Homecoming: WAVE Alumni Return to Caltech for Graduate Studies

For seven new graduate students at Caltech, it won’t be their first time conducting research at the Institute: they all had a head start in summer 2022, as members of the WAVE Fellows program.

Launched in 2015, the WAVE Fellows program is a 10-week summer research program for those undergraduates who have been significantly underrepresented in STEM and higher education. Although open to all applicants, the program aims to foster diversity by increasing the participation of students historically excluded from science and engineering PhD programs and making Caltech’s graduate programs more visible and accessible to students not traditionally exposed to Caltech.

Since the start of the program, 35 former WAVE Fellows have matriculated to Caltech for their PhDs, and more than 90 percent have enrolled in graduate programs overall. After an expansion of the program in 2021, Caltech increased the number of WAVE Fellows from 25 to 80 students each summer. With that expansion, the program’s success continues to grow.

“The WAVE program has been a powerful way to attract talented scholars to Caltech,” says Harry A. Atwater (Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science; Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science; and director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance), who worked with two WAVE Fellows in the incoming cohort.

“I’m delighted that César [Lasalde Ramírez] and Holland [Frieling] discovered Caltech through the WAVE fellowship program, and then chose to join our vibrant and tightly knit community. I’m looking forward to exploring interdisciplinary graduate research with both of them in the coming years.”