The University’s generation, use, and management of energy includes electricity, steam, hot water, chilled water, and now solar with the new array of panels atop the Goergen Athletic Center. This involves a complex web of people, processes, equipment, and data.

The Utilities and Energy Management (UEM) Office of UR facilities would like to provide access to this information to students and faculty for use in independent study programs, senior design projects, and academic research.

“UEM has been serving our University’s energy needs for nearly 100 years,” says Director Michael Whitmore. “We believe it is time to start serving UR’s academic needs as well. Our goal is to foster collaboration and opportunities for UEM, students, and faculty to engage in multidisciplinary projects and better the state of our campus.”

Potential projects, described in a manual, include developing mathematical and operational models of the power plant, then using them to analyze first a single piece of equipment, then subsystems, systems, and finally the entire plant for greater efficiency.

However, the list of suggested projects is “not exhaustive,” Whitmore says. “If you have another project idea in mind, we are certainly open to suggestions.”

Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, encouraged the school’s faculty and students to take advantage of this opportunity in a recent newsletter. “Energy generation and management involves ample opportunities to apply critical engineering and computer science skills and research,” she said. “I especially hope this can generate ideas for senior design and independent study projects.”

Students and faculty can review the manual of projects and how to participate. If interested, they can contact Michael Whitmore, UEM director, or talk to their department’s UEM contact listed in the manual. The manual was developed by students Beauclaire Mbanya Jr. ’20, Faraan Hamad ’22, and Benjamin Kelley ’23, all of chemical engineering.

Rob Clark, the University of Rochester’s provost and senior vice president for research, has announced his plans to step down from those roles as of June 30, 2021. A nationally recognized engineer and academic administrator, Clark joined the Rochester faculty in 2008, when he was named dean of what was later named the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.

He plans to take a leave during the 2021–22 academic year before returning to the Hajim faculty.

In a note to University faculty and staff, University President Sarah Mangelsdorf acknowledged Clark’s work as an academic leader, advisor, and key member of a University-wide effort to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Most recently, Rob has played an important role in the University’s efforts to navigate the COVID pandemic. Along with many dedicated faculty and staff across the institution, Rob helped the University meet this challenge while never losing sight of the importance of our academic mission,” Mangelsdorf said. Read more here.

Feedback from research participants can help organizations improve clinical trial processes to ensure safety and improve participants’ overall experience. But very few research organizations collect feedback from research participants–not for lack of desire, but for lack of infrastructure and resources.

In June, the National Center for Advancing Translational Science awarded a collaborative grant to six institutions to help them build an infrastructure to routinely collect and analyze research participant feedback. The $2.7 million grant was awarded to Rockefeller University with participation by the University of Rochester, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University, and Johns Hopkins University.

“Gathering systematic feedback from research subjects is essential to identify the strengths and opportunities for improvement of our research enterprise,” says Ann Dozier, chair of Public Health Sciences and principal investigator on this grant for the University. “Through this project we will help establish comparisons to other institutions in the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, contributing to improvements across the consortium.”

The University of Rochester participated in the development of the original Research Participant Perception survey and will now participate in the development of an infrastructure to collect and analyze results.

Learn more about the project being led by Rockefeller University.

A new tool, developed in part by the Wilmot Cancer Institute, can predict which older women with early-stage breast cancer are more likely to experience severe chemotherapy side effects and which ones are not.

Researchers developed and validated the tool by studying a group of 473 older adults with early-stage breast cancer who were receiving chemotherapy. The tool stratifies patients into low, intermediate, or high-risk pools. It provides useful information for oncologists to anticipate the potential for chemotherapy side effects, dose delays, and hospitalizations.

“This new tool fills a critical knowledge gap and will make complex decisions about chemotherapy more informed,” says Allison Magnuson, the Wilmot geriatric oncologist who led the Rochester team in this national effort to develop and validate the scoring system for seniors.

Researchers uncovered eight key predictors of severe toxicities, including anemia, poor liver function, limited mobility and falls, and lack of social support such as having someone to call in a crisis. Limited support may influence whether a person offers timely information to the health care team about difficulty with chemotherapy. The predictors allowed the team to score risks and successfully assign patients to risk groups.

Read more here.

Dustin Froula, a senior scientist at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, who is being honored by the US Department of Energy for his groundbreaking research on inertial confinement fusion and plasma sciences. Froula, who is also a group leader in plasma and high field physics at the LLE and an associate professor of physics and astronomy, was recently named a recipient of the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for his “seminal and creative contributions in fundamental laser-matter interaction physics, and laser-driven plasma accelerators that have significantly advanced the Department of Energy’s mission.” Froula is one of eight scientists at national research laboratories being recognized this year. Read more here.

Many communities support the sharing of preprints, but most preprint repositories restrict submissions to unpublished manuscripts.

So, what are the options if you have already published but still want (and are allowed by your publisher’s agreement) to deposit your manuscript to make your research more available? 

Enter OSF Preprints, a multidisciplinary preprint repository that allows authors to submit their manuscripts before and after publishing. OSF Preprints is part of a suite of open source tools offered by the Center for Open Science. Numerous emerging groups have partnered with OSF Preprints to support preprint sharing in their own disciplines (PsyArXiv, engrXiv, EcoEvoRxiv). See some examples:

• Bohn, M., Tessler, M. H., Merrick, M., & Frank, M. C. (2019, September 5). Predicting pragmatic cue integration in adults’ and children’s inferences about novel word meanings. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xma4f
• Cattin, M., Jonnalagedda, S., Makoliso, S., & Schönenberger, K. (2020, December 9). The status of refrigeration techniques for vaccine storage and transportation in low-income settings. https://doi.org/10.31224/osf.io/gx8fn
• Lürig, M., Donoughe, S., Svensson, E., Porto, A., & Tsuboi, M. (2020, December 17). Computer vision, machine learning, and the promise of phenomics in ecology and evolutionary biology. https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/98cuw

Have any questions? Get in touch with Lindsay Cronk, head of Collection Strategies & Scholarly Communications at River Campus Libraries.

Applications are open for the 2021 University Research Awards, which provide “seed” grants for promising, high-risk projects. Applications are sought from faculty across the University, and funding is awarded to recipients who demonstrate their projects favor new research with a high probability of being leveraged by future external funding. A review committee of faculty from across the University provides peer review of the applications.

Applications must be received by 5 p.m. EST on February 12. Selected applicants may be asked to present their research project to the Executive Research Committee prior to the final award decisions, which will be announced mid-May. Recipients of this award are required to peer review future University Research Award proposals. Completed applications should be directed to Adele Coelho at adele.coelho@rochester.edu.

The University of Rochester Resource-Based Center for Musculoskeletal Biology and Medicine is requesting applications from new investigators for funding of pilot projects. Investigator-initiated pilot studies for full-time faculty who are either physician-scientists, research assistant professors or assistant professors who have not received NIH R01 or equivalent grant funding as a principal investigator are eligible to apply for research funding relevant to musculoskeletal diseases ($25,000 maximum for one year). Send completed proposals to Kristin Smith by Monday, March 15.

Here are important links for researchers:

• The University’s COVID-19 Resource Center 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
• The University’s COVID-19 “Restart and Recovery” web page

VACCINE UPDATE: Due to limited vaccine supply, URMC is focused right now on continuing to vaccinate UR Medicine health care workers in New York State’s 1a category, as well as continuing second dose clinics, hopeful that next week URMC’s vaccine allotment will be increased to continue to vaccinate other eligible faculty and staff.

As a reminder, eligible University faculty and staff who accept vaccination appointments must sign an attestation of their eligibility and show their University ID. As vaccine supplies allow, additional slots will be made available more broadly for in-person instructional faculty, who are also approved within the current New York State eligibility designations. Invitations for this expanded group will be delivered through University email.

UR Medicine also this week officially opened its first two vaccine centers at Manhattan Square downtown and at the Saunders Building on the Medical Center campus for eligible UR Medicine patients by appointment only.

PLEASE NOTE that the University’s COVID-19 Dashboard is updated daily and dashboard numbers may reflect additional cases confirmed later in the day. When a new case is known, the contact-tracing process begins immediately with the Monroe County Health Department, with confirmed exposures being contacted and required to quarantine. Remember:

• A temperature of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher
• Chills
• Muscle or body aches
• Severe fatigue
• Headache
• Congestion or runny nose
• Sore throat
• Loss of taste, smell, or appetite
• Cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
• Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea