July 8, 2024
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
Experiential learning is a hallmark of a Hajim School education, and members of the UR Robotics student organization recently had an incredible experience in Florida for a NASA-sponsored competition against other top engineering schools from across the country. The team squared off against 42 other universities in the culmination of the yearlong Lunabotics Challenge.
The teams build autonomous robots that are tasked with driving, digging, and depositing regolith—the fragmented rock material that covers the moon’s surface—in a lunar simulant. Lunabotics is in its 15th year, and Rochester joined in 2022. The team’s advisor, Associate Professor Thomas Howard from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says this was the first year our students completed all three tasks, driving, digging, and depositing, at a formal competition. UR Robotics finished 19th of the 43 teams, a tremendous showing that the team can build on in years to come.
To give you a sense of the commitment a competition like this involves, team member Alex Saunders ’25 (mechanical engineering) estimates he spent about 300 hours on the project—everything from administrative tasks, CAD work, design reviews, machining, assembling, testing, outreach, and writing to meet all the requirements for the competition.
Congratulations to the team for all their hard work! See the robot in action and learn more about the competition at the News Center.
REGIONAL TECH HUB WINS $40 MILLION FOR SEMICONDUCTOR INNOVATION
Sara Miller / University of Rochester photo
The University of Rochester is a lead partner in the NY SMART I-Corridor Tech Hub, which last week was selected as one of only 12 national Tech Hub award winners. The NY SMART I-Corridor Tech Hub is receiving $40 million in funding from the US Economic Development Administration to elevate the burgeoning semiconductor industry in Upstate New York. The NY SMART Tech Hub spans the Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse regions and has engaged more than 100 institutions, assembling commitments from industry, academia, labor, non-profit, government, and other private sector members.
Our consortium initially beat out nearly 400 initial applications in the first phase of the Tech Hubs competition and was one of 31 proposals selected for the federal Tech Hub designation that allowed them to compete for this funding award. I’m excited by the prospect of Hajim School faculty, students, and alumni leading the region into becoming America’s semiconductor super-highway. Read more about the announcement at the News Center.
DAVID WILLIAMS AND FORMER COLLEAGUES RECEIVE RANK PRIZE FOR OPTOELECTRONICS
Congratulations to David Williams, the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, as well as three of his former doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, who received the 2024 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics during a special ceremony in London last week.
David, Junzhong Liang, Austin Roorda, and Donald T. Miller ’96 PhD (optics) were recognized for the development of instruments that use adaptive optics technologies to capture high-resolution images of the living human retina. Their pioneering research has generated new fundamental insights into the structure and function of the human eye in both health and disease as well as new clinical interventions to remedy sight loss from common disorders.
Learn more about David and his colleagues’ pioneering work at the Rank Prize website.
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
