College Sports Communicators has awarded Academic All-District honors to four members of the Caltech Women's Volleyball team.
Junior Alize Baker (Portland, Ore. / Westview), senior Giulia Murgia (Iglesias, Italy / Istituto di Istruzione Superiore G. Asproni) sophomore Ailsa Shen (Calgary, Alberta / Western Canada HS) and Sophomore Stephanie Wallen (Miami, Fla. / Ransom Everglades) received the honors. Four is the maximum number of recipients allowable for a single team.
On the court in 2025, Bakker set the program record for kills in a single season with 279. An all-around talent, she also recorded 348 digs – over three per set – coming in second on the team in both those dig categories. Off the court, she has served as an on-campus research intern at École Polytechnique in France, working at the LIX Lab in the Geometric and Visual Computing Research Team, where she collaborated on a software project to simulate the global and individual movement of herd animals, especially on different terrains and obstacles. This past term her course load at Caltech consisted of Biomolecular Engineering, Probability Models, Biochemistry and French Cinema. She was a teaching assistant for Professor Michael Mello's Mechanics course. She is involved in a research fellowship creating an optimal neural tissue microenvironment through mechanosensing using hydrogels, to one day provide a brain scaffold for curing neurodegenerative diseases and traumatic brain injuries. After graduation, Bakker plans to pursue a PhD in Bioengineering and hopes to "research improvements in medical tools and devices by bridging biology with material science."
Murgia was listed as a setter in 2025, but proved to be the team's most effective libero, with a team-leading 389 digs and 4.05 digs per set. She racked up an incredible 30 digs against Whittier on Oct. 14. The astrophysics major contributes to NASA's SPHEREx mission, creating full-sky maps for studies of the interstellar medium. Murgia intends to pursue a PhD and to continue a career path in astrophysics research.
Shen was the most prolific setter for Caltech in the 2025 season, leading the team with 444 assists. She dished 43 assists in a match against rival Occidental on Oct. 10. Academically, Shen is currently taking five classes including Discrete Mathematics, Probability Models and Learning Systems. She is currently working in Professor Anima Anandkumar's AI+Science Lab at Caltech, where her research focuses on interpretability and representation learning. Shen plans to pursue a PhD in a related field after graduation and hopes to pursue a career in research, most likely within academia. Formerly, she was a 2023 Young Women in Mathematics Jane Street Certificate winner and a qualifier for both the USA and Canadian Mathematical Olympiads. She is a former Canadian Biology Olympiad gold medal winner.
Wallen was a constant presence at the net for the Beavers in 2025. She led the squad with 44 total blocks and was second on the team in solo blocks (7). Off the court, the Mechanical Engineering major launched and developed payload for a high-altitude balloon to monitor climate change during an internship at NASA. She contributed to NASA's Mars Sample Return Mission this past summer. Her work "focused on developing autonomous precision landing algorithms for hazardous terrain, including designing a concentric-circles search algorithm for safe-site selection that reduced required divert distances below prior estimates." Wallen also serves on the executive committee of the Caltech Air and Outer Space Club, where she works on several aerospace-focused projects. She hopes to continue working on space exploration missions and plans to pursue a career in the aerospace sector after graduation.
The recipients earned their nominations by maintaining at least a 3.5 grade point average on a 4.0 scale and competing in 90 percent or starting at least 66 percent of games.
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