November 22, 2021
“Being announced as a Rhodes Scholar-elect was a surreal and humbling moment,” says Kudzai Mbinda ’22 of chemical engineering.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
We have another Rhodes Scholar among us! Kudzai Mbinda ’22, a chemical engineering major from Harare, Zimbabwe, is among the 100 students worldwide chosen to begin graduate studies at the University of Oxford in Great Britain as a Rhodes Scholar next fall. The Rhodes Scholarship is among the most prestigious academic honors in the world, and Mbinda was one of two chosen from 10 finalists competing in the Zimbabwe competition.
This marks the second consecutive year a University of Rochester student has been selected a Rhodes Scholar, and only the fourth time in the University’s history. Beauclaire Mbanya Jr. ’20 of Cameroon, another chemical engineering major, was selected last November and currently is at Oxford pursuing a master’s degree relating to sustainable energy.
Please join me in congratulating Kudzai. As a scholar-athlete who excels both as a chemical engineering student as well as a record-setting member of the varsity track team, he has taken advantage of the many opportunities available at our University. We can all look forward to seeing the incredible things Kudzai will be able to accomplish as a Rhodes Scholar and beyond. Learn more.
CELEBRATING 49 YEARS OF SERVICE
Who was the “eyes and ears” in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) during the pandemic, making sure everything was still running in Goergen Hall while most of his colleagues were hunkered down at home?
Who spent three to four weeks ensuring the labs were tidy and in great working order for an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) site visit in October?
Who gladly dropped whatever he was doing to help a senior design team fabricate a part or cut material for a prototype?
Who was always on call 24/7 to deal with equipment failures and facility shutdowns?
BME’s beloved laboratory engineer Art Salo, of course!
All of these contributions—and more—were fondly celebrated as BME faculty, staff, and students gathered recently to bid Art a heartfelt adieu as he drives off into retirement in his TR3 sports car. Learn more here about Art’s 49 years of outstanding service to our University, to BME, and, above all, to our students.
REU SEEKS FACULTY PROPOSALS
The 2022 NSF REU Program on Computational Methods for Understanding Music, Media and Minds (from late May to early August, planned in person) is calling for project proposals from interested faculty. The proposal is a simple one-paragraph abstract of the research activities you plan for the students. As required by the NSF program, projects need to have a strong computational component and be related to music, media and minds. In addition, to foster collaboration among participants, projects that can host 2 students are highly preferred. Similarly, projects with 2 or more mentors from different research disciplines are also highly preferred.
All logistics (travel, lodging, food, etc.) will be taken care of by the Goergen Institute for Data Science (GIDS) and the Kearns Center to help faculty mentors focus on the scientific activities of their projects. Each project can also support a paid graduate student mentor, who is typically a PhD student of the faculty mentor. Please submit your proposal here by Wednesday, December 1. I highly encourage every interested faculty member to consider this opportunity.
RESEARCH NEWS
American homeowners with solar panels can sell the surplus electricity they generate back to their local grids. Should electric vehicle (EV) owners be able to do the same thing? Vehicle to grid (V2G) technology is gaining traction in parts of Canada and Europe as a way to balance the increasing mismatch in electrical usage and generation that occurs as weather-dependent solar and wind energy sources come online. To help gauge the feasibility of V2G systems, Heta Gandhi, a PhD student in the lab of Andrew White, associate professor of chemical engineering, has developed a computational model that takes into account factors not previously considered. The model, described in ACS Sustainable Chemical & Engineering, shows that:
- Potential annual savings for V2G users in Boston, Chicago, Phoenix, New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco ranged from $120 to $150 a year, with much of the variation reflecting differences in local variable electricity rates.
- Letting commuters set their own threshold selling price is crucial to making a V2G scheme profitable for commuters.
- Increasing both charging efficiency and the rate of battery charging are more important than developing lower price lithium-ion batteries in making V2G schemes profitable.
This is an exciting contribution to our efforts to address one of the most pressing challenges of this century. Well done, Heta! Learn more here.
CONGRATULATIONS TO . . .
Two computer science students for notable achievements.
James Spann, a second-year PhD student in the Rochester Human-Computer Interaction (ROC HCI) Group of Associate Professor Ehsan Hoque, and collaborators Vivian Shen and Professor Chris Harrison from Carnegie Mellon University won the Best Paper Award at the 2021 ACM Spatial User Interaction (SUI) conference for their paper, FarOut Touch: Extending the Range of ad hoc Touch Sensing with Depth Cameras. The paper focuses on extending the sensing range of current state of the art touch-sensing devices. Here’s a video teaser to what the project is about.
Benjamin Carleton ’22 was the Undergraduate Student Award Winner in the ACM SIGOPS SOSP 2021 Student Research Competition for work he did on Evaluating the Impact of Delayed Hits in Multi-Level Caches during his summer REU (research experience for undergraduates) at CMU this summer. Benjamin worked with Professor Justine Sherry and CMU graduate student Nirav Atre. He will now advance to the 2022 SRC Grand Finals. Learn more.
GRAND CHALLENGES SCHOLARS
Our Grand Challenges Scholars Program is funding a 10-week research position for one student during the summer of 2022 in the lab of Marc Porosoff, assistant professor of chemical engineering. The research is part of the lab’s work in direct air capture of CO2 and is relevant to the Grand Challenge to “Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods.” The intern will synthesize and characterize dual functional materials for reactive separations of CO2.
Applications will go out in January. Students from any engineering major can apply, but you must be enrolled in GCSP to qualify. Contact Emma Derisi for more information about joining the GCSP; contact Marc Porosoff to learn more about the research position.
TUTORING OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS
Have you done well in your courses and do you have an interest in helping other students succeed? Apply to become a Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning tutor. The center is particularly interested in applicants who want to tutor BIOL, BCSC, BME, CHEM, CHE, CSC, ECON, FIN, MATH, ME, PHYS, and STAT. Other course offerings will also be considered. The application will remain open through the end of this month. Information for applying can be found online. Email tutoring@rochester.edu with questions.
If you’re an undergraduate student who has taken BME 210, FIN 205, MATH 162, ME 120, or PHLT 102 and would like to work in a position where you can support your peers’ learning and study habits for one of those courses, apply for the study group leader position through JobLink (Job ID #21504). The positions are for the spring 2022 semester and will be open until filled. Learn more about the position.
Did you know that four of the six peer tutors for the College Center for Advising Services are Hajim students? Hats off to Velma Anyona ’24 electrical and computer engineering; Hana Genana ’24, a dual computer science and studio arts major; Damian Otsile Rantshabeng ’24 mechanical engineering, and Theo Thompson ’23 chemical engineering. Learn more about their interests and goals here.
ALUMNI NEWS
Optics alum Gregory Samios ’85 ’87 MS has been appointed as president and CEO of the clinical effectiveness division at Wolters Kluwer Health, an information services company. Gregory joined Wolters Kluwer in 2014, serving as president and CEO of the Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. business before moving to the Health Division to lead Health Learning, Research & Practice in 2019. Previously, he held executive leadership roles at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, Reed Elsevier, Excerpta Medica, and Elsevier Health Sciences. Learn more.
Enjoy a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
