April 17, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

The Gwen M. Greene Career & Internship Center held its inaugural Gwennies Award Luncheon recently to honor partners who exemplify the center’s values – respect, collaboration, diversity and inclusion, betterment, and purpose. I am pleased to see several members of the Hajim School community among the recipients: Eric Brandt and Derek Swanson of our Hajim Advancement Team (along with Lisa Hall, executive director of advancement for the College); Amy Lerner, associate professor of biomedical engineering; Marty Guenther, undergraduate coordinator in the Department of Computer Science; Andrew Bosco ‘91 (mechanical engineering), director of project management at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and member of our Visiting Committee, and Stephen Fantone ’79 (PhD optics), founder and president of Optikos Corp. and member of our Dean’s Advisory Committee. Just as the center values its Hajim School partners, we value all that the center is doing on behalf of our students!

Congratulations to Regine Choe, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, who has received a National Institutes of Health RO1 grant for her project, “Longitudinal monitoring of bone fracture healing using diffuse optical and correlation tomography.” Regine proposes to develop and validate optical instruments for non-invasive, longitudinal monitoring of blood flow, volume, and oxygenation in bone fractures and surrounding tissues to predict bone healing. This approach will significantly expedite the development of new bone fracture treatments based on regenerative medicine and the diagnosis of impaired healing, which currently takes at least 3 months.

Congratulations as well to two more of our students whose scholarships were noted at the recent Rochester Engineering Society Gala. Rebecca Walton ’18 of mechanical engineering received a Society of Women Engineers award and Steffen Jensen ’18 of electrical and computer engineering received an award from IEEE.

In an earlier memo we shared a podcast produced by Nick Bruno ’17 of audio and music engineering, which featured Stephen Roessner, our Grammy Award-winning lecturer in audio and music engineering, and one of his students talking about the awards. Click here to read a Campus Times story about Nick’s role in launching this new media outlet for the University and here to listen to other podcasts he has produced for University Communications. Good work Nick!

Attention Hajim School students: We have four outstanding nominees – Taimi Marple, Barbara Dick, Cindy Fitzgerald, and Donna Porcelli – for this year’s Dottie Welch Award. The award recognizes a Hajim School faculty or staff member “whose performance and dedication enriches the student experience” in the tradition exemplified by Dottie, the former undergraduate coordinator in biomedical engineering. I encourage students to click here to cast their votes; voting remains open until April 27, with the winner to be announced on Design Day, May 5.

We had an outstanding response to our call for submissions for our Art of Science Competition — 43 entries using images and 13 using videos. We’ll announce four winners on May 4; in the meantime, thanks to all who entered and to Sandra Turner for organizing this.

A quick reminder that deadlines are approaching for two entrepreneurial competitions. Student teams interested in participating in the Mark Ain Business Model Competition have until Thursday to file business plans; students participating in the Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition have until next Monday, April 24.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman