December 21, 2020
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
“Sometimes life really kicks you in the butt, and you feel like the world is ending. Especially with the whole pandemic,” says Tram Nguyen ’22, a dual biomedical engineering and economics major. But Tram hasn’t let this get her down. Far from it, in fact. After getting an email from DandyHacks, the UR hackathon, Tram, an undergraduate researcher in Danielle Benoit’s lab, decided to try programming. She entered the hackathon as part of a team that won a prize for an app that tracks and stores your location data over two weeks for COVID tracing purposes. Since then, Tram has been on a roll, winning nine prizes at various hackathons. You can read more about her projects here. Well done, Tram!
And well done to Neil Yeung ’23 and Jonathan Lai ’22 of computer science, who recently presented their paper “Face Off: Polarized Public Opinions on Personal Face Mask Usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic” on Data Skeptic, a popular data science podcast reaching more than 30,000 listeners nationwide per week. Hosted by Kyle Polich, the podcast features interviews and discussions of topics related to data science, statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, from the perspective of applying critical thinking and the scientific method to evaluate the veracity of claims and efficacy of approaches. “Neil and Jonathan did a fantastic job in the interview,” says Jiebo Luo, professor of computer science, who also appeared on the podcast. “I was really impressed by their eloquence and confidence in speaking about their work.” The recording is available online. They also presented the paper earlier this month at the IEEE International Conference on Big Data. Read more here.
FOR STUDENTS
Current social distancing guidelines mean there aren’t as many opportunities to casually interact with people you pass on campus, less time to catch-up with friends after a club meeting, and fewer of the informal interactions that help us build shared experiences and community. Join the Dream University Challenge to imagine, design, and build virtual university spaces that can provide opportunities to connect with your friends.
Learn design thinking and hands-on technical skills. Work in teams to build your dream space using Mozilla Hubs, a user-friendly virtual reality platform. Submit your space for a chance to win a prize. No experience with virtual reality is necessary. Just bring your creativity. Register by midnight January 5 at bit.ly/DreamSign-Up.
RESEARCH NEWS
Congratulations to:
- Ranga Dias, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics and astronomy. His lab’s creation of room-temperature superconducting material–considered the Holy Grail of Condensed Matter Physics–was selected as one of 10 finalists for Breakthrough of the Year by two prestigious journals– Physics World and Science. Well done Ranga! Ranga is also affiliated with the Materials Science and High Energy Density Physics programs.
- Gonzalo Mateos, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, who is co-author of a paper selected for the 2020 IEEE SPS Young Author Best Paper Award. The paper, by lead author Santiago Segarra, is entitled “Network Topology Inference from Spectral Templates,” originally published in IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks, September 2017.
Researchers in the human-computer interaction lab of Ehsan Hoque, an associate professor of computer science, have an exciting new paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. They describe how the algorithms that social media platforms use to recommend who we should “follow” are designed to steer us to people who likely share the same ideas and interests.
However, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could help us become more creative—a quality that is increasingly valued in our society—if they instead steered us to people with ideas and interests different from our own.
The researchers describe conducting a novel experiment in which participants were asked to think of unusual, “creative” uses for commonplace items–using a pencil as a dart, for example, or a shoe as a hammer. They were also given the opportunity to view the ideas of other participants and then decide which of them they would like to “follow” for creative inspiration.
“We found that the participants overwhelmingly chose to follow peers who had the most creative ideas,” says lead author Raiyan Abdul Baten, a PhD student in Ehsan’s lab. This could have exciting applications on platforms like ResearchGate, where researchers are specifically looking for new ideas, and for offline social networks as well, including the workplace. Read more here.
GLOBAL EXPERIENCE
The FACE Foundation (Supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts) is funding an exciting collaboration between our University and our Institute of Optics with École Centrale de Marseille (ECM) in France, which also has strong programs in optics and photonics. Led by Miguel Alonso and Andrew Berger, professors of optics, the goal is to offer virtual exchange or other types of global learning opportunities at a time when International education and study abroad have been severely impacted by the pandemic. The project has two goals:
- to incorporate projects carried out by mixed teams of students from both institutions into specific undergraduate core courses.
- to share specialized elective courses, capitalizing on the experience that the faculty at both institutions have acquired on remote teaching and learning.
The recent work on a new microscopy system that can image individual molecules in 3D and capture the way they “wobble” is an example of collaborative research that has already occurred between the Institute and ECM. Thanks to Miguel and Andrew for leading this outstanding opportunity. Read more here.
ALUMNI NEWS
Evan Granite ’94PhD of chemical engineering was recently listed among the top 2% of scientists worldwide, from approximately seven million examined, in a recently published study assessing scientists for career-long citation impact up until the end of 2019. Evan is a research chemical engineer and task group leader at the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy. Evan’s research on mercury, arsenic, selenium, the rare earths, coal, sorbents, catalysts, electrochemistry, photochemistry, and separations has garnered international recognition. In September, Evan gave an invited seminar via Zoom at the Department of Chemical Engineering on “Coal in the 21st Century.”
IN MEMORY
We share our condolences with the family of Donna Salmon, a member of the University’s Advancement regional gift team, who passed away unexpectedly on December 8 at age 63. Donna, who served the University for more than 15 years, was respected for her deep intelligence and warm wit. She will be remembered for her dedication to the many alumni and donors she worked with. Cards and letters may be directed to Debra J. Salmon, 1160 Oak Openings Road, Honeoye Falls, NY 14472-9405. Donations in Donna’s memory can be directed to: Dean’s Fund for the Newman Center, University of Rochester, 300 East River Road PO Box 278701, Rochester, NY 14627. Or contributions can be made online.
HOLIDAY BREAK
Our next Hajim Highlights will be on January 4.
In the meantime, I wish you all a very happy and healthy, COVID-safe holiday season and send my best wishes for a bright new year.
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
