RIT women in the news

Shima Parsa, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy, received an NSF CAREER Award to advance her research in soft matter physics.

Graduate students Olivia Towne and Meghan Taylor gave back to the RIT community with their graduate research projects, which focused on the nutritional needs of student athletes and the challenges facing people with food allergies.

Corinna Hill didn’t expect to become a college professor, let alone one honored with a prestigious teaching award. But, this year Hill, an assistant professor in NTID’s Department of Liberal Studies, has earned RIT’s Richard and Virginia Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Valentage has won an Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching for her commitment to student success. The recognition is bittersweet for Valentage, who is retiring after 31 years at RIT.

Lea Michel’s commitment to mentorship, diversity, and hands-on learning reflects the same encouragement that once sparked her own path in STEM. She is being recognized for her impact with the 2025 Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching. 

The inaugural Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies symposium, hosted on March 28, will feature original work by individuals from across the RIT community.

Researchers who contributed to RIT receiving nearly $103 million in sponsored research awards during the past fiscal year, including 10 faculty members who reached or surpassed $1 million this past fiscal year, were inducted into the yearly classes of PI Millionaires.

Natalie Crowell and Olivia Croteau, both third-year humanities, computing, and design majors, are developing an AI tool that analyzes publicly available social media data, specifically from chat groups where refugees discuss needs related to housing, food, and other resources.

The Power Your Potential (PYP) Women’s Conference on Feb. 28, kicking off the upcoming national Women’s History Month in March, serves as a dynamic platform for area businesswomen to gather insights from peers, engage in educational activities, and foster an environment conducive to women’s success in various professional spheres.

The process combines virology and mechanobiology, two distinct areas of study that had not been explored at the same time but might prove to be a way to better understand disease progressions to intervene earlier and improve patient outcomes.

Integrating the development of eco-friendly practices with social and economic facets of sustainability, could further transform engineering education by equipping future engineers with the skill set required for the profession today.

RIT’s interdisciplinary collaborations enrich research across the university and beyond. Two of these collaborative projects recently received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of a total $22.6 million in grants given to support humanities projects across the nation.