Welcome to the latest SAS in Focus, a newsletter that reports what’s happening in the School of Arts and Sciences.

 

Pablo Sierra Silva, an associate professor in the Department of History, has received the 2025  J. Franklin Jameson Award for editing historical sources.

Sierra Silva received the award for Mexico, Slavery, Freedom: A Bilingual Documentary History, 1520–1829 (Hackett, 2024). The Jameson Award was established in 1974 for outstanding achievement in the editing of historical sources.

Sierra Silva’s research is centered on the experiences of Africans and their descendants in colonial Mexico, the Caribbean and the Atlantic during the during the 16th through 18th centuries.

Learn more about Pablo Sierra Silva’s research.

 

Tali Ziv, assistant professor, Program in Public-Health-Related Majors, has received the Rudolf Virchow Award in the professional category from the Society for Medical Anthropology’s Critical Anthropology for Global Health Special Interest Group.

The award honors Ziv’s journal article “When You Leave Out the Door”: The Streets, Medicaid, and Boundary Spaces of Healthcare in Urban Poverty.”

Read more about Tali Ziv’s research.

 

Machiel Blok, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has received the Leonard Mandel Faculty Fellowship. The award recognizes exceptional achievement by a junior faculty member in coherence and quantum science.

Blok’s research explores quantum effects in electrical circuits that operate near absolute zero where electric current can flow without resistance. His lab specializes in beyond binary encodings of quantum information using qudits. These could serve as key components of future quantum simulators that use quantum computers to mimic nature itself, revealing behavior of molecules and materials that traditional computers can’t fully capture.

The Mandel faculty fellow award was established in 2014 by the Department of Physics and Astronomy in honor of the late Leonard Mandel, a long-time University of Rochester physicist and pioneer of quantum optics.

Read more about Machiel Blok’s research.

 

Hussein Aluie, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Mathematics and senior scientist at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, has been selected to become an American Physical Society Fellow for his outstanding contributions to physics.

Aluie was nominated “for developing a coarse-graining framework to analyze multiscale and inhomogeneous turbulent flows and generalizing this framework to the sphere to unravel coupled-scale processes within the ocean and Earth’s climate system, and for service to APS, particularly in bridging the Topical Group on the Physics of Climate and the Division of Fluid Dynamics.”

Learn more about Hussein Aluie’s research.

 

Heather Higginbottom ’94 (political science), has become a respected voice in how governments, nonprofits, and businesses can partner to strengthen communities and expand opportunity.

Higginbottom, who is head of research, policy, and insights for corporate responsibility at JPMorgan Chase, recently sat down with to talk with political science major and mock trial captain Katie Young ’26.

Watch the alumni connections video with Heather Higginbottom.

 

Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs recently launched the Ever Better Graduate Mentor program. The program recognizes those who have distinguished themselves in benefitting graduate students in their academic and professional development. Mentors can be anyone in the University community who have become mentors to graduate students, including advisors, PIs, faculty, staff, and even other graduate students.

Graduate students can nominate a mentor by providing a paragraph explaining how the mentor has been valuable to their academic or professional development. Selected nominees will be recognized in the GEPA Connection newsletter and contacted individually to be thanked for their mentorship. Nominate an awardee using the Google Docs form.

 

A tribute concert featuring iconic songs by Bob Dylan and Leonard is scheduled for 7 p.m. Oct. 30 at Strong Auditorium, 417 Alumni Road. Tickets are free, but registration is required.

Singer and pianist Kimberley Dunn and cellist Greg Weeks, along with a surprise artis, will perform songs including “The Times They Are A-Changin’, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Shelter from the Storm,” “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and “If It Be Your Will.”

An interview with Cantor Gideon Zelermyer, moderated by Mehmet Karabela, will follow the concert.  Zelermyer collaborated with Cohen “You Want it Darker,” Cohen’s final album prior to his death.

Learn more about the event and reserve your ticket.

 

Send your SAS in Focus news tips to Director of Marketing and Communications Sheila Rayam at sheila.rayam@rochester.edu. Let her know about unique research, awards, publications, community collaborations and other interesting news. Please put “SAS in Focus” in the subject heading.