
Setback helped sharpen student’s focus on what matters most
Juliana Conley ’21 is using her experiences from a series of life detours to guide her academic goal: modeling wildfires and other environmental phenomena associated with climate change, via an interdisciplinary degree in geomechanics.

Supercomputer aids Rochester’s quest for inertial confinement fusion
Hussein Aluie, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded an additional 90 million hours of computer time in 2018 by the US Department of Energy to produce detailed simulations of fluid instabilities that hinder fusion “ignition.”

Rochester leads new multi-institutional effort to study ‘extreme matter’
Institutions including Cornell, Michigan, Princeton, and Stanford will join Rochester in developing an instrument to produce and study matter that exists under pressures far higher than either on or inside Earth.

An appreciation: David Quesnel, 1952–2017
The professor of mechanical engineering was remembered by friends, family members, and colleagues at a recent memorial service in Rush Rhees Library for his “unbounded curiosity.”

Adam Sefkow recognized for research in fusion, high-energy density physics
Sefkow, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and senior scientist at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, has received a prestigious Early Career Research Program award from the US Department of Energy and the Fusion Power Associates 2017 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award.

Down to the wire for Team Meliora in $1M competition
The four 2017 graduates on Team Meliora are days away from learning if their project to build refugee housing from recycled plastic bricks will go from wildcard winner to finalist in the Hult Prize.

Student follows liquid metal flow to build a better battery
Meghan Patrick ’18 has spent her summer studying the use of liquid metal batteries on a scale large enough to power entire cities in conjunction with solar and wind power. Patrick is helping the lab figure out where to place ultrasound probes that can capture detailed measurements of how fluids flow in those batteries and how that affects their performance.

‘Be mindful of the purpose of our work’
When we look up at a Dutch vault, stretching our tape measures and talking about the construction, we are standing inside a dungeon. This silent, moldy room once held hundreds of lives stripped of dignity, respect, and humanity. Do we add anything to this gruesome narrative by studying the construction methods of a human trafficking enterprise that sought a 12 percent profit margin? Or are we missing the point? … We are not missing the point. He is blessing our attempts to understand, and to safeguard a structure that without continued interest and stewardship, dies, and no longer tells its somber and important story.

Turning everyday objects into digital data
Mechanical engineering student Alan Xu ’18 is introduced to the power of photogrammetry — along with the power of nature — during his summer research trip to Ghana.

Engineering skills meet ‘real world’ challenges
From drones that see color to devices that help veterinarians extract the objects our pets swallow, this year’s Design Day showcases 87 seniors projects from students in five engineering departments and computer science.