Remarks at Convocation 2026

September 25, 2026

Good morning!

It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of welcoming you to our home. Today, it's my distinct honor to welcome you formally to one of the world's greatest institutions of discovery and learning.

For more than a century, Caltech has been a place where courageous and visionary thinkers have pursued the hardest questions at the very edge of human understanding—and found new ways to answer them.

Caltech researchers have driven breakthroughs that founded the field of molecular biology and detected gravitational waves from cosmic explosions. They have launched probes voyaging across the solar system and beyond, and built powerful new instruments that illuminate nature—from the world's most advanced telescopes to vital earthquake-warning networks.

You now take your place in that pioneering tradition.

And if you're anything like me, the thought of that is absolutely thrilling!

It may also be, if we are honest, a little intimidating.

So, allow me to borrow some wisdom from one of the seminal texts of Western thought—The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams' science fiction classic follows an unsuspecting human swept into a universe far stranger and more complicated than he had imagined.

On the cover of the guide is one essential instruction:

"DON'T PANIC."

Sound advice when roaming across the galaxy. I suspect it may also prove useful at Caltech.

And I offer that in the spirit of a fellow traveler, who shares a special bond with this year's incoming students—a bond I will not share in quite the same way with any class that follows.

I am a first-year, too. At the beginning of my own Caltech journey.

Like many of you I have also moved here recently, leaving behind familiar people, places, and routines to set out into unfamiliar territory of my own.

My initial introduction to Caltech, however, came many years ago and many thousands of miles away from Pasadena.

As a high school student in Sri Lanka, I sent an aerogramme to Caltech, asking for admissions materials and information. A few weeks later, the Institute sent me a slim, black-and-white brochure, and I still remember the first sentence in it:

"Caltech is not for everyone"

You may have come across the same phrase.
Decades later, our admissions website still says the same.

What can I say? In this case, there's truth in advertising: Caltech is unique.

You're joining a community that's intentionally laser-focused. One that's small by design, and global in impact.

The intimate scale of this campus means that you are not merely one among many. Here, you will work and learn alongside pioneers who know your name, recognize your talents, and take your ideas seriously.

And you will be defining new frontiers of your own.

So, while Caltech is not for everyone, it is for you.

You didn't arrive here by accident.

In a community this focused, each of you brings something special. You are here because of the talent and drive you have already demonstrated—and because of the promise of what we believe you can do.

The years ahead will give you the opportunity to put those qualities to work on a wide-ranging set of problems, from those that matter in people's everyday lives to seemingly esoteric questions whose implications could turn out to be profound.

You will quickly learn that our community's ability to take on the most difficult problems rests on Caltech's deep commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression coupled with our culture of mutual respect.

Caltech brings together people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and ways of seeing the world, then gives them the freedom to develop and debate their ideas through open exchange and rigorous experimentation.

Those freedoms are essential to the work we do. They allow us all to ask hard—even uncomfortable—questions, challenge prevailing assumptions, and test our ideas against the strength of evidence.

These values are fundamental to Caltech, and each of us shares a responsibility for sustaining them.

Many of you arrive with a clear view of the scholarly questions that interest you. You have described those interests eloquently in research statements and admissions essays. Some of you may see the path ahead clearly.

But I encourage you to not neglect the curiosity and imagination that led you to those questions in the first place.

Contemporary science is often mistaken as a pursuit of ever narrower specialization. At Caltech, you will find a much more expansive vision of scientific excellence.

Writing in 1907, one of our founders, George Ellery Hale, gave voice to that larger ideal. He argued that truly great scientific work required technical knowledge and mastery of the details to be matched "in no less degree" by "breadth of view and the highest powers of imagination."

The union of focused, technical rigor with unfettered curiosity and imagination is central to what makes Caltech's approach so distinctive.

It is also where much of its joy lies—what another Caltech legend, Richard Feynman, simply called "the pleasure of finding things out."

Feynman knew that better than most. He embodied that spirit well beyond physics—from biology to bongos.

Not long after Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA, he found himself drawn to questions reshaping biology and decided to spend some time trading his usual field for an unfamiliar one. He asked to spend the summer in Max Delbrück's biology lab here at Caltech, the same lab that helped found the field of molecular biology.

He first asked if he could simply hang around and wash petri dishes while he watched the biologists at work. The postdoc running the lab turned him down flat. If Feynman wanted to be there, he'd have to take on a real problem, just like any graduate student.

So he did. He took an introductory course, learned unfamiliar lab techniques from scratch, and began studying mutations in bacteriophages. His experiments produced results intriguing enough that Watson later invited him to present them at a biology seminar at Harvard.

He returned to Caltech's biology lab for his sabbatical year and helped conceive an experiment that might have demonstrated something fundamental about the cellular machinery shared across living organisms. But he supplied a contaminated sample, and the experiment failed.

Feynman later acknowledged that his technique had not matched the quality of his idea. But he didn't regret the excursion.

He didn't walk away calling himself a biologist, but he emerged with a better understanding of how another field asked questions, a shaper eye for experimental rigor, and one surprisingly practical skill—removing the cap from a test tube with one hand while operating a pipette with the other.

He later reported that he continued to use that skill every morning, to open and apply his toothpaste with one hand while holding his toothbrush in the other.

That isn't a story meant to extol Feynman's genius. Rather, it speaks to "the pleasure of finding things out".

Here was someone at the height of his field choosing to be a beginner again, on purpose, coming within a hair's breadth of a real discovery, and still walking away having learned something valuable.

That is closer to what discovery actually looks like than any Nobel medal can show you. There is no precise formula for it. But sustained curiosity and a willingness to fail make success more likely—and the path more fun.

At Caltech, a course outside your field, an unexpected result in the lab, or a conversation with someone who thinks very differently may send your work in a direction you had not considered.

Don't mistake that as a distraction from your path. Exploration is the path.

Our institute's illustrious history has been defined by that fearless, experimental ethos. And by people who ventured beyond all manner of established paths, daring to imagine what lay beyond the limits of current understanding.

Now, it's your turn.

We couldn't be more excited to have you here, and for the learning, discovering, and inventing we know you will do. We can't wait to see where the pleasure of finding things out will take you.

But wherever these next few years lead, remember:

DON'T PANIC.

Welcome home, Techers!