November 7, 2022
Duncan Moore was appointed vice provost for entrepreneurship in 2007.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Congratulations to Duncan Moore ’74 (PhD), the Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Professor in Optical Engineering Science and vice provost for entrepreneurship, who has received the Legacy Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers. The award recognizes pioneers in advancing entrepreneurship at universities, including the creation of high-impact centers.
Duncan has certainly created a lasting legacy of entrepreneurship at our University.
Duncan, the founder of Gradient Lens Corp., was instrumental in building the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, from its inception, into one of the top 10 in the country. From 2004 to 2009, he was responsible for an initial $3.5 million Ewing Kauffman Foundation grant, matched with $7 million from the University, that launched the center. In 2006, Duncan was appointed director for entrepreneurship, and the following year, vice provost for entrepreneurship.
Under Duncan’s direction, the center, named in honor of benefactors Mark S. Ain ‘67S (MBA) and Carolyn Ain, provides mentorship, training, and support in many ways. In addition to classes and guest speakers, the center offers programs such as the University of Rochester Student Incubator at NextCorps, a National Science Foundation Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) mentorship program, several student business plan competitions, the e5 program for select undergraduates looking to launch an enterprise or to intern at a startup, and the Technical Entrepreneurship and Management master’s program. It is great to see Duncan receive this recognition!
COURSES FOR SPRING
Registration for the spring 2023 semester begins next Monday, November 14.
Considering a career in engineering? Unsure of all the options possible with an engineering degree? To help Hajim students navigate important decisions like these, two new, one-credit sections of Designing Your Life, tailored specifically for engineering students, are offered. Taught by Greene Center advisors in the iZone, the course will show you how to use all of the exploratory tools available at our University to test out your interests and meet your aspirations. One section of CASC 104 will be offered 11:50 a.m. to 1:05 p.m., the other from 2-3:15 p.m., both on Fridays.
Are you interested in learning more about the fundamentals, methods, and applications of data science and machine learning? Ajay Anand, deputy director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science and associate professor, recommends DSCC 265/465: Introduction to Statistical Machine Learning, taught by Cantay Çalışkan, assistant professor of data science. This course, which emphasizes putting theory into practice through applications on real-world data sets, would be especially useful for entering graduate students. Students who want to advance their data science skills further by developing data-intensive applications (DIA) at scale in the Cloud may consider taking DSCC 202/402: Data Science at Scale, taught by Brendan Mort, director of our Center for Integrated Research Computing, and Lloyd Palum ‘87, president and CTO of Vnomics and adjunct professor at the institute.
MEET OUR GRAND CHALLENGES SCHOLARS
Hesham Elshafey, Danielle Getz, and Abbey Kampel.
Three of our Grand Challenges Scholars will share their experiences with fellow students during drop-in office hours at the iZone through the end of the semester.
Hesham Elshafey ’25, an electrical and computer engineering major, will be available from 1-3 p.m. today, this Thursday, and next Monday, and on November 17 and 21 and December 1 and 8. Hesham is involved with the Robotics Club and is a research assistant with Professor Hui Wu’s Free Space Optical Communication Project.
Danielle Getz ’23, a chemical engineering major, will be available 7-9 p.m. November 17 and 2-4 p.m. December 16. Danielle conducted summer research aimed at mitigating climate change with Marc Porosoff, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and is completing a minor in environmental humanities.
Abbey Kampel ’23, a biomedical engineering and psychology major, will be available 3-4:30 p.m. November 15 and 4-5:30 p.m. December 6. Abbey participated in a GCSP summer program at Arizona State University focused on entrepreneurship and also in an REU program at Rice University.
Bring your questions and ideas. If you can’t make it to our drop-in sessions, please reach out to Emma.Derisi@Rochester.edu Thanks to Hesham, Danielle, and Abbey for sharing your experiences!
A TALK BY CHRIS KANAN
Chris Kanan, associate professor of computer science, joined us this summer after previously serving on the faculty at RIT. He will share his insights on Mitigating Bias in Deep Neural Networks: Lessons from Continual Machine Learning, Medical Computer Vision, and Language Guided Scene Understanding from 2-3 p.m., next Friday, November 18 at 1400 Wegmans Hall. This is a great opportunity to learn about Chris’s exciting research. If you can’t make it in person, there is a zoom option. Learn more here.
PUMPKIN LAUNCH REVISITED
Student teams prepare for their practice launches, at left, at the annual pumpkin launch hosted recently by our ASME student chapter. Onlookers included faculty and staff of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Check out this video captured by Hana Goldstein. Four teams competed in the competition, which stresses accuracy over distance. The winner was the ASME team from Rochester Institute of Technology.
FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS
Join the David T. Kearns Center for “FG Week,” a series of events today through Friday, November 11, to acknowledge and celebrate first-generation college students at Rochester. Learn more about the week’s events here.
INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATES PROGRAM: BY THE NUMBERS
More than 450 attendees, including at least 165 undergraduate and 110 graduate students. Fifty-plus Research Lunch attendees. More than 55 companies represented. And more than 310 student interviews conducted.
These figures from the recent fall Industrial Associates meeting are provided by Tal Haring, strategic analyst at The Institute of Optics. They demonstrate why the IA program provides such a great opportunity for Institute students, faculty, and corporate partners to interact, helping students connect to internships and jobs, for example, and helping faculty and companies collaborate on projects. Thanks to all who attended!
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
