September 20, 2021

New faculty members Cantay Çalışkan, at left, and Kaave Hosseini

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Please join me in welcoming two outstanding new faculty members.

Cantay Çalışkan joins the Goergen Institute for Data Science as an assistant professor of instruction, after serving as a visiting assistant professor of data analytics at Denison University. Before that, he was a visiting assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Cantay has taught introductory and advanced data science courses on machine learning, data visualization, and social and ethical aspects of data science. He uses machine learning and deep learning, network analysis, and data mining to find patterns in social and political data sets. Most recently, he has been working on several projects involving the diffusion of information in social media and the quantification of emotions in politics.

Kaave Hosseini joins the Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor after serving as a postdoctoral associate in mathematical sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.

His research is in the area of theoretical computer science and usually deals with pseudorandom objects, that is, objects that are not random but behave as random in some respects. He has used such objects to better understand a variety of questions across different areas: Is randomness necessary to significantly speed up computation? Can data be stored in a way that when corrupted it can be detected and restored quickly? How can a computer perform a task on a stream of incoming data quickly and on the go? How can computational devices jointly perform a given task with minimized communication among them?

Read more here about Cantay, Kaave, and our other new AS&E faculty members, including Susana Marcos, our Nicholas George Professor of Optics and the David R. Williams Director of the Center for Visual Science, and Pablo Postigo, professor of optics, both of whom we introduced earlier.

OUTSTANDING STUDENT

Kendra Watson ’22 is happiest when she’s busy. Very busy. Fortunately, she has found plenty of ways to keep her happy here. Kendra balances the rigors of pursuing a major in chemical engineering and a minor in German with the rush that comes with clearing the hurdles for the women’s varsity track and field team. And she has excelled academically, receiving:

a Suzanne O’Brien Book Award for her scholarly achievement, humanistic values, co-curricular activity, and leadership potential as a first-year student,
the Department of Chemistry’s Donald F. Othmer Sophomore Academic Excellence Award,
the department’s Albert K. Ackoff Award for academic achievement as a junior, and
a University Provost’s Circle Scholar award for students who exemplify excellence in academics as well as in their sport.

And this summer the GEAR scholar had a rewarding research experience as an Eisenberg Research Fellow working in the lab of Astrid Müller, assistant professor of chemical engineering. Learn more about how this experience has influenced her plans for the future.

FREE MASKS FOR STUDENTS

Each member of the Class of 2025 and transfer students in the College are eligible to receive a free University-branded cloth face mask. Students should show their ID at the Genesee Building Manager desk, or the Common Connection Information Desk in 201 Wilson Commons. Find the hours that each desk is open here. The University’s current face mask policies can be found here.

SMALL BUSINESS GRANTS

Do you need resources to support technology development or commercialization? Would you like to learn more about applying for a share of the billions in funding set aside for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants?

Register to attend the SBIR and Other Resources to Support University Technology Commercialization workshop from 3-6 p.m., Friday, October 8, at the Medical Center’s Class of ’62 Auditorium, G-9425.

The workshop will feature:

An overview of SBIR and STTR programs, trends, and funding opportunities.
Insights on strategies for developing successful proposals from a panel of University researchers who have led and partnered on SBIR/STTR grants.
Information about University resources that support technology commercialization.

Register by October 1 at https://j.mp/3BAyMpL
Contact Karen_Grabowski@urmc.rochester.edu with any questions.

At this time an in-person workshop is planned. A final decision will be made by October 1 and registrants will be notified if the meeting is switched to a virtual format and a link will be provided.

SEED FUNDING

PumpPrimer–AS&E’s intramural seed funding program—is designed to stimulate extramural funding for projects that otherwise would be difficult to launch. PumpPrimerII (PPII) provides funding to help faculty establish a novel research direction.

The deadline to apply for the next round of PumpPrimer II awards of up to $50,000 each is Monday, October 25, 2021. All tenure track faculty are eligible to apply, except junior faculty members who have startup funding remaining or have not yet completed their first term of appointment. Additional application guidance.

The application portal is https://www.rochester.edu/fort/pumpprimer/

For more information, contact Cindy Gary, our Hajim School assistant dean for grants and contracts.

ALUMNI NEWS

Computer science alumna Amanda Stent ’01(PhD) has been named the inaugural director of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Colby College, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges. Amanda is considered one of the leading authorities on natural language processing, the branch of artificial intelligence that provides computers with the ability to understand human text and spoken words. Amanda, who most recently served as the natural language processing (NLP) architect at Bloomberg L.P., received her PhD here under the direction of James Allen, the John H. Dessauer Professor of Computer Science. Her thesis title was Dialogue Systems as Conversational Partners: Applying Conversation Acts Theory to Natural Language Generation for Task-Oriented Mixed-Initiative Spoken Dialogue.

Scott Pomerantz ’81 ’83 (MBA), a member of our Dean’s Advisory Committee, has been named CEO of FocalPoint Inc., a company that develops new technologies to transform the capability of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) worldwide. Global Locate, which Scott co-founded in 2002, was the first to bring GPS to the mass consumer smartphone market, supplying the first GPS chips to companies including Apple and Samsung. Scott has since continued to build his credentials as a “Silicon Valley legend,” serving as senior vice president and general manager for Broadcom, CEO and president of MC10, and co-founder of Wildcast Inc. We wish Scott all the best in this exciting new position.

Have great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman