California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology (or Caltech) was a university located in California which owned and operated the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Following Rain Robinson's SETI-contact with the USS Voyager in 1996, she e-mailed a friend at JPL, who in turn, called his professor at Caltech, regarding the possibility of extraterrestrial contact.

The Caltech professor then contacted Henry Starling regarding the possible contact, forcing Starling to downplay the event. After getting off the telephone with the professor, he decided that Robinson was a security threat and that she had to be eliminated.