Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–263
TOMBRELLO: I think some of them, not all, have gotten in there because they came out of highenergy
physics, where the number of faculty positions is relatively limited. They feel that they
have an alternative if they can go somewhere like Wall Street and use some of their
mathematical skills. I don’t think that’s all of it. The other part is the challenge of “If so-and-so
can do it, I can do it.” I have a former student, undergrad, named Sebastian Maurer, who went
from Stanford to D. E. Shaw on Wall Street. He has been there almost ten years now. He’s
awfully bright. I don’t think he looks on this as something he’s going to do forever. It’s
something you do until you think of something else you might want to do. Another kid out of
Physics 11 is, I guess, a vice president at Morgan Bank and also does derivatives and structured
instruments, like CDOs.
Vineer Bhansali, who was my TA and research student back in the 1980s, is VP for
PIMCO, I guess in Newport Beach. He runs their research department and has published a
couple of books with Mark Wise on finance. Not only are they successful at this stuff,
sometimes they drag the old professor back in, as in the case of Mark Wise. Rich [Richmond A.]
Wolf, who got his PhD in geochemistry here [1997], is a VP at Capital Group.
ASPATURIAN: He went there from Tech Transfer [Office of Technology Transfer] here.
TOMBRELLO: From Tech Transfer. He was very successful at Tech Transfer. He was one of the
people who Larry Gilbert’s vision identified and trained. Larry is one of the few people I know
who came in and totally changed the culture at Caltech. It was fun working with him for the
fourteen years I was technology assessment officer. I will take no credit for the vision of Tech
Transfer; that was Larry. I was there, picked by Larry, to keep things from running afoul of
campus traditions and standards that Larry did not understand. He’d worked for John Silber at
Boston University, and that, of course, gives one a certain freewheeling style. We had some very
interesting experiences. We may as well get some of them down if you have a few more
minutes.
ASPATURIAN: I do if you do.
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T