Random Walk
President Barack Obama gave a shout-out to Caltech in his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on January 25. Behind him are Vice President Joe Biden (left), in his role as president of the Senate, and Speaker of the House John Boehner.
Hail from the Chief
In his 2011 State of the Union address, “Winning the Future,” President Obama pointed to Caltech as a model for innovation, saying: “We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.
“At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.”
“It is a great honor,” says Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau, “that President Obama has recognized the Institute’s game-changing solar energy research as a prime example of how America is investing in innovation to confront ‘our generation’s Sputnik moment.’ Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the first U.S. satellite in just a few short months after Russia’s launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, leading our country into the
Space Age. When America wins this new innovation arms race—developing efficient ways to cleanly power our planet—we will not only ‘win the future,’ we will make a better future.” —KB
