Optica, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gruber Foundation, and other organizations and outlets are among those bestowing honors on Rochester faculty, particularly for their contributions to research and scholarship.

Recent award recipients include:

• Miguel Alonso, a professor of optics and a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, has been named the 2023 recipient of the G.G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
• Robert Boyd, a professor of optics and of physics, has received the 2023 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize, the highest award bestowed by Optica (formerly OSA).
• Also from Optica, William Renninger, an assistant professor of optics, has received the 2023 Adolph Lomb Medal from the organization.
• Andrew Cashner, an assistant professor of music, and Matthew Lenoe, an associate professor of history, each received a $60,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Marvin Doyley, the Wilson Professor of Electronic Imaging and chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Avice O’Connell, a professor of imaging sciences and the director of UR Medicine Breast Imaging, have been selected as fellows of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.
• Paul Dunman, a professor of microbiology and immunology and of ophthalmology, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
• Rose Kennedy, an assistant professor of chemistry, has won a Thieme Chemistry Journals Award.
• Lynne Maquat, the J. Lowell Orbison Distinguished Service Alumni Professor and the founding director of the Center for RNA Biology, has been awarded the 2023 Gruber Genetics Prize.
• Supriya Mohile, a professor of medicine, was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Given the importance of race, class, and immigration status in shaping American politics, two political scientists—Rochester’s Gerald Gamm and University of California San Diego’s Thad Kousser—wondered how demographic characteristics might affect state spending.

Gamm and Kousser took the long view, diving into historical archives and collecting data from six states for 1921, 1941, and 1961. They picked this time frame to incorporate the sweeping changes in American society and government brought first by the New Deal and then the Second World War.

The duo found “clear evidence of bias” and discovered that race, class, and immigration status played important roles in how and where state legislatures spent money. Examining historical budget and spending patterns from the state legislatures in California, Illinois, Montana, New York, Vermont, and Virginia—states selected to encompass the widest possible variety “in their region, party systems, size, level of urban development, and in their demography”—the authors found that certain demographic factors had a direct effect on how much a state spent on its constituents. Districts with more immigrants or larger numbers of nonwhite residents got significantly less money, while districts dominated by US-born, white Anglo constituents received more state dollars.

The findings appear in Legislative Studies Quarterly.

• Find out why Gamm and Kousser stopped their historical analysis in 1961.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

When older adults with cancer take multiple medications—including ordinary drugs like blood pressure pills, supplements, or antacids—it can result in more toxic chemotherapy side effects and even a need to stop cancer treatment, according to new research at the Wilmot Cancer Institute.

The latest study, published in the journal Cancer, provides a cautionary note to both patients and physicians regarding “polypharmacy,” a buzzword describing the concurrent use of multiple medications. It’s extremely common, applying to nearly 92 percent of older adults with cancer.

A key finding: Individuals who had one or more major potential drug interactions also had 59-percent-higher odds of having to stop cancer treatment earlier than recommended.

“It’s possible that polypharmacy affects both the experience and the effectiveness of chemotherapy,” says Erika Ramsdale, a Wilmot oncologist, geriatrics specialist, data scientist, and senior author of the paper.

• Learn more about the polypharmacy problem.

Founded in Santa Clara, California, in 1983, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) provided financing for nearly half of US venture-banked technology and health care companies. Its spectacular collapse on March 10 marks the second-largest bank failure in US history. The next day, Signature Bank followed suit in the third-largest bank failure in US history.

As startups scramble to recoup their deposits and policymakers leap into action to quell fears of financial contagion, others are working to piece together what happened.

Alan Moreira, an associate professor of finance at the Simon Business School, reflects on the bank’s failure—what we know, what we don’t know, and what happens next.

• Why Moreira thinks SVB was “a disaster waiting to happen.”

Komail Dharsee, computer science, 3 p.m. March 30, 2506 Wegmans Hall
Critical Hardware Towards Software Security Enforcement
Advisor: John Criswell

This virtual statewide event, hosted by the University of Rochester Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s UNYTE Translational Research Network, aims to accelerate collaboration and increase regional capacity for biomanufacturing and biotechnology through innovative translational research. The event takes place on Wednesday, April 12, from 9 a.m. to noon EDT. Those who work in cell and tissue advanced biomanufacturing, machine learning, chip manufacturing, scaling up and out, or standardization, regulation, and monitoring may be particularly interested in attending. Learn more and register by April 7.

Apply by April 3 for up to $20,000 to stimulate research partnerships between at least one faculty member at the University of Rochester and at least one faculty member at another UNYTE member institution. Proposed projects should focus on translational science and lead to further pilot funding applications. Learn more.

The Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center, is offering a one-week, residential, summer workshop program for undergraduates currently enrolled at US universities and colleges. The in-person program, the Discovery Science Center Summer School for Matter at Extreme Conditions in the Laboratory and the Cosmos, will be held June 26–30 (move-in: June 25; move-out: July 1) at the University. There is no fee to apply or attend. Roundtrip travel for non-local students, meals, and housing in an on-campus residence hall will be provided to accepted students. Apply online by April 8.

The Office for Human Subject Protection (OHSP) has developed new resources to help study teams navigate the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process:

• OHSP FAQ: When do I need to get IRB approval?
• OHSP FAQ: What do I need to include in my IRB submission? & IRB Submission Checklist
• OHSP Explains: The IRB Review Process

OHSP encourages you to provide these resources to new or inexperienced faculty and staff as part of their onboarding process or as they initiate new research projects. Other resources include:

• Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) Quick Reference Guide
• Getting Started with Your Research Flowchart