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2025–2026 Edition

A student wears a VR headset and holds a controller while another gestures nearby, with a robotic arm and colorful lab space behind them.

George Kassis, an MD-PhD student in biomedical engineering, shows how an AI-powered robotic arm, which he designed to perform ultrasound in rural areas, can be controlled remotely using VR. (University of Rochester photo / J. Adam Fenster)

Message from the Dean

While 2025 was a tumultuous year for education and research in the United States, the University of Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences has kept its eyes steadily fixed on the future, building strategically for an ever better world.

Headshot of Wendi Heinzelman
Wendi HeinzelmanDean of the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
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Hajim Highlights

Assistant Professor Marisol Herrera-Perez and biomedical engineering PhD student Maria Camila Ferrucho using a fluorescent microscope to activate an optigenetic tool to observe how manipulating proteins affects the condensation of the ventral nerve cord of flies.

Biomedical Engineering

Assistant Professor Marisol Herrera-Perez received a $2 million NIH MIRA grant to investigate the mechanical signals that guide how a single cell becomes a complex organism.

Assistant Professor Siddharth Desphande (R) and 3rd year PhD student Snehitha Srirangam are photographed at the VISTA Collaboratory with models depicting what happens on an atomic level when catalysts are used to turn shale gas into polypropylene.

Chemical and Sustainability Engineering

Assistant Professor Siddharth Deshpande and PhD student Snehitha Srirangam developed algorithms that show the key atomic features driving the complex chemistry when nanoscale catalysts turn propane into propylene.

GIF of two vases filled with dandelions blossoming to illustrate text-to-video artificial intelligence advancements.

Computer Science

Jiebo Luo, a professor of computer science and the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering, developed text-to-video artificial intelligence models to simulate metamorphosis more accurately.

Two people in green wheat field with a drone flying nearby overhead.

Data Science and Artificial Intelligence

Through a new grant worth up to $7.2 million from DARPA, researchers will develop biologically inspired predictive coding networks for digital image recognition built on analog circuits.

Chip-scale laser device (with penny for scale) made of thin film lithium niobate

Electrical and Computer Engineering

A new chip-scale laser developed by Professor Qiang Lin can conduct extremely fast and accurate measurements by very precisely changing its color across a broad spectrum of light at very fast rates.

Ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007

Mechanical Engineering

Research by Professor Hussein Aluie used satellite imagery and high-resolution climate model data to upend previous assumptions about how surface winds and ocean weather patterns interact.

Close-up of the technology that makes the Rochester Quantum Network possible.

Optics

URochester and RIT connected our campuses with an experimental quantum communications network, using single photons to transmit information 11 miles along fiber-optic lines at room temperature using optical wavelengths.