Alumni Establish Ingenuity SURF to Support Research that Could Lead to the Unexpected

Vladimir Fedorov (BS ’01, MS ’01) and Jean Wang (BS ’01) look to provide undergraduates with the same opportunities that proved foundational to their own careers.

In the late 1990s, Vladimir Fedorov and Jean Wang met and fell in love as undergraduates at Caltech. Years later, with two daughters and successful careers in their respective fields, the couple was looking for a way to give back.

Wang, who earned her MS and PhD from the University of Washington, was most recently the founding director for Amazon's Smart Eyewear programs. Listed as co-inventor on more than 30 patents, she also has served as the hardware lead and chief of staff for Google Glass. Prior to his current role as CTO for GitHub, Fedorov was senior vice president for privacy engineering and product at Meta.

The couple had been searching for new ways to support their alma mater in the face of federal funding cuts. Wang, who has been named chair of the EE Advisory Council (EEAC), attended a recent EEAC meeting that offered a possible answer.

At the invitation of then-Executive Officer for Electrical Engineering Changhuei Yang, second-year student Aleksandar Marinkovic joined the meeting along with fellow students Ruth Berkun, Yao Huang, Ron Freeman, Nerissa Finnen, Kenadi Waymire, and Ethan Labelson. Near the end of the meeting, Marinkovic brought up the value of the Institute's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program and the importance of ongoing funding support.

"SURF was a defining period of growth for me," says Marinkovic, who spent his summer developing a project to understand the neural mechanisms that inform decision-making with graduate student Sneha Aenugu and John O'Doherty, Fletcher Jones Professor of Decision Neuroscience. "Having the opportunity to focus on research full-time significantly deepened my passion for the projects I worked on, and it set me on the path I'm on today."

Inspired by their stories, Wang shared her experience with Fedorov. They decided to endow a fellowship they have named Ingenuity SURF, with a preference for students conducting research in electrical engineering.

The Benefits of a "SURFer Summer"

Fedorov and Wang were also driven by their own SURF experiences.

A signature offering at Caltech, the SURF program gives participating students 10 weeks during the summer to focus on a research project of their choosing under the guidance of a mentoring professor. Participants write research proposals, develop and run experiments, and, at the end of the program, submit a technical paper and give a presentation.

Fedorov took part in SURF before his sophomore year, focusing on the use of genetic algorithms for problem-solving in coding Turing machines.

"It was a great opportunity to learn how to do my own research project," Fedorov says. "It also exposed me to technologies that I previously didn't know and helped me build a skill set that I put to use in internships later on."

During her "SURFer summer," Wang was mentored by ASCIT 2010 Teaching Award recipient and Teaching Professor of Electrical Engineering Glen George (BS ’81, BS ’82) on using field-programmable gate arrays to make evolvable hardware. Wang enjoyed the work so much that when the SURF ended, she continued to pursue the topic for her senior thesis.

"Being able to dive into research problems was something that I was drawn to," she recalls. "Caltech and the SURF helped teach me how to think deeply, and that is the hallmark from which everything else has developed."

Promoting Ingenuity in Young Minds

Yang, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Medical Engineering, says the gift will make a fundamental difference in the lives of participating students.

"I am really grateful that Vlad and Jean saw the urgent need to sustain the SURF program in light of current events, and very quickly stepped up to help," Yang says.

This is not the first time Fedorov and Wang have given to the Institute. In 2021, they gave to the Engineering and Applied Science Instructorship Fund for Computer Science and Computation. Regarding the SURF endowment, Fedorov says that it is a way of honoring the assistance he received from merit scholarships.

Wang also has a personal connection to her support for the Institute.

"Vlad and I entered Caltech and met at frosh camp," she says. "In the years since, we've grown in many dimensions including having a family, and we're happy to be able to share and give back to the community together."

When asked about the specific name of the SURF, Wang shared that she's always loved the word. "It's about being creative and thoughtful," she says, "and coming up with something unexpected." She hopes that participants of the Ingenuity SURF will "…discover new things, not just for themselves, but for the world, the state of research, and a particular field."

As for Fedorov, he wants to encourage students to take advantage of the rare opportunity the program provides. "When students get internships and jobs, they will work on the priorities of their employers," Fedorov explains. "SURF lets young people follow their curiosity now."