Sept. 21, 2020
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
We continue to do an outstanding job of wearing masks, keeping a safe distance, and abiding by the other protocols we’ve put in place this semester to keep our campus safe and healthy. I thank all of you — students, staff, and faculty — for doing your part!
There is one important way we need to do better. Students attending classes on campus this semester need to use Dr. Chat Bot daily. Dr. Chat Bot is required for everyone who is physically on any University campus—River Campus, Medical Center, Eastman School, MAG—at any time of day or night. It only takes a few seconds. It’s easy to add to a morning routine. Dr. Chat Bot can help the University to identify emerging COVID-19 cases and clusters on campus earlier than testing. It was created right here at the University and is now being used in symptom trackers across New York. Thank you for doing your part to help keep our University – and yourself – healthy and safe.
AWARDS
Congratulations to a Hajim School alumnus and six seniors who received more than half of the Lysle “Spike” Garnish awards presented by the University’s Department of Athletics and Recreation last week.
John Zabrodsky ’82, an integral part of the men’s cross country and track and field programs for the past 40 years, received the Lyle “Spike” Garnish Memorial Citation, given to an alumnus, faculty, or staff member for longtime service to the student-athletes and the program in general. John earned multiple letters in both sports and captained both teams during his undergraduate days as a chemical engineering major. He has been an ardent supporter of the programs ever since. John, the founder and managing director of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Inc., holds 15 U.S. and foreign patents and is an author of numerous papers on manufacturing automation. (His daughter, Abigail ’14 ’19MBA, also of chemical engineering, won four New York State championships in track and field!) Congratulations, John!
And congratulations as well to these seniors, who were named Garnish Scholar Athletes for strong academic backgrounds, superior athletic skills, and a commitment to community service.
- Ryan Algier of data science, who has been honored numerous times for academic achievement and athletic skill as a member of the men’s basketball team.
- Eileen Bequette of mechanical engineering, an All-American member of the women’s track and field team, specializing in the pentathlon and heptathlon.
- Kathryn Colone of biomedical engineering, an outstanding defender in women’s field hockey who won the team’s Meliora Award by unanimous decision.
- Declan Hickton of mechanical engineering, a leader of the golf team since 2017 who has participated in every tournament his first three seasons and is a Scholar All-American.
- Renae Lapins of biomedical engineering, a setter with the women’s volleyball team and member of the team’s leadership council, who attended every practice and match despite an injury that curtailed her playing time during sophomore year.
- Tessa Ludwick of chemical engineering, a point guard who had a strong season with the women’s basketball team her junior year and was elected team captain for the 2020-21 season.
Read more here about the internships, service projects, and student professional chapters and design teams that these outstanding scholar-athletes have found time to participate in. Well done!
OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS
Speaking of internships, our Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers student chapters are hosting two presentations this week on how students can prepare for internships, now that the season to apply is ramping up. Part one, hosted by SHPE, is at 8 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/94471626278 Part two, hosted by NSBE, is at 6 p.m. this Thursday, September 24. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/95582999541
Still undecided about which Hajim School major is best for you? Our series of faculty presentations describing each of our majors continues this week.
The presentations describe the type of work people do in these fields and provide an overview of the curriculum in each major. You’ll also have a chance to ask Hajim faculty members about their program, their research, and the types of challenges that engineers in their field work to solve. Even if you’ve already picked a major, switching to another Hajim major is possible in the first year, especially in the second semester.
Have you heard of the Hult Prize? This global competition that challenges young people to solve our world’s issues is happening right on campus! Contestants get the chance to win a $1 million global startup prize! You can join whether you’re an undergraduate or a graduate student. Even if you don’t have a team or an idea, we will help you get connected to others who want to participate. Come to our info session at 5 p.m. this Thursday, September 24.
Interested in learning about graduate and MBA programs? Our IEEE student chapter is sponsoring a Q&A panel at 1 p.m. Saturday, September 26 with a local startup, Meltek, a pre-seed clean technology startup based at NextCorps in Rochester. Meltek is building a software platform that will enable more homeowners to participate in the renewable energy revolution by facilitating sharing of solar panels and battery storage with neighbors. The AI-based algorithms will minimize energy costs while drastically improving resiliency in areas prone to outages, due to wildfires, hurricanes, or underdeveloped grids.” Join in at this zoom link.
And there’s the e5 program, which offers selected students a fifth, tuition-free year of college to launch a project and engage in an experiential or entrepreneurial pursuit. For example, Sarmishtha “Ruki” Prathivadhibhayankaram ’21, a computer science, film and media studies, and anthropology major, plans to create a women’s business-wear clothing line that is trans-inclusive, body positive, and culturally sensitive, intended to be launched on an e-commerce site as a business that will empower marginalized communities. Check out current or past e5 projects. The fall online application deadline is November 1. Seniors may only apply during the fall semester. Contact Angela Buchiere with questions. The program is supported by The College, CCAS, and the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship. Learn more by attending a drop-in information session at 2 p.m. EDT tomorrow, Tuesday, September 22 via Zoom.
The Institute of Optics is hosting a monthly virtual coffee hour and chat on Female Perspectives in Optics, starting this Friday, September 25 from 10 to 11 a.m. with speakers Cherine Ghazouani ’21 and Sarah Grabowski ’21, this year’s peer advisors. You can sign up at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0445ABAA23AAF49-female
The Department of Chemical Engineering will host a meet and greet from 3 to 6 p.m. this Wednesday, September 23, so CHE majors can interact with other students, professors and staff in the department. Participants are encouraged to come and go as they wish. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/94104442733 Meeting ID: 941 0444 2733.
NEWS ABOUT GRANTS
Continuing our series on recent grants received by our faculty members, illustrating the depth and breadth of research in the Hajim School:
David Williams, the William G. Allyn Chair of Medical Optics and director of the Center for Visual Science, says he is as excited now about his research as at any time in his ground-breaking career at Rochester. The $250,000 Alcon Research Institute Award he recently received with William Merigan, professor of ophthalmology, is the starting point of an ambitious agenda to better understand the code that the retina uses to communicate with the brain – and to ultimately use that information to hopefully cure diseases that cause blindness.
Dave’s lab has taken advantage of the adaptive optics technologies he pioneered and Bill’s expertise in molecular engineering and animal psychophysics to make some exciting, first-ever observations about the retina’s ganglion cells — especially those in the all-important fovea where the center of vision is focused. Ganglion cells, which typically rely on rods and cones to sense light coming into the eye, process the signals from the rods and cones, and send that processed information on to the brain. There are as many as two dozen different kinds of ganglion cells, each kind responsible for computing a different aspect of an image coming into the eye, such as the image’s color, brightness, or motion. They are also involved in other functions such as controlling the size of the pupil and the circadian rhythm of the entire body.
The Alcon grant will support the lab’s efforts to identify ganglion cells in the living eye, which may ultimately allow the team to clarify their role in vision, a topic of considerable debate among researchers. The lab’s experiments, controlled by computer, allow “us to have a two-way dialogue with the retinal ganglion cells, listening to them to see what signals they are sending, and also controlling what signals they are sending by directly activating them with light,” Dave says.
Diseases that cause blindness do so by destroying the rods and cones that the ganglion cells rely on to initially detect light coming into the eye. However, the lab has discovered it may be possible to instead have ganglion cells take on this function when rods and cones are destroyed by disease. How? By injecting benign, genetically engineered viruses into the eye that cause ganglion cells to develop their own intrinsic sensitivity to light. Pinning down the function of each type of ganglion cell, then, is an important first step. While restoring vision in the blind is still at an early experimental stage, given this lab’s track record, the possibilities are exciting to contemplate!
Circle Optics, a company founded by its CEO, optics alumnus Zakariya Niazi ’12, and now headquartered in Rochester has received a $256,000 NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to advance its development of an innovative camera system that fuses images captured through a camera array at the level of the lenses, rendering a perfect 360° image instantaneously. The company, which also includes optics alumnus Andrew Kurtz ’84 ’86M as director of research and development, received a $350,000 investment as well as a $10,000 audience choice prize, as part of the Luminate competition in Rochester last year. The company’s Hydra camera system and spherical camera technology instantly align fields of view at the level of the optic, eliminating the need for stitching (post-processing). This could have exciting applications in security, risk and asset management, robotics, mapping, and live event capture. We wish all the best to Zakariya, Andrew, and fellow UR alums Ian Gauger ’12, Allen Krisiloff ’80 and Xueying “Shelley” Chen ’20 who are also on the leadership team.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAINING
Have a technical business idea? Hajim School PhD candidates, postdocs and faculty, in particular, can explore the market opportunity of your technology through the University’s NSF Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) program, which offers entrepreneurial training and modest grant awards for customer discovery or prototyping. Virtual I-Corps info sessions are coming up on September 29 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. ET; and October 7 from noon to 1 p.m. ET. Register online for the virtual info sessions. The next 3.5-week virtual I-Corps regional course kicks off on October 19. Apply online. Contact I-Corps instructor Matt Spielmann at the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship with questions.
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
