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One highlight of the RIT-Rochester Prep High School Partnership is the annual capstone showcase that spotlights student-professor collaborations. Their diverse projects in photojournalism, antibiotic resistance, 3D printing and fabrication, and chemical engineering gave the students experience on a college campus and the confidence of completing undergraduate-level material.

Drawn to RIT for its unique focus on technology, art, and design, Lindsay ’09 and Andy Mindler ’09 saw new media design as the perfect blend of 3D, motion, and code to fuel their diverse design interests. The couple started dating at RIT in 2007 and married in 2011. Since moving to the West Coast, they have carved out successful design careers, joining an ever-growing throng of new media and other RIT design alumni living and working in the Bay Area.

After a lifelong interest in clothing design, Chrystel Anne Clasicas has burst onto the fashion scene, starting by selling face masks in 2020 and showing her work at New York Fashion Week only one year later. Now, she’s preparing to appear again at this year’s New York Fashion Week by showing a collection of designs in collaboration with RIT engineers.

Two outdoor sculptures are adorning RIT’s campus this academic year, with more on the way. Works by artists Joshua Enck and Letha Wilson have revived an outdoor sculpture initiative that is part of the School of Art’s Anna Ballarian Visiting Artist Series.

Six graduate programs in Saunders College are now STEM-designated, allowing students the opportunity to engage in technology-based business education.

In virtually every art course and studio environment at RIT, technology is integral to the delivery of content and production of work, whether it’s an “ancient” technology like using a hammer and anvil to forge metal or a computer numerical control plasma table to cut metal forms.

RIT’s MAGIC Center won a MegaGrant from Epic Games, the largest academic grant ever awarded by the industry’s leading game engine developer. The grant allows professors to participate in hands-on training with some of the world’s leading visualization and virtual production experts.

Cecilia Alm, an associate professor in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, was awarded nearly $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead a team of RIT faculty addressing a lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence research community and gaps in AI curricula.

Since opening six years ago, RIT’s Battery Prototyping Center has nearly doubled its research and development projects with battery manufacturers from Boston to Silicon Valley. More industries are exploring designs for commercial quality lithium-ion batteries and seeking experts at the center to provide research about the development of different styles of batteries.

For RIT students, the learning doesn’t stop when classes end. In 2021, three student teams took what they’re learning and used it to win national and international competitions in cybersecurity, racing, and design.

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope—becomes operational this year, Jeyhan Kartaltepe will co-lead a team of nearly 50 researchers to map the earliest structures of the universe.

Three faculty members who chose to start their research careers at RIT received prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Awards in 2021. Their research aims to advance the foundations of machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, and clean energy.