Sammy Potter ’25 didn’t think he would get a chance to work in a research lab for at least a couple of years. Then, during his first year at the University, he met Masum Hasan through the Google Developer Student Club.

Hasan, a PhD student in the Rochester Human-Computer Interaction lab, was looking for someone with experience in 3D technology, something Potter had. “I jumped at the opportunity,” Potter says.

Since then, “I’ve had a great experience as an undergraduate hire,” he adds. “ROC HCI is a very friendly community, and I feel respected and that I have an equal voice.” The lab also helped him see new possibilities, giving him exposure to “a new field that I might not have considered otherwise.”

The lab is co-led by computer science faculty members Ehsan Hoque and Zhen Bai.

Both place a high priority on bringing a diverse representation of undergraduates into the lab. There are multiple reasons for doing so, they say.

• The continuing under-representation of women and minorities in computer science hurts the field. “Imagine a lab dominated by one particular group of individuals, and not recognizing the problems that females or minorities might associate with a technology that we are developing,” Hoque says. “Or not having someone with a disability coming in and helping us understand how a technology may create more problems for them.”
• The interdisciplinary nature of the research makes it “really important for us to bring in students from a lot of backgrounds, such as psychology, brain and cognitive sciences, digital media studies, and economics,” Bai says.
• Engaging undergraduates in research helps build a pipeline to address the shortage of US students applying for PhD programs in the field.

Learn more from current and former students about what they’ve learned in the lab and how they’ve applied those lessons in the workplace.

Human cochlear hair cells—the primary cells to detect sound waves—cannot regenerate if damaged or lost. People who have repeated exposure to loud noises, like military personnel, construction workers, and musicians, are most at risk for this type of hearing loss.

On the other hand, birds and fish can regenerate these hair cells, and now researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience are getting closer to identifying the mechanisms that may promote this type of regeneration in mammals, as explained in research recently published in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

“We know from our previous work that expression of an active growth gene, called ERBB2, was able to activate the growth of new hair cells (in mammals), but we didn’t fully understand why,” says Patricia White, professor of neuroscience and otolaryngology.

A 2018 study led by Jingyuan Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in the White Lab at the time, found that activating the growth gene ERBB2 pathway triggered a cascading series of cellular events by which cochlear support cells began to multiply and activate other neighboring stem cells to become new sensory hair cells. Learn more.

A team of electrical and computer engineering faculty members led by Michael Huang believe their invention—a simple computing device like no other—can help solve military logistic optimization problems in complex battles in the future. (Getty image)

“Why the Russian Military Is Bogged Down by Logistics.” “Allies Fail to Agree on Sending Tanks to Ukraine.”

These recent headlines underscore the importance of logistics in warfare. Which weapons and supplies are needed? In what quantity? And equally importantly, what is the most economical way to get these supplies to the right places, and at the right times, to soldiers in front lines spread over hundreds, even thousands of miles?

A team of Hajim School electrical and computer engineering faculty members, led by Michael Huang, believe their invention—a simple computing device like no other—can help solve military logistic optimization problems in complex battles in the future.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded the researchers, who also include Gonzalo Mateos, Zeljko Ignjatovic, Qiang Lin, Selcuk Kose, and Hui Wu, a Quantum-Inspired Classical Computing grant that could total $6.1 million over five years to develop two novel Ising machines.

But what is an Ising Machine? And what makes it so much more efficient at solving these kinds of problems than conventional or even quantum computers? Learn more.

Garrick Salois, neuroscience, 2 p.m. March 29, 2023, 1-7619 Adolph Lower Auditorium/Medical Center
Iron deficiency alters inhibitory neuron precursor population dynamics in human ventral forebrain organoids
Advisor: Margot Mayer-Proschel

The Center for Children’s Health Research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Department of Pediatrics introduces a new monthly seminar series covering all aspects of research related to children’s health. The series is directed to researchers of the entire University community with the intent of bringing together researchers that would not otherwise interact, promote collaboration, and uncover previously hidden synergies. Laurie Steiner, an associate professor of pediatrics, will give the inaugural presentation, “Developmental Origins of Leukemia in Infants with Trisomy 21” at noon on Friday, March 10, in room 2-6424, Medical Center.

The University community is invited to attend the keynote address, which will be held virtually, for the Office of Health Equity Research Strategic Planning Retreat on April 10, 9–10 a.m.

Keynote speaker David Williams, the Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an internationally recognized authority on social influences on health who created the Everyday Discrimination Scale, the original and still-recommended scale for measuring perceived racism. Register online.

The Summer School in Computational Social Sciences at the University, taking place May 8–19, is accepting applications until March 17. The program gives students the opportunity to build a computational social sciences project with a team of researchers and is open to seniors planning to do a PhD, master’s students, PhD students, and junior faculty within 7 years of their PhD. Tuition is free and the program will cover the cost of lunch, coffee, and snacks. For more information on the program and how to apply, visit the program website or email Cantay Caliskan.

If you’ve been thinking about retiring your lab notebook, there’s no better time than now.

The University Libraries announces that Rochester faculty and researchers now have access to LabArchives, a free, digital notebook that can help you organize and manage your research safely and quickly.

Using LabArchives, you can:

• Back up your work with cloud-based storage
• Upload a variety of files
• Share your notebooks with collaborators
• Assign DOIs to your research outputs

All you need is your Rochester credentials. For more information and help getting started, visit the libraries’ LabArchives page.