Famine to T-Cells: Distinguished Alumni Named
PASADENA, Calif. - Where do California Institute of Technology students go after graduation, and what do they do? Turns out the answer is everywhere and everything, as this year's Distinguished Alumni Awards will attest.
The awards are the highest honor Caltech gives to a graduate for a particular achievement of noteworthy value or a career of noteworthy accomplishment. This year's awards will be presented on Saturday, May 21, during the annual Alumni Reunion Weekend and Caltech's 68th annual Seminar Day. The 2005 recipients range from a mechanical engineer who developed a cardiovascular catheter to a gardener-turned-biologist who codeveloped an important cancer drug, and now fights famine in Ethiopia.
Mark M. Davis PhD '81, Biology
Davis is the Avery Professor of Immunology at Stanford University, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who studies T lymphocytes, a major component of the body's immune system. His discovery and characterization of T-cell receptor genes helped to explain how these molecules recognize foreign antigens.
Leonard A. Herzenberg PhD '56, Biology
Herzenberg conceived and oversaw the development of the fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS), the first of a series of flow cytometry instruments that have become essential tools in biology and medicine. He has continued to develop new FACS capabilities to overcome barriers to various kinds of experimentation. He is credited with making flow cytometry available to genetic and immunologic studies, and helped introduce and distribute fluorochrome-coupled monoclonal antibodies as flow cytometry reagents.
Wilton W. Webster BS '49, Mechanical Engineering
Webster is the founder and current senior science advisor at Biosense Webster, a cardiovascular catheter company. Webster became inspired to start this business after a cardiologist showed him how to modify existing catheters by adding thermistors (a type of resistor used to measure temperature changes) and electrodes. Later, the development of electrophysiology gave rise to the curing of patients with heart arrhythmias by radio-frequency ablation using catheters. Webster subsequently further modified his catheters for use in this emerging field.
Raymond L. Orbach BS '56, Physics
Orbach is the director of the Office of Science at the Department of Energy, the third-largest federal sponsor of basic research in the U.S. Before assuming this post, he had served for 10 years as chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. During his tenure, enrollment grew from 8,805 to more than 14,400 students. In addition to his administrative duties, Orbach maintained an active research program in theoretical and experimental physics, and even taught a freshman physics course each winter quarter.
Gordon H. Sato PhD '56, Biology Best known for his contribution to the understanding of the multiple factors required for the culture and husbandry of mammalian cells outside the body, Sato exemplifies the nontraditional student. In 1950, he was working as a gardener near the Caltech campus. Having spent his high-school years in the Manzanar internment camp and being, by his own admission, a terrible undergraduate student, he nevertheless decided to try making his dream of attending Caltech come true. He walked onto campus and ended up being interviewed by Nobel Laureate Max Delbrück, who recognized his potential and took him on as a graduate student.
After completing his PhD, Sato held a number of academic positions, and founded several biotechnology ventures. In the early 1980s, he codeveloped the cancer drug Erbitux. Today he devotes himself to a food development project he started in the late 1980s to help alleviate famine in Ethiopia.
At the ceremony, each recipient will receive an engraved pewter Tiffany bowl and a framed certificate. In addition, their names will be placed on a plaque at the Caltech Alumni House alongside the names of all past recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award.
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