous or local and not "high tech". Issues of sustainability in the business sense as well as the engineering sense are included, as are cultural concerns. We particularly emphasize ultra-low cost manufacturing as well as ergonomic design. Prototyping is an important part of the course with the second quarter devoted to building and testing engineering prototypes in India. The class is characterized by mixed international teams in collaboration with St Gits University in Kerala, India. All lectures are teleconferenced between both locations. To further broaden the experience, students from Art Center College of Design also participate. Some students will go on a pre-trip to India in early September to meet their future teammates and perform research on peoples' needs, choosing potential issues to address when the class commences, though this is not a requirement.

This course will provide students with a forum for discussing and working through challenges of visualizing students' data using techniques and principles from graphic design, visual art, and visual practices in science and engineering. Working together, we will help create and edit students' graphics and other visual forms of data to improve understanding. We will consider the strengths and weaknesses of communicating information visually in drawing, design and diagramming forms such as flow charts, brainstorming maps, graphs, illustrations, movies, animation, as well as public presentation materials, depending on the needs of students' projects. Our approach will be derived from design principles outlined by Edward Tufte and others. The course is targeted towards students across disciplines using visual display and exploration in research. There is no pre-requisite, but students should be competent in acquiring and processing data.

All candidates for the M.S. degree in applied mechanics, electrical engineering, materials science, and mechanical engineering are required to attend any graduate seminar in any division each week of each term. Graded pass/fail.