June 6, 2022

Brian McIntyre and Gunta Liders are recipients of President’s Staff Awards.

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Many people at our University, though often unheralded, contribute greatly to what we accomplish at the Hajim School. Brian McIntyre and Gunta Liders—this year’s recipients of President’s Staff Awards—are among them.

Brian, throughout his 37-year career at the University—including director of operations at URnano and a lecturer at The Institute of Optics—has shown remarkable skill, efficiency, and humor in tackling a multitude of tasks, often voluntarily. Brian’s name has appeared many times in Hajim Highlights as the organizer of our annual Art of Science Competition. He also established the first generally available scanning microscopy lab on River Campus, played a key role in the creation of URnano, and has mentored or advised generations of graduate and undergraduate students. “Working with Brian is always joyous, even when the task is tedious and the obstacles recalcitrant.” writes James Zavislan, a professor of optics and our former associate dean. Join me in congratulating Brian on receiving the Witmer Award for Distinguished Service!

Gunta is a recipient of the Lamar Riley Murphy Leadership Award. Our University’s associate vice president for research administration and leader of the Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA) is a key partner in helping us obtain and manage sponsored funding that places us among the top research institutions in the country. Gunta sets a tone of collaboration and respect at ORPA, resulting in an office that is “flexible, hard-working and creative,” notes Stephen Dewhurst, the University’s interim vice president for research. Her commitment to coaching, mentoring, and development is reflected in a continuous learning program she developed for our grant administrators. Gunta represents us well at the national level, serving in leadership roles at the Council of Governmental Relations and the National Council of University Researcher Administrators. Congratulations, Gunta!

ECE DIVERSITY

In my recent State of the School address, I mentioned that promoting cultural awareness and respect is an important part of our effort to recruit and retain a diverse and representative student body, faculty, and staff. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has shown an important way to do that. In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the department spotlighted ECE Asian Pacific American faculty, scientists, postdocs, and advisory board members.

They are, left to right, top to bottom: David Chen, advisory board; Tanzeem Choudhury, advisory board: Van Tuan Dinh, research scientist; Zhiyao Duan, associate professor; Michael Huang, professor; T.S. Khuranan, advisory board; Sanghamithra Korukonda, advisory board; Ming-Lun Lee, associate professor; Qiang Lin, professor; Nikhila Nyayapathi, postdoctoral associate; Gaurav Sharma, professor; Hui Wu, professor, and Stephen Wu, assistant professor.

To fully appreciate the contributions of these valued members of our Hajim School community—from cutting-edge research to outstanding teaching to insightful advice and counsel—learn more here.

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH AWARDS

Each year our University provides seed money to help launch particularly innovative projects that would likely attract external funding once they are sufficiently developed. Each year Hajim School faculty share in these awards, illustrating the wide range of exciting research at our school. Here are Hajim School recipients of 2022 University Research Awards and their projects:

Zhen Bai and Ehsan Hoque of computer science: CatMoment: Promoting Inclusive Conversation in Small-Group Learning.
Mark Buckley of biomedical engineering: Modulation of Cartilage Mechanical Properties and Health by Absorbed Macromolecules.
Edmund Lalor of biomedical engineering (and Brian Keane of psychiatry): Visual perception in schizophrenia: assessing predictive processing in the earliest stages of the visual cortical hierarchy.
Astrid Müller of chemical engineering: Electrocatalytic degradation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in aqueous solution.
Danielle Benoit of biomedical engineering (and Bradley Nilsson of chemistry): Hydrogels for Localized Delivery of Therapeutics to Promote Bone Regeneration.
Andrew White of chemical engineering (and Alexander Paciorkowski of neurology): Improvement of genomic variant interpretation in intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Marc Porosoff of chemical engineering: Vanadium Oxide Sorbents for Reactive Separations of Carbon Dioxide from Air.
Gary Wicks of optics: Quantum Dot Sources of Quantum Light at Telecom Wavelengths.

TEST OF TIME AWARD

A seminal 2002 paper by current and former computer science and electrical and computer engineering faculty members and their PhD students has been awarded the High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) Test of Time award by the IEEE Technical Committee on Computer Architecture. The paper, Energy-Efficient Processor Design Using Multiple Clock Domains with Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling, was one of several that resulted from a project on adaptive computer microarchitectures led by David Albonesi, then associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (now a professor at Cornell University) and Sandhya Dwarkadas, our Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Computer Science. Eby Friedman, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Michael Scott, current chair of computer science, were also involved in the project.

The paper, cited 549 times according to Google Scholar, introduced a microarchitecture design methodology in which a chip is divided into several clock and frequency domains that can be independently configured to exploit the benefits of frequency and voltage scaling. The 157 patent citations for this paper indicate significant industry impact.

The lead authors on the paper—Greg Semeraro, Rajeev Balasubramonian, and Grigorios Magklis —were PhD students of co-authors David, Sandhya, and Michael respectively. Greg is now senior engineer and partner at AppliedLogix in NYC. Rajeev is a faculty member at the University of Utah. Grigorios works for Esperanto Technologies in Barcelona, Spain.

OUTSTANDING STUDENT

Alex Wansha describes the senior design project he worked on with fellow students Owen Lynch and Will Eisold. The team was tasked with designing the optical subsystem for a NASA satellite proposal to study Zodiacal light, a phenomenon caused by light scattered from interplanetary dust.

Last month, Alex Wansha graduated with a BS in Optical Engineering and a job awaiting him at Corning Inc. In addition, this month’s outstanding student was selected as the 2022 Distinguished Lee Scholar. This prestigious award is given by the Patrick P. Lee Foundation to an exceptional Lee Scholar who has successfully integrated the Foundation’s values of integrity, leadership, and service to others into their personal and academic endeavors. This is the first year a student from our University was selected. “Alex’s thoughtful responses during the interview and his clear passion for engineering set him apart from the other candidates,” says Jane M. Mogavero, executive director of the foundation.

Alex’s interest in lens design began the summer before his junior year of high school when he participated in the annual Photon Camp hosted by The Institute of Optics. Learn more about his opportunities as an undergraduate to do research in the labs of Institute faculty members Nick Vamivakas and Jannick Rolland and his desire to “maximize whatever experience I’m having each day so I go to bed knowing a lot more than I did waking up that morning.”

STUDENT COMPETITIONS

The entrepreneurial competitions available to our students are a great opportunity to apply the skills they’ve learned in the classroom to real-life challenges. Here’s how Hajim students fared in recent competitions:

Charles and Janet Forbes Entrepreneurial Competition for engineering students, sponsored by the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship:

Amanda Adams ’22, Tiana Salomon ’22, and Tracey Moyston ’22, all of biomedical engineering, along with Maria Schapfel ’23 and Anca Frasineau ’22, both biological science majors, took first place and $5,000 for Bio-Spire. The iGEM team project developed the first wearable device that provides continuous, non-invasive monitoring of sepsis using biomarkers in patient sweat.
John Bates ’22, Chastity Chavez ’22, Madison Lang ’22, Alexander Rivera ’22, and Camila Ruiz Vega ’22, all of biomedical engineering, took second place and $2,500 for Tilt on the Toilet, which provides comfort, ease, and relief for patients of neurogenic bowel dysfunction.
Sidhant Bendre ’23 and Neil Yeung ’23 of computer science, took third place and $1,000 for BuddyBank, a peer-to-peer mobile lending app. BuddyBank lets people borrow money from peers fast, by automatically bundling loan offers in a borrower’s networks and leveraging social nudges to encourage loan payback.

Mark Ain Business Model Competition, sponsored by the Ain Center for all University students:

PhD students Juniyali Nauriyal and Sushant Kumar at The Institute of Optics took second place and $2,500 for Photonect, a startup developing a laser adhesion technique to attach optical fibers to photonic chips. (Earlier this spring Juniyali and Sushant won the New York Business Plan Competition.)
Bio-Spire (see above) took third place and $1,000.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman