Lessons in the Lab

Caltech senior Andrew Romine isn't just majoring in chemistry and business, economics, and management. He also majors in creativity. Because of Caltech's small size and favorable proportion of graduate students to undergraduates, Romine built a close relationship with the members of a small group of researchers in a lab that was practically his second home.

"In order to do research, you have to be immensely creative because you're thinking of something no one else has thought of before," Romine says. "Once you get someone who's creative enough to break the boundary of knowledge in chemistry, you suddenly have a whole new field. Caltech is one of the best places at doing that."

Romine learned that one of those field-shaping people—Nobel laureate Robert H. Grubbs—was on Caltech's faculty. And he learned Grubbs' door was wide open to him as an undergraduate.

Read more on the Break Through campaign website.