June 17, 2024

Kevin Ling

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Summer is an energizing time for the Hajim School because it offers us an opportunity to connect with our peers from other schools and industry to discuss their latest research and new opportunities for collaboration. Several Hajim School affiliated centers recently hosted meetings, bringing some of the brightest minds in their fields to the River Campus.

The Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures hosted their third annual meeting at the end of May to discuss key questions related to planetary and stellar physics, bridging scales from experiments to nature, and education and outreach efforts. At the start of June, the Microphysiological Systems (MPS) Network group hosted the inaugural Upstate New York MPS Symposium, bringing nearly 100 attendees from more than a dozen institutions to discuss organ models, tissue chips, microfluidic systems, and more. Last week, the Center for Freeform Optics (CeFO) hosted its Industrial Advisory Board meeting, bringing researchers from industry to campus to discuss exciting new optical systems projects.

Meanwhile, this week the Institute of Optics will conclude their 63rd annual summer school short-course series, providing industry professionals, graduate students, alumni, and high school teachers an opportunity to keep current with the latest advances in the optics and photonics fields. It’s wonderful to see the campus so busy year-round!

SOLAR SPLASH TEAM RECEIVES INNOVATION AWARD

Congratulations to our Solar Splash team, who traveled to Champions Park Lake in Ohio earlier this month for an international competition against teams from some of the top engineering programs in the world. This dedicated group of students works hard to design, build, and race a boat powered by solar-charged batteries each year, gaining great hands-on experience with hydrodynamics, materials, mechanics, and electronics.

The team’s hard work turned heads this year, as they took home the Innovation Award in the Design category and received third place in the Technical Report category. The Innovation Award is given to just one team, and the Rochester boat stood out for their toroidal propeller design, a product of their collaboration with a mechanical engineering senior design team. The technical report award is given to the teams that demonstrated thorough documentation and reason for the intricate engineering systems on their boat.

The boat suffered from some technical difficulties that prevented it from racing on the water, but the team still placed in the competition due to their design and technical prowess. Great work!

WHY CAN’T WE SEE COLORS WELL IN THE DARK?

Dmitri T/Shutterstock

Have you ever wondered why it’s hard to identify colors in the dark, and even in low light, different colors can look remarkably similar? Live Science recently turned to one of our postdoctoral researchers in the Center for Visual Science for answers.

Sara Patterson, a postdoc studying color perception with David Williams, the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, discusses how the rods and cones in our eyes explain the phenomena. Learn more at Live Science.

NEWLY FUNDED RESEARCH

Congratulations to Jim Fienup, the Robert E. Hopkins Professor of Optics, for receiving $120,584 from NASA for a project titled, “Spread Function (PSF) Calibration for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO).”

JUNETEENTH

The University will be closed on Wednesday in celebration of Juneteenth. The Office of Equity and Inclusion will host several events this week to celebrate the holiday and Lindsey Baker, humanities librarian for Black Studies, and Philip McHarris, an assistant professor in the Department of Black Studies, have curated a selection of books from the University’s libraries titled “The Juneteenth Collection Highlight.”

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman