September 29, 2020
Aidymar Bigio ’93, a senior director of engineering at Facebook; Margo Georgiadis P’18, P’23, president and CEO of Ancestry; Lisa Norwood ’86 ‘95W(MS), our assistant dean of the Hajim School; and Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland ’89(PhD) will participate in a Women Leaders in STEM panel discussion on October 9.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Instead of Meliora Weekend, our University will celebrate a virtual Meliora Month this October, with a great lineup of events that will appeal to our alumni, parents, students, friends, faculty, and staff.
This Saturday, October 3, President Sarah Mangelsdorf will deliver her State of the University address starting at 11 a.m. ET, followed by the launch of the new Women’s Network. Then join us for a live, virtual panel discussion with President Mangelsdorf and our six women deans starting at 11:30 a.m. We will discuss our career paths, our commitment to developing other leaders, and our perspectives around equity and access for women in higher education. Learn more.
From 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on October 9, I will have the honor to moderate a virtual panel discussion on “Women Leaders in STEM” with four distinguished women with ties to our school. They are Aidymar Bigio ’93, a mechanical engineering alumna who is now a senior director of engineering at Facebook; Margo Georgiadis P’18, P’23, president and CEO of Ancestry; Lisa Norwood ’86 ‘95W(MS), a geomechanics alumna who is our assistant dean of the Hajim School; and Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland ‘89(PhD), an optics alumna who is professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.
They will join me in discussing why they chose STEM-related professions, the future of their fields, and how to encourage more women to consider STEM careers. The panelists will also delve into some of the distinct challenges facing women in STEM and how they overcame them. You can learn more and register here.
This is an issue of utmost importance to our school and the nation, and I am thrilled to have a panel of this caliber share their thoughts on this challenge. I hope you will join us. And I especially urge our students to take advantage of this opportunity to learn from these outstanding role models.
Then from 7-8 p.m. on October 22 we will host a virtual Hajim School of Engineering Open House. I will give a short presentation, take questions, and then we will provide links for zoom chats with our department chairs and institute and program directors. More details to come.
AWARDS
Long before COVID-19 forced us to pivot to remote learning, Scott Seidman, professor of biomedical engineering, turned his attention toward developing on-line engineering educational courses, starting with a unique, laboratory-based course titled BME 150–Interfacing with Microcontrollers. Because of his experience, Scott was an invaluable source of inspiration and advice when our faculty had to quickly transition to online teaching this spring.
This is just one reason why Scott so richly deserves the Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching that he will receive October 23. Scott, one of the first faculty members hired by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is chief architect of BME 260: Quantitative Physiology. This is a core course that probably every BME graduate has taken, and is an “ah-ha” experience for many of them, says his colleague, associate professor Steve McAleavey. For example, Steve notes, Scott helps his students see the cardiovascular system as “a pump of innervated muscle feeding a dynamic network of vessels, a system of differential equations, an analog electric circuit, a closed-loop control system, and as living tissue whose properties can be quantified in the lab.”
Scott is co-instructor with Amy Lerner for the department’s outstanding senior design program, which matches student teams with companies, nonprofits, and Medical Center clinicians who have “real world” problems that need to be solved. Scott’s electronics expertise has enabled the department to expand the scope of these projects; Scott also “finds the right time to help and the right time to step away so the students still walk away confident and proud of their achievements,” Amy says.
The high regard students have for Scott is demonstrated by the Student Association Engineering and Applied Sciences Professor of the Year Award he received seven years ago and by Goergen Award endorsements like this one:
“It’s been nearly 10 years since I’ve been in Professor Seidman’s classroom, but it is so easy to picture his beaming smile and bubbling demeanor,” says Brett Sternfield ’11 ’12M, now co-founder and CEO of Ocular Technologies. “His love for the subject matter and sharing it with students is obvious to anyone who spends 2 minutes in lecture. . . . What I love most about him is his love for imparting knowledge and for creating a culture of creativity, exploration, critical thinking, and good old fun within the Biomedical Engineering Department.” Well done, Scott!
Congratulations as well to:
- Hani Awad, professor of orthopaedics and biomedical engineering, who has been named the Donald and Mary Clark Distinguished Professor in Orthopaedics. This important honor recognizes Hani’s outstanding research, teaching, and service achievements at the University. As Diane Dalecki, chair of biomedical engineering observes, this is a very prestigious honor and career milestone, and is so very well deserved!
- Jonathan Stone ’16M, a biomedical engineering alumnus of our Center for Medical and Technology Innovation master’s program, and associate professor of neurosurgery and director of the Simulation Innovation Laboratory at Strong Memorial Hospital. Jonathan is also founder and CEO of Simulated Inanimate Models, which received the Outstanding Graduate Award and $400,000 recently from the Luminate NY Accelerator Competition. The company offers an immersive “flight simulator for surgery” that eliminates patient risk by enabling surgeons to practice complete procedures on lifelike anatomical models in an augmented reality environment.
- Wasifur Rahman, a PhD student in the research group of Ehsan Hoque, associate professor of computer science. Wasifur won a Distinguished Paper Award at ACM UbiComp 2020, one of the flagship conferences for human-computer interaction research. In his spare time, Wasifur collaborated with the Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology (BUET) on diagnosing PTSD using a portable wearable neuro-headset and validating it with a standard PTSD questionnaire. “What is really impressive is that the research was conducted at the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, the largest refugee camps in the world,” Ehsan notes. “Many of these refugees have undiagnosed PTSD and have no way of seeking treatment. This inexpensive and portable solution potentially contributes to equity and access to healthcare in an underserved community. I am very proud of the example that Wasifur demonstrated in outreach and mentorship outside of our University.” Read more here.
STUDENT OPPORTUNITIES
The iZone and Studio X are co-hosting a Dream University Challenge to help students imagine and create virtual spaces that build community in a time when it’s hard to do so in person. This fun, multi-week event will introduce students to design thinking and Mozilla Hubs, while encouraging connections and community. Virtual spaces built during the Challenge will be submitted for a chance to win a prize. Register here by midnight this Thursday, October 1.
Doctoral candidates and post-docs can participate in all or any one of the Future Faculty Workshop Series, scheduled for this fall semester. The virtual zoom sessions address topics such as Understanding the Faculty Role (October 21), Unconscious Bias and Its Impact on our Academic Environment (October 28), When Students are Struggling, Troubled or Troubling (November 4), and Teaching Fundamentals: Tools to Demystify Course Planning and Assessment (November 18). Additional information along with the registration link may be found at https://www.rochester.edu/provost/faculty-development/
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.
Reminder to students: Please be sure your contact information in UR Student is updated with your personal phone number. Many students did not list one when we did the switchover to UR Student, and it is important that staff can reach you in case of emergency.
RESEARCH NEWS
Continuing our look at recent grants received by Hajim School faculty members, illustrating the depth and breadth of research occurring in our school:
A major challenge for the US Navy is how to communicate by laser from a surface ship to a submarine, to a satellite, or to another surface ship.
Each of these pathways involves obstacles — interfaces of water and air, for example, or sprays of aerosolized water– that can degrade a laser beam as it passes through them. For example, the beam may split off smaller beams in a process called filamentation, which reduces the energy of the main beam.
That’s why Bob Boyd, professor of optics, is a key collaborator for an Office of Naval Research MURI project led by Clemson University. Bob, an expert in nonlinear optical interactions and nonlinear optical properties of materials, has found a way to form laser beams that resist filamentation. Typical laser beams have a uniform polarization across the beam cross-section. The new beams studied by Bob and his students possess nonuniform, or structured, polarization. Examples include radial polarization, azimuthal polarization, or more exotic Poincaré beams, whose polarization structure takes on the shape of a lemon or a star. All of these beams with structured polarization are found to be more stable than uniformly polarized beams. Bob’s lab has developed a procedure for creating such beams. This project includes $749,000 for Bob’s lab to explore whether the beams will overcome marine obstacles.
In previous work, Bob has used structured light beams to increase the amount of information transferred by individual photons. That could help increase the efficiency of quantum cryptography systems. (Read more here.)
SOCIAL MEDIA
Don’t forget to follow our Hajim social media accounts, including our Instagram (@ur_engineeringandcs), Facebook page, and now our brand new YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel is currently the host for our Class of 2024 and Transfer Student Welcome, as well as the academic open houses that were held by our departments earlier this summer. You will also find our growing collection of presentations on each of our majors, and interviews with Hajim faculty, students, and alumni, a.k.a. Hajim Advising Live episodes, which are hosted by academic counselor Nick Valentino.
Have a great week! And please remember to keep a safe distance, wear a mask, use hand sanitizer, and let Dr. Chat Bot know how you’re doing every day!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
