More than 50 students, faculty, and staff submitted artwork in the 2026 , the ’s annual contest to explore and illuminate the aesthetic beauty that results when science, art, and technology intersect. Three winning entries will be permanently displayed in the��.

Held each spring, the competition is sponsored by the in collaboration with and supported through an endowed fund established by Trustee Emeritus Ed Hajim ’58 and his wife Barbara. Prizes are awarded for the top student submissions and for the People’s Choice Award, with more than 500 members of the Ģ����ý community casting votes.

First Place and People’s Choice Award

For the second consecutive year, the judges and the Ģ����ý community voters selected the same top entry. Political science student Matthew Ahn ’28 took home both first place and the People’s Choice Award—totaling $1,250—for his hand-drawn ink illustration titled The Architecture of Knowledge. Ahn says his ornate artwork featuring clocks, mechanical systems, geometric networks, and symbolic forms is intended to represent the structural layers of scientific discovery.

“The lower sections evoke instruments used to measure time and motion, while the upper sections introduce increasingly complex geometric and interconnected systems,” he says. “Each layer reflects how scientific knowledge builds progressively upon previous discoveries. The symmetry and intricate patterns invite viewers to explore the drawing at multiple scales, revealing new details much like scientific observation itself.”

Second Place

Physics PhD student Meg Farinsky was the runner-up with��Luminous Gills,��her macro photograph of the gills on the underside of a pink oyster mushroom illuminated by grow lights. She photographed the home-grown culinary mushrooms using a 100 mm Rokinon macro lens on a Canon 5D Mark III camera.

“Mushrooms—pink oysters in particular—are attracting a lot of scientific interest right now,” says Farinsky. “They’re being studied for applications in bioremediation and plastic degradation, sustainable food, and material production, and electrical signaling in fungal networks that resembles neural activity. Beyond their scientific relevance, their glowing gills and sculptural forms make them naturally compelling visual subjects.”

Third Place

Majd Tabsi ’29, a biomedical engineering major, earned a place on the podium with��Strings of Life—a creative representation of DNA and gene editing using about a mile of string. Tabsi sketched a design and input it into software called MyZigzagArt, which uses an algorithm to generate a sequence of string passes to create a representation of the sketch. He made a circle of 250 nails on a 2 x 2 foot piece of wood and, over the course of 30 hours, made 2,500 string passes from one nail to another to produce the final artwork.

“Humanity has always wondered about how life is created and how traits are passed,” says Tabsi. “Mendel’s discovery of the laws of heredity started the ever-growing field of genetics. We later learned about the smallest strings that hold the keys to our evolution and the continuity of life—DNA, or what my work calls ‘Strings of Life.’ We sought to map them, understand their construction, and even started trying to edit them using tools like CRISPR-Cas9, which is what the separated gene in my work refers to. Tools like these raise a variety of questions around the ethicality and the limitations of usage. But they also show what humanity is capable of. And the question remains: What will we do next?”

Advances in artificial intelligence promise to help chemical engineers discover complex new materials. These materials could be used for reactions such as turning carbon dioxide into fuel, but technical barriers have limited catalysis adoption so far. Researchers at the Ģ����ý are now harnessing the benefits of large language models (LLMs) similar to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to empower more researchers to use AI to discover new materials and accelerate experiment workflows.

In a published in ACS Central Science, a team led by , an associate professor in the , and , visiting associate professor and the cofounder and chief technology officer of , describes an AI-based method they developed that allows users to input natural language prompts about the materials they want to create and suggest optimal procedures for experiments to produce them. As the users run the experiments, they input the results back into the AI model and continue iterating until they reach their goal.

“We’re able to leverage the pre-trained knowledge of large language models and well-established statistical methods for materials discovery to help us as researchers navigate large experimental design spaces more efficiently,” says Porosoff.

Porosoff likens the new AI method to describing a cup of coffee, noting that someone could describe the coffee by its taste, color, and aroma, or by the type of beans, grind size, apparatus, and water temperature used to make the brew. Both representation methods describe the same cup of coffee, but the second approach gives you a recipe to reproduce it that others can easily replicate.

Porosoff and his team are applying the same principle to catalysts for energy applications, using language-based representations to describe materials not just by their properties, but by the steps needed to create them.

To build on their success, the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) it will provide nearly $3 million in funding to apply the Ģ����ý team’s method toward creating catalysts for the production of fuel from abundant materials, specifically methanol and ethanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Porosoff will lead a multi-institution project team that includes URochester, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, A*STAR Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE2) in Singapore, and OxEon Energy, a small business based in Salt Lake City.

Leveraging the power of LLMs

Traditional AI methods for materials discovery typically use a strategy called Bayesian optimization to identify and design the best candidates. But the result is complex numerical data about a material’s structure, which requires deep expertise to use effectively. The new LLM method instead produces a set of procedures that researchers can easily understand, execute, and verify to determine if the experiment’s output matches the predicted results.

This can be extremely useful for working with complex materials such as trimetallic catalysts, which are made of three metals.

“Our method reduces the technical barrier associated with using Bayesian optimization, which is a well-established method for efficiently exploring large and complicated parameter spaces,” says Shane Michtavy, a URochester chemical engineering PhD student who helped develop the AI method, synthesize materials, and run the chemical reactions described in the paper. “Using pre-trained LLMs allows users to explore using less data than traditional models, as they are deployed in a frozen state with built-in knowledge of the physical world and catalysis.”

The paper shows how the researchers applied the method to several live experiments, including one to identify catalysts for turning carbon dioxide and hydrogen into carbon monoxide and water using trimetallic catalysts made from low-cost metals. Porosoff says that there are about 360,000 possible experiments that could have been run to find the ideal catalyst, but by using procedures produced by the AI model and providing it with the results from the experiments, they were able to find an ideal candidate in just ten experiments.

The study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Energy. Additional authors included��Mayk Caldas, technical staff at Edison Scientific.

Next steps

Now that they have shown the model works as a proof of concept in the lab, Porosoff aims to take the method further using the funding announced through ARPA-E’s Catalytic Application Testing for Accelerated Learning Chemistries via High-throughput Experimentation and Modeling Efficiently (CATALCHEM-E) program.

“Right now, it takes a decade or longer to go from conceptualizing a new catalyst to testing it in a lab to putting it in a real reactor,” says Porosoff. “The CATALCHEM-E program aims to cut that by an order of magnitude to a single year, and we think using AI with text-based representations will be a big factor in shortening the development cycle.”

Porosoff and his collaborators will first demonstrate their workflow on carbon dioxide-to-methanol and then extend the process to higher alcohols such as ethanol, which is a key additive for gasoline and used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and many other applications. Ultimately, they hope to commercially deploy the model for industries to create catalysts to synthesize alcohols for fuel.

The project is scheduled to begin in July and run through 2029. See a full list of CATALCHEM-E programs on the .

When lasers were invented in the 1960s, they opened new avenues for scientific discovery and everyday applications from scanners at the grocery store to corrective eye surgery. Conventional lasers control photons—individual particles of light—but over the past 20 years, scientists have invented lasers that control other fundamental particles, including phonons—individual particles of vibration or sound. Controlling phonons could open even more possibilities with lasers, such as taking advantage of unique quantum properties like entanglement.

A new squeezed phonon laser developed by researchers at the and Rochester Institute of Technology provides precise control over phonons at the nanoscale level. This could give new insights into the nature of gravity, particle acceleration, and quantum physics. In in Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they coax these individual particles of mechanical motion to behave like a laser.

, the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics with the Ģ����ý , and his collaborators first demonstrated a phonon laser by trapping and levitating phonons with an optical tweezer in a vacuum in 2019. But to make this technology useful for extremely accurate measurements, they had to overcome a key obstacle fundamental to both photon and phonon lasers: noise, or unwanted disturbances that make a signal difficult to accurately read.

“While a laser looks to the naked eye like a steady beam, there’s actually a lot of fluctuation, which causes noise when you’re using lasers for measurement,” says Vamivakas. “By pushing and pulling on a phonon laser with light in the right way, we can reduce that phonon laser fluctuation significantly.”

Specifically, the researchers were able to squeeze or reduce the thermal noise intrinsic to the phonon laser. Vamivakas says that noise reduction provides the ability to measure acceleration more accurately than techniques that use photon lasers or radio frequency waves.

Vamivakas envisions researchers using the phonon laser to obtain pinpoint accurate measurements of gravity and other forces, which could be important in applications such as navigation. Scientists have envisioned quantum compasses as more accurate, “unjammable” alternatives to GPS navigation that do not require the use of satellites, and Vamivakas is intrigued by seeing if the phonon laser could be a step toward such systems.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation. Vamivakas’ collaborators on the paper include Ģ����ý optics PhD student Kai Zhang, RIT postdoctoral researcher Kewen Xiao, and Mishkat Bhattacharya ’05, a professor of physics at RIT.

A coalition led by the��Ģ����ý that aims to make the Rochester, New York, and Finger Lakes region a national hub for laser science and development recently hosted the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a site visit as a finalist in the .

����dz������ٱ��’s����is one of 15 nationwide finalists—and the only one in New York State—being considered for the second NSF Engines competition. The competition aims to build and scale new innovation clusters that accelerate the development of critical technologies and grow regional economies nationwide.

“There is no better place for a national resurgence in laser technology than the imaging capital of the world, which has a nearly 175-year history of expertise in precision, innovation, and light,” says , the director of Ģ����ý’s and STELLAR principal investigator. “This region has the pedigree, talent, and brainpower needed to fill national talent shortages, help translate technologies into businesses, bring manufacturing to a scale that can compete with leaders in Europe and China, and fuel core research and development.”

As part of the final rounds of the competition, NSF is conducting in-person interviews and a due-diligence review to evaluate each finalist’s risks, resources, and ability to meet the nation’s evolving needs. The Rochester site visit was the culmination of a planning process that formally began in 2023, when NSF awarded��Ģ����ý��a $1 million��Regional Innovation Engines��Development Award grant.

The field for this round of competition has narrowed from ��to 15 finalists, and the NSF anticipates announcing the 2026 NSF Engines awards later this year.

The in-person meetings with NSF officials were an opportunity for STELLAR’s organizers to showcase how they would progress the region as a national leader in laser technologies, education, company creation, manufacturing, and workforce development. The project’s key partners include ����dz������ٱ��’s�������Ի��� (������),�� (�Ѱ��),�� (�����),����,�� (GRE),��, and��.

“This region has the pedigree, talent, and brainpower needed to fill national talent shortages, help translate technologies into businesses, bring manufacturing to a scale that can compete with leaders in Europe and China, and fuel core research and development.”

In addition to the STELLAR organizers, the visit brought other critical public, academic, and industry partners from across the region, state, and the country to participate and voice their support for this important initiative. Among the dozens of officials who voiced their support for STELLAR during the site visit were Congressman Joe Morelle, Congressman Nick Langworthy, and Kent Rochford, the CEO and Executive Director of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

With local businesses, educators, nonprofits, and government entities aligning to support the project, STELLAR’s leadership has secured matching support at the state level if awarded NSF funding.

“New York State is incredibly proud to support this catalytic proposal, including with a $16 million matching commitment,” says Elizabeth Lusskin, the executive vice president for small business and technology development at Empire State Development. “If awarded, STELLAR would provide the connective tissue to knit together investments the state, local partners, and corporations have already made in both the laser sector and the region and bring them to a scale to serve national interests. It would not only benefit the laser industry but many other tech sectors in New York and around the country that rely on lasers, including biotech, defense, and semiconductors.”

Leveraging regional brainpower

Rochester is home to pioneering educational programs—from high school to the doctoral level—focused on the science of light, which could help build the laser workforce. Ģ����ý’s nearly 100-year-old Institute of Optics is the nation’s first optics program; RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science became the nation’s first program to offer degrees in the interdisciplinary field of imaging science; and MCC is the nation’s first community college to award associate degrees in optical systems technology.

Alexis Vogt ’01, ’07 (PhD), chair of optical systems technology at MCC, leads the education and workforce development component of STELLAR and says the project would be an opportunity to have these educational programs work collaboratively and expand their impact to reach people across the region.

“One of the biggest gaps in the laser industry today is workforce development,” says Vogt. “Our 11-county region is home to 1.2 million people with tremendous untapped potential. Through the STELLAR initiative, we are expanding access to laser education and training—particularly in rural communities—and creating new pathways into the industry for remote learners, military veterans, the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community, and individuals whose degrees have left them underemployed. By opening these doors, we can build the skilled workforce needed to power the next generation of laser technologies.”

STELLAR would also intensify research in a region that already boasts Ģ����ý’s LLE, home to the largest—and some of the most powerful—lasers in academia, as well as facilities like the RIT Semiconductor Nanofabrication Laboratory.

“STELLAR would empower our expert researchers to collaboratively focus on the frontiers of laser development,” says Stefan Preble, RIT’s Bausch and Lomb Professor and PhD program director of microsystems engineering. “There is already brilliant research and development underway locally in ultrafast lasers, microchip-scale lasers, lasers for biotechnology, and quantum networking using lasers. STELLAR would equip us to conduct even more laser research on a grander scale.”

Capitalizing on economic opportunities

STELLAR’s leadership says that the project would position the US to grow its stake in a $16 trillion global marketplace that depends on lasers for everything from precision manufacturing and quantum to energy and defense. They note that more than 150 optics, photonics, imaging, and laser supply-chain companies already operate in the Greater Rochester region.

“We have a unique density and concentration of talent,” says Leah George VanScott, executive vice president of business development and strategy at GRE. “The region also has an unusually mature and collaborative translational ecosystem as well as unparalleled foundational assets—everything from tiny integrated photonic lasers to 50-meter beam lines. Rochester and the Finger Lakes provide one of the strongest starting points in the nation to scale. STELLAR is an opportunity to turn our region’s existing foundation into an engine necessary to secure our nation’s technological future.”

Sujatha Ramanujan, managing director and chief investment officer of NextCorps Luminate, works to help entrepreneurs start or expand businesses related to optics, photonics, and imaging. She sees incredible opportunities for domestic companies to grow their share of the laser marketplace.

“The US only makes about a third of the lasers used in this country, and that number is shrinking,” says Ramanujan. “Applications from defense to medical devices to quantum depend on lasers. We are headed to a serious national problem if we don’t close that gap and start making our own lasers. But between the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the universities here in Rochester, and the AIM Photonics TAP facility, Rochester already has the infrastructure in place to support the laser industry. STELLAR could propel us into the next generation of science-based business.”

The federal government is providing researchers at two Rochester-area universities funding to advance the future of sharing quantum information and further develop an experimental quantum network connecting their campuses. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is providing the Ģ����ý and $2 million to build new capabilities for the Rochester Quantum Network (RoQNET). This new funding is a direct result of Congressional support from Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle as part of the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill.

Ģ����ý and RIT installed RoQNET in 2024, and last year they demonstrated that they can securely transmit single photons from one campus to another over 11 miles of fiber-optic telecommunications lines. Sending communications using individual particles of light offers unprecedented levels of security, making them impregnable from being cloned or intercepted without detection and preventing bad actors from accessing sensitive data.

Now, the researchers are preparing for experiments to share entangled photons across the network, leveraging the strange and surprising principles of quantum mechanics that defy the laws of conventional physics.

“We want to exploit some of the more unique features of quantum mechanics and quantum optics, specifically the idea of quantum entanglement, where two particles of light can share properties no matter how far apart they are,” says , the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Optical Physics, who leads Ģ����ý’s efforts. “One of these entangled photon pairs will live at RIT and one will live at URochester, and we aim to maintain that entanglement across RoQNET.”

Vamivakas says that harnessing quantum entanglement could eventually lead to sophisticated networks of quantum computers or advanced new methods to improve the resolution of space telescopes.

While there are other experimental quantum networks across the world, Vamivakas says RoQNET offers several distinct advantages, including the ability to transmit photons over normal fiber-optic lines like those that already exist across the globe. He says RoQNET is further distinguished from other quantum networks because of Ģ����ý’s expertise in quantum memory hardware and RIT’s ability to create quantum photonic integrated-circuit light sources.

“Our focus with RoQNET has been on the realization of heterogeneous entanglement between different types of qubits,” says Stefan Preble, RIT’s Bausch and Lomb Professor and PhD program director of microsystems engineering. “This funding supports further research to reach the next generation in quantum networking technologies.”

The funding will also enable hardware that will provide high school, undergraduate, and graduate students with some of their first opportunities to work with quantum optics and quantum networks.

“We are proud to be at the vanguard of the quantum revolution and thank Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle for their support securing crucial federal funding to make new advances in quantum communication,” says Ģ����ý President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “Our university is committing significant time, talent, and resources into advancing quantum technologies, as evidenced by our recent��investment in the transdisciplinary Center for Coherence and Quantum Science. We are fortunate to have terrific local collaborators at RIT with whom we can combine our strengths to advance the Rochester region as a hub for advanced quantum research and innovation.”

A quantum network was also recently established on Long Island, New York, between Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University. Vamivakas, who has been partnering with the researchers downstate, likens it and RoQNET to local networks and hopes to eventually connect quantum research into a statewide network, adding other facilities in New York State, including the Air Force Research Laboratory and New York University. They will need to further advance quantum repeater technology to boost signals across such large distances, but the funding provides them with important resources to try to reach that goal. New York aims to that will serve as incubators and foster the development and commercialization of quantum technologies.

Elected officials and leaders share support for RoQNET

US Senator Charles Schumer: “I was proud to secure this funding for Ģ����ý and RIT to help develop a cutting-edge Upstate quantum network. This win-win benefits national security and boosts economic development and innovation by enabling the Rochester region to connect into similar New York-based quantum communications networks positioning New York to be a global leader in quantum communication and networking. RoQNET will stimulate quantum workforce development for K–12 and college-age students and offer learning opportunities for students enrolled in the Monroe Community College Optical Technology program. Rochester is home to world-class research institutions, and this federal investment will help Ģ����ý and RIT continue advancing cutting-edge quantum networking work. I was proud to deliver this funding so Rochester’s innovators can keep pushing the boundaries of secure communications and strengthen the region’s role as a hub for advanced technology.”

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: “I am proud to help deliver $2 million in funding for this quantum network expansion. Through the development of RoQNET, the Ģ����ý and Rochester Institute of Technology are at the forefront of quantum research. Quantum has the ability to fundamentally change how we engage in secure communications. The Rochester region remains a preeminent leader in advanced technologies and high-impact research activities, and I look forward to seeing the results of this partnership.”

Congressman Joe Morelle: “Quantum technology is the next frontier of innovation, and thanks to world-class research universities like Ģ����ý and RIT, Rochester will continue to lead the way in these critical technologies. I was proud to secure funding in Washington to support RoQNET, and I cannot wait to see what they discover next.”

Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, delivered with growing confidence and certainty.

That feedback loop is the architecture of an echo chamber: a space where familiar ideas are amplified, dissenting voices fade, and beliefs can harden rather than evolve.

But new research from the Ģ����ý has found that echo chambers might not be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing more randomness into what people see.

The interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by Professor from the , created experiments to identify belief rigidity and assess whether introducing more randomness into a social network could help reduce it. The researchers studied how 163 participants reacted to statements about topics like climate change after using simulated social media channels, some with feeds modeled on more traditional social media outlets and others with more randomness.

Importantly, “randomness” in this context doesn’t mean replacing relevant content with nonsense. Rather, it means loosening the usual “show me more of what I already agree with” logic that drives many algorithms today. In the researchers’ model, users were periodically exposed to opinions and connections they did not explicitly choose, alongside those they did.

A tweak to the algorithm, a crack in the echo chambers

“Across a series of experiments, we find that what people see online does influence their beliefs, often pulling them closer to the views they are repeatedly exposed to,” says , a computer science PhD student and first author of the paper. “But when algorithms incorporate more randomization, this feedback loop weakens. Users are exposed to a broader range of perspectives and become more open to differing views.”

The authors—who also include Professor from the , , the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of , PhD student , and ’16, ’22 (PhD)—say that the recommendation systems social media platforms use can drive people into echo chambers that make divisive content more attractive. As an antidote, the researchers recommend simple design changes that do not eliminate personalization but that do introduce more variety while still allowing users control over their feeds.

The findings arrive at a moment when governments and platforms alike are grappling with misinformation, declining institutional trust, and polarized responses to elections and public health guidance. Proma recommends social media users keep the results in mind when reflecting on their own social media consumer habits.

“If your feed feels too comfortable, that might be by design,” says Proma. “Seek out voices that challenge you. The most dangerous feeds are not the ones that upset us, but the ones that convince us we are always right.”

The research was partially funded through the .

Important everyday products—from plastics to detergents—are made through chemical reactions that mostly use precious metals such as platinum as catalysts. Scientists have been searching for more sustainable, low-cost substitutes for years, and tungsten carbide—an Earth-abundant metal used commonly for industrial machinery, cutting tools, and chisels—is a promising candidate.

But tungsten carbide has properties that have limited its applications. , an associate professor in the Ģ����ý’s , and his collaborators recently achieved several key advancements to make tungsten carbide a more viable alternative to platinum in chemical reactions.

The best turn of phase

Sinhara Perera, a chemical engineering PhD student in Porosoff’s lab, says that part of what makes tungsten carbide a difficult catalyst for producing valuable products is that its atoms can be arranged in many different configurations—known as phases.

“There’s been no clear understanding of the surface structure of tungsten carbide because it’s really difficult to measure the catalytic surface inside the chambers where these chemical reactions take place,” says Perera.

In a , Porosoff, Perera, and chemical engineering undergraduate student Eva Ciuffetelli ’27 overcame this problem by very carefully manipulating tungsten carbide particles at the nanoscale level within the chemical reactor—a vessel where temperatures can reach above 700 degrees Celsius. Using a process called temperature-programmed carburization, they created tungsten carbide catalysts in their desired phase inside the reactor, ran the reaction, and then studied which versions performed the best.

“Some of the phases are more thermodynamically stable, so that’s where the catalyst inherently wants to end up,” says Porosoff. “But other phases that are less thermodynamically stable are more effective as catalysts.”

The researchers identified one particular phase—β-W₂C—that works especially well for a reaction that turns carbon dioxide into important precursors for making useful chemicals and fuels. With further fine-tuning by industry, Porosoff and his team think this phase of tungsten carbide could be as effective as platinum without the drawbacks of high cost and limited supply.

Plastic upcycling

Porosoff and his colleagues have also explored tungsten carbide as a catalyst for upcycling plastic waste and converting old plastics into high-quality new products. A , led by Linxao Chen from the University of North Texas, and supported by Porosoff and Ģ����ý Assistant Professor , showed how tungsten carbide can be used for a process called hydrocracking.

Hydrocracking involves taking big molecules such as polypropylene—the basis of water bottles and many other forms of plastic—and chemically breaking them down into smaller molecules that can be used for new products. While hydrocracking has been used in oil and gas refining, applying it to process plastic waste has been a problem because of the high stability of polymer chains that make up most single-use plastics, and presence of contaminants that deactivate the catalysts. The precious metals, such as platinum, that are currently used as catalysts deactivate rapidly and are supported within microporous surfaces that do not have room for the long polymer chains in single-use plastics.

“Tungsten carbide, when made with the correct phase, has metallic and acidic properties that are good for breaking down the carbon chains in these polymers,” says Porosoff. “These big bulky polymer chains can interact with the tungsten carbide much easier because they don’t have micropores that cause limitations with typical platinum-based catalysts.”

The study showed that not only was tungsten carbide less costly than platinum catalysts for hydrocracking, it was more than 10 times as efficient. The researchers say this opens exciting new avenues for improving catalysts and turning plastic waste into new materials, supporting a circular economy.

Taking the temperature

Underpinning these advancements in creating more efficient catalysts is the ability to accurately measure temperatures on the catalyst surfaces. Chemical reactions can either absorb heat (endothermic) or release heat (exothermic), and controlling the catalyst surface temperature allows scientists to efficiently coordinate multiple reactions. But the measurements currently used to take the temperature of catalysts provide rough averages that do not give enough nuance to accurately measure the precise conditions needed to effectively study chemical reactions.

Using optical measurement techniques developed in the lab of , a visiting professor in the , the researchers devised a new way to measure temperature within chemical reactors. They described the new technique in a .

“We learned from this study that depending on the type of chemistry, the temperature measured with these bulk readings can be off by 10 to 100 degrees Celsius,” says Porosoff. “That’s a really significant difference in catalytic studies where you’re trying to ensure that measurements are reproducible and that multiple reactions can be coupled.”

The team applied their new technique to study tandem catalysts, where an exothermic reaction provides enough heat to trigger an endothermic one. Effectively pairing these reactions can minimize waste heat and lead to more efficient chemical engineering processes.

Porosoff says the technique could also help change the way researchers conduct catalysis studies, leading to more careful measurements, reproducible work, and more robust findings across the field.

The ACS Catalysis study was funded with support from the Sloan Foundation and the Department of Energy; the Journal of the American Chemical Society study was funded with support from the National Science Foundation; the EES Catalysis study was funded with support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority via the Carbontech Development Initiative.

, the William F. May Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Ģ����ý, died in late December at the age of 71. He is being remembered as a pioneer in the field of ultrasound imaging and a revered faculty member in the .

Parker’s research about elastography and techniques for diagnosing cancer, liver disease, and other pathologies shaped the field of ultrasound imaging and inspired countless researchers.

Colleagues and former students describe Parker as a scholar who “led with vision, integrity, and a deep commitment to excellence,” says , the Wilson Professor of Electronic Imaging and chair of the department. “Equally meaningful was his generosity as a mentor. Many of us benefited from his guidance; I still remember seeking his advice at key moments in my career.”

At URochester, Parker served in numerous critical leadership positions, including as director of the Rochester Center for Biomedical Ultrasound from 1990 to 2006, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1992 to 1998, associate vice provost for research and graduate affairs from 1996 to 1998, and dean of what was then called the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 1998 to 2008.

“Kevin devoted his career to innovation that has changed the world,” says Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the . “As our school’s longest-serving dean, he was instrumental in establishing the and the development of the Robert B. Goergen Hall. He was a remarkable person, and his legacy lives on through his students and through his immeasurable contributions to printing, diagnostics, and imaging.”

Blue noise mask and other paradigm-shifting innovations

Parker experienced tremendous success translating his research into real-world applications and fruitful business ventures. He held 33 US patents and 14 international patents that have been licensed to 25 companies. In 2016, Parker became the first person from the Ģ����ý to be named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Blue noise mask, which Parker invented with then-graduate student Theophano Mitsa ’91 (PhD), was a deceptively elegant technological process that transformed how electronic devices in the early 1990s rendered images. They were able to shift otherwise distracting errors in the printing process to higher wavelengths where—because of a quirk of the human eye—they would be less visible. The technology would be licensed by more than a dozen companies, including Hewlett Packard, and become one of the most lucrative inventions in the University’s history.

“I could not have a more brilliant advisor,” says Mitsa. She recalls Parker approaching her with an idea when she was experimenting with blue noise but struggling to find anything worthy of a PhD. thesis. “On the board, he started creating graphs that described the blue noise mask. What a brilliant idea. The big guys—Xerox, Kodak, and��HP— were trying for years to find a technique to create a mask that yielded blue noise but could not do it. Back then, there were two ways to halftone: a fast but grainy one with a mask, and a slow but blue-noise-yielding technique (error diffusion). The blue noise mask was the first one to combine speed and quality.”

A series of patents Parker obtained with Robert Lerner, a former associate professor of radiology, and Ron Huang, a graduate student, helped launch the field of sonoelastography, which offers novel ways to measure tissue stiffness. In 2000, a succession of ultrasound, MRI, CT scan, and biomarker patents with Sara Totterman, a former professor of radiology, and graduate student Jose Tamez-Pena led to the founding of VirtualScopics Inc. The company specialized in making medical imaging analysis tools to help clinical researchers speed up the drug development process.

Parker’s former student Edward Ashton ’96 (PhD) was brought in to serve as the chief scientific officer of VirtualScopics, which quickly became an industry success. When the company went public in 2005, it had grown to about 40 employees and was earning about $3 million annually. VirtualScopics was acquired multiple times before becoming part of ICON PLC, which currently employs 44,000 people.

“No one person—honestly, no ten people—have had more to do with making me who I am, both personally and professionally, than Kevin Parker,” says Ashton, now ICON’s senior director for oncology imaging and a prolific novelist. “He was an adviser, a confidante, and above all, a friend. The world is a poorer place without him.”

‘A brilliant scientist, inventor, teacher’

Parker was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He earned numerous awards and accolades over his career, including Ģ����ý’s George Eastman Medal, the AIUM Joseph Holmes Pioneer Award for Contributions to Medical Ultrasound, the Eastman Kodak Outstanding Innovation Award, and the Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology World Federation Prize.

Many of Parker’s former students have gone on to become leaders in ultrasound imaging and other fields. In 2019, an endowed professorship named after Parker was established at Ģ����ý with royalties from the blue noise mask patents; his former student was installed as the inaugural Kevin J. Parker Distinguished Professor in Biomedical Engineering.

“I have always been so deeply honored and humbled to hold this named professorship, and now, even more so in Kevin’s absence,” says Dalecki. “I have had the profound privilege of knowing Professor Parker for decades, first as a student and then as a colleague. Professor Parker was a brilliant scientist, inventor, teacher, and importantly, a wonderfully kind and generous person. He was an important mentor, colleague, and friend. This is great loss for our scientific community and the URochester.”

Parker remained an active researcher until his death. He was listed as a coauthor on numerous studies published in 2025 and recently secured patents related to the��H-scan technique��developed in his lab and on reverberant shear wave fields.

“Kevin was the reason I decided to pursue my PhD at the URochester,” says Benjamin Castañeda ’09 (PhD), now a professor of biomedical engineering at URochester. “From our first meeting, I saw him as a role model: a world-class researcher who had invented a new imaging modality, served as dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and successfully translated his work into industry. Little did I know that this was only the tip of the iceberg. Kevin was not only a brilliant scientist and an inspiring mentor, but also a generous, wise, and deeply humble human being. His legacy will endure through the many lives and careers he shaped, and he will be deeply missed.”

Adds , an associate professor of biomedical engineering and chair of the department, who took ECE 452: Medical Imaging with Parker during his senior year as an undergraduate at Ģ����ý: “The experience and his encouragement convinced me to stay at Rochester for my PhD. He was an incredibly kind and patient mentor. And though he was incredibly busy, he was always so generous with his time.”

Parker is survived by his wife, Jean, and their four children. More details about his life and memorial services are available .

When Walter McDonald ’27 found himself stranded after his car broke down this summer and his favorite local mechanic was not answering his phone, the Ģ����ý student turned his frustration into a business idea. The third-year and double major knew his mechanic did great work but because he was a small business owner, he was often too tied up fixing cars to coordinate logistics with customers.

“I realized that this is a problem a lot of businesses around the country face,” says McDonald. “We are in an automated age and there are easy solutions, but a lot of business owners don’t know about them because there’s a technological gap.”

After getting his car fixed, McDonald teamed up with his roommate Stephen Lim ’27 (majoring in and ) to create a simple-to-use system that allows small business owners to set up their own virtual receptionist powered by artificial intelligence.

Building the technical foundation

McDonald gained crucial experience in voice systems and natural language processing over the summer working for , a position he secured through the summer internship program at the URochester-based New York State Center of Excellence in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. He was tasked with building AI voice systems that could take vocal instructions from customers, map them to back-end systems, and determine what insurance policies best matched the customers’ needs. He used many of the same concepts he learned at Soleo for OrbitPhone.

After a few months of development, in late November.

Answering every call

OrbitPhone provides a human-like assistant that can answer calls and book appointments, syncing to a client’s digital calendar and providing quick summaries of each transaction. The product promises an easy setup that takes less than two minutes, and if a client already has a website the system can scrape it for information to make the process even faster.

While products offering AI receptionists for large companies already exist, McDonald says OrbitPhone is intended to fill a gap in price point and ease of use for the small business market.

Ariel Herrera-Molina, who owns Guava Spa in Homer, New York, was among the first to sign up for OrbitPhone. She and her employees are all estheticians who are often too busy with clients to answer phone calls. She said a mentor had advised her to explore using AI to help her business, and she was excited when Ģ����ý students reached out with a potential solution.

“I run a spa and I’m the one doing the work, so I am in services all day long—I’m checking clients in and out, I’m doing the marketing, I’m doing everything,” says Herrera-Molina. “It’s literally impossible for me to be there answering the phone. I know that sometimes people are intimidated when they just get a voicemail, and sometimes they hang up before actually leaving a voicemail. I was hoping to find something to help capture any leads that I was missing.”

Expanding access to AI tools

McDonald and Lim hope their product can help level the playing field for small, local businesses trying to compete with larger corporations.

“We want to augment what people can do and democratize the technology,” says McDonald. “It’s not fair that larger companies are able to capture every single customer call and get all this valuable data while smaller businesses don’t get the same opportunities.”

Since OrbitPhone launched, McDonald and Lim have been working to incorporate feedback from their customers to enhance the product. They plan to add features such as more voice customization and outbound calling to help clients follow up on leads.

Lim says starting a company like this is a dream come true, fusing his interests in both software programming and business. He says Ģ����ý’s open curriculum��gives him the flexibility to pursue both paths, and he is glad to have found in McDonald a collaborative friend and business partner with whom he can work toward a shared goal.

“It’s a whole learning process as we’re building this and figuring things out ourselves,” says Lim. “I love getting first-hand, practical experience building a product. How can you not get excited to build something like this? It’s what I came to school for.”