Nov. 28, 2016
Dear members of the Hajim School community:
Our Solar Splash team, which competes against other colleges at an annual five-day meet, would like to build a new solar-powered boat from the ground up, using only components built by students in house. The team has launched a USeed campaign with a goal of raising $3,000, with more than half of the total raised to date. Like the Baja SAE team competition involving all-terrain vehicles, Solar Splash is a great hands-on opportunity for engineering students. They apply what they’ve learned in the classroom, while also generating support from outside sponsors, managing their educational priorities, and, in this case, promoting an alternative energy source. We wish the team all the best in meeting its goal.
Congratulations to Sandhya Dwarkadas, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering and chair of computer science, and to Robert Boyd, professor of optics, who have been notified they will be elevated to Fellows of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the world’s largest association of technical professionals. The distinction is reserved for select IEEE members for extraordinary accomplishments in their field. Bob’s citation is for contributions to the fields of nonlinear optics and photonics; Sandhya’s citation is for contributions to shared memory and reconfigurability. Well done, Sandhya and Bob!
Congratulations as well to members of our Women in Computing group who recently spent a Friday evening at the Harley School, introducing the magic of coding to middle school students, answering their questions, and encouraging the females, especially, to not be intimidated by computer science. Mikayla Konst ’17, for example, told how she arrived at the University having never coded before in her life, then took a computer science class and discovered that coding “is literally magic. If you can imagine it, you can build it.” The outreach is part of the BRAID Initiative, which has done so much to welcome increasing numbers of female students in computer science here.
Please extend a warm welcome to Tim Woodward, our new director of finance and administration. Tim has been with the University for eight years, most recently in the central budget office helping to manage the endowment for the academic core budget and River Campus and Medical Center endowment spending. Previously he worked at Xerox Capital Services LLC, a joint venture between Xerox Corporation and GE Capital Services. Tim is skilled in analytics and problem-solving, and is a great person to work with. He is excited to be part of engineering, and helping guide the Hajim School to the next level. I’m thrilled to have him as part of the team.
I would like to heartily endorse an invitation from Joan Rubin, the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the newly opened Humanities Center, for Hajim School faculty members to engage in helping the center bridge core disciplines in the humanities with those in engineering, computer science, and other natural sciences. For example, she encourages formation of faculty working groups to discuss opportunities for collaboration. Another opportunity to partner with humanities faculty is a current call for projects exploring the nature of human experience, past and present. A great example of the intersection of humanities with engineering and science is the work that Greg Heyworth, associate professor of English, is doing, combining traditional humanistic skills with imaging, material, and computer science to restore damaged texts and other cultural objects. Please give this serious thought. You can contact jennie.gilardoni@rochester.edu to sign up as a Humanities Center affiliate and receive a weekly newsletter.
Have a great week!
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
