January 4, 2021

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Here is a great example of Hajim School undergraduates getting hands-on research experience. Paul Irving ’21 of chemical engineering is lead author and Robbie Cecil ’20 of archaeology, technology, and historical structures is co-author of a paper in HardwareX entitled “MYSTAT: A compact potentiostat/galvanostat for general electrochemistry measurements.” The device performs a wide range of electrochemical measurements; can be controlled from any computer capable of running the Python programming language, including a low-cost Raspberry Pi, and is completely open source, giving researchers the ability to modify the hardware and software as needed for custom measurement techniques.

“I am really proud of the article and of the work these students did,” says Matthew Yates, professor of chemical engineering, also affiliated with the Materials Science Program, who supervised the project and is also co-author. “The article is the result of a LOT of work!” Part of Paul’s work was supported by the department’s Eisenberg internship program, which gives undergraduates an opportunity to spend a summer doing mentored research with department faculty. Robbie was supported by the McNair Scholars program at the Kearns Center, which strives to expand the educational pipeline through graduate school for low-income, first-generation college, and underrepresented minority students.

The University’s generation, use, and management of energy includes electricity, steam, hot water, and now solar with the new array of panels atop Goergen Athletic Center. This involves a complex web of people, processes, equipment, and data. The Utilities and Energy Management (UEM) Office of UR facilities would like to provide access to this information to students and faculty for use in independent study programs, senior design projects, and academic research. I encourage our faculty and students to take advantage of this opportunity. Energy generation and management involves ample opportunities to apply critical engineering and computer science skills and research. I especially hope this can generate ideas for senior design and independent study projects. Students can review a manual of projects and how to participate. If interested, contact Mike Whitmore, UEM director, or talk to your department’s UEM contact listed in the manual.

Special thanks to three Hajim students on the UEM/Academic Collaboration Team — Beauclaire Mbanya Jr ’20, Faraan Hamad ’22, and Benjamin Kelley ’23, all of chemical engineering – for helping UEM prepare the manual.

SYKES AWARD

Attention faculty members: The Hajim School is providing an extra round of Sykes award funding this year to support the development of innovative curricular courses or programs for engineering and computer science students, especially for first- and second-year students. The deadline to apply is March 15; this will allow time for interested faculty to give extra thought to this during winter break. Awards range from $2,500 to $30,000.

Examples of recent Sykes awards:

Renato Perucchio of mechanical engineering and Archaeology, Technology and Historical Structures received funding for an innovative multidisciplinary course at a five-week summer field school in Ghana, which introduces the principles of structural diagnostics of complex monumental heritage masonry buildings of the West African Heritage and UNESCO World Heritage List.
Zhen Bai of computer science received funding to develop a new undergraduate course titled “Design for Future Reality” that provides undergraduates the concept, principles, methods, and special topics of AR/VR and related technologies.
Nick Vamivakas of optics received funding for an optical design course with East High School in collaboration with our optics faculty, undergraduates, and East High teacher Paul Conrow. A goal is to deploy the curriculum to other Monroe County high schools and widen the pipeline into an optics career.

Submit a proposal describing details on program content, budget and budget justification, and the benefit for students via email to Tim Woodward, director of finance and administration at tim.woodward@rochester.edu. If you have any questions, contact Tim or associate dean Paul Funkenbusch at paul.funkenbusch@rochester.edu.

WINTER TERM

A course being offered during the January Term entitled CASC 090A-1J Critical Praxis in Virtual Engagement might be of interest to our staff and students. This is a free class (0 credits) taught by Cesare Wright, who works with Microsoft and will teach attendees about how to create effective virtual events and environments. Given we will be in the virtual space for the spring semester– and moving forward I am guessing there will be many more virtual events even after the pandemic–this might be a good professional development opportunity for any staff or students involved in events or working with other types of virtual environments. Registration closes Jan. 13.

RESEARCH NEWS

It’s always exciting to see collaborations between River Campus and Medical Center researchers that highlight signature strengths of our University. Here’s a nice example:

Kevin Parker, the William F. May Professor of Engineering and dean emeritus of engineering and applied sciences; Maiken Nedergaard, professor of neurology and neuroscience; and Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering and director of the Center for Freeform Optics (also affiliated with the Materials Science Program), are collaborating on a $421,880 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. They will use optical coherence tomography (OCT) elastography, a high-resolution imaging modality, to perform bio-mechanical measurements in mice, showing the variations in the softness and stiffness of brain tissue over time that are associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

All three of these researchers are pioneers in their respective fields. Kevin and his colleagues created the field of elastography, initially using ultrasound, to image the elastic properties of tissues. Jannick’s lab is not only at the forefront of freeform optics, but invented its own class of Gabor-domain OCT. And Maiken documented, for the first time, the glial waste removal system of the brain and how obstructions to that process may be linked to Alzheimer’s. They are joined by Gary Ge who is an M.D./ Ph.D. student and will incorporate this work into his thesis.

The thickness of the human skull, and the large size of the human brain has made it difficult to image changes in the mechanical properties of brain tissue associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases in live human patients. That will not be a problem with the much smaller mouse models of brains in normal, aging and disease states in Maiken’s lab. The detailed images that can be obtained with OCT will help inform the basic science underlying these changes in brain tissue, create useful biomarkers, and guide future clinical measurements in humans.

Though OCT imaging of the brain, in the near future, won’t be routine for humans, the insights gained from imaging mouse models will provide insights that can help guide clinical research being done here and elsewhere on developing other, emerging modalities–such as magnetic resonance elastography—for detecting and tracking these disorders in the human brain, Kevin says.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman