November 9, 2020

Left to right: Sophia Guarnieri, Yujin Nakamoto, and Jiayin Zhang are recipients of this year’s Wells prize.

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

This month we recognize three outstanding students. Seniors Sophia Guarnieri of biomedical engineering; Yujin Nakamoto of electrical and computer engineering and math; and Jiayin Zhang of mechanical engineering, also pursuing a minor in physics, are this year’s recipients of the Robert L. Wells Prize, awarded to Hajim School students who also excel in the humanities. Sophia, for example, is also completing a minor in Spanish, Yujin is also majoring in classical Greek, and Jiayin is also completing a minor in art history. Winners are chosen based on highest GPAs at the end of their junior year.

All three students have taken full advantage of our University’s open curriculum and status as a top research institution. They are not only pursuing rigorous engineering degrees but gaining hands-on lab experience doing cutting-edge research. I congratulate them for also putting a priority on the humanities, which helps them become better-rounded engineers. Well done, Sophia, Yujin, and Jiayin! Read more about their achievements here.

ALUMNI NEWS

Emily Hackett ’95 (T5), a mechanical engineering alumna working as a software engineer with Intel, spent a remarkable year in China from 1995 to 1996 studying materials science at Tsinghua University. Emily was able to explore broad swathes of the country, its culture and society. She now shares those experiences in her self published memoir Ghost Years: Recollections of an American student in 1990s China, an intensely personal, remarkably detailed, and revealing picture of what is was like, learning to navigate cultural differences at a time when China was transitioning from a developing country to a superpower.

Emily is unstinting in her praise of the education she received at the University of Rochester in preparing her for her time in China. She is especially grateful to three of her mechanical engineering professors — Stephen Burns, Alfred Clark, and James Li — for their encouragement and support. Thanks, Emily, for your remarkable account. It is a testament to the value of global experiences. Read more here.

FOR STUDENTS

The Rochester Engineering Society, an umbrella organization for engineering societies in the Rochester area, administers multiple $1,500 scholarships, sponsored by a variety of organizations, that Hajim School undergraduates are eligible to apply for, provided they have completed two years of study and have an overall GPA of 3.0 or better. Visit the society’s website to learn more about available awards and how to apply. The deadline is December 11.

Have an idea to change the world? Register online by tomorrow, November 10, to compete in the Hult Prize, the world’s largest social entrepreneurship competition, with a $1 million prize. Download information on this year’s challenge, “Food for Good.” Teams will pitch their ideas to “transform food into a vehicle for change” on Friday, November 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. EST. For more information, contact hultprize@rochester.edu.

Five juniors and seniors in the Department of Chemical Engineering will discuss their research projects as part of the department’s Eisenberg Fellows program at 5:30 p.m. this Friday, November 13, right after the conclusion of a panel discussion on equity and inclusion in chemical engineering. This is an opportunity for undergraduates to find out about the kinds of research their peers are doing. Register here. And if possible, don’t miss the panel’s discussion a topic that is of utmost importance to our school and our engineering profession as a whole.

RESEARCH NEWS

The lab of Nick Vamivakas, a professor of quantum optics and quantum physics affiliated with the Materials Science Program, and the AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, continues to build on its exciting work with atomically thin layers of tungsten diselenide (WSe2). In a paper in Nature Communications, Nick’s team describes a nanoscale node using WSe2 and highly reactive chromium triiodide (CrI3) that could interact with other nodes in a network, using laser light to emit and accept photons. The development of such a quantum network promises faster, more efficient ways to communicate, compute, and detect objects and materials as compared to networks currently used for computing and communications.  Read more here.

Congratulations to Wenxiang Hu, a PhD student in materials science, and Purvanshi Mehta, a data science master’s student, who were among the 17 interns with the highest rated presentations during Amazon’s first-ever virtual science intern poster session series this  summer. More than 180 graduate research interns had the opportunity to present a poster. More than 1,000 members of the Amazon science community were invited to rate, review, and provide feedback. Wenxiang presented “Improving performance of job recommender system based on classification and ranking model and click data.” Purvanshi presented “Pre-training graph neural networks for NLP tasks.”

Institute of Optics faculty will give two of the four keynote talks in January when Photonics Spectra, a research and trade magazine, launches its inaugural Photonics Spectra conference highlighting innovations in lasers, optics, and more. Chunlei Guo, professor of optics, whose lab has pioneered the use of lasers to etch black and colored metals, and superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces, will present “Surface Functionalization with Femtosecond Lasers and Applications.” Jessica DeGroote Nelson, ’02 ‘05MS ‘07PhD (Optics) and ’13MBA–director of technology and strategy at Optimax Systems Inc. and an adjunct assistant professor at The Institute–will describe science fiction prophecies that have become reality thanks to optics applications that are trending today. She will also explore whether the fantasy worlds portrayed in Iron Man, Star Wars, and Harry Potter are on target about the technologies of tomorrow.

EQUITY AND INCLUSION

The Department of Chemical Engineering is sponsoring a panel discussion at 4 p.m. this Friday on equity and inclusion in that field, featuring four of its alumni–Genevieve McSpaden ’13 ’14MS, John Ofori ’96PhD, Mary Fromm ’86 ’07MBA, and Chantel Gaudet ’14 ’15MS– along with John Barker ’09PhD, AS&E senior associate dean of faculty. Register here for what promises to be an interesting discussion. You can submit questions for the panelists here, and I also urge you to stick around for research presentations by five of the department’s undergraduate Eisenberg Fellows immediately after the panel discussion.

IN REMEMBRANCE

In memory of Randal Nelson and in recognition of his commitment to recruiting and retaining the very best graduate students, the Department of Computer Science has established the Randal Nelson Graduate Student Fund. The goal is to raise at least $25,000 to create a self-sustaining endowment in support of computer science graduate students—for research funding, academic fellowships and awards, conference attendance costs, etc., as determined by the department chair. Donations in Randal’s honor can be made at http://uofr.us/nelson.

Have a great week! And please remember 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