Student-Faculty Dinner - with Dr. Jason Alicea
This is a picture Dr. Jason Alicea. Whoo! Once every week during the SURF period, the Student Faculty Program (SFP) organizes these things called student-faculty dinners. Itencourages more personal interactions between students (from both Caltech and outside of Caltech) and our awesome professors.
This week, I had the privilege (with 9 other students) to have a dinner with Dr. Jason Alicea! We went to a French-Asianfusion resturant called Abricott near Caltech. The food was great, and the company was even better!
Dr. Alicea does research on condensed matter theory and other related fields. I decided to go to this dinner, even though I come from a more bio background, because I felt this would be a great opportunity to interact with professors and students outside of my current focus.Most of the discussion on his work went completely over my head - unsurprisingly. However, I found it very interesting when Dr. Alicea talked about he ended up in condensed matter. While some people have a very clear linear path in their career, Dr. Alicea described his path as more winding. He followed his interests even if there wasn’t a strong connection with what he had done before.
Part of the deal with the student faculty dinner is that student pay $2 (for $15 worth of food). When we went to pay, Dr. Alicea was a sweetie and paid for us instead. He’s awesome!
I’d definitely love to attend another student faculty dinner. :) They also have student faculty lunches during the school year. (same idea, free lunch with a prof) Yay!
