July 16, 2018

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

I am pleased to announce that Professor Mitchell Anthamatten has been appointed to serve as the new chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering.  Mitch joined the faculty here in 2004, and leads an outstanding research lab that applies new findings from chemistry, physics, and soft matter to design and engineer advanced macromolecular and supramolecular materials. These include new classes of polymers with novel shape-memory, self-healing, and ion- transport characteristics. He also directs the new Advanced Materials for High-Power Lasers initiative.  The department is “innovating in sustainable process engineering, biotechnology, and advanced materials to address problems of national and global importance,” Mitch says. “By prioritizing outstanding research, we will offer rich and forward-looking educational experiences to our students at all levels.” Read more about Mitch’s accomplishments here.

Our thanks to departing chair Matthew Yates. During his eight-year tenure, he coordinated the recruitment of several junior faculty members, the successful ABET accreditation of the undergraduate program with the implementation of an External Advisory Board, and the relocation of the department offices to Wegmans Hall.

Congratulations as well to:

Sahar Hashemgeloogerdi, a PhD student in Mark Bocko’s lab in electrical and computer engineering, who is one of 11 recipients of 2018 Microsoft Research Dissertation Grants. This is the second year Microsoft has awarded these grants (up to $25,000 each) to talented PhD candidates from groups that are under-represented in computing. Sahar’s research is “focused on the development of methods and algorithms that accurately model highly reverberant acoustic systems and process acoustic signals using as few parameters as possible. Such accurate yet computationally efficient modeling and processing algorithms are of essential interest in a wide variety of applications ranging from virtual acoustics to healthcare.” Well done, Sahar!

Vladimir Maksimovski, an incoming first-year student who plans to major in computer science. Vladimir will be missing the first week or so of classes for a very good reason: he’ll be representing his home country of Macedonia in the International Olympiad in Informatics, one of the most prestigious competitions held for high-school students, with 900 participants from 85 countries attending this year’s event in Tsukuba, Japan, September 1 to 7. We’ll be rooting for you Vladimir!

A warm welcome to 13 students from 8 local high schools participating in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics’ 30th annual summer research program. During the eight-week program, students who have just completed their junior year are assigned to projects integral to LLE’s research program and are supervised by staff scientists at the Laboratory.

This year’s pairings of students and mentors are: Aditya Bhargava (Victor HS) with Mark Guardalben; Steven Booth (Brighton) with Wade Bittle/Vinitha Anand; Carwyn Collinsworth (Brighton) with Mark Wittman/Dana Edgell; Matthew Cufari (Pittsford Sutherland) with Radha Bahukutumbi/Owen Mannion; Audrey DeVault (Penfield) with Chad Forrest; Katherine Glance (Pittsford Sutherland) with Walter Shmayda; Katherine Kopp (Victor) with Stavros Demos; Hannah Lang (Rush Henrietta) with Kenneth Marshall; Maia Raynor (Brighton) with Walter Shmayda; Margaret Rudnick (Pittsford Mendon) with Kenneth Marshall; Aidan Sciortino (Wilson Magnet) with Richard Kidder; Anirudh Sharma (Webster Schroeder) with Stephen Craxton; and Alan Tu (Pittsford Sutherland) with Adam Sefkow.

This is an outstanding opportunity for these students to have a meaningful hands-on research experience. Over the years, many of the students who have participated in this program have been named scholars in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly the Intel Science Talent Search) for the projects they did at LLE. I am especially pleased to see a good representation of women among this year’s participants.

The students will present their projects at a symposium from 1:30 to 5 p.m. August 29 in LLE’s Coliseum conference room.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman