Caltech Comes Together to Celebrate 131st Commencement
On Friday, June 13th, Caltech honored its 614 graduates with 619 degrees: 250 bachelor's degrees, 148 master's degrees, and 221 doctoral degrees.
The graduates, joined by hundreds of family members, friends, and community members as well as the Institute's trustees and faculty, were honored in a ceremony on Beckman Mall. It was a bright, warm day, and the area was festooned with orange and white balloons as the faculty and graduates processed onto the mall to the accompaniment of the Caltech Convocation Brass, Percussion, and Organ Ensemble.
In remarks by Caltech's Board of Trustees chair Dave Thompson (MS '78), President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, and 2025 commencement speaker Dr. Walter Massey, the graduates were celebrated for their accomplishments, recognized for their tenacity, perseverance, and commitment to their academic pursuits, and charged to address tomorrow's challenges, applying their technical skills and problem-solving prowess to positively shape and inform our future.
"Class of 2025, you are a creative community of explorers, problem-solvers, scholars, builders, and dreamers," said Massey, a condensed matter physicist, executive leader, and administrator who has held positions with the Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, the University of California system, Morehouse College, the National Science Foundation, and others. "True creativity is grounded in qualities that can never be automated. What you have learned here at Caltech will open up a universe of possibilities, lead to opportunities you never imagined, and transform your life in ways you never expected."
Massey, who shared personal anecdotes and lessons from his own professional journey, wished the graduates success in graduate school, as postdocs, as workers in academia or industry, and as entrepreneurs. Noting that the students are graduating into a very challenging time, Massey nevertheless enthused, "I promise and I truly believe, based on my own life and experiences, that the opportunities for new discoveries and breakthroughs in all areas of the creative economy are greater than ever before. … You have the opportunity and the ability to change the world for the better."
Massey encouraged students to cultivate the "values, traits, skills, and habits that equip us to handle even the most difficult situations: among these, community, hard work, the ability and desire to never stop learning, persistence, resilience—a word you've heard a lot about over these past two days—and a little bit of luck!" He particularly stressed the importance of finding confidence. "When you leave here today, I want you to leave your imposter syndrome behind. You wouldn't have graduated if you didn't deserve to be here! You've earned this," Massey said.
As one who has himself crossed disciplinary boundaries, Massey implored the graduates to embrace the liberal arts. "The liberal arts taught me how to learn and led to opportunities I had never envisioned, including perhaps the greatest surprise to me in my life—becoming president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And if you think you've experienced imposter syndrome, try being a physicist running an art school!"
Massey noted that graduates must take on responsibility for "restoring the public's faith and trust in our institutions of knowledge" but assured them they are up to the task: "You have run the gauntlet of one of the most rigorous and respected institutions in the world, and you have succeeded. You have been taught to approach any problem with creativity, analytical rigor, and integrity. What you have learned here has prepared you for any challenge that may come your way."
Celebrating Caltech's Newest Graduates
Thompson officiated the commencement exercises, welcoming the 2025 graduates and all who supported them along the way.
Thompson spoke to the challenges that the Caltech community has faced this year, beginning with the devastating LA fires in January, and highlighted the many ways in which the communities rallied to support one another and to provide scientific expertise to support recovery efforts.
Thompson also noted Caltech's many accomplishments in 2025, spearheaded by alumni, scientists and researchers, and students. This year the Initiative for Caltech Students raised more than $250 million from over 2,700 donors along with gifts that will fund the theater arts, music performances, and programs to mentor first-year students and provide achievement coaching for students of all levels as well as postdoctoral scholars. Caltech scientists and those at JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, adapted fiber-sensing technology for volcano early-warning systems, created smart bandages that can simultaneously monitor and treat skin infections, advanced understanding of different modes of learning and how they may indicate susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. They also launched the Europa Clipper bound for Jupiter's moon Europa and SPHEREx, NASA's latest space telescope that may answer questions about the first moments of the universe to signs of life elsewhere in the Milky Way. And Caltech students, working through the Caltech Y and other charities lent their support to numerous projects, including fire recovery.
"To our students, as you move on after graduation, I hope you will be inspired by these and many other breakthroughs that have occurred during your time at Caltech. You leave here with the knowledge, the skills, the experience, and the perspective to build on the extraordinary history of Caltech and to add to that with your own efforts. We are all excited to see where your paths lead."
President Rosenbaum conferred degrees to the graduates, called on deans and division chairs to bring the graduates up one by one, and then presented four prizes to members of the graduating class. These were:
- The Mabel Beckman Prize is awarded annually to one or more students in recognition of their academic excellence, leadership, and service to the Institute community. This year the award went to Shelby Scott and Sulekha Kishore.
- The Frederic W. Hinrichs, Jr., Memorial Award recognizes the seniors who, in the opinion of the undergraduate deans, made the greatest contribution to the student body. The recipients for 2025 were Luke Zhou and Sophia Elam.
- The George W. Housner Prize honors a senior who has demonstrated excellence in scholarship and in the preparation of an outstanding piece of original research. The Housner Prize was awarded to Miguel Lin-Shiaffini.
- The Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize is awarded by a faculty committee to the student whose PhD thesis reflects extraordinary standards of quality, innovative research, and the potential for opening new avenues of human thought and endeavor. The Clauser Prize was given to Zongyi Li for his thesis "Neural Operators for Scientific Computing."
During her time at Caltech Scott has been a peer academic coach, a Title IX advocate, a Student-Faculty Programs research ambassador, the president of Fleming House, and the 2021 Newcomer of the Year awarded player on the women's soccer team. Scott double majored in mechanical engineering and business, economics, and management and will soon be joining Apple's hardware test engineering team.
Kishore led the Caltech Science Olympiad club as president and was on the Executive Committee of the Caltech Y. She served as an admissions ambassador and tour guide, computer science teaching assistant, student activism speaker series committee member, and captain of Caltech's Ultimate Frisbee Club. She double majored in computer science and political science and will be continuing her education at MIT's Institute for Data, Systems, and Society in the fall.
Zhou, who majored in chemistry and is now going on to pursue a PhD in chemistry at MIT, showed his leadership at Caltech in many ways. He has been a research ambassador for Student-Faculty Programs, a SURF board member, student president of the Caltech Y Executive Committee, and undergraduate representative to the Student Experience Committee of the Board of Trustees. In January, Zhou led the Caltech Y's collaboration with other groups in the Caltech community to support relief efforts after the Eaton Fire. He was vice president of the Caltech chemistry club, an undergraduate teaching assistant, an admissions ambassador, and the principal trombonist with the Caltech Orchestra.
Elam majored in environmental science and engineering with a concentration in chemistry and minored in biology. She served as president of ASCIT (Associated Students of Caltech), peer advocate for health and Title IX, and captain of the women's soccer team and the women's track and field team. She was the undergraduate representative for the faculty board athletics committee, the Caltech sustainability advisory committee, and the Student Experience Committee of the Board of Trustees. Elam plans to spend the next year exploring collegiate athletics coaching opportunities.
Liu-Schiaffini has conducted research in Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences Anima Anandkumar's group throughout his time at Caltech, most recently working on a long-term project developing AI methods based on operator learning for solving partial differential equations and applying them to a wide range of scientific applications including fluid dynamics, seismology, and heat transfer. He majored in computer science at Caltech and will continue study in this field as a PhD student at Stanford.
Li’s thesis on "Neural Operators for Scientific Computing" was advised by Anima Anandkumar, the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. In this study he created neural operators that can learn mappings between functional spaces, accelerating traditional scientific computing by orders of magnitude. Li will spend next year as a postdoctoral associate at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and expects to become an assistant professor of mathematics and data science at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in the fall of 2026.
In his remarks, President Rosenbaum shared a photo of the 1985 physics faculty at the University of Chicago, which included himself, commencement speaker Walter Massey, and three physics Nobel laureates among others. He reminded students of the role that friendships among scientists play in a life well lived. "Whatever sector of society you choose to apply your talents, wherever in the world you go, you will share a language and an approach with other scientists and engineers," Rosenbaum said. "A life in science writ large is rich in its stimulation, connections, and conviviality," and leads to "experiences that are rare in the pleasures they can provide and astounding in their potential."
Rosenbaum concluded by wishing all the graduates "wholeness and magic on your journey forward."
