Life in the Division

Caltech is a vibrant intellectual community with many opportunities for self-enrichment. The flexible and lively intellectual atmosphere at Caltech nurtures a dynamic program of informal seminars, journal clubs, and joint group meetings where students and postdoctoral fellows have an opportunity to hear about recent scientific developments and to hone their public speaking skills. Every week, well-known scientists come to Caltech to present seminars about their work. There are four programs devoted to topics in biological research: Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Seminar; Biology Seminar; Neurobiology Seminar; and Biochemistry Seminar. In addition, there is a graduate student-hosted seminar series that has attracted 10 prominent speakers to Caltech during the past two years, including Elizabeth Blackburn, Lucy Shapiro, Lee Hartwell, David Botstein, and Kerry Delaney.

In a weekly seminar called Biolunch, students have an opportunity to present their work to a diverse audience of biologists and chemists in an informal setting. In addition to Biolunch, there are several journal clubs that link together labs interested in a common topic. During the past year, journal clubs covering cell-cycle regulation, protein structure and folding, signal transduction, immunology, the molecular basis of olfaction, and neurobiology attracted large audiences.

If that isn't enough to keep your calendar booked, every month the Sternberg, Meyerowitz, Benzer, Lewis, Hay, and Zinn labs get together for "Worms, Weeds, and Flies," and a large group of labs interested in various aspects of neurobiology get together for food and science at Neurodinner.

During October, the entire Biology division gathers for its annual retreat, which provides an excellent opportunity for new students to meet postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and other students, and to familiarize themselves with the diverse research programs in the division.

Besides the scientific interactions available within the Division of Biology, there are also excellent opportunities for interactions with colleagues in other disciplines. Many labs within the Division of Biology have graduate students from the cross-divisional graduate programs in computation and neural systems and in biochemistry. These programs bring together the complementary talents of computer scientists, electrical engineers, biophysicists, and organic chemists to address important biological problems.