October 5, 2020

Left to right: Govind Agrawal, Sandhya Dwarkadas, and Bonnie Lipari.

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

I am pleased to announce this year’s recipients of three of our top awards.

Govind Agrawal, the James C. Wyant Professor in Optics who “stands tall” in his field, is the recipient of the 2020 Hajim School Lifetime Achievement Award. Govind has made seminal contributions in physical optics, including lasers, fiber-optical communications, and nonlinear optics. His former students describe their time in his research group as one of the great experiences of their lives. He is a highly sought speaker for international conferences, summer schools and scientific workshops, plus guest professorships and visiting lectureships. Govind “has made significant and sustained contributions in . . . physical optics as an educator and researcher over the last 40 years and has made a real impact on the life of graduate students worldwide,” says Scott Carney, director of The Institute of Optics. Read more here.
Sandhya Dwarkadas, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering, is our recipient of the 2020 Edmund Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award. Sandhya has made fundamental contributions in both hardware and software to the ongoing quest to improve the efficiency and speed of parallel and distributed computing systems. During six years as chair, she guided the Department of Computer Science through dramatic changes, including a more than doubling of undergraduate enrollments and relocation into Wegmans Hall. The department launched a master’s degree program, and a training program for teaching assistants to assist with increased class sizes. Sandhya has also worked hard to create a pipeline for women in computing. Read more here.
Bonnie Lipari, the senior faculty research administrator in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is recipient of the 2020 Hajim Outstanding Staff Award. She is the essential link between the department’s faculty members and the University’s Office of Research and Project Administration, which provides support to the University for obtaining sponsored research funds and managing sponsored program activity. “Under Bonnie’s tenure in the department the number of submitted proposals per year has exploded and the success rate of grants in the BME department is now at an historic high,” says Carla Boff, the department’s lead administrator. “This success can be directly attributable to Bonnie’s expertise and professional skills in pre-award submission and post-award management.” And, as Cindy Gary, our assistant dean for grants and contracts notes: “there is no staff member who supports their department better than Bonnie.” Read more here.

Congratulations as well to Steven Spirakis ’22 of biomedical engineering, a placekicker on the varsity football team who has been named as one of 22 players on the AllState AFCA Good Works Team, which stretches across all NCAA and NAIA Divisions. Steven, a resident of Garden City, NY, has worked with hospitalized pediatric patients and their families at Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, NY. He and his brother discovered the Child Life Program at the hospital and created the Teen Project to provide gifts for hospitalized teenagers who are often overlooked at holiday time. Last year, he worked with Golisano Children’s Hospital on a holiday fundraiser. Well done, Steven!

HAJIM MAGAZINE GOES DIGITAL

Rochester Engineering, our spring and fall magazine, will be sent out digitally from now on. This will save costs on preparation, printing, and mailing, and give us much more flexibility in the amount and length of stories we can include in each issue. Watch for our fall 2020 magazine in your email this Wednesday, October 7.

A WARM WELCOME TO . . .

Kristina Lantzky, who joins us as the new assistant dean in the Office of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. Kristina will play a key role in helping our departments recruit and retain master’s and PhD students. Kristina comes to us from Hilbert College where she served as provost and vice president of academic affairs. Prior to that she served as an assistant, then associate professor of chemistry at St. John Fisher College, where she was also chair of the chemistry department for nearly six years. I am delighted to have Kristina on board. Please join me in making her feel at home!

MELIORA MONTH

And please join me from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. this Friday, October 9 for a virtual panel discussion on “Women Leaders in STEM” with Aidymar Bigio ’93, senior director of engineering at Facebook; Margo Georgiadis P’18 P’23, president and CEO of Ancestry; Lisa Norwood ’86 ‘95W(MS) P’13 P’20, our assistant dean; and Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland ‘89(PhD). We will discuss 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.

STUDENT OPPORTUNITIES

The Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (SASE), Women in Computing/Minorities in Computing (WiC/MiC), and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) student chapters will host a virtual event at 7 p.m. tomorrow, October 6, entitled “Open Discussion on Anti-Racism in STEM.” The discussion will be open to all students to talk about their experiences in STEM at the University of Rochester regarding racism and the current events such as Black Lives Matter protests and the Scholar Strike. They will ask guiding questions to start the conversation but allow everyone to express their thoughts and opinions in a welcoming space. Please register for the event here to receive the zoom link.

The Office for Global Engagement and Center for Education Abroad have recently joined with global space provider WeWork to provide work and study areas to undergraduates throughout China who are remote this semester. Each WeWork space is designed to provide students access to modern facilities with high-speed internet, and amenities including updated technologies, coffee and refreshment stations, clean and comfortable workspaces, and printing stations. There are close to 90 WeWork locations throughout China that Rochester students can access immediately.

Hult Prize Rochester and the Barbara J. Burger iZone will host a virtual Design Thinking & Ideation workshop for students looking for an idea for the Hult Prize 2020 challenge. The workshop is today, Monday, October 5, from 5 to 6:15 p.m. EDT, and students can sign up online. The Hult Prize is a global competition that challenges young people to solve world issues. Contestants compete for a chance to win $1 million in seed money. This year’s challenge is “Food for Good: Transforming Food into a Vehicle for Change.” The University’s competition will take place virtually on November 3 at 5 p.m.

Registration for DandyHacks 2020 is now open. DandyHacks is the University of Rochester’s annual student-led hackathon. This year for the first time ever, DandyHacks will be going VIRTUAL from October 23-25. DandyHacks is an accessible and beginner-friendly hackathon, offering workshops to teach beginners valuable skills and mentors to guide and advise hackers throughout the 36 hours. Register online: dandyhacks.net.

Still undecided about which Hajim School major is best for you? Our series of faculty presentations describing each of our majors continues this week.

Electrical and computer engineering, by Marvin Doyley, professor and department chair. This Wednesday, October 7, 1-2 p.m. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/93064329950 Meeting ID: 930 6432 9950
Data Science, by Ajay Anand, associate professor and deputy director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science. This Friday, October 9, 2-3 p.m. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/99056496709 Meeting ID: 990 5649 6709

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.

RESEARCH NEWS

The research group of William Renninger, assistant professor of optics, has determined that a new anti-resonant hollow core fiber, created by researchers at the University of Central Florida, produces the lowest levels of “noise” ever recorded from interference caused by the vibration of quantum material—known as acoustic phonons—as the signals travel through the fiber at room temperatures. The lab’s findings demonstrate that the fiber is a “promising platform for low-noise applications, such as quantum information processing and optical communications,” writes lead author Arjun Iyer, a graduate research associate in the group. To document the properties of the fiber, William’s lab developed a highly sensitive measuring technique. Their findings are reported in a paper published in APL Photonics. This continues a string of exciting papers and grants for this group. Read more here.

Continuing our look at recent grants received by Hajim faculty members, which also illustrate the depth and breadth of research taking place at our school:

Polymer sorbents – polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in particular — are often used to attract oil to a sponge so it can be mopped up during a spill. Now, Ben Miller, professor of dermatology, biomedical engineering, biochemistry and biophysics, and optics, and Matt Yates, professor of chemical engineering and a scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics — and both affiliated with the Materials Science Program — are creating new variants of PDMS that could help attract chemical warfare agents so they can be detected. They could also help first responders identify drugs taken by someone suffering symptoms of an overdose.

This project, funded with $305,474 from the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, began when Matt spent a year on sabbatical working with Ben’s lab. Ben had previously worked with the Office of Naval Research on a quarter inch by quarter inch chemical sensor chip small enough to fit on a cell phone. It uses waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy to identify specific molecules. Ben and Matt came up with a way to create variations of PDMS that could be deposited on the chip in order to attract and identify not oil, but molecules associated with specific other kinds of chemicals, for example chemical warfare agents circulating in the air.

On their first effort, for example, they came up with a variant that specifically attracts chemicals used for nerve gas. They are now looking for other variants that could attract other kinds of chemicals associated with opioids and other drugs that are often abused.

One challenge is figuring out how to package the polymers with the chip. Ben says he was impressed that, even when research labs were shut down this spring, Matt was able to prototype, in his kitchen, a system to deposit these polymers, at the same time he was also running a 3D printer 24 hours a day to help make protective face masks for health care providers. Well done, Ben and Matt!

Have great week! And don’t forget: Wear those masks, keep a safe distance, wash your hands, and report to Dr. Chat Bot daily if you are coming on campus!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman