Vast datasets are now being generated from a variety of sensing systems—each providing rich information about unexplored aspects of the modern world.

New ways of analyzing and extracting useful information from these datasets are being developed within many disciplines—each with its own unique set of methods, perspectives, and problems.

What is lacking, however, is a rigorous, shared mathematical foundation that would integrate the different tools and viewpoints used by these various disciplines—so that advances in data science will be enduring and broadly available.

The goal of a new Greater Data Science Cooperative Institute at the University of Rochester and Cornell University is to develop that shared foundation, with a focus on applications in medicine and health care.

Grounding the work in medical applications “helps us ensure that the assumptions we are making about the availability and quality of data are realistic,” says principal investigator Mujdat Cetin, interim director of the Goergen Institute of Data Science at Rochester who will take over the position full time on July 1. “And it allows us to test our methodology and results with real data.” Read more here.

Medical Center researchers are joining a pair of new national clinical trials this week that will test whether hydroxychloroquine, an FDA-approved anti-malarial drug, can keep COVID-19 patients alive and out of the hospital.

While the drug has been widely touted as a potential treatment for COVID-19, results from coronavirus research studies reported thus far have been contradictory and inconclusive. These new randomized, controlled trials—which are sponsored separately by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Novartis pharmaceutical company—are designed to provide clear and conclusive evidence that can guide future treatment of COVID-19 patients. Rochester is one of approximately 25 sites in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group that are conducting the outpatient trial of the drug and one of 20 sites across the US conducting the inpatient trial.

Research from a team led by Krystel Huxlin, the James V. Aquavella, MD Professor in Ophthalmology at the Flaum Eye Institute, may offer hope to stroke patients in regaining vision by providing them with a form of physical therapy for the visual system using a device Huxlin developed. Elizabeth Saionz, a recent graduate of the UR CTSI’s Translational Biomedical Sciences PhD Program, was the first author of the paper detailing the findings in the journal Brain. Learn more.

Saionz received a Young Investigator Award for best student talk at the Optical Society of America’s Vision Meeting in 2017 on this topic.

Aside from Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, and more recently Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern, women continue to be scarce in the halls of power.

To rectify this inequality, a majority of countries (or at least one political party in most) have imposed female electoral quota systems, or rules designed to increase the representation of women. The catch? Boosting gender may well curtail representation in other respects.

An unintended consequence of such quotas is the reduction of other underrepresented minorities, finds a recent University study in the American Journal of Political Science.

The Rochester study looked at India’s caste system and female representation in local government, where female-reserved seats have been enshrined in the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Indian Constitution since the early 1990s.

“The effect of electoral quotas for women in India was to reduce the representation of lower caste groups,” says lead author Alexander Lee, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, who looked specifically at what happened in Delhi in local elections once gender quotas were introduced. “In many poorer or developing countries electoral quotas can reduce the representation of marginalized groups.”

Read more here.

Are you good at reading your partner’s emotions? Your perceptiveness may very well strengthen your relationship. Yet when anger or contempt enter the fray, little is to be gained and the quality of your relationship tanks, researchers find.

A new study by a team of psychologists from the University of Rochester and the University of Toronto tried to figure out under what circumstances the ability to read another person’s emotions—what psychologists call “empathic accuracy”—is beneficial for a relationship and when it could be harmful. The study examined whether the accurate perception of a romantic partner’s emotions has any bearing on the quality of a relationship and a person’s motivation to change when a romantic partner asks for a change in behavior or attitude.

The new study shows that couples who accurately perceive appeasement emotions, such as embarrassment, have better relationships than those accurately perceiving dominance emotions, such as anger or contempt. The perception may be on the part of the person requesting the change, or the person receiving the request.

Lead author Bonnie Le, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, says the team zeroed in on how accurately deciphering different types of emotions affects relationship quality. Read more here.

This year’s recipients of Outstanding Dissertation Awards in Arts, Sciences & Engineering:

Engineering and applied sciences:
Fernando Zvietcovich, electrical engineering, for “Dynamic Optical Coherence Elastography.” Advisors: Kevin Parker and Jannick Rolland.

Social sciences:
Karisa Lee, psychology, “‘Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Will Be Girls’: The Interpersonal Consequences and Functions of Essentialistic Thinking about Gender.” Advisor: Harry T. Reis.

Natural sciences:
Zak Piontkowski, chemistry, “Excited State Torsions and Electron Transfer in Dye-Sensitizers for Light Harvesting and Photodynamic Therapy.” Advisor: David McCamant.

Humanities (tie):
Kyle Blanchette, philosophy, “Bridging the Gap between Personal Survival and Personal Ontology.” Advisor: Paul Audi.

Anastasia Nikolis, English, “Lyric Confession and the Specter of Autobiography in Postmodern American Poetry.” Advisor: James Longenbach.

Here are three important links for researchers:

• University’s COVID-19 website for important updates and guidance on working, teaching, and learning remotely
• University of Rochester Medical Center website for restrictions, resources, and news
• Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA) site on Coronavirus 2019 resources related to sponsored programs
• University’s COVID-19 “Restart and Recovery” web page.

Welcoming Back our Researchers – Safely: Many URMC researchers are back in their labs for the first time since the end of March. The Research Reboot, which officially began on May 18, allows researchers to get back to work while maintaining public health measures (like physical distancing and masking) that help protect our community from the spread of COVID-19. The latest information for our research community can be found on the COVID-19 Research Guidance website.