September 11, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

For almost 20 years, Sheryl Gracewski, professor of mechanical engineering, has accompanied our Baja SAE team each spring to off-road vehicle competitions against other universities in places like Alabama, Tennessee, Kansas, and California. As our first tenure-track and tenured female faculty member of engineering, she has:

  • Gained international recognition for expertise in computational modeling of the interaction of ultrasound fields with bubbles in biological tissue;
  • Mentored at least 17 graduate student theses projects, and more than 25 undergraduate research experiences;
  • Taught 7 different undergraduate courses and 8 different graduate courses –invariably earning high marks from her students;
  • Been a dedicated mentor and advisor for students in both mechanical and biomedical engineering; and
  • Received the UR SEAS Undergraduate Teaching Award and the University Dean’s Award for Meritorious Service in PhD defenses.

Sheryl epitomizes the faculty member who quietly goes about her work out of the limelight, all the while compiling a truly impressive list of accomplishments. For all of these reasons, I was delighted to present Sheryl with the Hajim School Lifetime Achievement Award at our annual reception at Oak Hill Country Club on Thursday. Please join me in congratulating Sheryl on her award, and on her remarkable record of achievement.

Congratulations as well to three Hajim School seniors who are among this year’s recipients of the Garnish Scholar-Athlete Award. The award recognizes students who lead their varsity teams on the field of play, while doing outstanding work in the classroom. They are:

  • Gabriela Alatorre of mechanical engineering, a member of the softball team who spent this summer as a design intern working on the next generation of commercial jet engines at Pratt & Whitney.
  • Arlen Fan of electrical and computer engineering, a member of the swimming team who participated this summer in the Computational Methods for Understanding Music, Media, and Minds REU, doing a project on computer music transcription.
  • Alexandra Nelligan of mechanical engineering, a member of the volleyball team who also plays trombone in the brass choir and interned this summer with a small design firm doing HVAC design.

I encourage our students to gain experiences beyond the classroom, and these students have done a great job of seizing opportunities to do so!

So has Siri Chillara ’19 of chemical engineering, who is spending this semester in Israel interning with the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. She reports she’ll be working on a hydrogen reactor project as well as a biodigester for the institute’s experimental off-grid village. “I just wanted to let you know that I was selected as the only undergraduate intern because of the extensive work we did in junior lab,” Siri writes. “My PI was impressed with our final LV (LabView) projects.” I invite Siri and other Hajim students tackling these kind of engineering challenges to check out our new NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program.

The Science, Technology, and Culture book club, organized this summer by Emma Grygotis, a PhD student in Denise Hocking’s lab, is a multidisciplinary reading group that examines how science is shaped by the culture that surrounds it, and how technological innovations change society. Each meeting features snacks, discussion, and a guest speaker. I think our engineering faculty and students could bring –  and gain –  some interesting perspectives at the group’s meetings, which are held one Wednesday each month from 5 to 6 p.m. in the Humanities Center lobby. Here’s the schedule:

  • September 27 – Chemistry, by Weike Wang. Featuring Hochang (Ben) Lee, chair of the Department of Psychiatry.
  • October 18 – A Crack in Creation, by Jennifer Doudna.
  • November 8 – The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi.
  • December 6 – Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O’Neil.

Email Emma_Grygotis@urmc.rochester.edu for more information.

The passing of David Quesnel after a lengthy illness has prompted a flood of fond remembrances from family, friends, colleagues, and former students. (Read more here.) David, a professor of mechanical engineering, was a respected and versatile researcher who conducted well-funded studies of metal fatigue, adhesion of particles to surfaces, piezoelectric materials, corrosion, and battery design. He also took an innovative approach to teaching senior design. The entire class would form a company, exploring all aspects of product design and development. One year, the students built a 15-foot-long injection molding system that converted chips of recycled plastic yogurt containers into yo-yos. There was quite a scene in the Hopeman conference room on commencement day, when seniors and their parents gathered for a live demonstration. Each student left that day with a yo-yo as a memento. David will be missed.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman

 

 

 
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