June 7, 2021
Members of the Baja SAE team at Louisville briefly removed face masks for this team photo.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Congratulations to our Baja SAE off-road vehicle team, which successfully competed against 77 other college teams at Louisville, KY, recently. The team–represented by undergraduates–finished 4th in acceleration, 16th in maneuverability, 19th in hill climb, 19th in the concluding 4-hour endurance race, and 33rd in suspension and traction.
The competition enforced masking and limited the number of participants and spectators due to COVID restrictions. The decision to send undergraduates reflects this team’s ongoing commitment to building continuity from year to year. Based on these results, it is not surprising that faculty advisor Chris Muir says these undergraduates “are well positioned to carry on the tradition of Baja at UR.” Well done!
OUTSTANDING STUDENT
One of the undergraduates who competed with the Baja team at Louisville is Ongjen “Ogi” Bosic ’22 of mechanical engineering, who is from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ogi, this month’s outstanding student, was one of two drivers in the endurance race. You can see him seated on a front wheel in the post-endurance race photo above (without glasses but with mud all over his pants!).
Ogi’s dream job is to one day design a Formula One race car. In pursuit of that dream, he has been unswerving in his desire to find “useful” applications for what he learns in his classes. Starting his first year, for example, he was selected by his Baja teammates to be the frame project team lead and will serve as chief engineer as a senior this year. By sophomore year he was also doing research in Niaz Abdolrahim’s lab. Ogi received the Suzanne J. O’Brien Book Award, which recognizes students who excel academically and in leadership roles in their first year at the College; was the inaugural recipient of the Prof. Alfred Clark Undergraduate Scholarship in Mechanical Engineering, which recognizes worthy students based on their successful scholastic record and potential to build on multiple talents, and most recently received the Hajim School’s Richard Eisenberg Engineering Award, which recognizes hard-working undergraduates who have an interest in metallurgy.
Niaz praises Ogi’s “passion for research and, more importantly, his critical thinking and independent research skills.” Chris Muir, who worked in industry for 25 years, says he would “certainly have hired Ogi to be part of my team in a research or design/development capacity. I know I can trust him to get something done.” Read more about Ogi’s achievements.
RESEARCH NEWS
Jiebo Luo, professor of computer science, has done a series of studies mining Twitter to help explain some of the major events of our time — why Trump won, for example, and public reaction to COVID-19. Now, Luo’s team, including PhD student Bruce Lyu, has collaborated with Mayya Komisarchik, assistant professor of political science, to examine public opinion toward Asian hate crime, specifically in tweets regarding #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate. They find, for example, the growing political divide in the US extends to this issue, with Biden supporters more likely to support the hashtags, and Trump supporters more likely to be negative. “Our interest is to always understand public opinion first, and then maybe discover some insight into how the situation can be improved,” says Jiebo. “We hope these findings can help us design better ways of removing tension and misunderstandings between ethnic groups. That’s the high-level objective.” Read more.
AR/VR TRAINING FOR PHD STUDENTS
The University’s PhD Training Program on Virtual and Augmented Reality is looking for first- and second-year doctoral students who desire AR/VR cross-training experiences to pair with their existing studies. This NSF Research Traineeship program admits PhD students from multiple University of Rochester departments including biomedical engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, neuroscience, and optics.
The deadline to apply for funded fellowships–available to US citizens and permanent residents only–is July 1. The deadline to apply for the general trainee program is August 15. Applications can be found here. Full information on the program is available here. Questions? Contact Kathleen DeFazio, program coordinator.
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
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