IST "IST Quarterly Update" Meeting and Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social
Wednesday, April 6, 2005

provacative speakers! sprinkles! imaginative ideas! chocolate! mentors! colleagues!

The first IST "IST Quarterly Update" (and Ice Cream Social!) was held on Wednesday, April 6. In a mere fours years, the IST seeds have sprouted and are thriving:

• a new building is in the works thanks to the generosity of the Annenberg Foundation;
  
• our four new research centers are establishing roots thanks to the efforts of center directors Matthew Jackson*, John Preskill, Leonard Schulman, and Paul Sternberg with fantastic support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation;
  
• post-docs are here en masse (currently 23) with a new crop already selected for the fall 2005 and "alumni" beginning to spread the word about what's growing at Caltech;
  
• courses have begun to be integrated into the curriculum
  (CS 286c Seminar In Computer Science, BI 250c Topics in Systems Biology, Ph/CS 219 Quantum Computation, SS/CS 270ab Introduction to Social and Information Sciences);
  
• the first graduate endowment support has been provided by Howard Oringer (MSEE '63); and
  
• the first IST poem has been composed:
  
  

  CPI At CPI we would submit That anything can be a bit. Recall that in an early age It was a letter on a page. Now, we can record our datum In the state of just one atom. Or we might use DNA To build our bits in an array. To students at CBS-cubed We told of bits in nanotubes. And further, we're investing in Storing bits in photon spin. Physics built the atom bomb But also brought us telecom. It helps us to build tiny things; We'll see just what the future brings. Meanwhile, IST's dream team Is gathered here to eat ice cream. And so I'd better say good-bye From all of us at CPI. —John Preskill 6 April 2005

Hats off to all who have helped move our endeavor forward!

*A few of the quotes provided by Matthew Jackson at the event:

It is a very sad thing nowadays that there is so little useless information.
—Oscar Wilde (1856 - 1900) Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.
—Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004) 40th U.S. president

Left to right: John Preskill, Matthew Jackson, Shuki Bruck, and Leonard Schulman

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
—Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) English statesman, author

I find that a great part of the information I have, was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
—Franklin P. Adams (1804 - 1865) English politician

We have for the first time an economy based on a key resource [Information] that is not only renewable, but self-generating. Running out of it is not a problem, but drowning in it is.
—John Naisbitt (1874 - 1965) English statesman, author