Edith Williams, who has been named the founding director for the Medical Center’s new Office of Health Equity Research, began her journey in the field while earning a doctorate in epidemiology and community health at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Having grown up in the comforts of suburban Henrietta, Williams was shocked by the inequities she noticed in Buffalo. Her master’s thesis highlighted the lack of access to fresh, healthy foods in communities with mostly Black residents and led to a grant to set up a community garden and to distribute food from the garden to local residents and food pantries.

For her doctoral research, Williams shifted her focus to lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that disproportionately impacts Black women. Her community-based participatory research in this area included lengthy interviews with patients that moved her to devote her research career to understanding this disease in hopes of improving patients’ lives.

She will take up her new role on September 1, and will also be appointed associate professor in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Medicine (Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology). The Office of Health Equity Research, which is housed in the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, is a crucial part of the Medical Center’s Equity and Anti-Racism Action Plan.

Learn more.

In the summer of 2021, University economist George Alessandria wanted to buy his 12-year-old son a bicycle. They went to a store—then another, and another, and another—only to find a limited inventory of bikes. Sure, they could order the bike they wanted, as long as they were willing to wait a year.

Alessandria’s experience is not unusual. Consumers in the United States and elsewhere have been having a difficult time buying lumber, potatoes, cream cheese, paper products, and cars, among many other items.

“It all started with COVID-19 and the shutting down of ports and factories, which slowed down the movement of goods around the world. And then it just became hard to partially reopen the economy, since public health issues remained in play. That’s why we saw periodic closures of facilities and ports around the world all through 2021,” explains Alessandria, a professor of economics.

“On top of that, the bounce-back in consumer demand has been stronger than what was anticipated. It’s like trying to push more and more stuff through a straw that shrank. It just doesn’t work well.”

And relief won’t come quickly, he says. Learn more in this Q&A with Peter Iglinski.

Researchers at the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences have developed a web-based system called BachDuet that allows users to improvise duets with an artificial intelligence (AI) counterpart in real time.

To play a duet with German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, you don’t have to travel back to the 18th century; thanks to a new program developed by University researchers, you only need a computer.

The web-based program, called BachDuet, was developed by Zhiyao Duan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of computer science, and members of his lab, including Yongi Zang ’23 and PhD student Christodoulos Benetatos. BachDuet allows a person to improvise duets in the style of Bach with an artificial intelligence (AI) counterpoint in real time. By visiting the BachDuet website, a user can play duets with the AI agent using a computer keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, or MIDI keyboard.

The AI agent will either follow the human musician, lead the improvisation, or “just goof around,” Duan says.

But the researchers foresee the program could have applications in music education, entertainment, and music therapy. For instance, says Duan, “most of the existing musical therapies are listening-based, but in recent years we have seen some playing-based music therapies that have been shown to help improve cognitive functions.”

BachDuet is part of Duan’s research project, funded by a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, to develop algorithms and systems that allow humans to work with machines to harmonize pitch, coordinate musical timing, and convey expression in music. Learn more.

Peter Regenstreif, who taught at the University for nearly half a century, was an expert on Canadian and comparative politics, mass media, and public opinion.

“With the media, there is no truth, there are just appearances,” University political scientist Peter Regenstreif told a group of Rochester alumni and friends in Boston in 1988.

In the talk—“A Short Course in the Black Arts of Manipulation,” a version of which appeared in the Rochester Review that same year—he shared the “bald statement” he made every semester to his students: “There is no fundamentally, nonideological, apolitical, nonpar­tisan, news-gathering and reporting system. Having taken this in, we are ready to understand the process.”

Regenstreif, who died in Los Angeles on May 19 at the age of 85, taught at the University for nearly half a century.

A scholar, editorial consultant for the Toronto Star, pollster, and consultant to the political campaigns of Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney in Canada and Jimmy Carter in the US, Regenstreif was an expert on Canadian and comparative politics, mass media, and public opinion.

Despite wearing many hats, Regenstreif told the student Campus Times newspaper that “above all, I’m most valuable as a professor . . . being a professor is a marvelous opportunity to be judged on our merits, rather than on illegitimate criteria. It’s a perfect job for a man who admits that he is very much of an intellectual.” Learn more.

Joseph Murphy, microbiology and immunology, 1 p.m. July 13, 2022, Ryan Case Method Room 1-9576 (Medical Center)
Analyzing the Multifaceted Roles of Tumor Associated Neutrophils in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Host: Scott Gerber

Tyler Couch, pharmacology, 12:30 p.m. July 14, 2022, Ryan Case Method Room 1-9576 (Medical Center)
Topography and Motion of the Acid-sensing Ion Channel 1 Intracellular Domains
Host: David M. MacLean

The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) will host workshop training sessions on a variety of programming languages, data analysis tools, and software for research during a five-week period starting on July 19. Known as the CIRC Summer School, these workshops will feature 8 different languages and software tools.

Faculty, students, and staff may register for any one or multiple topics prior to the start of the training sessions.

Topics will include basic training in Linux, programming languages, data analysis, visualization, and software tools for research. The sessions are designed for beginners, and emphasis will be placed on using these languages, libraries, applications, etc. on BlueHive. The classes will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings and afternoons over Zoom. Please see the table on the registration page for the topics, dates, and times and to register for the sessions.

Register here. Please note that the registration site is only accessible from a UR/URMC trusted network or VPN if connecting from an off-campus location.

Registration for an optional Connectivity Clinic on Thursday, July 14 is also available if you have never connected to BlueHive before. Details are provided on the registration page.
 
Questions? Contact circ@rochester.edu.

Register now for a free course, sponsored by the UR CTSI and Center for Community Health & Prevention, to learn about community-based participatory research (CBPR), a collaborative approach to research that involves community members in all phases of the research process. Through the program, University researchers (faculty, trainees and students) and community members will form collaborative teams to develop and submit proposals for the UR CTSI’s CBPR Pipeline to Pilot Awards. 

Classes run from September 2022 through mid-March 2023. Register by Wednesday, August 17. Learn more.

The University has licensed InfoEd’s funding opportunity database, SPIN, to provide investigators with the ability to locate funding. SPIN includes thousands of opportunities from approximately 10,000 sponsors, including non-traditional ones. This database is available for all university faculty and staff. Learn more.