June 26, 2023
Hajim School faculty who received promotions this year. Top row from left to right: Niaz Abdolrahim, Jaime Cardenas, William H. Renninger, and Jessica Shang. Bottom row from left to right: Douglas H. Kelley, Jong-Hoon Nam, and James McGrath.
Dear Members of the Hajim School Community,
I am happy to announce a list of Hajim School faculty who received promotions and tenure this past academic year. Effective July 1, 2023, four Hajim School faculty will be promoted to associate professor with tenure and two will be promoted to professor:
- Niaz Abdolrahim, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, promoted to associate professor of mechanical engineering with tenure.
- Jaime Cardenas, assistant professor of optics, promoted to associate professor of optics with tenure.
- William H. Renninger, assistant professor of optics, promoted to associate professor of optics with tenure.
- Jessica Shang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, promoted to associate professor of mechanical engineering with tenure.
- Douglas H. Kelley, associate professor of mechanical engineering, promoted to professor of mechanical engineering.
- Jong-Hoon Nam, associate professor of mechanical engineering, promoted to professor of mechanical engineering.
In addition, James McGrath has been appointed as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in Biomedical Engineering.
Please join me in congratulating these individuals whose hard work has paid off and have reached important new milestones in their professional careers.
DONNA STRICKLAND ’89 HONORED BY IEEE
Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD), pictured here delivering the University of Rochester commencement address in 2019, recently received IEEE Honorary Membership. (Photo by Adam Fenster / University of Rochester)
One of the Hajim School’s most decorated alumni continued to add to her incredible list of accolades this spring. Nobel Prize laureate Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD) recently received IEEE Honorary Membership “for contributions to the demonstration of chirped pulse amplification, a method to increase output power in ultrashort pulse solid-state lasers.”
Donna was recognized at IEEE’s 2023 Vision Innovation Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony Gala in Atlanta this May.
To coincide with the award, IEEE Spectrum published a wonderful profile of Donna that describes her time pursuing her PhD at the Institute of Optics and working at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Reading about her work to help develop chirped pulse amplification right here on campus is a reminder of the brilliant minds we’re surrounded by and all that we should aspire to achieve.
Read the full profile at the IEEE Spectrum website.
NSF I-CORPS REGIONAL COURSE
Graduate students conducting optics and photonics research can now apply for an upcoming special NSF I-Corps Regional Course from July 31 to September 1 to explore the product-market fits of their optics innovations. This free course begins online and culminates with a funded customer discovery trip to the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference in San Diego.
Hosted in partnership with the University of Rochester and Dartmouth College, this course provides a unique opportunity to explore the market potential of your innovations by interviewing potential customers. Applications are due by July 5.
HAJIM RESEARCHERS STAND OUT AT CONFERENCE ON SIGNAL PROCESSING IN THE AI ERA
Associate Professor Zhiyao Duan, left, and electrical and computer engineering PhD student You (Neil) Zhang, right, presenting at IEEE’s 2023 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).
A contingent of Hajim School faculty and students had a strong showing at IEEE’s 2023 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Rhodes Island, Greece.
A paper authored by electrical and computer engineering PhD students You (Neil) Zhang and Yuxiang Wang and Associate Professor Zhiyao Duan was recognized for being among the top three percent of all papers accepted at the conference. Their paper was titled “HRTF Field: Unifying Measured HRTF Magnitude Representation with Neural Fields.”
Neil Zhang was also selected as one of the 24 presenters at the inaugural “Rising Star Program in Signal Processing” workshop. The new initiative aims to “foster the growth of the next generation of scientists and scholars who are at the forefront of research and innovation in the field of signal processing.” He presented a poster titled “Personalized Immersive and Secure Audio for Metaverse.”
Read more about the Rising Stars Workshop at the ICASSP website.
COMMUNICATIONS RECOGNITION FOR LUKE AUBURN
Luke Auburn, senior communications officer for the Hajim School, was one of several University of Rochester communications professionals recognized at this year’s Rochester Public Relations Society of America’s PRism awards.
One of our most recent additions to the Hajim School staff was recently recognized for his communications talents. Luke Auburn, senior communications officer for Hajim, was honored during this year’s Rochester Public Relations Society of America’s PRism awards for his media relations efforts at RIT, where he worked prior to joining us in April.
Luke developed a strategy to secure coverage of a James Webb Space Telescope program led by RIT that resulted in stories by Popular Science, Wired, Space.com and other national and international outlets. Luke was one of several University of Rochester communications professionals recognized at the event.
We are lucky to now have Luke on our Hajim team and look forward to working with him to amplify the incredible work of the Hajim School community.
All these well-deserved accolades make me so proud to be your dean and work alongside a team passionate about and dedicated to educating the next generations of engineers.
Lastly, there will be no edition of Hajim Highlights next week due to the 4th of July holiday. The next edition will be on July 10.
I hope you have a safe and happy holiday!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
