Caltech’s new president is a couple months into the job — here’s what you should know about him

Ray Jayawardhana, a seasoned astrophysicist and university administrator, officially took over as Caltech’s 10th president on July 1.

The newly appointed president sat down with Larry Mantle on AirTalk, LAist 89.3’s daily news program, to talk about his plans for the future of the esteemed university.

Ray Jay and Caltech — it was in the cosmos

Jayawardhana, who goes by “Ray Jay,” told Larry he was always interested in the cosmos growing up.

He shared that, as a teenager in Sri Lanka, he wrote to the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) — NASA's leading space exploration center, which is managed by Caltech — to ask for images from the Voyager space missions they were conducting during the 1980s.

“I waited impatiently for a response, and one day, this large envelope with an oversized wheel of books arrived with a set of images of the outer planets and their moons,” he said. “That just delighted me to no end.”

Saturn and its satellites Tethys (outer left), Enceladus (inner left) and Mimas (right of rings) are seen in this mosaic of images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on Oct. 30, 1980 from a distance of 18 million kilometers (11 million miles).

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This view of Jupiter was taken by Voyager 1. This image was taken through color filters and recombined to produce the color image. This photo was assembled from three black and white negatives by the Image Processing Lab at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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This picture of Neptune was produced from images taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 in the summer of 1989 as it became the first spacecraft to fly by the planet.

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Today, he’s the first South Asian American to lead Caltech, overseeing the operations of the same Jet Propulsion Lab he wrote to in the '80s.

How he came to the U.S.

After attending St. John’s College in Sri Lanka, he decided to pursue higher education in the United States. He earned an undergraduate degree from Yale and subsequently his doctorate in astronomy from Harvard, quickly establishing himself as one of the world’s most renowned astrophysicists.

He previously held positions at Cornell University and Johns Hopkins.

Exoplanetary president

Aside from his main focus as the school’s head of administration, Ray Jay continues his own research exploring the formation of planets and stars, saying it keeps him intellectually engaged.

He's part of a team that works with the James Webb Space Telescope to observe and characterize so-called exoplanets — planets around other stars — with an eye toward the potential for life beyond Earth.

He’s confident in Caltech’s future with JPL

Universities like Caltech are on rocky terrain amid sweeping federal government cuts of public funding for scientific research.

Additionally, JPL's future is uncertain. NASA — which now owns and sponsors JPL — is opening its contracting to other research institutions for the first time, which could mean a bidding war.

The entrance to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

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Losing the contract for Caltech would mean losing a stream of federal funding valued at $3 billion per year.

Jayawardhana said he’s confident Caltech and JPL’s partnership will continue, saying that the university's value proposition is unrivaled.

“It’s not only about the self-interest in continuing to ensure there's federal and public funding for research, it's also about enriching humanity,” he said.

NASA’s current contract with Caltech expires in September 2028.