December 13, 2021

Left to right, Mercy Asiedu ’14, Nicholas Achuthan ’23, and Beth Greenwood ’22 lift our spirits with their outstanding achievements.

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

One of my greatest pleasures in Hajim Highlights is presenting stories about our current students who are doing great things here–and about our alumni who continue to do great things after they leave. For example:

  • Nicholas Achuthan ’23 arrived at our University knowing he wanted to major in a STEM or engineering discipline, but not sure which one. Nicholas also hoped to take piano lessons at the University’s world-renowned Eastman School of Music to further his passion for performing classical music. Just look at how far he has come since then. This semester Nicholas is taking lessons with Eastman faculty member Vincent Lenti, emeritus professor of piano. He recently was co-winner of a concerto competition and will appear in concert next spring with the University of Rochester Symphony Orchestra. When Nicholas is not practicing at the keyboard, he’s teaching other students and doing research in the Cardenas Lab for Nanoscale and Integrated Photonics as he pursues his major at The Institute of Optics. Nicholas is a great example of a student who makes the most of the opportunities at our University! Learn more.
  • Beth Greenwood ’22 is clearly in a league of her own. Last spring, the mechanical engineering major played for the men’s varsity baseball squad, becoming the first female player in the Yellowjackets baseball program history and the first American female catcher in NCAA history (a Canadian catcher also played in 2020). She’s also been training with the US women’s baseball team and filmed scenes for an upcoming Amazon Prime TV show based on the movie A League of Their Own. Beth shows the same dedication to her studies as she has to baseball. “She’s an excellent, hardworking student with a first-rate sense of humor,” says Chris Muir, professor of mechanical engineering. Chris says he is trying to find a “physics of baseball” project that he can work on with Beth next spring. “I’m sure it would be a winner,” he says. “She has taken three of my classes and has been outstanding in all of them.” Way to go, Beth! Learn more.
  • Earlier this year, biomedical engineering alumna Mercy Asiedu ’14, now a postdoctoral research scientist at MIT, was an inaugural recipient of the Patrick J. McGovern Tech for Humanity Changemakers award for her efforts to address health care problems in sub-Sahara Africa. The award will support two start-up companies Mercy has launched. Calla Health is about to market an FDA-cleared, low-cost, portable cervical cancer screening device. GAPhealth, cofounded with Bintou Kaira, a chemical engineer from Gambia, is developing a data-driven, personalized mobile app designed to make it easier for patients with non-communicable diseases to monitor their symptoms and connect by telehealth with doctors when they need help. Mercy knows all too well the staggering human toll that results from the lack of basic health care in developing countries. Her own family members in Ghana have paid the price. Learn more about Mercy’s remarkable journey from Ghana to Rochester and beyond. Well done, Mercy!

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

As we wind up our series on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we are proud to include Mercy among the nearly 50 women and underrepresented minority faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the Hajim School we have profiled for their notable contributions and for being outstanding role models.

Despite the disruptions caused by COVID-19, we have made good progress toward fulfilling our commitment to:

  • Increase the diversity of our students, staff, and faculty.
  • Create policies, programs, and opportunities to ensure that women and those traditionally underrepresented in engineering are treated equitably.
  • Above all, support everyone with a spirit of genuine inclusivity.

I am especially pleased that all of our departments have now established Diversity and Equity committees consisting of faculty members, staff, students, and alumni working together to help us achieve our goals. I am grateful to all of you who have contributed to this all-important quest. Please learn more at our new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion webpage, which includes all of our profiles from the last two years.

ROCHESTER REVIEW

The fall issue of Rochester Review is chock full of stories involving Hajim School students, faculty, staff, and alumni, including:

CONGRATULATIONS TO  . . .

Two of our students who received best paper awards.

  • Shadi Sartipi, a PhD student in the research group of Mujdat Cetin, professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Robin and Tim Wentworth Director, Goergen Institute for Data Science. Shadi received the IEEE Brain Best Paper Award for her paper, “EEG Emotion Recognition via Graph-based Spatio-Temporal Attention Neural Networks.” The IEEE Brain Initiative was formed in 2015 to create a technical community to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration and coordination to improve our understanding of the brain and how to treat diseases and improve the human condition.
  • Sultan Abdul Wadood, a PhD student in the lab of Nick Vamivakas, professor of quantum optics and quantum physics. Wadood is one of the winners of the Emil Wolf Outstanding Paper Competition for his presentation at last month’s 2021 Frontiers in Optics+Laser Science (FiO LS) conference. Wadood presented “Propagation of Partially Coherent Beams in Longitudinally Modulated Graded-index Fibers.” The competition was established in 2008 to honor Emil Wolf, one of the most recognized optical scientists of his generation and the Wilson Professor of Optical Physics at Rochester. Emil was a leading expert in coherence and polarization of optical fields. As Nick notes, this is a well-deserved award for Wadood, who has been doing fantastic work. This work may find applications in fiber-based imaging systems.

Congratulations as well to a University undergraduate team, including four biomedical engineering students, that recently was nominated for best diagnostics project, best hardware, and best education awards and won a gold medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, making it the second-most-awarded iGEM team in North America.

The team developed a novel device that instantaneously diagnoses sepsis based on biomarkers in a person’s sweat. The device uses materials that are environmentally friendly and affordable, making the device easily deployable in low-income countries.

“After researching statistics on sepsis and talking to a variety of medical experts, we got a sense of its immense medical and economic impacts and the need to develop better options for sepsis diagnosis,” says Amanda Adams ’22 who serves as the team’s PR manager. “Our goal was to create a biosensor that could provide up-to-date information about a patient’s condition. Getting to work in a student-led team where we were directly responsible for the entire project from planning it to presenting it was very rewarding.”

Other team members from BME are Tiana Salomon ’22, team leader; Tracey Moyston ’22, lab and safety manager, and Helen Shammas ’22, teaching assistant.

Thanks to Anne Meyer, an associate professor of biology, and the other faculty advisors who helped guide the team. Learn more.

IT INNOVATION GRANTS

The Educational IT Committee, a part of University of Rochester IT Governance, is offering Innovation Grants to support faculty and staff in adopting new technologies to their teaching. This program will also include mentorship, support, and connection to existing resources in the institution. Project funding ranges from $5,000-$7,000 per project. Proposals for the first round of awards are due Friday, December 17. Learn more.

GRAND CHALLENGES SCHOLARS

In case students missed this because of the holiday, 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. Applications will go out in January. Students from any engineering major can apply, but you must be enrolled in GCSP to qualify. So students who are interested, but not participating in GCSP, need to contact Emma Derisi as soon as possible for more information about doing so.

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. Students can contact Marc Porosoff to learn more about the research position.

Have a great week,

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman

 

 
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