The 30,000-square-foot Sloan Performing Arts Center, adding a much-anticipated new building to the River Campus, is opening just in time for the fall semester. The building will be fully functional by the end of the calendar year.

Dedicated to theater, dance, and music, the three-story Sloan Center will house a 200-seat black box theater, an atrium, a café, a green room, a scene shop, a costume shop, a box office, dressing rooms, a conditioning room, and more. Each space will encourage creative expression, skill building, and community activity.

The Sloan Center is made possible thanks to the generosity of University Life Trustee Thomas Sloan ’65, ’67 (MS) and Linda Sloan ’67 and other lead supporters.

“This is the first building ever designed to serve the performing arts on the River Campus,” says Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. “We’ve needed this additional space on campus for some time now, and because of the vision, dedication, and leadership of the Sloans and others, we can now offer a beautiful, thoughtfully designed, contemporary building that will nurture our students’ creative pursuits.”

Rochester students pursue degrees in theater, dance, and music. They participate in more than 40 performing arts-based clubs on the River Campus, including 20 co-curricular dance groups. In addition, they engage in the International Theatre Program, which typically offers four productions annually and two smaller works. The College also offers many musical performances and more than 100 music classes to undergraduates.

“The most difficult part of selecting a public work for a space like this is finding one that is audacious enough to prompt conversation but not so much so that it meddles with the function of the facility,” says Allen Topolski, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History who served as a member of the selection committee.

In Jay Yan, the selection committee found a talent whose creative vision fit the bill. Yan’s Mural for Two Walls, a mosaic commissioned by the University, provides a shimmer of color as visitors enter the center.

Dandelions—a symbol of Rochester’s perseverance—figure prominently in the design. Read more.

“Part of the magic here at Rochester,” says Dean Gloria Culver, is that “our students can pursue their academic and cocurricular passions and be part of an environment that supports exploration, growth, and imagination. The Sloan Center will be a great addition to campus—a center for joy, inspiration, and connection.”

Left to right: New faculty members Brandon Barnett, Dora Biro, and Erin Black.

(This is the first of three posts about new faculty members in Arts, Sciences & Engineering.)

Brandon Barnett . . .

. . . joins the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, after serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Barnett’s research draws from fields including inorganic chemistry, materials science, and chemical engineering.

As a postdoctoral fellow, he studied how solid-state materials containing permanent pores—akin to tiny, nanoscale sponges—can be used to store gaseous fuels and separate mixtures of small molecules.

His research group at Rochester is interested in developing new materials that can mimic certain functions of solid-state porous materials, including the abilities to store gases and help perform challenging reactions. The research is important in developing greener technologies, such as more efficient batteries and energy-saving alternatives to liquid fuels.

Dora Biro. . .

. . . most recently a professor of animal behavior in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, joins the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences as a professor.  Biro focuses her research on the mechanisms that underlie group living in animals.

Using field observations, GPS, accelerometry, head-mounted sensors, camera-trapping, facial recognition software, and other data-gathering techniques, combined with mathematical modeling, Biro explores social behavior, problem solving, and learning in birds and primates. She’s particularly interested in how individual animals with conflicting knowledge or preferences make decisions together and the consequences of those decisions for collective performance.

Biro also conducts research on spatial cognition and the role of vision in avian navigation, developmental and cultural aspects of tool-using skills in wild chimpanzees, regional differences in behavior in wild baboons, and symbolic and numerical cognition in captive chimpanzees.

Erin Black . . .

. . . joins the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, after serving as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Black’s research focuses on understanding the drivers of the marine carbon cycle and the global cycling of biologically important elements, such as iron. Her research group utilizes uranium-thorium isotope geochemistry to track elements like carbon as they enter, move within, and exit the world’s oceans.

Improving the estimates of elements in the marine cycle helps scientists to better understand and quantify the role that oceans play in global climate change. Black is actively involved in field research in the coastal North Atlantic, the central Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean.

Read more about these and other new AS&E faculty members.

In a perspective piece that appears in the journal Science, Elaine Hill, an economist in the University’s Department of Public Health Sciences, calls for tighter regulation and monitoring of unconventional oil and gas development, commonly called fracking, as more evidence points to the negative health consequences of the practice.

The debate over fracking is often viewed through either an economic lens that emphasizes jobs and energy independence, or an environmental one that warns of the damage to air and water quality and human health.   Because fracking technology has been operating on a significant scale in the U.S. for the past two decades, the scope of the public health impact due to long-term exposure to air, water, and noise pollution is only now becoming clear.

The rising toll in the form of increased rates of chronic diseases, stress on rural health care providers, and growing need for mental health and addiction services, ultimately diminish the economic returns for communities that host the fracking industry.  “Many of the impacts have lifelong consequences on individual well-being, including future health, education, and labor market outcomes,” says Hill and co-author Lala Ma with the Department of Economics at the University of Kentucky.  Read more.

A Medical Center pilot project demonstrating that telepsychiatry reduces emergency department visits and re-hospitalizations for nursing home residents has earned long-term funding from the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH).

Grant-funded since 2017, the UR Medicine Telepsychiatry Program has:

• helped nursing homes meet quality metrics,
• lowered nursing home residents’ use of antipsychotics, hypnotics, and sedatives, and
• reduced residents’ depression symptoms compared to traditional approaches.

OMH recently awarded $6 million to the Department of Psychiatry to continue providing geriatric telepsychiatry to more than 60 nursing homes throughout the state, the third consecutive round of funding. This continuous support makes the initiative the first OMH “legacy program” for the University of Rochester.

“When the Office of Mental Health wants to try something innovative, they have a pot of funding for testing. We’ve been using this pot to build, test and show the importance of the program since 2017,” said Michael J. Hasselberg, chief of innovation and technology in the Department of Psychiatry.

“If it demonstrates that it improves quality of care and delivers of the outcomes of interest, the program receives a sustainable investment by the state. We’re no longer at the mercy of those ‘innovative funds.’ Our program isn’t an ‘unknown’ anymore.” Read more.

The Department of Psychiatry’s Collaborative Care and Wellness Division’s sixth annual Behavioral Health Integration Symposium begins on Friday, September 17. Join in on Fridays for virtual talks from experts on substance use, suicide prevention, and public health. Learn more about the sessions and register for this free event here.

PumpPrimer–AS&E’s intramural seed funding program—is designed to stimulate extramural funding for projects that otherwise would be difficult to launch. PumpPrimerII (PPII) provides funding to help faculty establish a novel research direction.

The deadline to apply for the next round of PumpPrimer II awards of up to $50,000 each is Monday, October 25, 2021. All tenure track faculty are eligible to apply, except junior faculty members who have startup funding remaining or have not yet competed their first term of appointment. Additional application guidance.

The application portal is https://www.rochester.edu/fort/pumpprimer/

For more information, contact:

• School of Arts and Sciences: Lindsey Junge, Assistant Dean for Grants and Contracts. Email: junge@rochester.edu Phone: (585) 273-2289
• Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Cindy Gary, Assistant Dean for Grants and Contracts. Email: gary@rochester.edu Phone: (585) 273-5173

Do you need resources to support technology development or commercialization? Would you like to learn more about applying for a share of the billions in funding set-aside for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants?

Register to attend the SBIR and Other Resources to Support University Technology Commercialization workshop from 3-6 p.m., Friday, October 8, at the Medical Center’s Class of ’62 Auditorium, G-9425.

The workshop will feature:

• An overview of SBIR and STTR programs, trends and funding opportunities.
• Insights on strategies for developing successful proposals from a panel of University researchers who have led and partnered on SBIR/STTR.
• Information about University resources that support technology commercialization.

Register by October 1 at  https://j.mp/3BAyMpL Contact Karen_Grabowski@urmc.rochester.edu with any questions.

At this time an in-person workshop is planned.  A final decision will be made by October 1 and registrants will be notified if the meeting is switched to a virtual format and a link will be provided.

The Office of Clinical Research (OCR) empowers clinical research teams to do more high-impact clinical trials by taking the administrative workload off study teams.

OCR can help teams by:

• creating a minimal protocol shell in OnCore and Calendar,
• creating budgets in OnCore,
• negotiating with study sponsors and
• working with Research Compliance to get study approval.

OCR also offers post award financial support by invoicing sponsors, tracing payments, following up on unpaid invoices and completing research billing review.

Some services have a fee for service. Email Embark@urmc.rochester.edu to learn more.

Learn more about the various member resources available through a free membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, an independent professional development, training, and mentoring center dedicated to supporting academics in making successful transitions throughout their careers.

The institutional membership provides all faculty, postdocs, and grad students with access to the center’s member resources.

Register to attend an information session taking place Thursday, September 30, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Genrich-Rusling Room, Le Chase Hall.

The University Libraries has upgraded and renamed its discovery layer, which now goes by DiscoverUR.

DiscoverUR is a simple, one-stop searching for articles, books, e-books, videos, digital media, and more.

DiscoverUR also helps you manage your research. Sign-in to your account for additional functionality including:

• Renewing books and videos
• Creating a favorites lists of books, articles, and more
• Saving your searches
• Exporting citations to Refworks, Endnote, and other citation managers
• View full search results (some databases only show results when you’re signed in)

What is a discovery layer? You will find the answer to this question and other “explainers,” such as how to access course reserves or how altmetrics work, through a new set of DiscoverUR tutorial videos. If you have questions or are experiencing issues, email DiscoveryFeedback@library.rochester.edu.