Winners of the 2024 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes Announced

The student winners of the 2024 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. This year, prizes were awarded for outstanding PhD work by a Caltech graduate student in the areas of biotechnology and nanotechnology, with a separate prize in entrepreneurship awarded to a graduating student (graduate or undergraduate) for the best business plan, proposal, start-up, or related efforts at Caltech.

Anand Muthusamy, advised by Henry Lester, Professor of Biology, receives the prize in biotechnology. Muthusamy's research combines the protein engineering of new biosensors and computer vision for pose estimation to quantify brain-body-behavior interactions. His PhD thesis is titled: "Neuropsychiatric Drug Biosensors in Organelles, Cells, Biofluids, & Behaving Animals."

Andrei Ruskuc, advised by Andrei Faraon, the William L. Valentine Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, receives the prize in nanotechnology. Ruskuc's research builds quantum networking technologies using single rare-earth ions coupled to nanophotonic cavities, as a means of interconnecting future quantum computers. His PhD thesis is titled: "Single Rare-Earth Ions in Solid-State Hosts: A Platform for Quantum Networks."

Heather Lukas, a graduate student in Medical Engineering advised by Wei Gao, Assistant Professor of Medical Engineering; Investigator, Heritage Medical Research Institute; Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, receives the prize in entrepreneurship for her business plan titled: "Persperity Health: A Caltech Medical Engineering Start-Up; Empowering women at every stage of the reproductive health journey through wearable hormone monitoring." Lukas' research focuses on engineering bioaffinity sensors towards continuous electrochemical sensing for noninvasive, wearable medical diagnostic platforms.