#SoCaltech: Meet Caltech’s 2025 Graduates
Ten of Caltech’s 2025 graduates discuss their achievements, challenges, and lessons learned during their time at the Institute.
Adele Basturk
Adele Basturk is a fourth-year physics undergraduate and winner of the C. S. Shastry Prize, the Haren Lee Fischer Memorial Award in Junior Physics, and the D. S. Kothari Prize in Physics. She is an avid pilot working toward her commercial license, and will join the physics PhD program at Harvard University in the Fall.
Kathryn Edwards
“It’s hard to process that I’m already getting close to the end of my career at Caltech. It’s been a great experience—from building bonds with my basketball teammates and people in my house to getting into my major classes and doing a SURF where I worked on impact ionization for dust particles in space at the University of Colorado Boulder.
One of the most valuable things to me has been my relationship with my teammates. They’re genuinely some of the most brilliant and kind people I’ve ever met. Being able to spend time together every single week for months has allowed us to develop an unusually close bond; it’s really difficult to find a full team as close as we are.
As captain, my teammates are my best friends, but on the court there are times where I need to be the person who takes charge and makes sure we’re getting the most out of every practice. We challenge each other daily to be our best, ensuring we’re ready for game day.
My goals for my final season are to enjoy my time with my teammates while also pushing for personal records. I try to focus on the team goals first, and the rest follows. It’s more satisfying to have victories as a team rather than just focusing on personal stats.
After graduating, there are two things I’ll miss the most: One is the people. Knowing that my friends won’t be a door away anymore will be a lot harder. And on a different note, I’ll miss the challenge of being at Caltech. Balancing everything from the course load to basketball is difficult. But I really enjoy the challenge. Something I’ve learned is that it’s OK to fail. A lot of students come in not having been pushed to our limits or experiencing failure. But here, we gain the understanding that it’s OK to fail, and we learn the skills to bounce back and continue striving for our best.”
Kathryn Edwards is a fourth-year undergraduate studying mechanical engineering and aerospace. As captain of the women’s basketball team, she has led the team through a successful season while also achieving numerous accolades throughout her four years. On January 29, Edwards broke Caltech’s all-time scoring record in women’s basketball, earning a career total of 1,420 points to date.
Sulekha Kishore
“I’ve had so many experiences at Caltech, but they’re all different facets of what I’m interested in. It’s been nice to have the ability to do lots of different things because it’s always been hard for me to choose just one.
“I was initially really interested in aerospace, and I did an internship and had a couple of research experiences related to satellites. Working with Professor Soon-Jo Chung [Bren Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems and a Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior research scientist], I helped develop a computer vision algorithm for a satellite called Edge Node Lite that does on-board training, segmentation, and detection of other objects in space. It was especially exciting to see a rocket launch with our satellite and get pictures from it in space!
“Around the same time, I took several classes with Professor Mike Alvarez [Flintridge Foundation Professor of Political and Computational Social Science] and got more engaged in political science research. I helped create a software package that quickly finds and links duplicated information in voter registration databases when someone signs up to vote at the DMV or changes their address and winds up with multiple records. It was exciting to learn about the real-world problems that election officials face and think about how to solve them with theory-informed approaches and tools.
“I also really like getting out in the community and working with people. One of my favorite experiences has been organizing the Southern California Science Olympiad State Tournament, which is a massive volunteer-run event that brings more than a thousand middle and high school students to Caltech’s campus to compete in science events. I participated in the state tournament when I was a high school student in Pasadena, and I thought it was so cool to learn the science and then compete at Caltech. Now, as the president of Caltech’s Science Olympiad Club, I helped organize the event and even got to hand out the awards on stage in Beckman Auditorium. That was a very ‘full circle’ moment.”
Sulekha Kishore is a graduating fourth year double majoring in computer science and political science. She is the president of the Caltech Science Olympiad Club; a member of the executive committee and Student Activism Speaker Series (SASS) committee of the Caltech Y; the captain of Caltech’s Ultimate Frisbee Team; an admissions ambassador, tour guide, and blog writer for the Undergraduate Admissions Office; the vice president of the Caltech Surf and Windsurf Club; and a computer science and political science teaching assistant.
After graduation, Kishore will pursue her PhD at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. She plans to research algorithmic fairness and AI alignment, explore the societal impacts of AI, and develop more robust technical foundations for responsible AI.
Aditya Nair
“I think Caltech is a place where boundaries don't exist between different disciplines; you are actively encouraged to go talk to your colleague in computer vision or your colleague who's a molecular biologist. And I think that's because there are so few of any given type of scientist here that we don't have a large community of just people who are molecular biologists or just people who are computer scientists. You are forced in some sense to embark on this boundary-breaking exercise. That interaction has led to huge dividends, both within my own research and in the broader scheme of everything Caltech does.
My work has been centered around bringing computational and physics-informed perspectives into the study of emotions. My advisor, David Anderson, and members of his lab have been working for many years to understand how the brain creates innate behaviors like mating and aggression. Building upon insights from the group’s previous studies, my research employed machine learning techniques to uncover the hidden neural signals that encode the persistence and escalation of aggression and arousal.
One challenge about publishing research at the intersection of distinct fields is that you’re never enough of a computer scientist for the computer scientists, and you’re never enough of a biologist for the biologists. But by persevering at that intersection and continuing to tackle fundamental questions in neuroscience with innovations in AI, I’ve been able to make an impact that now spans three papers in Nature and three in Cell in collaboration with many incredible scientists at Caltech.
The people I’ve met here are all experts in their specific fields, but it’s a very special experience when we work toward a common goal of understanding how the brain works. My hope is that I can continue to be part of an institution like Caltech, where those boundaries between disciplines don't exist, and people are both ambitious and driven but also curious and humble enough to step outside their expertise and learn from diverse scientific perspectives.”
Aditya Nair (PhD ’24) is an incoming Nanyang Assistant Professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and a principal investigator at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Agency of Science, Technology and Research in Singapore. While at Caltech, he co-founded the Chen Institute Data Science and AI for Neuroscience Summer Schools, which teaches researchers how to develop and apply computational techniques in neuroscience. He also served as the resident associate for Blacker House and mentored eight undergraduate researchers. In his future work, Nair aims to redefine the way we conceive of and treat mental health disorders by drawing on insights from computation and dynamical systems research.
Julian Navarro
“In my first year, I didn’t get any summer jobs I interviewed for. I didn’t know how to talk. I didn’t know what they wanted to hear. Other students had way more coding experience than me coming from high school. When I started teaching at FSRI, I learned how to prepare. I also have a friend at Caltech named Favour Okodogbe who got an internship, and I learned a lot from her about how to communicate in interviews and how to express yourself—like making eye contact and sharing your thought process. That motivated me to help other students who might be in the same position I was in.
Now, with help from Caltech’s CALE (Career Achievement, Leadership, and Exploration) and our alumni network, our club brings companies to campus to do workshops. Last year, we brought NVIDIA and Roblox, and we talked about the interview process and the importance of LinkedIn. Then, we set up photo shoots so people can have a good LinkedIn picture. We also made a visit to Google’s Venice office with students interested in software engineering and quantum computing. These companies want to recruit here, and we give students the opportunity to connect with them directly in a more personal way.”
Julian Navarro is a fourth-year computer science major from San Juan, Puerto Rico. After working as a teaching assistant in 2023 with the First-Year Success Research Institute (FSRI), Navarro cofounded CS Careers @ Caltech, a club that helps students network with recruiters from tech firms and gain professional development skills. After graduation in June 2025, he plans to start a job as a software engineer at Oracle, where he completed an internship in 2024.
Jimmy Ragan
“I first got involved with the Caltech Y when I saw they were doing a pre-orientation trip to Yosemite. I had done a lot of hiking and backpacking in high school as an Eagle Scout but didn’t have as much of a chance to do it during college. I figured it’d be a great introduction to the Caltech community and a good transition to grad school. I had also never been to Yosemite, so I volunteered to drive figuring I’d be more likely to get on the trip. I just stuck with it from then on. I also tutored a Pasadena student from eighth grade until he graduated high school, which was very rewarding and taught me a lot about how to communicate, especially to those people who can be good at math or science but don’t feel they are right now.
These experiences were a good opportunity to reconnect with the joy of mentorship. Even with the outdoor trips, we would explicitly invite people who had never gone camping before to come. I enjoy teaching people who have never chopped firewood before how to do that and to help them get through the weekend and have a good time. Without these experiences, I think I probably would’ve made it through Caltech, but it certainly would’ve been harder. Caltech’s always going to be an academic institution first, but there definitely is a sense that people care about the community beyond that.”
Jimmy Ragan will receive his PhD in space engineering during Caltech’s 131st Commencement ceremony on June13, 2025. He currently works as a data scientist at Slingshot Aerospace. Ragan worked as a tutor in the Caltech Y’s Rise Program for five years. In 2019, he joined the Y’s Outdoors Committee, which plans and organizes outdoor adventures for students. During the 2023–24 academic year, he served as a member of the Y’s board of directors.
Juan Renteria
“I came to Caltech with the mentality that my medical condition was not going to stop me and, in fact, was something that empowered me and motivated me to not slow down. But things started to ramp up in my junior and senior year, and I had to go to the hospital more than 10 times. And when I get discharged from the hospital, it's not like I'm healthy; I have another three weeks where I'm bedridden and can't get my own food, shower, or do laundry—all while keeping up with classes and other responsibilities. But I never faced these challenges alone. My family supported and cared for me through daily video calls, my friends helped me with daily tasks, and through it all, they always made me feel loved. Caltech has also supported me in every way possible, from Dining Services delivering food to my room to the Ricketts custodial staff always checking in on me. The Deans’ Office was even able to fly my mom in from Chicago to help care for me during medical emergencies. I didn’t even have to ask; they just saw the situation and said they would see what they could do to help.
Being a kid from a Mexican community, a first-generation college student, and someone with a medical disability, I’m in a unique position to advocate for other people who face challenges, to remind them that they’re here for a reason, that they’re capable. Caltech can be very intimidating, and I think a lot of students face that insecurity—regardless of whether they have a condition or not—asking, “Do I belong here? Did I make a mistake?” So, I think truly knowing oneself is the most important thing, knowing nobody is greater or lesser than anybody else. We’re all different, so own that and just keep moving forward. Know that people are going to support you, that there are resources to help you, and never stop fighting for yourself.”
Juan Renteria, a fourth-year student studying mechanical engineering, was born with Klippel-Trénaunay syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause blood vessel and soft tissue malformations. He is the past president of the Caltech Hispanic and Latino Association and recipient of a 2024 New Horizons Award. He is one of only two students accepted to Northwestern University’s combined doctoral program in physical therapy and engineering, where he will study after graduation.
Edward Speer
“When you say you study philosophy, a lot of times people just immediately think of a grizzled old graybeard writing about the meaning of life or whatever, but it’s really more connected to science than people realize.
Every modern field of study is connected to philosophy in some way, and philosophy really acts as a guiding light to new fields of research and discovery. In the time of Aristotle or Plato, all of the things that we talk about as natural science today—they were philosophy then. Philosophy kind of gives birth to these new fields, and in a place like Caltech, it really plays a major role.
I've gotten a chance to look at the philosophy of quantum mechanics, the philosophy of electromagnetism. Those fields are trying to make real progress in what the scientific picture of the world is. In quantum mechanics, we don't have a clear picture of what's going on, of what the theory posits about the world. We have more of a mathematical formula. One side of science is saying, ‘What can we compute about the world? What can we predict?” And philosophy is asking, “Why do we trust our scientific theories, and what do they say about the physical world around us?” And I think that's an incredibly valuable side of the coin to look at.”
Edward Speer is graduating this June with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and computer science. His philosophy thesis was an ethics paper on algorithmic fairness, which he co-authored with a large language model; he accompanied that with a meta-paper analysis of the success of that collaboration. Speer was a starter on Caltech’s baseball team all four of his years as an undergrad and was recently named one of the Institute’s Sportspersons of the Year. He is also recipient of the Gordon Mcclure Memorial Communications Prize and the Sanpietro Travel Prize.
Alexander Viloria Winnett
“As a PRISM leader for three years, I focused on providing a space for people at different phases in their journey of identity development to meet and support one another. There's a lot of joy that comes from queer community, and our events were designed to foster that.”
“Caltech prides itself on free-thinking, thoughtful inquiry and innovation. That’s what Caltech PRISM is about. We’ve hosted movie nights, poetry and essay readings, crafting sessions, artistic drag performances, hikes, holiday parties, queer history trivia, and a gender discussion and exploration night—these are opportunities to be creative, to think deeply about the world and about expression. From there, one decides how to live with intention and not simply following prevailing dogma.”
“In the lab, I ask and attempt to answer questions like ‘How does the immune system protect us from infections?’ At PRISM, we ask and attempt to answer questions like ‘Who am I? ‘What does the happiest, most authentic and best version of myself look like?’ and ‘What is love?’ Queerness is so many things, but I see it fundamentally as the freedom to imagine and investigate the answers to these questions. Building queer community through PRISM at Caltech enables discovery.”
Alex Viloria Winnett is a student in the Caltech-UCLA Medical Scientist Training Program, which allows students to go to medical school at UCLA and graduate school at Caltech. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Viloria Winnett supported the health care response and then co-led the Caltech COVID-19 Study, which answered key questions about how to use diagnostic testing strategies to stop outbreaks. After Commencement, he will continue clinical rotations for medical school at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Leo Zhang
“For my first two years at Caltech, I was focused on academics and making sure I was on top of my work. But then I realized there were so many interesting things to do in addition to academics. I started doing trail runs with the Caltech Alpine Club and discovered the beauty of the San Gabriel Mountains. I also got involved with the Caltech Y, initially volunteering in the local community through the Y and then planning events for students to volunteer with me.
Volunteer work for me is very fulfilling, knowing that I can spend a few hours that can have real-world impact. Like working on urban gardens at a local school: I realized that all the weeding we did and all the gathering of plants, like lemongrass, would help provide food for people in need. At the same time, I learned a lot about gardening and how to live a sustainable life. It’s a different avenue of learning than doing equations, but it’s a valuable way of seeing how to translate what you learn into something practical.
Volunteering and exploring research—I did a SURF in 2022—allowed me to take a different approach, to use curiosity to explore how things actually work. Now I’ve expanded my interest to the whole world: Why does the world work like this? Caltech broadened my horizons, and I’m grateful to have met the mentors and friends I made along the way.”
Leo Zhang, a graduating senior who studied computer science. He has served on the executive committee for the Caltech Y and is a recipient of the 2024 Hastrup Award, which allowed Zhang to take an educational trip to Spain study the Wenzhounese diaspora and contrast their upbringing with his own Miami childhood.
#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.