News
Microsystems Engineering Ph.D.

Alumnus Nick Conn’s vision for a one-of-a-kind smart toilet seat that will improve the health of people around the world has made giant leaps toward becoming a reality with the help of one of RIT’s most generous patrons, Austin McChord.

Undergraduates aren’t the only students taking advantage of RIT’s co-op and internship program. Across the university, Ph.D. students are securing prestigious work experiences to provide important gateways to careers in industry, foundations, and government.

WROC-TV features Zac Bittner ’11 (microelectronic engineering), ’11 MS (materials science), ’19 Ph.D. (microsystems engineering); Nicholos Mackos ’08 (mechanical engineering); Chelsea Mackosm ’09 (microelectronic engineering), ’11 MS (materials science); and Joseph Hunt ’19 (chemical engineering).

RIT graduate programs are among the best in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report annual statistical survey of graduate programs.

Assistant Professor Pratik Dholabhai from RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and grant for his five-year project to conduct fundamental physics research on complex materials in solid oxide fuel cells.

ASME.org features David Borkholder, the Bausch and Lomb Professor of Microsystems Engineering, and Nicholas Conn '11, '13 MS (electrical engineering).

Professor Seth Hubbard is an expert in designing, growing, and fabricating solar cells and said that if the cost of these highly efficient solar cells can be reduced enough, they could be used to help devices ranging from smartphones to drones to cars.

Three new engineering doctoral degree programs at RIT were approved by the New York State Department of Education and are focused on using multidisciplinary approaches to solving today’s global challenges.

Toilet seats with high-tech sensors might be the non-invasive technology of the future that could help reduce hospital return rates of individuals with heart disease. A joint project by researchers at RIT and the University of Rochester Medical Center will determine if in-home monitoring can successfully record vital signs and reduce risk and costly re-hospitalization rates for people with heart failure. The five-year, $2.9 million venture is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

RIT’s Future Photon Initiative (FPI) and L3Harris have entered into a new industry partnership to develop quantum technologies. The partners will begin developing next steps for experiments and analysis focused on quantum information processing for communication, sensing, and computing.

RIT Ph.D. candidate Mehdi (Aslan) Dehghani secured an internship at bio-device company after his team's research paper was published nationally.

Researchers at RIT and the University of Rochester discovered an alternative to successfully purify biological particles to better understand how cells communicate with one another.