July 27, 2020

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

We are coming down to the wire as we prepare to open for the fall semester. Undergraduates arriving from states identified as coronavirus hot spots have an option to begin a 14-day quarantine (Aug. 1-14) in a variety of on-campus and off-campus locations.

I strongly urge our students, parents, staff, faculty, and alumni to take advantage of the multiple platforms the University is using to keep us up to date. The Rochester Restart and Recovery website provides the latest updates on how we plan to educate our students while observing safeguards against COVID-19. You can also visit the University’s FAQ webpage for answers to commonly asked questions about our reopening, or submit a question of your own.

Moreover, here’s a video of last week’s Town Hall meeting with University leaders addressing topics of interest to undergraduate students and their families, including moving in, life on campus, symptom tracking and testing strategy, online learning, and more. In addition, Provost Rob Clark hosted a webinar with University medical experts and facilities leaders to discuss a range of topics, including:

Current health guidelines and which COVID test the University is employing
Cleaning protocols for classrooms, labs, and public spaces
The science behind social distancing, PPE, and indoor and outdoor ventilation
What happens if someone tests positive for COVID-19
Community thresholds and factors we’re closely monitoring
Ways that we can ensure that our community members follow the guidelines to keep everyone safe and healthy

We expect that our graduating seniors who enter the workplace will be well-prepared to tackle real-world engineering problems. That is why it is so important that our students have an opportunity to do senior design projects sponsored by partners who pose real-world challenges for our students to address. It’s a win-win situation: students get valuable experience; partners (companies, non-profits, teachers, researchers) interact with future engineers (and potential employees) and receive a fresh, often innovative perspective on a problem.

Partners interested in sponsoring a design project during the coming academic year are encouraged to fill out this request form in the next few weeks, before classes resume August 26. Many of the same social distancing and masking constraints that apply in the workplace will also be observed on our campus, so project sponsorship will involve a hybrid of remote and person-to-person interactions.

You can get a sense of what constitutes a feasible project and see examples of past projects at our Senior Design Sponsorship website; more than 80 projects from last school year can also be viewed here.

Questions? Contact Paul Funkenbusch, our associate dean for education and new initiatives.

Speaking of tackling real-world challenges, here are some wonderful examples of how Hajim School faculty, staff, and students have been doing just that, through service to the community, or through their cutting-edge research:

A team of engineering faculty, staff, and students, led by Omar Soufan ’17, ’18 (MS), a research technician in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, produced about 2,500 3D–printed headbands and more than 3,000 laser cut sheets that were assembled into face shields to protect caregivers against COVID-19, initially in local hospitals and long-term care facilities, then for hospitals and long-term care facilities in Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, and Georgia, and most recently, for relief agencies in the Middle East, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico. They were able to do so by collaborating with Coty Pastene and her volunteer organization Face Shields Roc. Thanks to all who participated with Omar in this great example of how our University can help our community. Read more here.
Marc Porosoff, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and members of his lab have demonstrated that a potassium-promoted molybdenum carbide catalyst efficiently and reliably converts carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, a critical step in turning seawater into fuel. The findings, published in Energy & Environmental Science, were the result of an exhaustive series of experiments, and help advance the Navy’s quest to power its non-nuclear ships without having to pause and refuel from tankers, which can be a tricky maneuver in rough seas. This could also provide fuel for fighter jets on the nuclear-powered carriers. Read more here. You can also see a video and story by WROC-TV.
Chunlei Guo, professor of optics, and members of his lab, have developed an especially exciting application for their laser-etched metal surfaces: addressing the global shortage of drinking water. In Nature Sustainability they demonstrate how a superwicking (water-attracting), super energy-absorbing metal surface, angled directly at the sun, draws a thin film of water upwards over the metal’s surface, retains nearly 100 percent of the energy it absorbs from the sun to quickly heat and evaporate the water, and simultaneously changes the inter-molecular bonds of the water, significantly increasing the efficiency of the evaporation process even further. This inexpensively removes impurities from the water, which can be collected after condensing. Read more here.
Hesam Askari, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Randal Nelson, late professor of computer science, collaborated with researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy on modeling what happens when robotic explorers and other objects touch down on complex, granular surfaces in low-gravity environments. Their research, published in the journal Icarus, provides important information in improving the accuracy of data collection on asteroids. Read more here.

We have 15 prospective engineering students participating in the University’s Early Connection Opportunity (ECO) summer session. The ECO program, administered by the Office of Minority Student Affairs, is offered to select incoming first-year students who are economically disadvantaged, first-generation and/or from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The goal is to provide the students—many the first in their family to seek a degree—with an introduction to basic skills and resources, and to build their confidence in navigating a collegiate landscape. The 15 students in the Essentials of Engineering course are receiving a mix of lectures, one-on-one advising, and workshops. We wish them all the best. Because of COVID-19, the workshops–involving computer science, machine shop, and micro-controllers, taught by George Ferguson, Jim Alkins and Scott Russell, respectively–are being conducted by Zoom. Thanks as well to Nick Valentino, our academic advisor who overseas these students, and to everyone else who is helping to welcome these students to the Hajim School.

Finally, the Project Imagine team has received more than 500 “big and bold ideas” on how the University might change the way it operates – and would like to receive at least that many more. You can submit your ideas here by this Friday July 31. Read more about the project here.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman