PASADENA, Calif. — After posting 11 new entries on the all-time Caltech top-ten record list in 2023, the men's track & field team will welcome seven new Beavers as they take on the 2024 season.
The team will look to do damage yet again after putting up an
incredibly historic campaign this past spring. Among many big accomplishments, the squad earned an impressive 10-point win over Whittier College and several Beavers set new school records.
Meet the newest members of the team:
Ryan Fortin
Londonderry, N.H. / Londonderry
Distance
Fortin will take on the track & field season after competing for the Caltech cross country team this fall. A decorated high school athlete, the New Hampshire native comes to the Institute with PRs of of 4:29 in the 1600-meters, 9:29 in the 3200-meters and 15:49 in the 5K. The standout nabbed runner-up finishes in the state's D1 Cross Country Championship as well as in New Hampshire's D1 Indoor 3000-meter championship; additionally, he helped his team to a victory in the 4x800m at the NH D1 Track Relay Meet and at the NH Meet of Champions. Voted All-New England in cross country and All-State in both cross country and track & field, Fortin earned NHIAA Scholastic and 3-Sport Athlete distinction. He leaves Loundonderry third all-time in the 3200m. For his work in the classroom, Fortin won the Jae S. Lim Science Award, RPI Medal for Math and Science and the Blue Star Lancers Award, among others. As part of MIT's LLCipher Program, Fortin learned the advances of theoretical cryptography at the Lincoln Library to program encryption schemes and digital signature algorithms. Fortin has also created a robot that collected trash on beaches. He served as the co-founder and president of his school's Science National Honor Society chapter and was a member of the town environmental committee. Before coming to Caltech, Fortin tutored for Mu Alpha Theta weekly. He will study electrical engineering at Caltech.
Tyler Gatewood
Corpus Christi, Tex. / W.B. Ray
Hurdles, Jumps
Gatewood comes to the Institute after a remarkable high school career. A multi-year regional qualifier in Texas for hurdles and high jump, the star achieved personal bests of 6'6" in high jump, 14.6 seconds in the 110-meter hurdles and 39 seconds in the 300-meter hurdles. In all four years, he was named to the Varsity team and was an Area Meet Medalist. In the classroom, Gatewood achieved a 5.2 weighted grade-point average on a 4.0 scale; he was named an AP Scholar and earned the prestigious National Merit Scholarship Commendation. The Texas native also created and presented neural network designed to predict criminal recidivism rates with InSpirit AI. Additionally, he completed a project at Texas A&M's Kingsville workshop, where he used Python to identify flood inundation within areas of interest using Synthetic Aperature Radar (SAR) data. Gatewood was a coleader at his high school's Learn to Code summer camp and has taught students web science and Java. He was an active member of the Science National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta and the Ray Programming Club. The standout looks to study computer science at the Institute.
Richard Hoffman
Simi Valley, Calif. / Westlake
Distance
Another cross-country dual athlete, Hoffman comes to the Institute after an immensely successful high school career in cross country and on the track. A team captain at Westlake, Hoffman achieved personal bests of 16:32 in the 5K and 2:02.64 in the 800-meters and earned CIF-SS Regional Athlete recognition in addition to being named a Varsity Scholar-Athlete. Outside of athletics, Hoffman has conducted impressive research as a high school scholar; last year, the California native worked a six-week internship in the CU Boulder Intelligent Robotics Laboratory alongside the Autonomous Robotics and Perception Group; there, he labeled data and created programs to calibrate LIDAR with image data using a neural network. He also designed wiring for model cars used for autonomous systems research and controlled driving functions of the car while recording data. Additionally, he has volunteered with Voice of Calling to teach elementary students the basics of Python, and has created his own website to connect music volunteers with event organizers. In June 2021, he conducted research at UC Santa Barbara working on real-time telescope observation. Hoffman will pursue his degree in computer science.
Nathan Jay
Fremont, Calif. / John. F Kennedy
Distance
Jay will take on the cross country season before competing in action on the track this spring. A California native, Jay comes to Pasadena with several fast times, including a personal record of 4:29 in the 1600-meters and a PR of 9:56 in the 3200-meters. He currently interns at the Chabot Space & Science Center, a nonprofit museum and learning center in Oakland, where he served as a volunteer for three years explaining science demonstrations to the public. Now an intern, Jay manages volunteers and helps with various activities, such as soldering, fixing rovers and running planetarium shows. As part of the Astronomy Team, he has done computational work with meteorite datasets and plans to explore computational astronomy further in his academic career. Beyond his work at Chabot, Jay is a part of the Aspiring Scholars Direct Research Program, where he uses CERN particle collision data and machine learning techniques to identify and classify particle jets. Additionally, he has earned the Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement for building a functional balsa wood glider, an Arduino-based heartbeat monitor, and a plant watering system, while serving as co-president of his school's branch. He also has served as Physics lead at his school's Tech Club and will be studying the discipline at Caltech.
Colin La
Potomac, Md. / Winston Churchill
Distance
The fourth cross country dual-athlete, La comes to Caltech with a plethora of achievements from his four years in high school. A team MVP, Churchill HS Player of the Month, and winner of the Andy White Coaches' Award for Outstanding Distinction, La helped lead his squad to a runner-up finish at the Maryland State 4A Championships. Entering Caltech, the first-year boasts personal-records of 16:18 in the 5K, 33:37 in the 10K and 9:57 in the 3200-meters. Outside of running, the Maryland native has interned in quantum computing at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL), where he presented research at their summer showcase as well as the IEEE Conference. Additionally, La has served as the program representative at the MCPS Student-Athlete Leaderhip Council and was treasurer of the Science National Honor Society. He has also taught Chinese at Westmoreland Academia and tutored students in math through Mu Alpha Theta. La won the Governor's Merit Scholastic Award and was an AP Scholar with Distinction. La will pursuing a degree in applied mathematics at the Institute.
Ahaan Shetty
Dubai, UAE / Gems Modern Academy
Sprints
Shetty will add depth to the sprints group as he enters his first collegiate season with impressive international experience. The Dubai native comes to Caltech after nabbing the 200-meter silver medal at the World School Games and representing UAE at the CISCE National Games. Additionally, he holds the 100-meter school record at his high school and represented the school at several GEMS meets. In relays, Shetty helped his team to gold and silver medals in the 4x100-meters at the GEMS interschool meet. An exceptional scholar, Shetty worked as a government-funded quantum researcher in UAE and won a national award after conducting research on non-Newtonian fluids. He has also conducted research on the transport of luggage in airports, designing a project which was presented at the global innovation and entrepreneurship summit "iCan" in Rome. Additionally, Shetty published a research paper on the influence of viscosity on the behavior of forced vortexes. A winner of the Sanjay Gupta Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the incoming first-year is a two-time International ASSET Gold Scholar, three-time FLL National Robotics Award winner and a two-time MakeX National Robotics Award winner. Shetty was named a finalist at the ABWA Infinity International Math Competition and is a World Topper in 3 ICSE subjects; he was awarded the KS Varkey Academic Scholarship and is an Innovation Mela Winner. The standout will look to pursue physics and astrophysics at Caltech.
Miigwan Tanner-Wostrel
Cloquet, Minn. / Cloquet
Sprints, Hurdles
Tanner-Wostrel comes to the Institute with an impressive resume, both athletically and academically. The newcomer will bring high-level meet experience — in 2022, he qualified and competed at the 2022 Division AA Minnesota state meet in the 4x100-meter relay before qualifying and competing at the Division AA Minnesota state meet in the 4x200-meter relay in 2023. He helped lead his relay team to a school record time of 1:31.69 in the in 2023 and has earned Academic All-State three times. In 2021, the sprinter earned his team's Most Improved Award. Outside of the track, Tanner-Wostrel has placed first in Saint John's University's Engineering Design Competition and was a FRC Dean's List semifinalist; he is a Minnesota Legion Boys State participant and is a Minnesota State High School League Triple "A" 7AA regional winner. Tanner-Wostrel competed in the Minnesota's Mathematics League all four years of high school, captaining the team his senior year. The former Lumberjack plans on studying Applied Physics and Aerospace Engineering at the university.
The seven incoming first-years will join a number of high-performing returners as the program seeks to take another step up in the ever-competitive Southern California Intercollegiate Conference (SCIAC).
Stay tuned to GoCaltech.com for an official schedule release.
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