October 12, 2020
This month we recognize four more women Hajim School faculty members for their contributions to engineering and computer science at our University. From left to right: Julie Bentley, Sandhya Dwarkadas, Sheryl Gracewski, and Jannick Rolland.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Amid the turbulence of a pandemic, a divisive presidential election, and a long overdue re-examination of how we treat racial and ethnic groups in this country, it was inspiring last Friday to hear four strong voices discuss another matter of paramount importance: overcoming the ongoing under-representation of women in STEM fields.
Thanks to 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). They joined me in a virtual panel to discuss why they chose STEM-related professions, the future of their fields, and how to encourage more women to consider STEM careers. And thanks to all of you who listened in!
In her first State of the University address, President Mangelsdorf provided a wide-ranging update to the University community that highlighted the extraordinary research, scholarship, and academic inquiry taking place at Rochester despite recent disruptions. “Certainly the world has changed, and the University of Rochester is adapting to change with it,” she says. “I believe that in these challenging times, we have not just an opportunity, but an obligation, to make an impact.”
I urge Hajim School staff, faculty, students, parents, friends, and alumni — as well as prospective students — to register for our virtual Hajim School Open House, to be held from 7-8 p.m., October 22. I’ll give a brief presentation, and then you will have an opportunity to hear from our department chairs and program and institute directors and ask them questions.
CELEBRATION 2020
This month, as part of our Celebration 2020 observance, we recognize four more of our women faculty members who have made notable contributions to engineering and computer science at our University.
Julie Bentley ’90 ’92M ’96PhD, an associate professor of optics and our first woman instructional track faculty member in the Hajim School, is an internationally recognized expert in lens design and recipient of the Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Though she was valedictorian of her high school class in New York’s rural Southern Tier, she was advised not to go into engineering because she was a girl. Julie was not deterred and thank goodness for that! She excelled as an Institute of Optics undergraduate and graduate student; as an optical designer and commercial technology manager in industry; and continues to excel as a valued member of The Institute’s faculty and as a private consultant. She is an outstanding role model for women in STEM.
Last week I was honored to announce that Sandhya Dwarkadas, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering and recent chair of the Department of Computer Science, is the recipient of this year’s Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award for her stellar achievements as a researcher, as a teacher, and as one who has served her discipline and her University in many capacities. In the context of Celebration 2020, we also recognize Sandhya’s outstanding efforts to recruit and retain women students in computing –through her long involvement with the Computer Research Association’s Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP), which she currently co-chairs, and the instrumental role she played in securing her department’s participation in the BRAID (Building, Recruiting, And Inclusion for Diversity) Initiative.
Sheryl Gracewski, emeritus professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, is our first woman tenured faculty member in engineering, and the first woman to receive the Hajim School Lifetime Achievement Award. She has excelled in all three benchmarks by which we rank our faculty: research, teaching, and service. Sheryl is an expert in modeling the interactions of ultrasound with bubbles and stones in biological fluids and tissues. She has received University awards for both undergraduate teaching and helping with PhD defenses. And for 20 years, as faculty advisor for our Baja SAE team, Sheryl endured dust, noise, oil leaks, mechanical breakdowns, and lack of sleep while chaperoning team members to competitions across the country. Talk about going above and beyond!
Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering, wears many hats–and wears them well–as director of the Center for Freeform Optics and the Robert E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design & Engineering, and as co-founder and CTO of LighTopTech. She, too, is a recipient of the Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award and has been recognized as a woman pioneer in augmented and virtual reality. Jannick, a talented dancer while growing up in France, took a big chance in 1984. After graduating from the Institut D’Optique in Orsay, she hopped on a plane to America — still undecided about her future plans — and managed to get accepted into the optics graduate program at the University of Arizona. She’s now helping to pioneer an exciting new technology–freeform optics–and setting a strong example for women in STEM.
STUDENT SUPPORT
UR Connected is a peer-to-peer network that connects students to the resources they need when they need them most. If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, homesick, or not sleeping well, a UR Connected coach could help. The team of over 50 coaches has received specialized training in the areas of effective communication, helping students in distress, and suicide prevention. They are educated on all the resources the University has to offer, from academic support to navigating an off-campus therapy appointment to finding a program to improve sleep habits. To request a meeting with a coach, you can complete an online form.
The University’s CARE Network is another option for students who are seeking support or for faculty, staff, and family members who would like to help a student seek support. The support can be for a variety of non-emergency issues, including academic, medical, or mental health-related concerns. Anyone can submit a referral for a student (undergraduate or graduate) through the CARE website. In an emergency, call Public Safety at (585) 275-3333.
A salary negotiation workshop open to all students will help you research your target salary, highlight your accomplishments, and find the right words—and confidence—to negotiate for better benefits and pay. This interactive webinar from 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, October 27, 2020 will be led by alumna and faculty member Rachel Roberts ‘03E and co-facilitated by Blaire Koerner ‘19E. It is presented through the Start Smart Program of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), a non-profit organization that advances equity for women. The webinar is co-sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Center, Hajim School, and Greene Center for Career Education and Connections, among others. Register here by October 26. Contact kbuscetto@ur.rochester.edu for ASL interpreting, real-time captioning, or other communication access.
Still undecided about which Hajim School major is best for you? Our series of faculty presentations describing each of our majors wraps up this week. Thanks again to Nick Valentino and Paul Funkenbusch for organizing these informative sessions, and to the faculty members and program directors who have given presentations. The presentations are being archived at our new YouTube channel along with our Class of 2024 and Transfer Student Welcome, the academic open houses that were held by our departments earlier this summer, and a growing collection of interviews with Hajim faculty, students, and alumni, a.k.a. Hajim Advising Live episodes, which are hosted by Nick.
This week’s presentations:
- Engineering Science, by Lisa Norwood, our assistant dean. This Wednesday, October 14, 1-2 p.m. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/92648826996 Meeting ID: 926 4882 6996
- Materials Science, by Danielle Benoit, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Materials Science program. This Friday, October 16, 10-11 a.m. Join in at https://rochester.zoom.us/j/94058134166 Meeting ID: 940 5813 4166
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
Continuing our look at recent grants received by Hajim faculty members, which illustrate the depth and breadth of research taking place at our school:
“The world is entirely dependent on server machines that run operating systems with a 1970’s architecture,” says Michael Scott, the Arthur Gould Yates Professor of Engineering, and chair of the Department of Computer Science. “These systems are basically one huge pile of code written in C, any part of which can touch all the rest. A bug anywhere in those tens of millions of lines of code can do arbitrary damage to your machine.”
Historically, the only way to make the code less brittle was to rewrite it all from scratch in a more secure programming language. However, doing so “is prohibitively expensive,” says John Criswell, associate professor of computer science and an expert in computer security for operating systems. “For example, the Linux kernel has nearly 20 million lines of code. The cost of rewriting all that code is astronomical.”
Instead, Michael and John, as principal investigators of a $1,135,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, will develop ways to efficiently “modularize” operating system kernel code into separate, isolated components. That way, a bug in one piece of code won’t be able to damage any of the other pieces. Programmers can also begin rewriting some of the pieces in a secure language without worrying that the new code will be damaged by the old.
“This is—really for the first time—an incremental path toward improving the safety of the operating system,” says Michael, an expert in the design and implementation of systems software for parallel and distributed computing.
The protection will be provided through an unconventional use of “memory protection keys,” a newly available feature of Intel’s server processors. Protection keys allow running code to quickly change the parts of the system that are currently accessible. The trick is to ensure that every change obeys an appropriate security policy.
In addition, the project will also use memory protection keys to create libraries—previously developed code that is imported into a running program—that can safely perform tasks on behalf of multiple applications, outside the main body of the operating system. Such cross-application sharing can greatly improve performance while also making it easier to install upgrades and patches. The project will also explore whether OS kernel components can be moved into shared libraries without sacrificing security and performance.
The funding will support three graduate students. Experimental results, raw data, and source code will be freely and publicly available, the latter via open-source licenses.
TEACHING DURING COVID
This fall’s Online Learning Symposium series is centered around discussions with panels of University of Rochester faculty who have designed and developed online versions of their courses and are teaching them this semester. The panels are organized by broad disciplinary areas. Register in advance below, and find additional information online.
Note that Andrew Berger, professor of optics; John Lambropoulos, professor and former chair of mechanical engineering and professor of materials science; and Lewis Rothberg, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering, also affiliated with the Materials Science Program, will be part of the panel on November 9.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAINING
Reminder: The next 3.5 week NSF Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) entrepreneurial training course for PhD candidates, postdocs, and faculty kicks off next Monday, October 19. Apply online. Contact I-Corps instructor Matt Spielmann at the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship with questions.
HAJIM MAGAZINE
Be sure to take a look at our fall 2020 issue of Rochester Engineering, our twice-yearly magazine that has now gone digital.
Have a great week! A don’t forget to 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
