May 15, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

A primary school that serves 40 students in Chaturale, Nuwakot is among the structures yet to be replaced after the devastating 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Now five students — Michael Chavrimootoo ’20 of computer science, Avishek Sanjel Chhetri ’20 of biochemistry, Jolena Zhou ’19 of chemical engineering, and Kritin Gupta ’20 and Suman Kumar ’19 of mechanical engineering — have launched a $2,000 USEED fundraising campaign to help them rebuild the school using earthquake resistant interlocking bricks. “We want to map the ‘Meliora’ culture to real world situations and promote the legacy of the University of Rochester to create an international bond between societies through our programs,” the students explain at their campaign website. We have seen how a similar USEED campaign helped our Engineers Without Borders student chapter bring fresh water to a school in the Dominican Republic. I hope this new campaign will garner enough support so these students, too, can change the world for the better.

Congratulations to:

  • Ehsan Hoque, assistant professor of computer science, who has been inducted into the inaugural class of the Future of Computing Academy. The academy is an initiative of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to “enable the next generation of researchers, practitioners, educators, and entrepreneurs to develop a coherent and influential voice that addresses challenging issues facing the field and society in general.” The 46 inductees represent 19 different countries.
  • Muthuramakrishnan Venkitasubramaniam, assistant professor of computer science, whose 2006 paper  “L-diversity: Privacy Beyond K-Anonymity” has won the IEEE ICDE (International Conference on Data Engineering) Influential Paper Award this year. According to Google Scholar, this paper has received 3,357 citations. It identifies critical vulnerabilities in prior works and builds theoretical foundations for private data publishing.
  • Meiting Song, who has been awarded the Institute of Optic’s Best Masters Independent Laboratory Award for “Measurements with Laboratory Speckle,” which uses laser speckle to determine small vertical and horizontal movements, angular rotation, and thermal expansion from a roughened glass substrate.
  • Jonathan Papa, an optics PhD candidate in the lab of Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering. Jonathan has been awarded the 2017 Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship in Optical Design.
  • Our Baja SAE team for placing 14th overall in a recent California competition against 99 other collegiate teams that design and build off-road vehicles. This team is getting ever better! Next up: A similar competition in Pittsburg, Kansas later this month.

Congratulations as well to this year’s winners of the Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition:

  • First place: Anis Kallel ’16 ’17 (KEY) of computer science and business for EcoFemina, which would enable adolescent girls living in poverty to wash, dry, and carry reusable sanitary pads without stigma and while being successful in school.
  • Second Place: seniors Connor McBride, Edward Ruppel, and Chandler Woo of biomedical engineering for Proteus Medical. They have designed a novel endoscopic retrieval device for removing objects that pets swallow.
  • Third Place: seniors Edgar Alaniz (biochemistry), Carlos Gonzalez (financial economics), Ibrahim Mohammad (mechanical engineering) and Omar Soufan (biomedical engineering) for Meliora Homes, which will build homes made from recycled plastics for the homeless and refugee populations. This team has also been accepted as a wild card entry in the Hult Prize Summer Accelerator program. Once the team completes the summer program, it may have an opportunity to pitch at the Hult Competition global finals in September, competing for the top prize of $1 million.

For those of you who could not make it to Design Day, check out the photos at our online projects page.

I’m looking forward to my first Commencement as Hajim School dean this weekend. Events include the Order of the Engineer induction ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Strong Auditorium, the Hajim School Reception from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at Staybridge Suites, and our Diploma Ceremony at 3 p.m. Sunday at Kodak Hall, 60 Gibbs Street.  Click here for more details about school and department ceremonies.

Please join me in giving the Class of ’17 a joyous sendoff!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman

 
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