October 10, 2022
Members of our Baja SAE team and the vehicle that provided them with plenty of problem-solving opportunities during the OctoBaja Fest.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Recruiting and training a steady stream of young members is important for our student teams and chapters that engage in annual competitions or long-range projects. The younger students gain the experiences they need to take the reins and maintain continuity when the older students graduate.
Our Baja SAE team, which designs and builds off-road vehicles to compete against other college teams, does a great job of this. Last weekend, for example, 17 members of the team participated in the OctoBaja Fest hosted by Clarkson University. This was a low-key event where new members took on responsibility for the competition, everything from getting the vehicle through technical inspection, to driving, tuning, and fixing the car.
Seven new members drove in the hill climb, acceleration, and Baja Cross events, as well as the four-hour endurance race. “There were plenty of ‘opportunities to problem solve,'” says Chris Muir, the team’s faculty advisor. The CVT belt melted, the throttle cable broke, a steering column failed, and a hub failed, causing one of the tires to come off. “They rolled the car a couple of times on the course,” Chris says. “Everyone was fine. The cars are designed to roll over safely and the team was able to finish strong.”
In other words, an excellent weekend!
INTERESTED IN OPTICS MASTER’S DEGREE?
The Institute of Optics will hold a master’s degree information session from 6-8 p.m. November 4 in Wilmot 116. Dinner will be provided and there will be lab tours. A Zoom link will be provided to those who register but won’t be able to attend in-person. Contact Dustin Newman or Kai Davies.
ECE CELEBRATES HISPANIC HERITAGE
Left to right, top to bottom: Andres Ayes, Irving Barron Martinez, Benjamin Castañeda ’09 (PhD), Maria Helguera, Jesús Sánchez Juárez, Gonzalo Mateos, Juvenal Ormachea Quispe ’20 (PhD), Tara Peña, and Jose Fernando Zvietcovich Zagarra ’19 (PhD).
We have numerous opportunities to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Hajim School. Kudos to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by spotlighting faculty, graduate students, and alumni and their contributions to the department, our community, and engineering. Their achievements are an inspiration to our future engineers.
They are:
- Andres Ayes, a PhD student supervised by Eby Friedman.
- Irving Barron Martinez, a PhD student supervised by Gaurav Sharma.
- Benjamin Castañeda ’09 (PhD), professor and director of research and innovation in the Department of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
- Maria Helguera, adjunct faculty member in electrical and computer engineering.
- Gonzalo Mateos, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science and Asaro Biggar Fellow in data science.
- Juvenal Ormachea Quispe ’20 (PhD), ultrasound scientist at Verasonics Inc.
- Tara Peña, a PhD student supervised by Stephen Wu.
- Jesús Sánchez Juárez, a PhD student supervised by Jaime Cardenas.
- Jose Fernando Zvietcovich Zagarra ’19 (PhD), a postdoctoral fellow at the Daza de Valdes Institute of Optics.
Learn more about their contributions here.
CONGRATULATIONS TO . . .
Computer science alumnus Zhengyuan Yang ’21 (PhD), now a senior researcher with Microsoft Research, who won the 2022 ACM SIGMM Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis in Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications for his thesis entitled Visual Grounding: Building Cross-Modal Visual-Text Alignment. Zhengyuan also received the inaugural Twitch Research Fellowship and the ICPR 2018 Best Industry Related Paper Award during his PhD study supervised by Jiebo Luo, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor in Computer Science. Zhengyuan’s research interests focus on the intersection of computer vision and natural language processing.
STUDIO X: CREATE A 360° VIDEO
At this Friday’s Studio X Drop-In session from 1-2 p.m. on the first floor of Carlson Library, you can learn the basics of 360° recording and editing with Studio X’s Insta360 cameras. Create your own video using fun special effects like stop motion, cloning, and tiny planet clips that can be used for all kinds of projects from social media to music videos. Register here.
No experience necessary, however you will need to download the free Insta360 Studio 2022 editing software to your own computer (available on both PC and Mac) prior to the workshop. Need assistance with this process? Ask for help on the Studio X Discord (Quick Questions Channel).
Drop in every Friday at 1 p.m. for informal XR talks, workshops, demos, and more. Here is the full fall 2022 schedule.
MELIORA WEEKEND
Muhammed El-Sayed ’23, right, an electrical and computer engineering major, helps Jennifer Reisch P’23 with a VR headset at the Grand Opening and Dedication of the Mary Ann Mavrinac Studio X in Carlson Library during our University’s 2022 Meliora Weekend. (Photo by Adrian Kraus / University of Rochester) Click here for more photos and coverage.
It was wonderful to celebrate Meliora Weekend in person! Thanks to all of you who participated!
WATCH FOR HAJIM MAGAZINE
Be sure to watch your emails for our annual Rochester Engineering magazine on Wednesday morning.
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
