Photo Spotlights

Black Heritage Month kicked off with a performance by the Womba Africa Drumming and Dance group from Ghana in the Fireside Lounge. Numerous events are scheduled during the month of February.

Students took part in the annual Winter Warrior obstacle course at Grace Watson Field on Feb. 1. Part of FreezeFest, the event was hosted by Phi Kappa Psi and Sigma Chi to benefit the Veterans Outreach Center.

RIT’s annual FreezeFest celebration featured free activities throughout the weekend, including swing dance lessons, a mechanical reindeer ride, escape room puzzles and “Chocolate on Ice,” pairing ice skating and chocolate desserts in the Gene Polisseni Center.

From left, first-year NTID students Shanelly Nunez and Maia Swanson show off their caricatures at a FreezeFest event in the Student Alumni Union. Other highlights included a photobooth inside a giant snow globe, a candy and hot cocoa bar and free FreezeFest swag.

The Imaging Science Club hosted hack.tiff, RIT’s first-ever imaging processing hackathon, on Jan. 25 and 26. Seven teams of students competed in the 24-hour challenge to solve an image processing challenge presented by the Rochester-based company EagleView, which offered $5,250 in prizes. EagleView provided the students with a data set of thousands of images of single-family homes across the U.S. and asked them to develop ways to analyze the data and extract meaningful information from it. The interdisciplinary event brought more than 40 participants from undergraduate and graduate programs including imaging science, computer science, computer engineering, motion picture science, American Sign Language and interpreting, management information science, physics and more.

From left, Sofia Bzhilyanskaya (computer science), Perry Deng (computer science), Dylan Bowald (computer science BS/MS) and Lori Liu (electrical engineering) work together during the hackathon.

MSNBC political analyst Joy-Ann Reid delivered the keynote address at RIT’s Expressions of King’s Legacy on Jan. 30.

Jackie Davis, the creator of the webcomic "Underpants & Overbites", is the visiting artist for SOIS 105: Making Comics. She gave a talk in the Campus Center Reading Room.

Construction is underway for RIT’s Global Cybersecurity Institute, a new wing of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences that will help the university become a nexus of cybersecurity education and research.

Ethan Constant, a third-year graphic design student from Ames, Iowa, sets type with Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, associate curator of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at a Jan. 18 workshop. Students learned about European avant-garde typography and letterpress printing technology during the workshop, which highlighted the collaborative teaching opportunities supported by the Cary Collection.

Nicole Doyley, director of Prayer and Care Ministries in Rochester, gives the keynote address at the third annual Let Freedom Ring event on Monday in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Looking ahead, the 38th annual Expressions of King’s Legacy event, featuring keynote speaker and MSNBC political analyst Joy-Ann Reid, poet Javon Johnson and actress Mzuri Moyo Aimbaye, takes place from noon to 2 p.m. Jan. 30 in Ingle Auditorium.

A mixed media book from Fairport High School student Erin Cook is among the work on display at the annual exhibit "Start Here," featuring regional middle and high school student artwork. The exhibit opens today, with a reception from 5-7 p.m. in Bevier Gallery, and runs through Feb. 1.

3D digital design student Avery Fallon draws with invisible ink for the 100-Hour Project, an annual workshop that promotes collaboration and creativity. Students are creating one-minute animations around the theme of “secret agent.” Final projects will be screened at 2 p.m. Friday in MAGIC Spell Studios’ Wegmans Theater.