Alan Marumoto’s (BS ʼ86) gift to endow a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) ensures that generations of students will enjoy life-changing opportunities he experienced as an undergraduate.

Sophomore Jinhuang Zhou is studying computer science, but it was a Frontiers course in biology during his first year at Caltech that captured his imagination.

Frontiers classes, more commonly known as pizza classes because these noon seminars offer free pizza, allow undergraduates to learn about faculty research. On this day Kaihang Wang, assistant professor of biology and biological engineering, shared his research on designing and building synthetic genomes. Zhou, already contemplating a minor in biology, was fascinated. Following the presentation, he emailed Wang and expressed interest in helping the professor with his path-breaking work.

Zhou spent the summer in Wang’s lab thanks to the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program and funding made possible by alumnus Alan Marumoto. SURF connected Zhou to a mentor and offered guidance on how to carry out independent research, while Marumoto’s fellowship provided Zhou with a stipend so the undergraduate could freely focus on his project. Using computer simulations and mathematical modeling, Zhou sought to uncover the likelihood of double-stranded DNA having their ends linked together or to other strands based on their length and concentration. Addressing this phenomenon can make molecular cloning more efficient.

"My SURF gave me a peek into graduate student life, and it was helpful to know that’s a path I could take in the future," Zhou says.

Zhou expected to enjoy participating in cutting-edge research but did not anticipate how much he would like collaborating in a lab setting, being mentored by a graduate student, and applying his computer science skills in unexpected ways.

Now, Zhou is open to career paths at the intersection of computer science and genetics. He credits SURF for expanding his career options and Marumoto for making his SURF possible.

"Without the fellowship, there was a lowered chance my SURF would have happened," he says.

Learning from Laureates

Whether students pursue careers in academia or industry, Marumoto believes every Caltech student can benefit from a SURF. Tackling complex challenges and dealing with failed experiments are all valuable experiences, Marumoto says. As an undergraduate student, Marumoto participated in three summer research projects, of which two were SURF-sponsored projects. While some projects hit major roadblocks, he was not deterred. The opportunity to assist and be mentored by leading scientists was priceless. In fact, his research projects involved three Nobel laureates: the late Robert Grubbs, who was the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry; the late Ahmed Zewail, who was the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry; and Rudy Marcus, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry.

"The SURF program gave me an opportunity to work with people who were the top in their fields, and who also took the time to advise and guide me," Marumoto says. "That's something that I would not have gotten anywhere else."

Marumoto’s SURFs also changed the course of his career. He had planned on becoming a petroleum engineer, but the chemistry undergraduate soon realized he had the talent but not the interest in the profession. Sunney Chan, his SURF advisor and the George Grant Hoag Professor of Biophysical Chemistry, Emeritus, had connected with Marumoto both inside and outside the lab and knew how much his young advisee liked investigations that had medical applications. Chan shared updates of innovations in technology, including the arrival of the first MRI scanner in Southern California at the time housed at nearby Huntington Memorial Hospital. He suggested that Marumoto pursue a medical and doctoral degree, and pointed him in the direction of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where the late Paul Lauterbur, future Nobel laureate and pioneer in magnetic resonance imaging, taught.

Soon, Marumoto was meeting with Lauterbur. He remembers his future advisor holding up letters of recommendation from Chan, Grubbs, and current Centennial Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, John Bercaw and saying, "If you can work with them, then you can work with me." Ultimately, Marumoto would pursue a career in radiology and just recently stepped down as medical director at University Center Imaging in Florida.

"I jokingly tell everybody that I am the Forrest Gump of science,” Marumoto says, referring to the main character of the 1994 Academy Award-winning film of the same name. "I bumbled along and met Nobel Prize winners who pointed me in the right direction. I’m just glad I was smart enough to follow their advice."

Philanthropy’s Ripple Effect

Forty years have passed since Marumoto participated in his first SURF, and he has not forgotten how philanthropy made his time in the lab possible. That is why he has supported Caltech’s Student-Faculty Programs since 2018 and endowed the Dr. Alan K. Marumoto Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. "In 1984, somebody sponsored my SURF, and it changed my life," Marumoto says. "I wanted to create that opportunity for somebody else."

Marumoto also wants to be more than a behind-the-scenes benefactor. He has already attended two SURF dinners and spoke at one of them. He also met with Zhou, the inaugural recipient of the Marumoto SURF Fellowship.

"I want to tell all students to not worry about the research results, to just be a sponge and take in what the graduate students and professors are doing," Marumoto says. "The opportunity to work with people who are literally changing the world is priceless."