Caltech will formally inaugurate Ray Jayawardhana as its 10th president Thursday morning, marking with a public ceremony on Beckman Mall a presidency that began nearly four months ago.
The ceremony, scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon on Caltech’s Pasadena campus, will formally mark Jayawardhana’s installation in an office he has held since July 1. He succeeded Thomas F. Rosenbaum after the Board of Trustees appointed him following a months-long international search. Caltech announced the appointment Jan. 6.
Rosenbaum likewise took office July 1, 2014, and was formally inaugurated on Beckman Mall that Oct. 24.
As president, Jayawardhana oversees the campus and is responsible for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA, and for observatories including the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory and the W. M. Keck and Palomar observatories. He also holds the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and is a professor of astronomy.
Caltech has built the two-day inauguration program around the theme “First Light,” which it describes as the moment in astronomy when a telescope makes its first observation. Jayawardhana, an astrophysicist, studies the origin and evolution of planetary systems and the formation of stars and brown dwarfs.
The ceremony will open with welcomes from across the institution, including representatives of the Board of Trustees, faculty, JPL, undergraduate and graduate students and alumni, according to Caltech, with the investiture and Jayawardhana’s inaugural address at its center. The Caltech Glee Club is scheduled to perform with brass, percussion and organ.
Jayawardhana came to Caltech from Johns Hopkins University, where he was provost and oversaw the university’s 10 schools. Before that, he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University and dean of science at York University, following a decade at the University of Toronto. An asteroid, 4668 Rayjay, is named after him.
At a January gathering where his appointment was announced, Jayawardhana recounted requesting a viewbook of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 images of the outer planets from JPL by aerogramme as “a space-obsessed kid growing up in Sri Lanka,” Caltech reported.
In a Caltech magazine interview published July 1, Jayawardhana said the funding and policy landscape for science is shifting and that he intends “to be a fierce advocate for the Institute’s mission, for the people who advance it, and for the case that fundamental discovery and applied innovation are not in tension, that they reinforce each other.”
The ceremony is free and open to the public. No invitation is needed, Caltech says, though registration is appreciated. General guest seating on Beckman Mall, where the ceremony will be held outdoors under a tent, is limited, opens at 9 a.m. and is first-come, first-served.
The ceremony will also be livestreamed online beginning at 9:45 a.m., with a recording to follow on Caltech’s YouTube channel.
A community luncheon and campus celebration will follow from noon to 2 p.m. along the Olive Walk and outside Browne Dining Hall and Red Door Cafe, with a complimentary lunch for attendees, live music, demonstrations and student research displays.
From 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., visitors can preview “Dare Mighty Things: From Rocketry to Space Exploration at Caltech JPL,” an exhibition in the Beckman Institute’s Beckman Room marking 90 years since Caltech founded JPL, with documents, spacecraft models and concept paintings from the Caltech and JPL archives. No preregistration is needed, and the exhibition officially opens Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Caltech will not charge for guest parking on campus Thursday and says the two-hour limit is lifted on nearby streets, including Hill Avenue, Del Mar Boulevard, Catalina Avenue, San Pasqual Street and Wilson Avenue. Ushers will direct guests to designated wheelchair spaces and companion seating, large-type programs will be available at the Information Tent at the south end of Beckman Mall, and event screens will show live captioning. An accessible drop-off is at the south end of Lot 11, entered from Michigan Avenue just south of Del Mar Boulevard; a Campus Security officer at the drop-off can arrange a cart to the ceremony.
Inauguration Ceremony, Thursday, Oct. 29, 10 a.m. to noon. Beckman Mall, Caltech, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena. For more call (626) 395-6811, email inauguration@caltech.edu or visit https://inauguration.caltech.
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