July 29, 2019

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

I am confident that Nick Vamivakas, who has been an outstanding researcher and teacher since joining the Institute of Optics faculty in 2011, will do an equally exceptional job as our new AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs. Nick has been appointed to replace Melissa Sturge-Apple, who was recently named vice provost and University dean of graduate education. Read more here. I look forward to working with NIck in his new role. Please join me in congratulating him.

One of the major impediments to increasing the speed and efficiency of computers is the bottleneck that occurs when data must be transferred between memory and the processor, between computers, and between remote storage and local memory. “Transferring data takes much more time than the actual computing, and it takes much greater power and energy,” says Chen Ding, professor of computer science.

Chen has just received the latest of multiple NSF grants that have supported his research on optimizing the use of data “caches.” Caches can temporarily store data most likely to be needed closer to the processor, where the computing actually occurs. This can greatly speed up the processing and make it more efficient. But a cache can hold only a fraction of all the data stored in a system’s memory. How do you make sure the right data is in the right place when it’s needed?

Chen’s group will address this challenge with the latest $499,816 grant through a process called “lease caching,” an interface that directly integrates software with hardware to determine–based on the capacity of the cache and the type of program being used–which data should be kept in the cache and for how long.

This challenge has been keeping several undergraduates busy doing research in Chen’s group this summer, including Hannah Simons ’20, a computer science and gender studies major; Michael Chavrimootoo ’20, a computer science and political science major; and Noah Bertram ’21, a physics, math, and economics major. Click here to read more about them and:

Joanna Chavez ’21 of chemical engineering, a McNair Scholar, working this summer with PhD student Michael Klaczko of chemistry, in the lab of James McGrath, professor of biomedical engineering. They are developing and refining a point-of-care potassium electrode sensor.
Xerox Engineering Research Fellows Eve Marealle ’21 and Aime Laurent Twizerimana ’20 and Eisenberg Summer Intern Madeline Vonglis ’20, all of chemical engineering. They are working in the lab of Marc Porosoff, assistant professor of chemical engineering, on various projects related to the conversion of carbon dioxide for other uses.
Lyse Mugeni ’21 of optics, a Xerox Engineering Research Fellow, working with Kenneth L. Marshall, senior research engineer and organic chemist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. She is using polymer cholesteric liquid crystal flakes suspended in silicone oils of different viscosities as a way to visualize the velocity gradients that occur when an air stream is directed across a metal surface.

For an overall look at undergraduate summer research taking place on campus this summer, click here. You can drop by the Kearns Center’s annual Research Symposium at Feldman Ballroom today to see and hear firsthand what the students have been doing. They will present their findings in oral presentations, lightning talks and a poster session.

Congratulations to Matthias (Matt) Banet, a second-year PhD student in Professor James Fienup’s group at The Institute of Optics. Matt won the Outstanding Student Paper award from the Optical Society (OSA) for his paper, “Multiplexed Digital Holography for Atmospheric Characterization” in the topical meeting on Propagation Through and Characterization of Atmospheric and Oceanic Phenomena at the OSA’s Imaging and Applied Optics Congress in Munich, Germany, last month.

Have a great week,

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman