August 16, 2021

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

I recently had the pleasure of listening to this year’s engineering and computer science students in our Early Connection Opportunity (ECO) program talk about their hopes and dreams.

It is exciting to see what happens when 13 motivated first-year students have a chance to hear about all their options in engineering and computer science, start zeroing in on their majors, pick a grand challenge, and learn about other opportunities on our campus. During the four-week program this summer, they participated in an informative series of lectures and workshops organized by Nick Valentino and offered through our Office of Minority Student Affairs.

The enthusiasm of these students is one of the reasons I’m excited about the start of our new academic year, regardless of any new hurdles COVID-19 might have in store for us.

For example, ECO participant Julian Noble is excited about pursuing mechanical engineering to achieve his goal of eventually working at NASA. Julian says he was especially impressed when John Lambropoulos, professor and former chair of mechanical engineering and a recipient of several teaching awards, talked about the major. “He really inspired me!” Julian says.

Leka Rob’s interest in pursuing computer science was solidified after hearing Adam Purtree, assistant professor of instruction, talk about all the classes she could take to further her goal of using AI to decrease racial bias and other forms of victimization. She is also looking forward to pursuing a minor in political science to help with her grand challenge: Finding ways to protect people from deep fakes.

LET’S BE SAFE!

Undergraduates will be arriving on campus this week, eager to make the most of what we expect will be a rewarding, in-person learning experience–despite a hopefully temporary need to wear face masks indoors. I especially look forward to greeting our Class of ’25 engineering and computer science undergrads and our transfer students, in person, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. next Tuesday, August 24, at Hubbell Auditorium.

I urge all arriving students not yet vaccinated to please comply as quickly as possible.  The deadline is today for all staff and faculty, including those who are working in a hybrid model or remotely, to report their vaccination status by completing the online COVID Vaccine Participation Form. Strong Memorial Hospital’s Outpatient Pharmacy in the hospital’s lobby is offering free, walk-in COVID Pfizer vaccines for all University students and employees.

Despite all the hardships and heartache caused by COVID, the pandemic has shown us that we can be creative, resilient, and resourceful in meeting any challenge. We have learned important lessons about working, learning, and connecting remotely that we will continue to apply in ways that will make us ever better, even when the worst of COVID is behind us.

So take heart, and join me in giving our students a warm welcome and the best guidance and help we can offer them!

Thanks to these additional presenters who set an example by helping our ECO students get off to a great start. Faculty members Andrew Berger (optics), Jack Mottley (electrical and computer engineering), Marc Porosoff (chemical engineering), Amy Lerner (biomedical engineering), and Sarah Smith (audio and music engineering) gave talks on their department’s programs.

Thanks as well to Jim Alkins, senior laboratory engineer, and technical associate Omar Soufan who presented workshops on using the machine shop and computer aided design (CAD).

RESEARCH AWARD

Congratulations to Chuang Ren, professor of mechanical engineering, who has been awarded 800,000 node hours of computing time at the “Cori” supercomputer system at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Chuang, along with co-PI Riccardo Betti, professor of mechanical engineering and chief scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), will address one of the key challenges in achieving inertial confinement fusion.

Here’s what’s at stake:

A typical ICF experiment at the LLE takes all of about 3 billionths of a second. During that time 60 pulsed laser beams converge on a tiny fuel capsule, less than 1 mm in diameter, containing deuterium and tritium isotopes. The goal is to implode the capsule at high enough pressures and temperatures to cause the isotopes to fuse and then ignite. Achieving this would provide a safe way to monitor the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, and even pave the way for an inexhaustible supply of clean fusion energy.

However, at almost every step of the fusion experiments, things go awry.

For example, when struck by the converging lasers, the plastic outer layer of the fuel capsule ionizes, causing plasma waves to form. “Electrons can be accelerated by the plasma waves to high energy, much like a surfer gaining speed riding a wave,” Chuang says. Some of the energetic electrons collide with the imploding shell, causing it to heat prematurely before reaching the compression needed for ignition.

Chuang will use the 800,000 hours of computing time to conduct a series of particle-in-cell simulations. The simulations could be combined with a hot electron database from experiments already performed at LLE, to obtain a scaling law to better understand how the hot electrons are generated, and ways to compensate. The scaling law would improve the modeling used to limit the trial and error involved in ICF experiments, including those using alternative ignition schemes.

For more than four decades, scientists have doggedly pursued this grand challenge for science and engineering. I applaud Chuang and all his colleagues for continuing the quest!

ALUMNI NOTE

Congratulations to electrical engineering alumnus John McNeill ’91 (MS) who has been named the Bernard M. Gordon Dean of Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). John, who has been serving as interim dean since 2018, joined the faculty at WPI in 1994 after working in industry. He has received multiple awards for outstanding teaching, and is an expert in biomedical sensing, jitter (noise) in integrated oscillators, and digitally assisted calibration of analog-to-digital converters used in low-power sensor systems. Read more.

REMINDER

Undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs have until noon today to register for the University of Rochester Biomedical Data Science Hackathon, which will be held online tomorrow through Sunday. Students of all skill levels are invited to test their ability to make predictions from high dimensional biomedical data, working individually or in teams of up to four people. Questions can be directed to: andrew_mcdavid@urmc.rochester.edu,
matthew_mccall@urmc.rochester.edu, or alarracu@bio.rochester.edu.

Have great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman