Inaugural Address

October 29, 2026

On the evening of November 1st, 1917, a small group gathered beneath a white dome high on Mount Wilson. There, among the rugged peaks of the San Gabriel mountains, George Ellery Hale and his guests watched as the one-hundred-inch Hooker Telescope prepared to take its first peek at the cosmos.

Hale had already built the world's largest telescope – twice. Now, next to a giant apparatus of unprecedented power, he stood on the precipice of that achievement and promise again.

Among his guests that evening was the renowned English poet Alfred Noyes, who marveled at this feat of engineering "alive with all the thoughts, and hopes, and dreams of man's adventurous mind."

It was human imagination given form in glass and steel, a prosthesis of our own curiosity, built to reach even farther into the unknown.

Astronomers have a poetic term for the moment that a new telescope opens its eye to the night sky. We call it first light.

As my fellow stargazers in the audience can attest, first light is a moment of anticipation. Years of ideas, ingenuity, and painstaking effort converge to bring us to the threshold of new discovery.

First light represents both a pinnacle and a promise. It connects the travails and triumphs that led to it with the impetus and inspiration of a beckoning frontier.

An inauguration, too, brings the past and the future into a shared field of view. We draw illumination from those who came before us as we envision what we might yet discover.

It gives us occasion to reflect on the inheritance entrusted to us, the enduring values that animate our collective endeavor, and the future we aspire to create together.

When I think about what might lie beyond the horizon, I return to another night beneath the stars, half a world away, and to the first person who taught me just how dramatically the boundaries of possibility could expand.

I was about four years old at the time, walking with my father Somapala in the garden of my childhood home in Sri Lanka. We must have done this countless times before. But, this particular evening is etched in my memory, because my father pointed to the moon and told me something I could scarcely comprehend.

People have walked there.

Suddenly, the moon wasn't just a luminous dinner plate, hanging in the night sky. It was a place we could reach. A world we could explore.

My own sense of possibility expanded dramatically in that instant. And with the boundless enthusiasm of a 4-year old, I remember wondering: If people could do that, what could we not do?

In one form or another, I've been chasing that question ever since.

I owe much of that expansive optimism to my late father. His own life gave me every reason to believe that the circumstances we inherit need not determine the boundaries of what we can accomplish.

He had to drop out of school in 7th grade, and take a job in a printing shop in Colombo, far from his village home, to support his suddenly widowed mother and five siblings.

Yet his desire to learn was irrepressible. Somehow, he managed to finish high school at night, get two degrees externally from London, and serve as a government official who rose through the ranks to senior administration —while also writing three-dozen books on a variety of topics, tending to things around the house and garden, and raising two kids.

At age 55, he ‘retired' early, and did a PhD in linguistic philosophy, realizing a dream he had held onto for decades.

He possessed a voracious curiosity about the world. More importantly for me, he shared it.

If my father taught me to look toward distant horizons, my mother Sirima, who is with us today, showed me the inner strength that it takes to reach for them.

She has a deep sense of what matters most. Her resilience through life's many twists and turns, and her steadiness in keeping the ground firm beneath our feet, gave my sister and me the freedom to dream and the confidence to venture into the unknown.

Mom, මගේ සිහින සැබෑ කරගන්න මට උදව් කළාට, බොහොම ස්තූතියි. Amma.

Together, they launched the journey that brought me from that garden to this podium.

But many, many others have pitched in along the way to ensure I could travel the distance .

I am overwhelmed by the generosity of family, friends, colleagues, and mentors who have traveled from across the country and around the globe to be here.

Your presence is a reminder that no one travels anywhere of consequence alone.

To our Board of Trustees and to my faculty colleagues, thank you for the confidence you've placed in me to steward this remarkable institution.

And to the entire Caltech community: thank you for welcoming our family so warmly—though I hadn't quite anticipated that welcome extending to low Earth orbit.

I first came to this country as an international student inspired by the power and promise of its great universities.

I still believe these institutions are among America's most precious assets.

To lead one is a tremendous privilege. To lead Caltech is a privilege beyond measure.

Caltech's story is one of continuous reinvention and renewal in the service of discovery.

In 1907, when George Ellery Hale joined the governing board of Throop Polytechnic Institute, the school was on a conventional path of progress —more students, more programs, a larger campus.

Hale urged a radical rethinking.

He saw in Throop the potential for creating an institute of science and technology of the highest order.

The transformation was uncompromising.

Throop closed its elementary and secondary schools and its teachers' college.

Student enrollment dropped from more than 600 to just 27.

In 1910, the American Educational Review called it "probably the boldest step ever taken by an American educational institution," marking "the determination to concentrate resources on the development of an institute of technology that shall rank with the best in the world."

That defining choice set Caltech on its trajectory. And the soaring aspiration behind it has guided the Institute ever since.

The legendary trio of Hale, Arthur Noyes and Robert Millikan, set about building a preeminent center of research and learning that gave primacy to fundamental science and curiosity-driven inquiry.

Their vision gave rise to a singular institution that has expanded boundaries of human possibility for well over a century, repeatedly reinventing the very means by which we investigate and understand our world.

At Caltech physicists, chemists, and biologists joined forces to decode life at its most fundamental level.

Our geologists sold off the Institute's fossil collection as they forged a new path into geochemistry and, later, reached outward from the rocks beneath our feet to the geology of other worlds.

And, risky experiments with rockets in the Arroyo Seco grew into the Jet Propulsion Lab, transforming the dream of reaching those worlds into the science of exploring them.

To capture the full scope of Caltech's impact and the breakthroughs born here would undoubtedly test the patience of even the most generous audience.

So let me make the point with just a few numbers: 48 Nobel laureates. 126 members of the National Academies. 68 National Medals of Science. 15 National Medals of Technology and Innovation. Over 2,000 active U.S. patents. More than 16 billion miles—and counting—traveled across the solar system.

Behind those data points is an uncommon ethos. One that invests in brilliant people who are undeterred by the seemingly impossible. That bets on bold ideas and gives them room to run. That is uncompromising in its excellence and courageous in tackling problems at every conceivable scale. That devotes itself to unraveling the mysteries of the natural world. And when nature doesn't readily divulge its secrets, builds the tools necessary to reveal them.

That is the exhilarating bequest entrusted to us.

We take it up at a time of breathtaking scientific possibility, but also fraying public trust and mounting pressure to measure the value of inquiry by the immediacy of its returns. The demands of the present could easily narrow our sights and eclipse the possibilities of the future.

Yet science is a profoundly hopeful endeavor, sustained by a belief that there is more to seek, to know, to understand.

As scientists, we must remain optimists in the face of uncertainty.

And Caltech has never measured the worth of an idea solely by what it promises to deliver tomorrow. Nor should we begin to do so now.

George Ellery Hale could not have anticipated all the ways his great telescope would expand our understanding, including the astonishing revelation that the universe itself is expanding! But he knew what it would take to give scientists the capacity to look further.

I see in that something of my own charge. Not to prescribe the discoveries of our future, but to ensure that the people of Caltech have what they need to bring those within reach.

So what comes next? How do we preserve Caltech as a place where new frontiers are born? How do we hold fast to its distinctive character and spirit of daring, while finding and inventing new ways to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of a new era?

I suspect this crowd would rightly be skeptical if I professed to have a detailed blueprint for success.

In truth, Caltech's future will emerge from the ideas and the collective efforts of this entire community.

What I can offer are three aspirations for the future, grounded in the values that have brought us this far.

First, it begins—as everything at Caltech does—with curiosity. Caltech must always be a place where the most ambitious ideas in science and engineering have the space and support to soar.

We may prize our compact scale in many regards, but we have never been modest in our aspirations or our questions.

Our task is to preserve and bolster the environment where human curiosity can find its fullest expression.

That means embracing intellectual risks others might not, putting extraordinary tools in the hands of people with the imagination to utilize them in entirely new ways, and ensuring brilliant minds have the freedom to follow wherever their inquiries lead.

Isaac Asimov once observed that the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureeka!" but "that's funny..."

To stay at the forefront of thought and discovery we need the latitude and encouragement to seize those unexpected glimmers of insight. And the bravery and resolve to pursue the biggest, boldest questions.

It took 43 years to bring LIGO from its conception to the moment we first heard the universe speak in gravitational waves —a full century after Einstein predicted their existence.

Today, that patient wager has opened an entirely new window on the cosmos.

Not every idea will end in a breakthrough. Some may carry us to entirely unexpected destinations, others may take generations to bear fruit.

But, to quote a predecessor of mine, Caltech exists to create "knowledge for the ages."

We must match the audacity of that ambition by making investments of time and resources, of focused attention and sustained effort, worthy of the long horizon of human exploration.

Second, strengthening our enterprise requires a fierce commitment to the flourishing of our people, and to the vitality of our community.

From the beginning, the Institute's founders held an expansive view of what it meant to educate scientific leaders. They sought to develop imagination and wisdom nurtured through the humanities, alongside scientific understanding and technical mastery.

Their vision echoed in the words of Albert Einstein, who, addressing Caltech students in 1931, said: "Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors… Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."

In the aftermath of the Second World War, that responsibility took on new urgency as scientists confronted the destructive powers of their advances in atomic physics.

Today, artificial intelligence holds immense promise for accelerating discovery and economic prosperity, even as it raises thorny questions about human agency, values, and purpose.

Preparing our students to navigate that future, as they actively help shape it, requires more of them than technical brilliance.

They will need capaciousness of thought, the wisdom to weigh questions of meaning and value, and the moral imagination to grapple with humanity in all its complexity and contradictions.

These qualities take shape in the shared life of community, through encounters with differing views and experiences, through friendships and debates, through artistic creation and athletic pursuits, —and through the occasional release of a liquid nitrogen-soaked pumpkin from 10 stories up.

This communal richness is not incidental to our scientific prowess. Rather, it enables so much of Caltech's magic.

Our aspiration is a Caltech experience that develops not only formidable scientists and engineers, but original thinkers and daring leaders with the judgment and breadth of view to lead lives of meaning and service.

Third, our commitment to cultivate human potential does not end at the boundaries of our campus. We have the opportunity and the obligation to shine our light outward, to share the wonder and possibility of discovery with the wider world.

Discovery serves humanity in many practical ways. It gives us new technologies, new medicines, new tools for understanding and improving our lives.

But those are not the only gifts of science.

Richard Feynman once made this point with his characteristic eloquence. An artist friend suggested that while an artist could appreciate the beauty of a flower, a scientist would spend time dissecting it and make it a dull thing.

Feynman found this idea pre-posterous. Knowing something about the cells inside the flower, its colors, its evolution, and the processes that brought it into being only added to its beauty.

Knowledge gave him even more to marvel at. Understanding only deepened wonder.

That spirit should shape how Caltech meets the world.

Science is a splendid human endeavor, one that enriches us tremendously, not only materially but also culturally.

We have a responsibility to invite more people into this magnificent quest —to share the big questions that drive us, the moments when nature surprises us, the exhilarating rush of seeing something no one has ever seen before, and even the experimental failures that send us searching in another direction.

The work we do here belongs in a much grander story. Each discovery becomes part of humanity's common inheritance, revealing more of the universe around us and our place within it, and enlarging the realms of possibility.

The promise of first light is not just to see further for ourselves, but to illuminate the way for everyone.

When Alfred Noyes stood beneath the dome on Mount Wilson on that November night, he had come to witness the first light of a magnificent new machine.

But ultimately, what moved him was not the telescope. It was the human endeavor embodied in it.

He wrote that "the story of scientific discovery has its own epic unity—a unity of purpose and endeavor—the single torch passing from hand to hand through the centuries."

We are both inheritors and stewards of that great, unfinished enterprise.

And the frontier is calling.

We do not yet know what most of the universe is made of.

We still do not fully understand how life begins or how the workings of the human brain give rise to consciousness.

We are only beginning to understand the nature of intelligence itself, and how far we might extend its possibilities through artificial intelligence.

We are still searching for ways to provide abundant, clean energy to a warming planet, and to harness the full potential of quantum phenomena.

But we take up the torch with the unshakeable conviction that nature still holds wonders far beyond anything we have yet imagined.

Each unanswered question offers another horizon.

Each moment of first light is an invitation to venture further.

When I consider how far this community of adventurous minds has carried us, I'm awestruck by what Caltech can achieve.

We've listened to gravitational waves rippling through the universe, and flown a helicopter on Mars;

We've learned to read the Earth's trembling, and moved a robotic arm through the power of human thought;

We've revealed how DNA is copied and repaired, and pioneered the silicon chips that revolutionized modern computing;

We've harvested solar power in space and learned to direct evolution itself.

As I've come to know this community from within, I've grown even more convinced that our most consequential contributions still lie ahead of us.

With our sights set on the horizon, I'm transported back to that garden and the kid who stared at the moon wow'ed by humanity's giant leap.

And I feel that same sense of boundless possibility.

If Caltech could do all that…what could we not do?

Thank you.