By compressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, the lab of Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics and astronomy, has, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.

The work is featured as the cover article in the journal Nature.  Dias says developing materials that are superconducting—without electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic field at room temperature—is the “holy grail” of condensed matter physics. Sought for more than a century, such materials “can definitely change the world as we know it,” Dias says.

In setting the new record, Dias and his research team combined hydrogen with carbon and sulfur to photochemically synthesize simple organic-derived carbonaceous sulfur hydride in a diamond anvil cell. The carbonaceous sulfur hydride exhibited superconductivity at about 58 degrees Fahrenheit and a pressure of about 39 million pounds per square inch (psi).

Applications include:

• Power grids that transmit electricity without the loss of up to 200 million megawatt hours (MWh) of the energy that now occurs due to resistance in the wires
• A new way to propel levitated trains and other forms of transportation
• Medical imaging and scanning techniques such as MRI and magnetocardiography
• Faster, more efficient electronics for digital logic and memory device technology

Read more here.

The University has joined several other research universities to file a federal lawsuit against the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, challenging “fast-tracked” H-1B visa regulations announced on October 8 as unlawful.

These rules will make it much more difficult for universities and other employers to hire and retain skilled foreign employees to work in the US under the H-1B visa program and some legal permanent resident status categories.

H-1B visas allow some of the world’s most talented faculty, postdoctoral associates, and research scientists the opportunity to come to Rochester and other research universities to teach, conduct critical research, and practice medicine.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the University a prestigious grant for a Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures, to support the project “Unbordering Migration in the Americas: Causes, Experiences, Identities.”

The interdisciplinary seminar will explore neglected but vital aspects of human migration in the Western hemisphere, considering the political, social, and economic circumstances of migration to and within the Americas over time. Components of the project also include biweekly seminars, public lectures, monthly workshops, film screenings, and an art exhibition.

Goals of the Sawyer Seminar, which is funded from this October through June 2022, include a bridging of humanistic and social scientific inquiry into migration and an effort to bring a more nuanced understanding of migration to bear on conceptions of justice.

The Rochester metropolitan area is home to one of the largest per-capita refugee populations in the United States, and one component of the project will bring together Rochester-area scholars with community leaders to investigate migration and justice in the region.

The principal investigators for the grant are Joan Shelley Rubin, the Dexter Perkins Professor in History and the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center; Daniel Reichman, an associate professor of anthropology and chair of that department; and Ruben Flores, an associate professor of history.

Read more here.

Elaine Hill, assistant professor of Public Health Sciences, is using a new national COVID-19 clinical dataset, called the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), to understand how the novel coronavirus affects maternal and infant outcomes when contracted during pregnancy.

N3C, which operates under the overall stewardship of the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), is a collaboration of NCATS-supported Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program hubs, the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H), distributed clinical data networks (PCORnet, OHDSI, ACT/i2b2, TriNetX), and other partner organizations. The goal is to leverage collective data resources, unparalleled analytics expertise, and medical insights from expert clinicians, to synergize discoveries that address the pandemic “beyond the sum of our parts.”

“The N3C data and community are an incredible asset for rapidly engaging in timely research about COVID-19,” says Hill, who is collaborating with Rena Patel, an assistant professor of medicine with the University of Washington.

Their project seeks to understand associations between SARS-CoV-2 infection and treatment for COVID-19 with maternal and infant outcomes in the N3C cohort, and associations with maternal characteristics, including clinical and environmental factors, and COVID-19 severity among pregnant women. The project also aims to assess the likelihood of vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from mother to infant.

The N3C Data Enclave is a secure platform through which harmonized clinical data provided by contributing members are stored. The Enclave includes demographic and clinical characteristics of patients who have been tested for or diagnosed with COVID-19, and further information about the strategies and outcomes of treatments for those suspected or confirmed to have the virus. Additional data from individuals infected with pathogens such as SARS 1, MERS, and H1N1 are also included to support comparative studies.

Learn more about the N3C Data Enclave and Hill’s project on the CLIC blog.

Sarah Peyre, dean of the Warner School of Education, who is the 2020 recipient of the Madeline H. Schmitt Award for Interprofessional Education from The Rochester Academy of Medicine. The award recognizes her leadership and innovation in health care education and the education of medical professionals. Prior to becoming Warner dean in July, Peyre most recently served as associate dean for innovative education at the University’s School of Medicine and Dentistry and executive director of its Institute for Innovative Education. Peyre also created and led the Center for Experiential Learning, which functioned as the educational delivery system for the University of Rochester Medical Center. Read more here.

Brianna Theobald, an assistant professor of history, who has won two awards for her first book, Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). She is the recipient of the John C. Ewers Award from the Western History Association and the Armitage-Jameson Prize from the Coalition for Western Women’s History. Reproduction on the Reservation traces the history of reproductive health care and reproductive politics on reservations during the last century, including the notorious sterilizations that occurred in the 1970s when US doctors sterilized an estimated 25 to 42 percent of Native American women of childbearing age, some as young as 15. Read more here.

Ryan Rygg, senior scientist and High-Energy-Density Physics (HEDP) Group Leader at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and assistant professor (research) of mechanical engineering and physics. Rygg has been elected a Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS). No more than one half of one percent of the APS membership is elected to Fellowship annually.  Rygg is being  recognized “for pioneering experiments and discoveries that have revealed a new understanding of extreme electromagnetic fields, transport mechanisms, and atomic to hydrodynamic structure in high-energy-density matter and inertial confinement fusion plasmas.”

Charles Thornton, the Saunders Family Distinguished Professor in Neuromuscular Research, who is one of 15 recipients of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s prestigious annual grant funding. Thornton’s award will be used to make improvements in technology for genetic testing of myotonic dystrophy type 1, a relatively common form of muscular dystrophy. Many people with DM1 have never had genetic testing to determine the size of the expansion of DNA building blocks known as CTG, which repeat in the non-coding region of the DM protein kinase gene—the cause of this type of muscular dystrophy. Thornton and his team seek to develop methods of genetic analysis of DM1 that are as cost-effective and precise as possible.

Warner School of Education Dean Sarah Peyre will moderate a panel discussion on emerging Center for Urban Education Success (CUES) research and how the center is poised to activate broader systemic progress in our region and on the national stage.

The panelists will be:

Shaun Nelms, a graduate of the Warner School, who is the William & Sheila Konar Director of the Center for Urban Education Success (CUES) at Warner. Nelms is also the superintendent of East High. At Warner, Nelms is an associate professor who teaches courses on teaching and leadership in urban school settings.

Valerie Lieberman Marsh, a graduate of the Warner School, who is the assistant director for CUES, as well as an assistant professor in Warner’s teacher preparation program for English education.

Joanne Larson, the Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education and associate director of research for CUES who has worked as a leader in the Educational Partnership Organization with East High since 2014 and continues to participate as a research partner.

Advanced registration is required for the event, which will take place Tuesday, October 27, from 1 to 2 p.m. EDT.

Equity-Focused Dissemination and Implementation Science (EQ-DI) is the study and practice of ensuring that evidence-based policies and interventions (drugs, devices, etc.) are effectively and equitably distributed and used in real-world settings.

The University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI) is offering a new pipeline-to-pilot award to stimulate early-phase research that incorporates EQ-DI science. Teams with at least one UR faculty member can apply for up to $10,000 to support six months of research planning activities. Learn more about the pipeline-to-pilot and apply by Friday, November 20, 2020.

The UR CTSI’s new EQ-DI webinar series focuses on how context – and its complex and evolving nature – can impact dissemination and implementation of health-improving interventions. See below for details on webinars being held on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. throughout November:

• November 11:  Science of Dissemination & Implementation and Its Adaptations in Public Health Emergencies
• November 18: Engaging and Linking Stakeholders Across Systems for Implementation
• November 25: Promoting Health Equity using Dissemination and Implementation – Opportunities and Challenges

The University of Rochester Aging Institute is hosting a half-day virtual retreat from 8 a.m. to noon on Friday, October 30, to garner stakeholder input on research priorities.

The retreat is open to faculty, staff, trainees, and students with an interest in aging research and its translation to patient care, education, and community outreach. Learn more about the retreat and add to calendar.

Register by Tuesday, October 27.

Here are 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.

Dr. Chat Bot student text reminders coming soon: In response to feedback from students, daily Dr. Chat Bot reminders will soon be sent to students by text message. The phone number University IT will use to text you is located in the University’s AlertUR database. However, there are a lot of students with no cell phone number listed in AlertUR, or the number listed may not be current. Without this information being updated, we won’t be able to text you Dr. Chat Bot reminders, and even more importantly you won’t receive emergency AlertUR texts during a campus crisis or life-threatening situation. Here’s what you can do now:

• Go to alert.rochester.edu/ and log in with your NetID.
• Add your cell phone number for texts—this will be the only phone number used to send you text reminders. The phone number must be in the 10-digit format, for example, (585) 222-1234.

Everyone is automatically registered in AlertUR with their University email, so that information does not need to be changed unless you want to enter an additional email address.

NYS’s COVID Alert NY app is another awareness tool: Recently, New York State in collaboration with the state of New Jersey launched a new phone app, COVID Alert NY, which can provide individuals who download it with greater peace of mind about potential exposure to others who have COVID-19. The free app can be downloaded directly from this New York State announcement (as well as from Google Play and Apple’s App Store) and uses Bluetooth technology to let individuals know when they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

While the University’s Coronavirus University Restart Team (CURT) isn’t requiring students, faculty and staff to download the app, it can be recommended as an additional tool to help individuals understand their own interactions and possible exposures.  One of the benefits of the COVID Alert NY app is that beyond the one-time “opt-in,” it does not require users to actively perform any regular or daily check-ins, and it works while keeping all users completely anonymous—it does not track or collect any location data or personal data from anyone’s phone. And the app can be turned on or off at any time. It will work on the University’s campuses, but is not geofenced for the University community specifically—it works anywhere in New York state or New Jersey, and also works with similar apps in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Opting to use this app does not replace the requirement for students, faculty and staff who are on campus or University property to complete their Dr. Chat Bot screening every day.

New daily parking option for River Campus employees: Starting Monday, October 26, River Campus employees can utilize a new daily parking permit option if they are working on campus, yet parking onsite less often. Employees will be able to choose a daily permit option, which lets you pay by the day. Details and an FAQ are available on the Parking website. New parking options were also announced recently for remote employees at the Medical Center.