May 8, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Thirty-three of our undergraduates were recently inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Congratulations to the recipients in these departments:
Audio and music engineering: senior Vincent Mateo
Biomedical engineering: seniors Nathaniel Barber, Claire Kaiser, and Justin Schumacher,
Chemical engineering: seniors Sayaka Abe, Melissa Becker, Jean Brownell, Laurence Lohman, Dominick Salerno, William Porter, and Michaela Wentz.
Computer science: juniors Akihiro Minami, Wen Zhou, and Zixiang Liu; seniors Rohun Bhagat, Lia Klein, Mikayla Konst, Kevin Gerami, Minfeng Lu, Jacob Margolis, Lee Murphy, Milijana Surbatovich, Jesse Thurston, Zoe Tiet, and Joyce Zhu.
Electrical and computer engineering: junior Meixiao Han; seniors Yizhe Cheng, Matthew Dylewsky, Nicholas Graham, and Karan Vombatkere,
Mechanical engineering: junior Alexander Boyd; senior Elizabeth Fox.
Institute of Optics: senior Zhaoyu Nie.

With such a great response to our Art of Science Competition — 43 entries of images and 12 of videos from all across the River Campus — it was no easy task deciding on the winners. Dalia Mitchell ’20 of chemistry and biochemistry took first place in the image category with a set of three drawings that investigate the beauty behind the intriguing forms of human anatomy. Kilean Lucas, a PhD student in biomedical engineering and recent winner of the Falling Walls competition, placed second with a scanning electron microscope image of a single red blood cell, captured amid white blood cells on a silicon nanomembrane. Charlie Granger, a PhD student in optics, was third with an image of the retinal pigment epithelium, captured with adaptive optics technology. Given the large number of videos submitted, we created a separate award for that category, won by Hoda Ayatollahi, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering. Hoda demonstrated how resonance can create myriad patterns when colored sand is sprinkled on a metal plate, and clearly explained the science behind it. You can learn more about the winning entries here. Thanks again to all who participated in the competition, and to all who attended our award ceremony on Thursday.

Congratulations as well to:

Cindy Fitzgerald, senior technical associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering, who is recipient of this year’s Dottie Welch award, which recognizes staff members whose “performance and dedication enriches the student experience” in the tradition of the former undergraduate coordinator of biomedical engineering. Members of the chemical engineering department have garnered three of the four Welch awards given out so far. Well done, Cindy! You can read more about her award here.
And to two teams that fared well at the New York Business Plan competition. The Chalaza Technologies team — Sean Humesky, Lei Liao, Kristopher Page and Brianna Rockwell of the Technical Entrepreneurship and Management master’s degree program — took third place and $1,500 in the clean technology category for a proposal involving diesel emission filtration. Omar Soufan ’17 of biomedical engineering and Ibrahim Mohammad ’17 of mechanical engineering, along with Yuki Gonzalez ’17 and Edgar Alaniz ’17 of Team Meliora, won the Undergraduate Excellence award in the same category for their plan to create Lego like modular homes made from recycled plastics for the homeless and refugee populations.

Visiting Committee members were on campus Friday for a productive spring meeting that included discussions about new research initiatives and federal funding, a visit to Design Day, and updates on advancement and AIM Photonics. As always, the input of the committee is deeply appreciated.

Thanks to Jim Zavislan, our associate dean, for orchestrating another successful Design Day on Friday. And thanks to all our seniors and CMTI master’s students — and their supervisors and customers — for producing a truly outstanding set of projects.

We’re finishing a wonderful year on a high note indeed!

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman