An interdisciplinary hub at the University of Rochester has been renamed to reflect its deep expertise encompassing two rapidly growing fields of research. The new moniker for the Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (GIDS-AI)—previously the Goergen Institute for Data Science—is intended to communicate the University’s leadership in both AI and data science.

“AI has historically been a subdiscipline of computer science, but has been playing a central role in broader, interdisciplinary initiatives in data science, which emerged as a new discipline over the past decade,” says Mujdat Cetin, the Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. “GIDS-AI serves as an important facilitator that creates opportunities for Rochester faculty and students to engage in collaborative work where the disciplines overlap.”

The University has been a leader in AI research and education for more than 50 years, dating back to the founding of the Department of Computer Science in 1974. Since then, Rochester’s computer science faculty have made major contributions to the field of AI, including with seminal texts in computer vision and natural language processing. Cetin says GIDS-AI’s close relationship with the department is critical to staying on the cutting edge of AI research.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, GIDS-AI has grown to include more than 100 affiliated faculty across the University. The institute currently offers a bachelor of arts (BA), bachelor of science (BS), master of science (MS), and advanced certificate in data science. This fall, the Institute will launch a new online professional master’s program in healthcare AI and data science in partnership with the UR Health Lab.

Cetin says the institute is planning to offer other learning opportunities in data science and AI in partnership with other units. As an example, this fall, the Department of Computer Science and GIDS-AI plan to pilot an “AI for All” class to empower students not only to use AI in ways beneficial to their education and beyond, but also to help them navigate doing so in a safe and ethical fashion. The course, which would not have prerequisites or require previous experience with AI, would also provide intuitive perspectives on how AI works and show students how they can stay up to date with rapidly developing advances throughout their careers.

Cetin, who has served as director since 2020, was reappointed to lead GIDS-AI for another five-year term.

In addition to its academic offerings, GIDS-AI houses the Center of Excellence in Data Science (CoE). Funded by Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology, and Innovation (NYSTAR), the CoE aims to help drive regional economic development through supporting basic research, training, and technology development in data science and AI.

Elaine Sia has been appointed the inaugural senior vice provost for academic excellence at the University of Rochester, effective January 1. In this new role, Sia will be responsible for advancing the University’s academic mission by working closely with faculty, deans, and other senior leadership to strengthen the quality and impact of the University’s academic programs, research, and student success initiatives.

Sia is a professor in the Department of Biology and currently serves as the associate dean of academic affairs for the School of Arts & Sciences and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. She is known for her contributions to genetics education and research on mitochondrial DNA and comes to this role with a distinguished career in academic leadership and higher education administration. She brings a wealth of experience in fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, supporting faculty development, and leading initiatives that enhance the academic environment.

As senior vice provost, Sia will play a pivotal role in the continued growth and success of the University’s academic offerings, furthering our commitment to excellence and innovation.

“I am thrilled to welcome Elaine Sia to our leadership team as senior vice provost for academic excellence,” says Interim Provost Nicole Sampson. “Her vision, academic acumen, and deep commitment to faculty and student success make her the ideal person to lead this critical area of our institution. Elaine’s leadership will be instrumental in furthering the University’s academic goals, advancing excellence across disciplines, and creating a more inclusive and dynamic academic community.”

Since joining the University in 2000, Sia has been a pivotal figure in the academic community. She has taught nearly 4,000 undergraduates with a philosophy that emphasizes understanding the experimental basis of scientific knowledge, encouraging students to explore not just what we know but also how we know it. In 2021, Sia received the Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. She has served on numerous school and University-level committees and is currently a member of the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) Abroad Curriculum Committee and the IES Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Steering Committee.

Throughout her career, Sia has been recognized for her dedication to teaching and mentorship. She has been described as approachable, supportive, and committed to student success, often making herself available for discussions outside of class. Her efforts to enhance laboratory components of introductory courses have provided students with essential hands-on experience, bridging theoretical knowledge with practical application. “I am honored to accept this position and to work alongside such a talented and dedicated community of scholars, faculty, and students,” says Sia. “I look forward to collaborating with colleagues across the University to build on its strong academic foundation and help shape its future trajectory. Together, we will continue to drive innovation in teaching, research, and the overall student experience—and foster an environment where every member of the university can thrive.”

Sia earned a bachelor of science in biological sciences from Michigan State University and completed a PhD in microbiology at Columbia University in 1994. Following her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research in the biology department at Columbia University and at the University of North Carolina. Sia’s research has focused on the replication, repair, and maintenance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Her work has provided insights into the unique requirements of this subcellular genome, utilizing genetic and molecular techniques to identify proteins involved in mtDNA stability.

Keep your fingers crossed: Two books, edited and published by Open Letter, the nonprofit, literary translation press at the University of Rochester, have made it onto the longlist for the 2024 Barrios Book in Translation Prize. The honor is awarded annually by the National Book Critics Circle.

Melvill (Open Letter, October 2024) by Rodrigo Fresán, a work of fiction translated from Spanish by Will Vanderhyden ’13 (MA), and the nonfiction book Muzzle for Witches (Open Letter, September 2024) by the late Dubravka Ugresic, translated from Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, both made in onto the so-called longlist, which comprises a select group of only 12 books. The winner will be announced around March 21 of next year.

Chad Post, who heads up Open Letter, is pleased about snagging two nominations this year—understandably so: The University’s translation press, while small, boasts a surprisingly large number of winning books and authors, among them Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse (2023) and National Book Award–winning translator Elisa Shua Dusapin (2021).

A Rochester home for (most of) Ugresic’s translated oeuvre

“I published Dubravka first in 2003 with Thank You for Not Reading at Dalkey,” says Post, who also manages the editorial activities at Dalkey Archive Press. Over the course of the next twenty years, the two—author and publisher—became good friends. Incidentally, her book Nobody’s Home was the first book Open Letter ever published.

Subsequently, Open Letter became the home for all of Ugresic’s works—past and future, except for three that are still under copyright with other presses. All told, Ugresic has penned more than a dozen books, including Karaoke Culture (Open Letter, 2011), which was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Politics, of course, has a way of seeping into the lives of authors and their literature. In 1991, when war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, Ugresic took a firm anti-nationalistic stand for which she was vilified in the Croation press, proclaimed a “traitor,” a “public enemy,” and a “witch.” As a result, she left Croatia in 1993 for the Netherlands, where she died in 2023, but not without using the experience for her latest book, published in translation posthumously.

The careful reader may have noticed that the National Book Critics Circle’s nomination announcement had two accents on Ugresic’s name, spelling it Ugrešić. Yet all her Open Letter covers omit the accents.

“As Dubravka said many times, ‘I don’t care how my name is pronounced and I don’t want all those little guys scaring off readers,’” Post recalls the author’s relaxed attitude vis-à-vis her name.

Rochester-trained alumnus nabs translation nomination

The second nominated work, Melvill, has not one but two Rochester connections: Open Letter is its publisher and Vanderhyden, the translator, is an alumnus of the University’s master of arts in literary translation program.

It’s precisely the work of literary translators that render international literature accessible to a wider audience. When selecting a foreign author to be published in translation, several factors come into play, according to Post. Just as important as the literary quality of the work itself is the translator attached to a particular book or author.

Post’s work almost always has a personal dimension. He taught (budding translator) Vanderhyden in two of his classes at Rochester—Introduction to Literary Publishing and Translation and World Literature. And while Post had met Fresán years ago, it was only when Vanderhyden promoted the author in one of his classes that Post started paying closer attention.

Vanderhyde’s interest in Fresán was serendipitous at first. Back in 2010, his brother had given him a copy of Kensington Gardens, Fresán’s only novel in English up until that point. Vanderhyden loved the book and felt a strong affinity for its references and style—a kind of synthesis of his own reading interests. The timing proved fortuitous, coinciding with his growing interest in translation.

“When I learned that none of his other books had been translated into English, I decided to take a stab at translating him myself,” says Vanderhyden. A couple of years later, after earning his master’s in literary translation studies at Rochester, he pitched his translation of The Bottom of the Sky to Post, which would become the 100th title translated by Open Letter.

Today the three of them are friends and Open Letter publishes now all of Fresán’s translated works—six to date.

In fact, Vanderhyden and Fresán have worked together on every one of his translated books. “We’re all a team,” says Post emphatically. “I would never ask anyone else to translate Fresán, and Rodrigo wouldn’t have it any other way.”

In Melvill (the author added the “e” later), Fresán writes about American novelist Herman Melville (1819–1891), best known for his 1851 epic novel Moby-Dick. Fresán’s approach is a work of fiction—an invented biography, a gothic novel of sorts, populated by ghosts. Open Letter bills it as “an evocation of a filial love,” containing “all the talent, humor, and immense culture found in the other great works from one of Spanish literature’s most ambitious writers.”

Open Letter’s podcast Two Month Review featured Vanderhyden chatting about translating Fresán’s style. More episodes about the book can be found online at Three Percent, a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester.

“Sussing out and recreating the underlying patterns” that make a writer’s style come alive in English are probably the biggest general challenges for a translator, according to Vanderhyden.

When it comes to Fresán, Vanderhyden is “pretty familiar with his style” and has a level of comfort and confidence with translating it. “But tracking down his incessant literary and pop culture references and recreating his ludic sensibility—his sense of humor, his tireless wordplay—in English are and will always be particularly challenging aspects of translating his work,” Vanderhyden says.

A challenge Venderhyden readily accepts—and that the National Book Critics Circle clearly noticed. We’ll know more come March. Until then, fingers crossed, tightly please.

University photographer J. Adam Fenster shares his favorite images that he made this year. Plus, a look back at 2024 in video.

For J. Adam Fenster, the key to making compelling photos is checking around the edges or fringes of an assignment, finding where the action isn’t necessarily supposed to be taking place. And he would know—Fenster has been the University of Rochester’s lead photographer for more than 15 years, capturing moments ranging from the intricate to the iconic.

As 2024 comes to a close, we talked with Fenster about his favorite images of the year—taking a look at what happened over, around, and through the University and beyond.

Enter stage left

McKenna Young ’26, Grace Van Der Meer ’25, and Nora Rooney ’25 of UR Celtic prepare for their performance at a welcome concert for attendees of the 2024 American College Dance Association Northeast Conference, hosted by the Program of Dance and Movement, in Feldman Ballroom.

“I was a photojournalist for years,” says Fenster, “and the general wisdom was to arrive early and stay late. And sometimes the photo isn’t always in the most obvious spot. This was the warm-up area, away from where the performances were happening. As soon as I walked in, I saw this composition. There’s great symmetry and natural light, and I like how they’re connected to one another by their hands. And three is always a cool number to have in an image. I think this photo is more interesting than any of the action photos I made that day.”

Waiting to exhale

Each year on Match Day, thousands of medical students across the country find out where they’ll be spending the next four years for their residency. Here, students at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, await the countdown to the reveal at noon.

Fenster says you’ll often hear photographers talk about layers. “This is layered front-to-back and side-to-side. I think I put the camera over my head to get this photo, and that angle allows the viewer to see more of those layers. I had never made an interesting photo of the ‘before’ of Match Day, as it’s usually about the joy and excitement that comes a few moments after this photo. So it was nice to capture the anticipation for a change.”

Another dimension, another dimension

A student tests out a virtual reality (VR) headset in Mary Ann Mavrinac Studio X, located within Carlson Library.

“I spent the morning at Studio X and I made hundreds of photos that day,” recalls Fenster. “This was a staged shoot; they kept bringing in students to populate the space. This photo is total eye candy. It’s colorful, it’s punchy, and you’ve got the thirds thing going on, compositionally, with the vertical color blocks in the window.”

Sky’s the limit

In April, Rochester was in the path of totality for an all-too-rare total solar eclipse. Despite the overcast sky, the day yielded memorable images, with a University community ready to celebrate.

In Fenster’s words, he couldn’t have gotten this photo without a lot of help. “There was so much build-up to the eclipse—so many expectations. I had five cameras working that day. And then the clouds rolled in.”

What might be mistaken as a drone shot was actually taken from the roof of the University’s Brooks Crossing Apartments. “I kept thinking ‘I’m not going to get a good photo today.’ At the last minute, I called the Department of Public Safety and asked to get up to the roof at Brooks Crossing. There, I set up a tripod and programmed the camera’s intervalometer (a feature used for remote shutter release) to make a series of images every few seconds for the duration of the eclipse while I was back on campus capturing the scene on the quad.”

In concert

An Eastman School of Music ensemble performs for inmates in the rehabilitation unit at the Monroe County Jail. This is believed to be the first time live music has been performed within the jail walls—and it’s also the first time the Eastman School has brought musicians there.

“This was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had working on an assignment for this institution,” says Fenster. “The juxtaposition between the musicians, the inmates, and the guards was striking for me, and there was something incongruous about hearing such beautiful music in such an unlikely place.

“For photographers, access is everything, and sometimes you need to ask for a little more than what event organizers are initially willing to provide. Before the concert, I asked the head guard if I could climb a staircase to get this elevated angle, which makes the image possible from a compositional standpoint and shows the important context.”

Lighter than air

As part of Senior Week, members of the Class of 2024 enjoy a picnic on Wilson Quad.

“Any time you have backlit bubbles, it’s worth going after,” says Fenster. “It’s got a nice springtime feel to it.”

Point of pride

Xavier Green gets a hug from his father, Bobby, during Rochester’s 174th Commencement ceremony in May. The event marks the conferral of academic degrees for all undergraduate and graduate students.

For Fenster, “This is the essence of Commencement. As photographers, we’re always looking for emotion. Hundreds of these moments happen throughout the day, but they’re so brief you’re not always able to catch them. This was during the processional before anything was happening on the stage. It’s another example of finding the fringes of the action. I also had enough time to run and get their names.”

Taking flight

Myzomela cardinalis, known locally as kikito, is pictured in flight near Kirakira, the provincial capital of the Makira-Ulawa Province in the Solomon Islands. Rochester Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology J. Albert Uy explores the ecology and genomics of hybridization in this species, using a combination of genetic and genomic approaches with field observations and experiments.

“How much time have you got?” laughed Fenster, when asked how he made this photo, taken during a research trip to the Solomon Islands in June. “I asked myself, ‘What’s the photo here? It’s got to be a bird in flight.’”

Things you should know: It took Fenster two days to travel from Rochester to the Solomon Islands, five flights each way, and several vaccinations. He photographed the birds—which are very small, about the size of hummingbirds—for only about two out of seven days of active photography. His flight home was delayed, allowing him a few extra hours on the day of his departure to go out one final time with Uy, who set up a decoy and a speaker playing myzomela calls, to make this shot, which landed on the cover of the fall 2024 issue of Rochester Review, distributed to approximately 150,000 alumni, friends, and supporters of the institution globally.

“I think it works to tell a story. I made over ten thousand photos during this trip. If I had to pick one, this is probably it. It was an incredible opportunity, an incredible trip. It’s great that the Office of Marketing and Communications sees the value in making these kinds of images, in documenting the research being done by Rochester researchers around the world.”

Letter best

The CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival, of which the University is a sponsor, celebrated its 21st season in June. The event featured numerous musicians from the Eastman School of Music community—current students, faculty, staff, and alumni—as well as students and faculty from the Eastman Community Music School, and concert spaces at the Eastman.

“This was late in the day and I was waiting for something to happen,” shares Fenster, who had made numerous photos already of performers onstage. “The light became more horizontal, and the colors were getting more and more saturated. And then I noticed this little girl playing among the giant letters just off Gibbs Street, near Eastman. It was along the edges of the event, among crowds of people.”

All that and a bag of (sensor) chips

Led by Benjamin Miller, a Dean’s Professor of Dermatology with joint appointments in biomedical engineering, biochemistry and biophysics, optics, and materials science, Rochester researchers are developing microchips with brain and lung tissue to study viral neuroinflammation.

The takeaway here, according to Fenster, is, “Experiment if you have time.” He says, “I was working on finding a groove using different camera angles and different light angles. This is the only photo in the gallery that I lit myself. The wafers are semi-opaque and have a weird iridescence that only occurs when lit from a particular angle.”

Blue-light special 

First-year graduate student Alina Neveroska uses blue light and a special dye to check for corneal abnormalities in the eyes of post-doctoral student and test subject Krish Prahalad after an experiment session in the lab of Michele Rucci, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences.

“The research itself involves contact lenses in someone’s eye, which are attached to a tiny copper cable,” says Fenster. “This was actually at the end of the shoot, and this photo has nothing to do with the experiment they were conducting. They’re checking to make sure those crazy contact lenses didn’t scuff up his cornea. So, I’m wrapping up, putting gear away, and I saw that. It’s not why I was there, but to me, it was cooler than anything else I photographed while I was in the lab.”

A fresh coat

The School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Class of 2028 received their white coats at the annual Dr. Robert L. & Lillian H. Brent White Coat Ceremony in August. Above, Austin Hansen gets a kiss from his wife, Eliza, as he holds their 14-month-old daughter Maggie after the ceremony.

“This is another nice family moment that took place away from the action, on the fringes of the event,” says Fenster. “There’s a sense of release after this ceremony when the students can finally be with their families to celebrate. This photo is sort of a bookend with the one from Match Day. You don’t see a lot of families regularly at institutions like this. And if you can weave that into whatever story you’re illustrating, that’s a nice thing to do. It’s a reminder that behind all these people there are often families supporting them.”

Top-down supervision

Move-in day (or week) is a rite of passage for most Rochester students. With help from her mom, Sharon Xu (top bunk), Koko Connor, a piano major from San Francisco, gets settled into her room in the Eastman School of Music’s Student Living Center.

“This is a transitional time for students and parents, and this was a situation I hadn’t seen before—with the mom directing from the top of the bunk beds,” notes Fenster. “It’s bittersweet. They’re setting up the room, but they’re also delaying the inevitable separation, the goodbye.”

A night to remember 

In August, students in the Class of 2028 attended the annual Candlelight Ceremony on the Eastman Quadrangle on the University’s River Campus.

“The Candlelight Ceremony used to be a much more subdued event; this year it was so different. Credit to John Blackshear, vice president for student life, who got everyone fired up by DJing this event. There was an energy throughout the crowd,” says Fenster. “I’d forgotten about the confetti cannons but fortunately was able to capture that moment, which really conveys the vibe of the evening. There’s a unity here, a class spirit.”

The path to knowledge

Fall in Rochester offers up a wealth of beauty—even indoors. Above, the evening sunlight shines through a doorway from Messinger Periodical Room into the Great Hall of Rush Rhees Library.

“Around mid- to late-October, I start looking around campus for photo opportunities. The leaves are changing, the sun is getting lower. I don’t know what brought me into Rush Rhees Library that day,” says Fenster, “but the light was changing quickly. The Great Hall is not that dark. This was all about exposing the subject—that beam of light—to create a dynamic photo. I like how the light coming through the periodical room door offers up a destination for the subject.”

Four-hundred-plus foot view

Located 40 miles south of Rochester in the Bristol Hills, the University’s C.E. Kenneth Mees Observatory is devoted to research, teaching, and public instruction. The observatory houses a 61cm Boller and Chivens Cassegrain reflector, dedicated on May 8, 1965.

In the Finger Lakes for another shoot that day, Fenster found himself driving around the area, making pictures. “I knew we had the observatory because years ago I made photos from there at night. I worked with one of the caretakers at the time. This trip, I launched the drone to make this photo. Shortly after I sent it up, a guy rolled up in his truck and was like, ‘What are you doing, man? Do you have permission to be here?’ So I introduced myself, and it turns out it was the same caretaker (shoutout to Kurt Holmes from Facilities!) from when I was there last, almost 15 years ago. So he went from being not very pleased to see me to being very helpful and kind. This photo is a great way to show how close the University is to one of the most beautiful areas in the world. And it’s made entirely possible by the drone, which is a great tool to have in our arsenal.”

Democracy in action 

Gar and Cindy Lowenguth place “I Voted” stickers on the grave of women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony on Election Day at Mount Hope Cemetery.

“The last time I was here was Election Day in 2016,” notes Fenster. “A similar thing was happening—there was media there, people waiting to put their stickers on the headstone. There were huge lines in 2016. That wasn’t the case this year. I hung out there for a while, and then this happened. And I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was a really cool moment.”

Where should the Rochester Fire Department (RFD) locate fire stations over the next 10 years to minimize response times to emergencies? Where should it deploy the most fire trucks? How do seasonal shifts impact the nature and volume of emergencies that firefighters need to respond to?

These are questions that a team of students from the University of Rochester’s Goergen Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence explored over the course of a semester for their capstone project sponsored by the RFD.

“We were looking for someone from the outside to come in and provide a different set of ideas, experiences, and viewpoints to help us enhance our emergency response services,” says Daniel Curran, a captain for planning and research who is responsible for technology-based projects at the RFD. “We felt the students would have an unbiased perspective and look at the situation and tell us, ‘This is where the data leads us,’ and come to their own conclusions.”

Over the course of the semester, the students used artificial intelligence and other data analytics tools to make sense of more than 1.6 million points of data collected by RFD from 2006 to 2024. They also incorporated external census data related to population, income, property, and housing to enrich their analysis.

“This was an amazing opportunity to contribute something meaningful,” says data science graduate student Brynn (Ye In) Lee ’24 (MS). “The RFD has 15 fire stations, they’re supporting about 500 personnel, and they have around 50,000 annual dispatches, so that’s a huge impact that we can have on the community.”

The students developed interactive maps that allow the RFD to analyze how long it takes the firefighters to reach an incident, while providing information about the distribution of incidents across the city and the ability to sort by incident type. They also created models to predict the monthly incident density over the next 10 years for all 15 fire stations.

In their analysis, the students found that the RFD is already effective at responding to incidents in a timely fashion. However, the students offered recommendations for small improvements that could further decrease response times. Their suggestions include reallocating specific types of trucks from one station to another and introducing programs similar to those in other cities that can address non-life-threatening calls with fewer resources.

According to the students, a critical aspect to their project’s success was going on “ride-alongs” with the RFD, which gave them an appreciation for the firefighters’ day-to-day responsibilities. They said witnessing the types of incidents the firefighters respond to, learning about their shifts, and seeing the equipment in person was enlightening.

“I used to think the fire department only deals with fire-related emergencies, but they deal with so many medical emergencies and spend a lot of time early in the morning patrolling their area to look for fire hazards,” says Homayra Tabassum ’24 (MS). “Getting to see that in person helped us be much more insightful when we were thinking about resource allocation.”

The students said their weekly meetings with the RFD sponsors and collaborating with RFD’s internal data analysts were important learning opportunities as well.

“Dealing with real-world data is not always clean or exactly the way you want it, so the captain and the senior data analysts were extremely helpful,” says team member Medhini Sridharr ’24 (MS). “They helped us choose the most important variables based on their domain knowledge, which was crucial because we had more than 300 variables to consider. They helped us drill down to what’s important.”

Overall, the students said they loved the chance to do a hands-on project with real-world implications, witness the firefighters at work first-hand, and deliver a product that will serve the RFD and local community for years to come.

The project team included data science master’s students Eugene Ayonga ’24, Lee, Sridharr, Tabassum, as well as undergraduate data science student Nour Assili ’26.

University of Rochester faculty are leaders in their fields who are regularly recognized with regional, national, and international awards and honors for their professional contributions to research, scholarship, education, and community engagement.

As part of an ongoing series, we’re spotlighting their many and varied achievements.

Nursing faculty honored for research, clinical excellence in cardiovascular and stroke care

School of Nursing faculty members were recognized for their clinical and scientific contributions to heart attack and stroke care at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) annual Scientific Sessions.

Salah Al-Zaiti, an endowed professor and the chair of cardiovascular nursing, received the AHA Council on Cardiovascular & Stroke Nursing’s (CVSN) 2024 Research Article of the Year Award. In collaboration with a national team of researchers, Al-Zaiti is developing a machine learning-based clinical decision-making support tool to better classify chest pain and identify hidden heart attacks among emergency department patients.

Ann Leonhardt-Caprio, an assistant professor of clinical nursing, won the Excellence in Clinical Practice Award. She was recognized for her work as program coordinator with the UR Medicine Comprehensive Stroke Program, which delivers the region’s most advanced stroke care and provides 24/7 support to 16 hospitals across Upstate New York.

School of Nursing Dean Lisa Kitko, the chair-elect of the CVSN Council, presented both awards to Al-Zaiti and Leonhardt-Caprio during the AHA conference in Chicago in November.

• Learn more about the awards on the School of Nursing website.

Three Rochester professors make Clarivate’s list of ‘highly cited researchers’

The triumvirate of Robert Boyd, a professor of optics and physics, James Druckman, the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science, and Maiken Nedergaard, the codirector of the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine, has made it onto Clarivate’s 2024 list of Highly Cited Researchers. Among other criteria, each selected researcher on the annual list has authored multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1 percent by citations for their field, according to Clarivate. The company is a global provider of analytics, data, and expert services in the areas of academia and government, intellectual property, and life sciences and health care.

Boyd is known for his pioneering work in nonlinear optical interactions and nonlinear optical properties of materials. Druckman’s research focuses on democracy and political polarization. Nedergaard is an expert on the brain’s unique waste removal system—the glymphatic system, discovered by her team—and sleep’s role in its function.

• Read about the work of Boyd, Druckman, and Nedergaard.

Robert Foster named Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow

Robert Foster, the Richard L. Turner Professor of Humanities in the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, has been awarded a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship.

The fellowship provides scholars with two-month appointments to conduct research in residence full time at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. There, fellows have access to the notable resources of the museum, including its library and art collection.

Foster will conduct archival research for his project titled, “Tracking ‘Primitive Art’ from New Guinea: How Morton D. May Assembled Department Store Exhibition Sales for Middlebrow America (A Detective Story).” May, who died in 1983, was the head of the May Department Stores Company, formerly one of the largest retail chains in the United States, and an ardent collector of so-called “primitive art” from New Guinea and elsewhere.

• Get the details on Foster’s fellowship.

Jennifer Grotz honored with poetry award

Jennifer Grotz, a professor of English, has received the Bogliasco Foundation/Van Cleef & Arpels award in poetry. The Van Cleef & Arpels Fellowships in Choreography and Poetry sponsors annual fellowships for choreographers and poets of any nationality.

Grotz is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Still Falling (Graywolf Press, 2023). Everything I Don’t Know, the selected poems of Jerzy Ficowski, which Grotz co-translated from the Polish with Piotr Sommer, received the 2022 PEN Award for Best Book of Poetry.

• Discover the meaning behind Grotz’s latest collection.

Krystel Huxlin named Silver ARVO Fellow

Krystel Huxlin, the James V. Aquavella, MD Professor in Ophthalmology with the Department of Ophthalmology, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Center for Visual Science, the Department of Neuroscience, and the Institute of Optics, has been selected as a 2025 Silver Fellow by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). This honor recognizes her outstanding contributions to advancing vision and ophthalmology research and her dedication to the ARVO community. As a fellow, Huxlin will continue to serve as a role model and mentor for individuals pursuing careers in vision and ophthalmology research.

Huxlin is currently president of the Vision Sciences Society and a member of its board of directors.

• Read more about Huxlin’s research on visual training after a stroke.

Sally Norton named New York’s top nursing researcher

Sally Norton, a senior associate dean for research and a nationally recognized expert in palliative care, was named the 2024 Distinguished Nurse Researcher by the American Nurses Association–New York and the Center for Nursing at the Foundation of New York State Nurses. The award is given every two years to a nurse researcher conducting studies that contribute to the advancement of nursing and patient care.

Norton, the Independence Foundation Chair in Nursing and Palliative Care, joined the School of Nursing in 2001 and has led its research mission since 2019. Her groundbreaking research focuses on improving communication and care delivery for patients with advanced illness, particularly in palliative and end-of-life care.

• Learn more about the award and Norton’s research.

Steve Rozenski awarded Hagiography Society Book Prize

Medieval historian Steve Rozenski, an associate professor of English, has been recognized with the 2024 Hagiography Society Book Prize for his book Wisdom’s Journey: Continental Mysticism and Popular Devotion in England, 1350–1650 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022).

The prize is awarded annually to the author of a first scholarly book that significantly contributes to the study of saints, virtue traditions, and sanctity. In Wisdom’s Journey, Rozenski explores the English translations and adaptations of medieval devotional and mystical literature.

• Learn more about Wisdom’s Journey and the Hagiography Society Book Prize.

Denise Yarbrough selected as a Sinai and Synapses Fellow

Denise Yarbrough, the director of religious and spiritual life and an associate professor in the Department of Religion and Classics, has been named a 2024–26 Sinai and Synapses Fellow. The fellowship is a small interfaith group of clergy, scientists, and writers committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science.

At Rochester, Yarbrough works with staff chaplains and affiliated faith community leaders to create, articulate, and carry out the mission of the Interfaith Chapel, providing leadership by encouraging multi-faith understanding, interfaith dialogue, education, and cooperation through a variety of educational programs, spiritual offerings, and service projects in the University and the local off-campus community.

• Get to know the 2024–26 class of fellows.

Tens of thousands of years ago, as modern humans migrated out of Africa and into unfamiliar territories, they encountered Neanderthals—a now-extinct group of ancient humans who lived in Eurasia. These interactions left a lasting mark on our DNA; today, nearly all non-African humans carry traces of Neanderthal DNA, a genetic inheritance that provides important insights into human migration and survival.

Despite years of research, however, questions remain regarding the timing, extent, and impact of the genetic exchange between Neanderthals and modern humans.

In two groundbreaking new studies published in Science and Nature, researchers from the University of Rochester—along with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of California, Berkeley, and others—traced how ancient interactions with Neanderthals shaped modern human evolution. By examining patterns of Neanderthal DNA in both modern and ancient human genomes, they reconstructed a timeline of interbreeding and its evolutionary impacts. Their findings reveal when and where these exchanges occurred—and highlight how Neanderthal genes helped humans adapt to new environments.

“Our study provides the most detailed insights yet into how Neanderthal gene flow impacted human genomes,” says Benjamin Peter, an assistant professor in the University’s Department of Biology. “It helps us understand when Neanderthals and humans interacted, which Neanderthal genes were beneficial for our ancestors, and the forces that influenced genetic diversity and shaped the course of human evolution.”

Human-Neanderthal divergence and gene flow

About 500,000 years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor. Following this split, one lineage evolved into Neanderthals in Eurasia, while the other evolved into modern humans in Africa. Both groups had complex behaviors, including tool use and social structures, but Neanderthals developed unique physical traits, such as a stockier build and larger brow ridges, reflecting adaptations to their environment.

Sometime around 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa, encountering Neanderthals and interbreeding. The gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans resulted in most non-Africans carrying one to two percent Neanderthal DNA.

However, the exact timing of the gene flow event has remained elusive.

A single period of gene flow

To uncover a more precise timeline, the researchers used genome sequencing techniques to analyze more than 300 genomes from ancient and modern humans spanning the last 50,000 years. They examined Neanderthal DNA segments in the individual genomes across different time periods and geographic regions, identifying patterns to determine when interbreeding occurred and how natural selection influenced which Neanderthal genes were passed on.

They found that most Neanderthal DNA in modern humans can be traced to a single major period of gene flow, which occurred about 47,000 years ago and lasted approximately 7,000 years. This suggests there was one extended period of interaction between the two groups, rather than multiple separate events, as some researchers had previously believed.

The findings provide tighter constraints for when humans migrated out of Africa—known as the “Out-of-Africa event”—helping to more precisely pinpoint when migration and interbreeding occurred.

“Our results suggest that all Neanderthal ancestry in living people traces back to the same event shortly after the Out-of-Africa event,” Peter says.

Ancient traits stand the test of time

So, what Neanderthal genes are in humans? The researchers found that Neanderthal DNA is not evenly spread throughout the genome. In fact, some regions lack Neanderthal DNA entirely, suggesting that Neanderthal ancestry in those areas wasn’t beneficial for survival. Other regions—particularly those linked to traits such as skin pigmentation, metabolism, and immune function—have higher concentrations of Neanderthal DNA. The researchers discovered that this uneven distribution existed in human genomes more than 40,000 years ago, indicating that some Neanderthal genes provided immediate benefits, such as helping humans adapt to new climates as they migrated out of Africa.

“This shows that natural selection on Neanderthal genetic variants, both beneficial and harmful, acted very rapidly and was likely quite strong,” Peter says.

The patterns in the DNA also suggest that interbreeding may not have been entirely random. Instead, factors such as geography or culture may have influenced which groups of humans were more likely to interact with Neanderthals, leading to different amounts of Neanderthal DNA in different populations.

Ancient encounters and future discoveries

Uncovering when and how certain Neanderthal genes were passed down reveals how these ancient encounters shaped human adaptation and diversity.

These latest findings not only show the lasting influence of Neanderthal genes on human evolution, but they also pave the way for future research. Gathering more genetic data from areas of the world where early human-Neanderthal interactions remain a mystery could deepen the understanding of this key moment in human history.

“A major limitation of our study is that we do not have genetic data from early modern humans in several key areas of the world, such as the Middle East, South Asia, and Oceania,” Peter says. “Direct data from there would likely allow more insights on where exactly Neanderthals and humans met.”

Beneath the ocean’s surface, simple marine animals called sea sponges grow delicate glass skeletons that are as intricate as they are strong. These natural structures are made of a material called silica—also known as bioglass—that is both lightweight and incredibly durable, allowing the sea sponges to thrive in harsh marine environments.

Now, scientists at the University of Rochester have replicated this remarkable material in the lab, using bacteria and enzymes from sea sponges to create tiny microlenses that mimic the sea sponge’s natural ability to combine strength and lightness. In a paper published in the journal PNAS, the team—including scientists from the University of Colorado–Boulder, Delft University of Technology, and Leiden University—reports that the bioinspired material could pave the way toward specialized image sensors for medical and commercial uses. By applying the remarkable properties of sea sponges, the researchers unlock new possibilities for creating sustainable and efficient materials that mimic the natural world.

“This research is the first to engineer light-focusing properties into bacteria cells, and I am excited to explore the different possibilities that our work has opened up,” says Anne S. Meyer, an associate professor in Rochester’s Department of Biology.

What is a microlens?

A microlens is a very small lens that is only a few micrometers in size—about the size of a single cell in your body. Microlenses are designed to capture and focus or manipulate light into intense beams at a microscopic scale.

Because of their small size, microlenses are typically difficult to create, requiring complex, expensive machinery and extreme temperatures or pressures to shape them accurately and achieve the desired optical effects.

When Meyer learned about the enzymes that sea sponges use to make their glass skeletons—and that the glass structures had excellent optical properties—“it seemed like a perfect basis for a synthetic biology project,” she says.

Collaborative innovation across disciplines

Meyer teamed up with experts across multiple disciplines, including optics, physics, and chemistry. Her lab engineered bacteria cells to express the silicatein enzyme from sea sponges, which the animals use to mineralize silica-based glass. They also developed a novel microscopy technique to measure the optical properties of the bacteria cells. In collaboration with material scientists at the University of Colorado–Boulder, Meyer ensured that silica was present on the engineered cells by analyzing the bacteria’s chemical properties. She also worked with faculty members Greg Schmidt and Scott Carney at Rochester’s Institute of Optics to create mathematical models that predicted the optical properties of the glass-coated cells.

The result? Bacterial microlenses that are much smaller than typically produced microlenses.

Because the microlenses are created by bacterial cell factories, they are inexpensive and easy to grow, and they can create their glass coating at standard temperatures and pressures.

“These properties make them well-suited for a unique range of applications,” Meyer says.

Small lenses, big potential

What are the benefits of a microlens? The tiny size of the bacteria-based microlenses makes them ideal for creating higher-resolution image sensors that go beyond current capabilities. The microlenses could, for instance, allow clinicians to visualize smaller structures with greater clarity. Since the glass-coated bacteria focus light into very bright beams, they have the potential to enhance conventional microscopy by enabling the imaging of objects that are currently too small to be visualized, such as small subcellular features.

The glass-coated bacteria remain alive for several months after glass encapsulation, making them living optical devices that could be used to sense and respond to their environment by changing their optical properties.

These characteristics make the microlenses attractive for other environments as well: Meyer and a team of her colleagues recently received a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study the effects of the materials in low-gravity environments.

“The ease of producing these microlenses could make them a good way to fabricate optics in locations with less access to nanofabrication tools, including outer space,” Meyer says.

Two University of Rochester faculty members have been elected as fellows of the National Academy of Inventors(NAI), the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors.

• Eby G. Friedman, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Steve Goldman, the Dean Zutes Chair in Biology of the Aging Brain in the Department of Neurology and URMC Distinguished Professor of Neurology

They are among the 170 inventors, representing 135 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes worldwide, being honored this year. Explore the full list.

The honor recognizes academic inventors “who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.”

The 2024 class of fellows will be honored at the NAI 14th Annual Meeting on June 26, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Eby Friedman: Advancing high-complexity, high-performance integrated circuit design

Friedman was recognized for his pioneering work in high-performance integrated circuits. Friedman’s work spans topics such as clock synchronization, power delivery and management, interconnect models, three-dimensional (3-D) integration, and emerging technologies such as superconductive circuits and magnetic devices. His research is used in a variety of common applications, such as microprocessors, wireless cell phones, cloud computing centers, and electronic design automation (EDA) tools used throughout industry.

As an inventor, Friedman holds 25 US patents and four foreign patents, which cover topics ranging from circuits for high-performance microprocessors and superconductive systems to methods for directional biasing of magnetic devices in high-density magnetic memory. His research has been integrated into a variety of commercial products across a diverse group of industries such as ink jet printers (Xerox), electronic design automation algorithms (Synopsys), digital cameras (Eastman Kodak), power management circuits (Qualcomm), and synchronous circuits (Intel) for microprocessors. His patents have been licensed by the primary EDA companies.

Friedman has been a member of several technical advisory boards and has founded multiple startup companies in the areas of electronic design automation and quantum computing. Several of these startups commercialized design tools for clock network synthesis to automate the on-chip synchronization process, necessary in almost all modern integrated circuits.

Friedman worked at Hughes Aircraft Company for 12 years, where he participated in the development of a large variety of integrated circuits and systems for US military and commercial applications. Friedman joined the University of Rochester in 1991 where he directs the High-Performance VLSI/IC Design and Analysis Laboratory. Friedman also serves as a visiting professor at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, where he directs the Technion Advanced Circuits Research Center and is a member of the Technion Board of Governors. He previously led the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems at Rochester for nine years. The Center is now known as the Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences.

A prolific author and scholar, Friedman has authored more than 600 peer-reviewed publications and 17 textbooks. His books cover a broad range of topics, including high performance integrated circuits, 3-D integrated circuits, quantum integrated circuits, and on-chip power delivery and management. Friedman is a Fellow of the IEEE and past Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems and the Microelectronics Journal.

Friedman is a Fulbright scholar and has been a recipient of many awards such as a University of Rochester College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, the University of Rochester Graduate Teaching Award, the University of Rochester Hajim Lifetime Achievement Award, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE Circuits and Systems Mac Van Valkenburg Award, and is an inaugural member of the University of California, Irvine Engineering Hall of Fame.

Steve Goldman: Pioneering neurological therapies through innovation and commercialization

Goldman, the URMC Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences, was recognized for his innovative research on stem and progenitor cells in the central nervous system. This work continues to shape the future of therapeutic development for complex neurological conditions, including progressive multiple sclerosis, childhood leukodystrophies, Huntington’s disease, and other neurodegenerative and myelin disorders, potentially touching the lives of countless individuals worldwide.

Goldman’s contributions and entrepreneurship extend beyond academia into commercial biotechnology. He holds 36 US patents, with another 32 pending, and more than 100 foreign patents. These new technologies include innovations like fluorescence-activated cell sorting of brain cells, stem cell-derived glial cells, and human-glial chimeric brain models, all of which have become industry standards. The technologies—licensed by the University of Rochester to Sana Biotechnology, Oscine, CNS2, and Lyriq—are being employed in the development of new cell and gene therapies for neurological disorders.

Oscine was cofounded by Goldman in what was then the University’s largest-ever biotech startup, and was later acquired by Sana Biotechnology, which subsequently went public. He then cofounded another startup, CNS2, which now employs 22 staff members in Rochester, New York, further supporting innovation and job creation in the region’s biotechnology sector. Research done in the Goldman Lab—under both academic and commercial support—has led to FDA applications for therapies targeting progressive multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, and other conditions.

Goldman is a neurologist and former chair of the Department of Neurology at the Medical Center. He has published more than 250 articles, most as first or senior author, which include papers in top journals such as Science, Nature (including Nature portfolio journals Nature Biotechnology, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience) Cell (including subjournals Cell Stem Cell and Cancer Cell), Neuron, JCI, and Brain, among many others. He is an associate editor of Brain, on the editorial board of Stem Cell Reports, and has been editor of the neuro-oncology and neuroscience sections of the Merck Manual. He has also served as a permanent voting member of the FDA’s Cell, Tissue, and Gene Therapy Advisory Committee. Goldman and his wife, Maiken Nedergaard, codirect the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, which maintains labs in both Rochester and at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Reporting by Luke Auburn and Mark Michaud.

Biologists at the University of Rochester are calling a discovery they made in a mysterious region of the chromosome known as the centromere a potential game-changer in the field of chromosome biology.

“We’re really excited about this work,” says Amanda Larracuente, the Nathaniel and Helen Wisch Professor of Biology, whose lab oversaw the research that led to the findings, which appear in PLOS Biology.

The discovery involves an intricate and seemingly carefully choreographed genetic tug-of-war between elements in the centromere, which is responsible for proper cell division. Instead of storing genes, centromeres anchor proteins that move chromosomes around the cell as it splits. If a centromere fails to function, cells may divide with too few or too many chromosomes.

These critical structures are rich in what biologists call “selfish” genetic material—transposable elements that move within the genome, and thousands of repeated segments of DNA known as “satellite DNAs”—that often compete during cell division to ensure their own transmission.

For centromeres to function effectively, though, these competing elements must also cooperate.

“In biology, we’re used to thinking about things that have essential roles as being highly conserved,” Larracuente says. “So, it’s fascinating that they are the opposite of highly conserved. They are rapidly evolving.”

‘Dramatic’ centromere reorganization

To learn more about the interplay between these elements, researchers studied closely related species of fruit flies, or Drosophila, and found that centromeres frequently switched between types of transposable elements and satellite DNA in short spans of evolutionary time.

“Repetitive sequences are known to evolve rapidly in general,” Larracuente says. “But what we found was a dramatic centromere reorganization over two short evolutionary timescales.

“We didn’t just see different variants of the same sequence in different species, we found categorical shifts in the types of elements.”

The researchers used chromatin profiling and high-resolution imaging on stretched chromatin fibers to observe these shifts in detail.

“Regardless of the evolutionary forces driving this turnover,” reads the study, “the rapid reorganization of centromeric sequences over short evolutionary timescales highlights their potential as hotspots for evolutionary innovation.”

The lab is interested in understanding the roles these DNA sequences play in centromere function and stability in future work. Larracuente says the discovery and subsequent study of centromere dynamics could have potential applications in the long-term for how we treat diseases and disorders characterized by genome instability, such as cancer, and other aging-related diseases.

“Those can be related to centromere defects,” Larracuente says. “Learning how DNA sequences contribute to centromere organization and function could help us understand abnormal centromere behavior.”