Meet Bay Area Network Leader Gwen Musial ’14

Tell us about your time as a student.

When I was a freshman at Rochester I was really excited about all of the different clubs and activities and may have over-committed myself a bit. I played rugby, water polo, joined Greek Life, and was in the Biomedical Engineering Society and Society of Women in Engineering. In my sophomore year, I got even more involved and joined the Meridians (ie. campus tour guides) and gave both general campus tours and engineering tours. I loved that I got to try so many different things outside of classes. However, I think some of my favorite memories were from my senior design class. It was so fun to get to actually implement all four years of coursework into a practical application and my project let me use the URnano Nanofabrication Cleanroom in Goergen Hall which was a really cool experience. I am still surprised at how the director of URNano let us use the facilities and all of the incredibly high-end technology for a student project when it was primarily used for cutting-edge research.

How did your experience at the URochester influence your life?

I, like many others, got involved in research at Rochester and it had a huge impact on my life. I enjoyed the technology I was working on in my undergraduate projects so much I then went on to graduate school and continued to work in the same field. My PhD advisor even did his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Rochester! While I have now moved to a career in the medical device industry, I still attend the same conferences as my former advisors so I am able to catch up with them year after year. These are connections that I deeply cherish even though it has been years since I worked in some of their labs. The field of ophthalmic imaging is quite small and Rochester is a huge player in the field so being an alumni has been a valuable asset to me in my career.

What inspired you to get involved and volunteer?

I first started volunteering with the University while I was a graduate student in Houston after attending a few of the happy hour events and connecting with other volunteers. It was a great way to meet people in a new city and it was fun to help plan the events. In my senior year, I was a student interviewer as part of the Meridian society so it only felt natural to continue to volunteer to interview prospective students.

What’s the most rewarding part of staying connected with your alma mater?

I love doing the alumni interviews to meet the next generation of Rochester students. During the pandemic, I was living in Cologne, Germany, so I interviewed a lot of students who were from Europe and it was incredible to hear of the things they had accomplished already and to learn about what made them excited about the University. Since many of these students didn’t have the chance to visit campus before applying or even after being accepted due to both the distance and the pandemic, they had a lot of questions about what the campus and campus life was like. Being able to connect with them and share my experiences after they had shared their incredible experiences of helping refugees, building companies, and adapting to many new cultures was a bright spot in the pandemic for me.

What are you looking forward to next?

I am really looking forward to the Global Days of Service. I recently moved to the Bay Area and I am excited to give back to the community and learn about ways to get more involved in community service.

What advice do you have for others looking to get involved?

Start with something that you already enjoy doing. If you don’t like happy hours, you don’t have to go to one or plan one, you could help plan a community hike; one of the most fun events I went to as an alumni was a camping trip!

Miguel Fittoria ’12, ’15W (MS), whose job is to facilitate hard conversations, addresses a burning question: Why are so many of us losing our cool?

(Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

Editor’s note: The New Horizons program for adult musicians celebrated its 30th birthday in 2021. Founded at the Eastman School of Music, it has grown to nearly 200 chapters around North America and Australia.

I work in the Palo Alto Unified School District as part of a 10-person team of student and family engagement, or “SaFE,” specialists. This year I’m also overseeing our virtual independent program, which is an at-home option created in response to COVID. In both roles, I act as a liaison between families and the school. The SaFE program was set up to offer a guiding hand to parents who are low-income, or don’t have a lot of formal education, or don’t speak English—and who need help navigating the school system. On the other hand, the virtual independent program draws heavily from well-educated and affluent families who make up most of the district.

We’re seeing conversations devolve into arguments much more, and more quickly, than we’ve ever seen. Like many of the examples we hear about in the news, or watch on social media, we’re seeing this happen between people who have a relationship that’s at least in part transactional. Not between close colleagues, or family members, or friends, but between people at the school or school district, and people in the community. Individuals are responding to each other quickly, in a kind of fight-or-flight moment.

There’s a lot of frustration stemming from the novelty of COVID, and all the changes and uncertainty around protocols. It’s caused a lot of things to go wrong, both in our own organizations or ones we interact with. In our case, a lot of families have been confused about COVID protocols. Our district accounts for so many different scenarios. And the first day after winter break, we had a bunch of middle and high schoolers in our new online independent program not able to get into their classes. Their schedules weren’t appearing. It was a mess. We got emails and calls from people saying, “What’s going on?” and “Why is this happening?”

When something goes wrong, it’s stressful on both sides. I’m usually on the “customer”-facing side. People want information and they want it now.

But don’t just say, “I’ll call you or I’ll email you back” either. Or forward the message to someone else, or even worse, say “I’ll transfer you.” We all know those stories! Tell the person who you’re going to talk to; for example, “I am going to go talk to the health coordinator;” and then, “I will get back to you as soon as I have the information.” Now the person is informed, and they have a timeline. And they have someone they know, that they’re now in contact with. When we do things that way, people are usually appreciative.

My team and I are always talking about the idea of spillover. We’re already using so much of our mental and emotional energy to hold the stress back, that any statement or comment can lead us to the worst conclusions, to that fight-or-flight reaction. The spillover can be so hard to contain in that moment. But in all our interactions, it’s important to be aware of the spillover effect on ourselves and to realize the strangers we encounter are probably experiencing it in their own lives, too.

This article originally appeared in the winter 2022 issue of Rochester Review magazine.

Anju Gupta with her husband and daughter

When Anju Gupta ’90, ‘91S (MBA) graduated from the Ģ����ý and moved to California, she was excited to immerse herself in her new life. While attending the university, she participated in a 3-2 program that allowed her to receive both her BA and MBA in just four years, due to her credits from Advanced Placement high school courses and summer classes. When Gupta thinks of her time at Rochester, she fondly remembers studying abroad in England where she worked as an intern in British parliament. While she now works as a Consultant for Dell Technologies in Austin, Gupta first explored her finance career in Los Angeles. Although LA was full of young professionals, it wasn’t as easy to make connections as she had anticipated.

Gupta decided to tap into the UR Alumni Network. By attending alumni events, she made friends with people who lived in her area who she would not have met if it weren’t for the network. She says, “Especially living on the west coast, when you meet someone from the Ģ����ý from the east coast, you immediately feel connected.”

Gupta has always made it a habit to attend alumni events. She says, “My alumni network is one of my first go-to places to help open doors.” For instance, when Gupta moved to Dallas a few years ago, she met an alumna from the Eastman School of Music, with whom she had not interacted during her studies. The Eastman alumna invited Gupta to her book club, which then introduced her to larger social circle.

At another Dallas event, Gupta met an alumnus from Simon Business School. She networked with him, became friends with his wife, and even interviewed at his company. Although she didn’t end up joining his team, she was grateful for the professional and personal connection.

Gupta says that alumni events always offer a welcoming environment in which it is easy to make friends. “We have a shared experience and that makes it easier for us to connect. There’s a level of openness and trust when you meet someone who went to your university, especially when you’re in a new place away from that environment.”

Gupta encourages alumni to be open to new ideas when it comes to events. “If there isn’t an event and you have an idea for something, definitely suggest it. There are a lot of people who are willing to jump in and help create an event. You’re not alone.”

No matter where you are with your career or where you are in the world, Gupta says it is always worth the effort to attend an alumni event. “It’s a great experience and you feel like you’re in this special yet very inclusive club.”

Monique Mendes ’18M (MS), ’20M (PhD)

Monique Mendes ’18M (MS), ’20M (PhD) moved from Kingston, Jamaica to South Florida, when she was a teenager. Her parents came to the U.S. with the hope that Monique would live the American dream. And, because of her hard work, determination, and passion for science, she has.

I majored in English at Cornell. Rochester was my top choice for medical school because it had the reputation of having an artsy, diverse student population. I think that’s probably from having the bio-psycho-social model in place before that became de rigueur at every medical school. In my medical school class, we had an opera singer and multiple writing majors from Johns Hopkins.

I ended up in surgical pathology. I taught a lot of medical students and residents and published about 12 papers. And all that time I really liked wine. In 2008 I had the opportunity to make wine on a really small scale, at an urban winery in San Francisco called Crushpad. I jumped in, and I fell in love with it.

Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review

“Wine is part of a total experience. Nobody comes back from their honeymoon or vacation waxing poetic about the vodka.”

They come back and tell you about the wine. Not a week goes by when I don’t get an email from somebody saying, “our granddaughter was born, and we opened a bottle of your wine”—and they send a picture. Or, “we went on this hiking trip, and your wine was the one bottle we carried in our backpack”—and there’s a picture. That’s really special to me.

Wine is also a wonderful mix of science and artistry. I often give talks about harvest chemistry and the parameters that we measure, which are both quantitative and qualitative. I can look at the sugar levels and measure that with a number. I look at the acid levels and quantify it. But on the other hand, you have to walk the vineyard yourself. You have to taste the grapes; look at the clusters and the seeds; chew the seeds and taste them, to assess the quality and maturity of the tannins. You inspect and taste the skins. You taste the pulp and then you spit it out to see if it is separating cleanly from the seeds. I measure, look for, and taste for indicators of harvest maturity.

Monitoring fermentation is a lot like doing rounds with patients. Every morning during harvest, the first thing I do is check on all my tanks. First, I look at the temperature. What was the temperature overnight? Was there a spike? I certainly hope not, because I set a cooling jacket. Then I look at what the Brix [a proxy for sugar content] did overnight. I also see what the cap is doing. Does it still seem firm? Has it fallen down? And of course, I smell the tanks, the juice. Once you assess the tanks, you decide what you’re going to do for the day—a lot like internal medicine. It’s sort of funny that way. In the afternoon, you do the same thing all over again. You make rounds twice a day.

Artisanal winemaking is all about the vineyard. Mass-produced wines come from a broad area and are made in a large production facility. They don’t speak specifically to a site. The fruit that I work with and the growing partners that I have are designed to make a wine that speaks to a particular place. Wines from this vineyard taste like they do because the climate is a certain way, the fog and wind are a certain way, because the bushes that surround the vines are endemic to that place.

I drained and pressed my last tank in early October. It’s always a bittersweet time. Harvest is my favorite time of year, and after that, 99 percent is in the rear-view mirror. No more fruit to sort. Just waiting for my chardonnay to do its thing, ferment in the barrel.

Just weeks after harvest, the Kincade fire burned over 75,000 acres. Fortunately for Bruliam, my wines already were safe in barrel. Actually, 93 percent of Sonoma County was picked before the fire erupted. Nonetheless, lives and businesses were disrupted; homes were destroyed. I hope the national news coverage reminds people to support Sonoma County.

A son sets out to make an iphone app to communicate with his father.

This tough gel can stretch 20 times its length without breaking, which is more than what the most resilient rubber band can do.

Ben Freedman ’11 looks to nature to inspire engineering solutions

It is not uncommon for scientists like Ben Freedman ’11 to look to nature for engineering inspiration—including the development of a super tough surgical gel that can strongly adhere to wet and dynamic surfaces inside the body. Think about a beating heart, entangled tissues, collapsed lungs, damaged cartilage, and broken bones.

“Our hydrogel technology is based on the incredibly stretchy mucous that Dusky Arion slugs emit when they sense danger,” says Freeman, a post-doctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. “Our tough gel can stretch 20 times its length without breaking, which is more than what the most resilient rubber band can do.”

According to Freedman, many of the medical grade adhesives available now just aren’t tough or sticky enough, and they are rigid. They behave, as he says, like super glue. Because of this, they can kill cells. Fortunately, his research team’s tough gel addresses all of this and more. Health care practitioners can mold it into any shape, insert it into syringes, and then apply or inject it into a specific area. Although not commercially available yet, this tough gel is far along in the clinical study stage.

“The future of medicine is all about developing materials that respond to the way tissues heal,” Freedman adds. “It is rewarding to work on technology that will promote healing and drug delivery and make a difference in people’s lives.”

Freedman enjoys many aspects of his work, from making gels and looking at tissue cultures to analyzing data and planning studies. He also appreciates interacting with extremely smart, motivated people with similar goals. Working with early career scientists and sparking their interest in innovative technologies is also a plus.

“It all comes back to my undergraduate education,” he adds, noting how he spent several summers working in the National Institutes of Health research labs. This was an opportunity presented to him through the biomedical engineering faculty, with whom he is still close. “If I hadn’t had access to great faculty and gone to Rochester, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”