February 27, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

The fourth annual DandyHacks hackathon, held the weekend before last at the Douglass Ballroom, illustrates how this event has grown, attracting nearly 200 participants who worked on 31 projects. Congratulations to lead organizer Maggie Curtis ’17 and other members of the Computer Science Undergraduate Council. Click here for a list of winning projects and here for a Campus Times article.

Earlier this month, Zhiyao Duan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and David Temperley, professor at the Eastman School of Music, co-hosted the 2017 North East Music Informatics Special Interest Group workshop on River Campus, attracting about 45 participants representing 12 institutions and companies from seven states. The workshop included presentations on music information retrieval, music cognition, composition, and audio engineering and also featured a researchathon and a music jam session in the Rettner Hall Studio. “Participants had a lot of fun presenting, learning, coding, and playing music,” Zhiyao says. Click here for more about the workshop. Zhiyao and David will be teaming up this summer to help mentor students attending the Goergen Institute for Data Science’s new REU (research experience for undergraduates) in a project involving web-based interactive music transcription.

Jiebo Luo, associate professor of computer science; Yu Wang, a dual PhD student in computer and political science; and their colleagues were busy during the recent presidential election amassing huge amounts of data about the various candidates’ Twitter followers. Click here to read some of interesting insights this yielded about why the campaign turned out the way it did. This is the first in a series of articles celebrating the use of data science at our University.

NullSpace VR, originated by Hajim School students in the University of Rochester Robotics Club, has launched a Kickstarter campaign. The team has developed a virtual reality suit with a unique pattern of haptic feedback zones. Check out the website to see the amazing progress NullSpace has made.

The University’s third annual Falling Walls competition will be held April 20 in the Eisenberg Rotunda, with researchers and entrepreneurs giving rapid-fire, three-minute, three-slide presentations on how they would break down the barriers to overcoming societal problems. The winner will represent Rochester at the international competition in Berlin, Germany this fall. Click here to register by March 19. Contact Adele Coelho for more information. Here’s a video of Solomon Abiola, winner of our competition last year, presenting in Berlin.

Hajim School faculty are invited to a lunch with David J. Skorton, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who is coming to Rochester to receive an honorary degree.  The event is 12 to 1:15 p.m. March 3 in the Humanities Center, Conference Room D (second floor Rush Rhees Library).  Dr. Skorton will give a brief talk on “Intersections:  The Sciences and the Humanities.”  RSVPs to jennie.gilardoni@rochester.edu preferred but not essential.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman