(upbeat music)
- Hi.
- Hello.
- It's okay.
We're just chatting.
- Caltech is really a unique university.
There's absolutely nothing like it.
- This is like Utopia University in my dream.
And Caltech should never change.
- The excitement of the environment kind of lifts us up.
It inspires us to try to do our best work.
- Fearlessness is an unusual quality
in all walks of life.
At Caltech, there is a culture
where fearlessness is encouraged.
- You look for ways in which,
potentially if you're successful,
you can change the world.
(upbeat music)
- The campaign has been central to our ability to draw
the right people to the Institute
and keep them here.
- People are interactive.
Their doors are open.
They talk to each other.
They work together.
- To be honest, the hardest thing about Caltech
is saying no to projects because there's just so many
different opportunities and so many cool things going on.
- Sometimes really the best ideas come from,
oh you just get a coffee, and it's like,
"Oh wait, I didn't really think about that."
- I knew if I came here,
I would just be here to do science and to learn.
Science for the sake of science.
- This is really our sandbox to explore
a large space of ideas.
- The campaign allows our campus to do what it does best.
It allows us to run an epic experiment.
- The projects that are kind of crazy and out there,
those are the ones that are oftentimes harder
to get money in the first place,
but those are the ones where we're really going to
make these huge strides eventually.
- Bold ideas.
- And risky.
- Imagine what the world would be like
if instead we were able to combine clean energy from the sun
with carbon dioxide to serve the role that oil serves
our society now.
- Our goal was to take
the very first picture of a black hole.
Black holes appear very small in the sky,
so what we did is we connected telescopes
from around the world and only took little slivers
of the light that we would have on an earth-sized
telescope, and then we had to design algorithms
to combine that information to recover the picture.
- I've always been inspired by The Fantastic Voyage,
which is a sci-fi film about little robots,
submarines that are moving around the body
and diagnosing and fixing various problems,
and when you have these submarines inside,
you want to have ways to communicate with them.
Azita said "Oh yeah, this kind of thing might be possible."
Almost anybody else would have said,
"No, it's not possible," but it's because
Azita is the world expert in exactly the things
that are needed to do this kind of thing.
- We really want to develop something
that's never existed before.
A microelectronic gadget that's put inside the eye
to enable blind people to see.
- The moons of the solar system are the next frontier
of exploration and discovery.
- I think looking at things from different angles
are really the source of creativity,
connecting the dots and leads to innovation.
- It's so hard to get funding that you oftentimes
have to have results to even have a chance
of getting that funding.
Whereas the support that Caltech has given me
oftentimes it gives you seed money
that allows you to take risks and do crazy things.
That's something that's not really possible to do
in the current funding landscape.
- This is the kind of project that was so new
that to try to go and get it funded
by the federal government
would have set us back by a lot.
- And this is the kind of project that definitely requires
different expertise to come together,
so it's been really rewarding.
- Philanthropy and subsidy is crucial
to modern day research.
It gives you the tranquility.
- Intellectual freedom.
- Academic freedom.
- Freedom to really think and do science.
- So liberating for me.
I don't have to spend a decade establishing myself
before I can do the work that I want to do,
and that I know I can do.
I can do it right now.
- You just hit the gas pedal on that
and just start moving in that direction.
- It's hard to think of any major advance
that's happened at Caltech that hasn't been impacted
by philanthropy.
The most visible aspect of the Breakthrough Campaign
has been the construction
of the Chen Neuroscience Research building.
The building obviously is spectacular,
in terms of just visual appeal,
but what's even more spectacular is the science
that's going on inside the building.
- The Resnick Sustainability Institute
is a virtual Institute on campus
that will become a physical Institute on campus,
which seeks to draw that talent pool
into working on problems that are longterm,
incredibly impactful, in the area of sustainability.
- We need to work with the planet to figure out
how to stay here.
And it's great that there's institutions like Caltech
that take that problem seriously.
- If you're a doctor, you are providing a service
to somebody that they need, and so they're going to pay
you for it.
If you're a scientist, people have to have faith
that your science will produce something for them,
maybe not now, but in some, 50, 100 years.
- And this is why a university like Caltech
has such an essential role to play,
to be thinking about the longer term.
- I would like to thank our many donors.
You've done a wonderful thing, and we're deeply grateful.
- Tremendously grateful.
That faith, that trust in me, is inspiring.
It gets me out of bed in the morning,
and it gets me into the lab.
- Believing in us without seeing the exact scene why yet,
has been transformational for us and amazing
in this journey.
- What she said.
(both laugh)
- Once again, thanks.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
- Billions of thanks to you.
- All the donors of the Breakthrough Campaign,
you've made campus even better than it was before.
- Caltech is unique.
We are vicious, we are fearless,
and we can only succeed with philanthropy.
- Philanthropy is essential to realize
the breakthroughs we're seeing.
Philanthropy allows you to take risks.
It allows you to push the limits of your imagination.
- It is an investment that will generate great returns
in the future.
And further empower Caltech to transform
and change the world in positive ways.
- You probably don't even realize just how amazing
it really is that you did this
because my day-to-day existence,
what happens inside my brain when I'm thinking science
has been transformed, and it's really hard to emphasize
how incredible that is.
- People really want to help each other succeed
and want to succeed together.
- I love Caltech.
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