May 5, 2020
Outstanding students like Daniel Savage — and a virtual event highlighting senior design projects — give us cause to celebrate even in the most trying of times.
Dear members of the Hajim School community,
As announced last week, the University will enact a temporary furlough program, starting as early as May 10, to address the financial challenges our institution faces as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The goal is to reduce by 20 percent the University’s overall salary costs through August 31. I want to assure our staff that every effort will be made to notify you of your furlough status and information on how to pursue unemployment benefits as quickly as possible.
I know this compounds the anxiety and stress we’ve all been subjected to in recent weeks, but it is unfortunately a necessary step to help ensure the University can recover from the effects of the pandemic. Please know how much we all value our dedicated staff. And let us continue, as best we can, to celebrate all that we stand for as the academic year comes to a close.
For example, please join me in saluting our seniors by participating in a virtual event showcasing their capstone projects. Visit the website to view 82 senior design projects spanning all of our departments and programs. They encompass an amazing array of innovative ideas, including:
- a face mask that offers superior function in a fraction of the manufacturing time when compared to many emerging 3D printed mask designs to protect against COVID-19.
- a temporary sternal spacer to enable safe transport and turning of patients whose chests must remain open following cardiac surgery.
- biochar bricks, made from organic and plastic waste materials, to be used as building materials in third world countries to reduce global CO2 emissions and create more jobs in these countries.
- an AI chessboard for people “who would like to take their chess skills to another level and a “life-size” chessboard to promote the Russell Hope Robins Library.
And even nine-foot long interactive mechanical models of extinct sea scorpions that could be hung in the atrium of Hutchison Hall!
The site will remain open for comments and interaction until May 11. This is a tribute to the resiliency of students and faculty alike. They not only had to pivot to remote learning in the midst of these projects, but find ways to cleanly wrap them up, in many cases without an opportunity to finish a prototype.
This is a scenario that often occurs in the “real world,” even in the best of times. So I believe our students will be all the stronger and more resilient in their careers for having gone through this experience.
Special thanks to Paul Funkenbusch, associate dean of the Hajim School, and all of our senior design instructors who worked very hard to enable students to finish their projects — and to organize this virtual celebration of our students’ achievements. Thanks as well to Emily Sherwood, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab, who created the platform for this event, and members of the AS&E Web Help Team, who provided additional support.
This is also an opportunity to recognize this year’s recipient of the Dottie Welch Award, given annually to a Hajim School staff member “whose performance and dedication enriches the student experience” in the tradition exemplified by the former undergraduate coordinator in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dustin Newman, undergraduate program manager at the Institute of Optics, has “literally been like a parent to all of us in Optics,” one student wrote, and “works hard to be there for each and every one of us,” wrote another. In addition to advising undergraduates, Dustin, who joined the Institute in February 2018, has also been instrumental in organizing outreach to local high school students through the Institute’s Summer Photon Camp and collaborations with Monroe Community College. Well done, Dustin!
Up next: A virtual degree conferring celebration for the University, our school, and individual departments on May 15. Details to come.
This month’s outstanding student has achieved a remarkable milestone. Daniel Savage is the first student at the University — and most likely anywhere — to earn both a medical degree and a PhD in optics. The 10-year commitment will position him perfectly to pursue his dream of eventually joining the University as an ophthalmology clinician and researcher, Daniel says. His goal is to find better ways to improve vision, especially for people in developing countries. Daniel has impressed his mentors and fellow students with his “easy, warm nature, his humility, his ceaseless quest for self-improvement and his generosity towards his peers,” says Krystel Huxlin, the James V. Aquavella, MD, Professor of Ophthalmology, who served as one of Daniel’s PhD advisors. “This rare combination of attributes will make him a natural leader in his field.” Wayne Knox, professor of optics and also Daniel’s PhD advisor, concurs. “Dan has blazed a remarkable trail,” he says. Read more here.
Despite the pandemic, Hajim School and Laboratory for Laser Energetics researchers continue to contribute and be recognized.
For example, Suxing Hu, group leader of the High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) Theory Group at LLE, and coauthors Philip Nilson, a senior scientist, and scientist Valentin Karasev, are breaking new ground that could shed light on how stars and other astrophysical objects evolve. They have applied theory and calculations in collaboration with French scientists to predict the presence of two new phenomena—interspecies radiative transition and the breakdown of dipole selection rule—in the transport of radiation in atoms and molecules under HED conditions.
The work being done on terahertz (THz) wave generation from liquid water by the research group of Xi-Cheng Zhang, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics, is highlighted by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Xi-Cheng’s group has found that THz wave generation from ionized liquids involves photoionization processes that differ significantly from those of air or other gases. They discuss these differences in detail in a recent article published in Advanced Photonics.
Congratulations to:
- Ethan Fahnestock ’21, a dual major in interdepartmental (robotics) engineering and physics and astronomy, who has received a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. The scholarship, named after the former senator and presidential candidate, was authorized by Congress in 1986 to develop a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding merit-based scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who plan to pursue graduate degrees and research-oriented careers in those fields.
- Marc Haddad ’21, a mechanical engineering major from Beirut, Lebanon, who will serve as Student Association vice president for the 2020-21 academic year. Marc and incoming president Justyna Gorka ’21, a political science and philosophy double major from Chicago, recently were elected by fellow students in online voting.
- Edward Ashton ’93(M) ’95(PhD), an electrical engineering alumnus, now vice president for oncology imaging at BioTelemetry Research, who writes science fiction in his spare time. Warner Brothers has acquired the rights to Edward’s Mickey7, a novel that will be published next year.
The Field Guide to Lens Design (SPIE 2012), which Julie Bentley, associate professor of optics, co-authored with optics alumnus Craig Olson ’95(M) ’99(PhD), a senior principal engineer at L3 Harris, has now been downloaded nearly 41,000 times. Very impressive!
Donna Byron ‘98M ‘02PhD, a computer science alumna who was mentored by James Allen, is now working as a senior software engineer at IBM, which she says has been “quickly standing up all sorts of solutions to help citizens, the government and health workers, and companies deal with the changes brought about by the pandemic.” Her team, for example, developed a data dashboard visualizing local data for each county in the US and an accompanying question and answer conversation agent in just a few days. “It was so gratifying to put the skills I learned in James Allen’s conversational agents lab to use in this effort,” she says.
After graduating, Donna was an assistant professor at Ohio State University for 6 years, co-directing the Speech and Language Technologies Lab. She then spent more than 2 years as a senior research scientist at Northeastern University before joining IBM. She is a co-inventor on more than 100 issued US patents in the areas of natural language interaction, IoT, and cognitive systems architecture. Thanks Donna, for keeping us posted. I encourage more of our alumni to do likewise (see note at bottom).
Students and faculty colleagues are paying tribute to Randal Nelson, the associate professor of computer science who passed away unexpectedly last month. A memorial mass will be held at St. Anne Church at a later date. The family requests that remembrances in Randal’s name be made to the Highland Park Conservancy.
Keep safe,
Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman
Hajim School students, staff, faculty, friends, and alumni are encouraged to share their stories about learning, working, and teaching remotely — for example the obstacles you’ve overcome and what you’ve learned and achieved — or other ways you’re coping with the pandemic. Email bmarcotte@ur.rochester.edu
