LOS ANGELES — As a teen in Sri Lanka, Ray Jayawardhana wrote to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory asking about its Voyager and Viking missions. In response, he received a booklet with pictures of Jupiter and Saturn.

On Thursday, the astrophysicist who studies distant planets and writes about alien life will be installed as the California Institute of Technology's 10th president. He leads an institute behind many scientific feats: It gave birth to JPL 90 years ago, created the earthquake Richter scale and helped build the first detectors to observe cosmic gravitational waves. Its alumni, faculty and postdocs have won 49 Nobel Prizes.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Jayawardhana, 55, the first astronomer and first South Asian American to lead Caltech, said the institute needs to "find clarity at a time of change and uncertainty" driven by artificial intelligence, shifting federal policy and global events.

He takes over as Caltech faces its most consequential threat: NASA has opened JPL's management contract to outsiders for the first time in its history, forcing the institute into a high-stakes competition. Potentially dozens of institutions are in the mix, possibly including the University of California, Texas A&M and USC, whose representatives attended a briefing at JPL last week to learn about the opportunity to manage the laboratory.

In addition, Caltech, Stanford and seven other campuses are under investigation by the Labor Department for potential fraud in their use of J-1 visas to bring in international scholars.

Jayawardhana defended the decades-old partnership between higher education institutions and Washington, which pours billions of dollars into research universities. But he said universities must "accept responsibility" for delivering value to taxpayers and "learn from critiques that are legitimate."

"It's time to renew that compact while also recognizing the ecosystem needs to evolve," he said.

Caltech needs only to look up to see reasons for optimism now and into the future. NASA's Roman Space Telescope, carrying a JPL-built instrument, launched in August. In September, NASA advanced PRIMA, a $1.2-billion far-infrared telescope built around Caltech and JPL detectors, toward a 2033 launch.

He called Caltech — which enrolls fewer than 2,400 students and admitted under 4% of applicants this year, about as selective as Harvard — "really small but truly mighty." Since Jayawardhana took office July 1, donors have committed about $73 million in gifts.

JPL up for bid

Nowhere is the uncertainty sharper than at JPL.

NASA has given Caltech the contract without competition since the agency's founding in 1958. In May, NASA said opening it up would "ensure continued accountability and strong value for U.S. taxpayers." NASA plans to pick a winner in early 2028 that will take over after Caltech's current contract, which is valued at up to $30 billion over 10 years.

JPL has eliminated more than 1,500 jobs for employees and contractors since early 2024, roughly a quarter of its workforce, under the Biden and Trump administrations. Reductions included work on the now-canceled Mars Sample Return mission. NASA's reimbursements to Caltech for the cost of running JPL fell about 12% to $2.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2025. NASA also paid Caltech $58.4 million in 2025 for managing the lab.

Jayawardhana said it makes sense for NASA to evaluate "what's working well" in how the lab is run. Caltech welcomes "the chance to demonstrate" what he called "the continuing unparalleled value of the partnership." He said sustaining the JPL partnership is a "high priority."

Caltech is also remaking how the lab does business. Under an arrangement set up in the last year, private companies and nonprofits can fund work at JPL directly. Jayawardhana said that has brought $50 million worth of work to JPL in about nine months.

JPL is the largest piece of Caltech's dependence on Washington.

"I don't think it's fully replaceable," Jayawardhana said of federal funding, calling corporate and philanthropic money "complementary."

So far, the campus has increased its other federal funding, avoiding major cutbacks faced by other research universities such as the UC system. Caltech's federal research funding rose about 13% to $370.6 million in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2025, and grew to $381.4 million in the last fiscal year.

But the strain shows elsewhere. In a July 2025 memo, then-President Thomas F. Rosenbaum warned that federal money, "roughly one-third" of the campus budget, could no longer be counted on, and that Caltech was "prepared to implement a substantial reduction in graduate admissions for fall 2026." This fall, 213 new graduate students and postdoctoral scholars came to campus, down from 287 a year earlier.

Visas and a subpoena

Nearly half of Caltech's graduate students, 46%, come from abroad, along with 16% of undergraduates.

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has expanded a travel ban to 39 countries and turned scrutiny on the J-1, a State Department exchange visa that universities use to bring in visiting researchers and professors. On Oct. 8, Vice President JD Vance and the Labor Department's inspector general announced an investigation into potential fraud in the J-1 program, alleging that universities — including Caltech— use the visas to bring in foreign researchers and students at Americans' expense.

"I can't specifically comment on it," Jayawardhana said of the allegations. Caltech "has received an administrative subpoena," he said. "Our lawyers are reviewing it."

Navigating AI, free speech and diversity

Tensions over AI surfaced on campus this fall when nearly 800 current and former Caltech mathematicians protested a student-run "Mathathon" backed by about $2 million in computing credits from OpenAI and Anthropic, warning of "slop mathematics." OpenAI later pulled out.

Math is "changing certainly quite dramatically" because of AI, Jayawardhana said, calling it "a precursor to what's coming to other fields." As "more and more of that scientific process is handled by AI," he said, what human scientists contribute "is going to change."

As provost at Johns Hopkins, Jayawardhana co-signed a 2024 statement committing the university to restraint in taking public positions on social and political issues, a practice often called institutional neutrality. He said the practice should apply at Caltech too.

"Hearing or allowing for ideas to be heard is not the same as endorsing those ideas," he said.

The Trump administration has also pressed universities to end diversity programs. Last year, Caltech retitled its chief diversity officer as an associate vice president for "campus climate, engagement and success." The change, which was not publicly explained, came weeks after the Education Department warned colleges that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs could cost them funding.

Jayawardhana said Caltech is "based on merit," aims to keep "doors wide open and wants to recruit from a full cross section of society."

From childhood curiosity to a search for alien life

Jayawardhana traces his interest in space to when he was 4, walking in the family garden as his late father, Somapala, pointed to the moon and told him people had walked on its surface. Jayawardhana said that instilled an early belief that "if people could do that, what could they not do?"

Growing up, he said, American research universities "were really like beacons on a hill for me."

After studying at Yale and Harvard and holding posts at UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, York University and Cornell, he joined Johns Hopkins in 2023. Keeping with Caltech tradition, Jayawardhana still does research of his own, studying planets around other stars. He holds a call every Friday with his research group that includes Caltech postdoctoral scholars and researchers in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Jayawardhana has written for years about the search for life beyond Earth. He is the author of four books, including "Child of the Universe," a children's title about a girl who learns she is made of stardust. He made alien life the centerpiece of a talk to alumni on campus this month.

"The universe is a big, big, big place, and it would be presumptuous, to say the least, to imagine that life originated only on one little rock around one rather ordinary star," he told the alumni. He said that if repeated signs of life are found outside Earth, "I do think it could be a moment in the history of humankind comparable to Darwin or Galileo."

"I do this for a living," he said of astronomy and science, "and yet I find it mind-boggling."

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.