February 24, 2020

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Members of our Engineers Without Borders student chapter and their advisor were back in the Dominican Republic during winter break, visiting the Escuela Taller Santa Maria Josefa Rossello primary school. They had planned the visit as a final monitoring and sign-off on a water disinfection system and new piping installed on previous visits to provide 400 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students with drinking water. Instead they had to address a problem with hard water and loss of water in one of the buildings due to a well that was improperly installed before the project began.

The students, to their credit, took it all in stride. “The beauty of this is, you encounter setbacks, but ultimately it helps move the project along,” says Fatou Diop ’20 of chemical engineering who was part of the team. I applaud the students’ persistence, and the organizational skills that have enabled the chapter to keep this project going since 2014.

By the way, participation in Engineers Without Borders is a great way to satisfy requirements of the Grand Challenges Scholars program, since providing access to clean water is one of the 14 challenges. Read more here.

Past members and friends of Baja SAE, please take note of a special reunion planned for April 3 and 4 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the student team, which each year designs and builds an off-road vehicle for competition against other university teams. This will be a great opportunity to reconnect and reminisce with fellow alumni, meet current team members, and see the unveiling of this year’s vehicle. Tour the Taylor Hall Baja SAE workshop and attend a reception in Munnerlyn Atrium. In addition, a plaque will be unveiled in honor of Kevin Bonko ’17, former Baja SAE president, who passed away in 2019 after a battle with leukemia. All events are complimentary, but you are encouraged to register here. You can also get information and updates on the Baja SAE Facebook page.

Congratulations to:

Miguel Alonso, professor of optics, who has been named the new editor-in-chief of Optics Letters, taking over from Xi-Cheng Zhang, our former Institute of Optics director and M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics, who held the post the last five years. Read more here.
Ehsan Hoque, the Asaro-Biggar (’92) Family Assistant Professor of Computer Science, who has received a Google faculty award to explore the early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease using video data. For example, individuals could have the option of downloading an extension for Google hangout to help detect early signs of Parkinson’s disease, which are often exhibited with subtle deviations of facial features invisible to the human eye. A potential future step could include the system giving individuals an informal referral to see a neurologist so that the patients can decide to perform a clinical test towards early diagnosis.
Aaron Bauer, a research engineer in Jannick Rolland’s group at The Institute of Optics, who has been named the 2020 recipient of the Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award by the Optical Society (OSA). Aaron is being recognized for theoretical, creative, and innovative design methods for freeform optics. Read more here. The award was established in 2017 in memory of Kevin P. Thompson, who was a scientist at The Institute; the group director of Research and Development/Optics at Synopsys, Inc.; and an active member and fellow of both SPIE and OSA.
Engin Ipek, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, who will share the Persistent Impact Prize at next month’s Non-Volatile Memory Workshop, hosted by the Center for Memory and Recording Research and the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory. The prize is awarded annually to a paper published at least five years prior that has had exceptional impact on the fields of study related to non-volatile memories — in this case, “Better I/O Through Byte-Addressable, Persistent Memory,” a 2009 paper Engin co-authored while he was a researcher at Microsoft.
Suman Kumar ’19 of mechanical engineering, who has been selected as the recipient of the Global Engineering Student Award from the University of Colorado at Boulder, to be presented at the Mortenson Center Global Engineering Awards on March 4. During his four years as an undergraduate here, Suman, who is from Kathmandu in Nepal, attended a half dozen international development conferences; met several influential world leaders, diplomats, and Nobel laureates; rebuilt two schools destroyed by an earthquake in his native Nepal; and still managed to complete a rigorous curriculum in mechanical engineering.

If you have a chance, please drop by the May Room between 4 and 5:30 p.m. today for the farewell reception for Anthony Plonczynski-Figueroa, director of operations for the Kearns Center, who is leaving after 17 years with the University to become regional political organizer for the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) Union. Anthony has been integral to the important partnerships the Hajim School has enjoyed with the Kearns Center in supporting minority, low-income and/or first generation students and providing summer research opportunities. We wish Anthony all the best!

Are you interested in understanding more about deep learning and, specifically, how to use MATLAB to apply deep learning to a range of fields? If so, you will be interested in “Demystifying deep learning: A practical approach in MATLAB,” a seminar that will be useful to students and researchers at all levels of knowledge. It will be conducted by Loren Shure, who has worked at MathWorks for over 30 years, from 2-4 p.m. next Monday, March 2, in Room 601 of the Computer Studies Building. The seminar will demonstrate new MATLAB features that simplify deep learning tasks and eliminate the low-level programming. It will demonstrate how to build and train neural networks that recognize handwriting, categorize foods, classify signals, and control machines. RSVP here. Questions? Contact Alyssa Silverman or call 508-647-4343.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman