May 8, 2023
Damian Rantshabeng ’24 handles the mechanical engineering ceremonial mace, one of dozens of projects on display on the Hajim Quad during Senior Design Day on April 28. Photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester
Dear members of the Hajim School Community,
The creativity, ingenuity, and hard work of our undergraduate students were on full display during Design Day. Our students have been busy this past year working on a wide range of projects that showcase their design expertise.
From do-it-yourself telescopes designed by optical engineering students to get kids interested in science and technology to pickleball analytics platforms created by data science students for ball detection and tracking, the projects were fascinating and often surprising.
This year, project sponsors ranged from a local brewery to a company designing Internet of Things technology for agriculture. We appreciate the companies that supported Senior Design projects and took advantage of the opportunity to work with the next generation of engineers, scientists, and programmers.
Thank you to Associate Dean for Education and New Initiatives Paul Funkenbusch for spearheading this wonderful annual event, and to all the senior design instructors. Their hard work is evident in the quality of these projects.
If you missed the in-person event, you can view details about each senior design project on the Hajim website. Special thanks to Emily Sherwood, director of digital scholarship and Mary Ann Mavrinac Studio X, and Joe Easterly, digital scholarship librarian, for their help setting up the website.
THE ART OF SCIENCE
The top three finishers in the Art of Science Competition plus the People’s Choice winner posed with their artwork during the ceremony on April 27. Photo by Michelle Dunn / University of Rochester
One of my favorite annual events returned stronger than ever this year. More than 60 students, faculty, and staff members submitted entries to the Art of Science Competition to explore and illuminate the aesthetic beauty that results when science, art, and technology intersect.
Held each spring and sponsored by the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences in collaboration with River Campus Libraries, the competition offers student prizes of $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $250 for third place. All entries were eligible for the People’s Choice Award of $250, and this year’s winner received 563 votes.
Our panel of judges had a very difficult job in selecting the winners and for the first time, we had to grapple with the question, “Does the art need to be created by a human in order to be eligible?”
Fateema Islam ‘24, a biochemistry student, won first place for Ochre Complex. Fateema used a phone camera to take a photo of a ferrous material sample as it was going through a rotovap. Upon receiving the award, she said, “I think this piece really shows that if you take a step back from scientific work, we can really notice that there’s really intense beauty around us.”
Second place was awarded to biomedical engineering student Antonio Ladron de Guevara Ruiz ‘24 for Cerebrospinal fluid flows through wide perivascular spaces into the brain. His submission featured superimposed particle tracks illustrating the entry of cerebrospinal fluid into the brain through periarterial spaces.
Glen Zhang ‘25, a neuroscience student, won third place for Death Before Death. The submission is an artistic representation of Alzheimer’s disease inspired by Zhang’s grandfather’s battle with Alzheimer’s before his death.
This year’s People’s Choice Award went to computer science student Qingjian Shi ‘26 for Robot’s Expression of Individuality, which featured a “retro-futuristic robot expressing itself and what it feels while contrasting mechanical and fluidity of Nature in Monet style.”
Honorable mention went to Please Don’t Tap on the Glass by mechanical engineering student Katie Jarvis ’25, and The Fractals of Cactus by optical engineering student Benjamin Margulies ’24. Check out the winning entries here.
Congratulations to our winners and thank you to everyone who submitted an entry or voted. Special thanks to the Art of Science Committee for organizing this year’s competition, and to our panel of judges.
DOTTIE WELCH STUDENT ENRICHMENT AWARD
Taylor Hall Head Machinist Bill Mildenberger earned this year’s Dottie Welch Student Achievement Award. Photo by Hana Goldstein / University of Rochester
During Design Day, we took a moment to celebrate an exemplary staff member who goes above and beyond to help students with their design projects. We presented this year’s Dottie Welch Student Enrichment Award to Bill Mildenberger, the Taylor Hall head machinist.
The award, which was established in 2013, is given each year to a Hajim School staff member whose performance and dedication enriches the student experience. Dottie was a guiding force for students, and we are happy to recognize others for demonstrating the same spirit.
Through the nomination process, students commended Bill for his patience, approachability, and willingness to help with any project presented, both curricular and co-curricular. One student who voted for Bill summed it up best: “He is not only a master machinist, but he makes the shop a safe, rich, and enjoyable learning environment. He has a great soul and we are extremely appreciative of his work.”
Please join me in congratulating Bill for this well-deserved recognition.
ROCHESTER ENGINEERING SOCIETY INDUCTEES
Congratulations to two Hajim School faculty members who are being recognized by the Rochester Engineering Society (RES). In the April 2023 edition of Rochester Engineer, RES announced that Mark Bocko is 2022 Engineer of the Year and Jessica Shang is a finalist for 2022 Kate Gleason Young Engineer of the Year.
Mark is a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering whose academic career has spanned four decades at the University of Rochester, where he received his PhD in physics in 1984. During his 15-year tenure as chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mark created our program in audio and music engineering, which has grown to more than 100 undergraduates and master’s students since 2013. He is an outstanding educator who has received five University of Rochester teaching awards.
In addition to his teaching and research, Mark directs the Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences (CEIS), which recently received funding from FuzeHub’s Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund. CEIS, the Hajim School, and Thermal Expansion Solutions, Inc. were awarded $50,000 for their work on titanium ALLVAR alloy manufacturing for optomechanical assemblies. The goal of the project is to accelerate the adoption of novel ALLVAR alloys by demonstrating they can eliminate the detrimental effects of temperature changes on an optic’s performance.
Jessica is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a scientist at the university’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. In 2022, she received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to create a computational model to determine what drives the brain’s glymphatic system and helps it flush away metabolic wastes linked to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. She also works with the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to improve the design of experiments aimed at achieving fusion by better understanding how viscosity dissipates energy in fuel plasmas.
Mark and Jessica will be celebrated during the RES Annual Meeting & Awards Presentations on Thursday, May 25 at the Rochester Museum & Science Center. Congratulations to them for being identified as leaders in our region’s engineering community.
OPTICS OUTREACH TENT AT THE ROCHESTER LILAC FESTIVAL
The 2023 Rochester Lilac Festival will feature interactive demonstrations that explore light, color, and optics provided by students from the SPIE and Optica student chapters at the Institute of Optics. Stop by the Optics Outreach Tent next to the main stage throughout the festival from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. May 12–21. The all-ages exhibit will give you a chance to look at the beautiful cell structure of a lilac under a microscope, investigate how eyes perceive color, learn about thermal imaging on the James Webb Space Telescope, and more. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact optics PhD student Shravan Gupta.
HENRYFEST: A DAY OF TALKS
Henry Kautz retired in July 2022, after more than 15 years at the University of Rochester’s Department of Computer Science. To celebrate Henry’s career, the department and the Goergen Institute for Data Science are jointly hosting a set of accessible, enjoyable talks on artificial intelligence, highlighting the higher-level aspects of machine cognition from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 20. The event will be in keeping with the tenor of Henry’s many years of groundbreaking research on practical algorithms for solving worst-case intractable problems in logical and probabilistic reasoning; automated planning; models for inferring human behavior from sensor data; pervasive healthcare applications of AI; and social media analytics. The talks are all open to the public, with free registration up to a capacity limit, either in-person or via Zoom.
Have a wonderful week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
