Edmund Hajim’s $30 million gift commitment to the school in 2008 was the largest in the University’s history.

The University of Rochester first offered engineering courses in 1908. The emphasis was on mechanical engineering.

Eastman Kodak Co. and Bausch and Lomb Optical were instrumental in providing the funds to establish The Institute of Optics in 1929. The Institute has awarded nearly half of all U.S. optics degrees.

Computer Science is now the Hajim School department with the largest undergraduate enrollment. Its graduating class in May 2017 will be about 34 percent female, double the national average.

Two of the school’s six department chairs are women – Diane Dalecki in biomedical engineering and Sandhya Dwarkadas in computer science. So is the school’s dean – Wendi Heinzelman.

19 Hajim School faculty members are also scientists at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

15 have received prestigious NSF CAREER awards.

Goergen Hall is 981 feet from the Medical Center – less than a five-minute walk – facilitating research and educational collaborations.

The measurement was taken by Greg Gdowski, director of the Medical Technology and Innovation master’s program, whose students take advantage of that proximity to design and build medical devices after immersing themselves in clinical settings.

In its first year of full implementation, the Hajim School STEM-Gems program increased the first-year retention rate of low-income, first generation and underrepresented racial minority students in engineering to 88 percent, compared to an average of 57 percent the prior five years.

More than 70 senior capstone projects were on display during Hajim Design Day in 2016. Twenty-nine were sponsored by outside companies or agencies, another 10 by Medical Center faculty and one by a University of Ghana faculty member.

Spain was the country most often picked by Hajim School students studying abroad during the 2015-16 school year.