Photo Spotlights

Cult-hero of the graphic fiction world Lynda Barry held a workshop, “Writing the Unthinkable,” at RIT May 5. Barry also presented a lecture concluding the Caroline Werner Gannett Project for the academic year.

RIT’s Formula SAE Racing Team unveiled its car at the Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 3. The team will compete in the annual Formula SAE competition, sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers, May 14-18 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich. The team will also enter the Formula Student Germany contest Aug. 6-10 in Hockenheim.

The RIT Kung Fu Student Organization demonstrated their discipline to a crowd during the Imagine RIT Festival on May 3.

Past and present participants in RIT’s Partners in Pluralism program reconnected at the first reunion on May 1.

Michael Kane, president and publisher of the Democrat and Chronicle, was the inaugural speaker in a new lecture series at RIT, the Paul and Louise Miller Lecture Series, through RIT’s School of Print Media. The lecture series focuses on the transformation of news media. Kane’s lecture was a highlight among the activities of the School of Print Media’s sixth annual Industry Day on April 30.

IMAGINE RIT EXHIBIT—Viewed through a small hole, multiple reflections of a molecular model are created using parallel mirrors. The intent is to show the symmetry of the reflections as each successive one is reversed front to back. In addition to this exhibit, College of Science presenters George Thurston, Ronald Jodoin and Bernard Brooks will display a large version of the Mobius trihedral kaleidoscope. An observer can insert a straight object, such as a stick, in alternate positions to form, together with its reflections, a cube, an octahedron or a tetrahedron. In addition to being startling, this clearly demonstrates common symmetry elements of these regular polyhedra.

James E. Hammer, president and CEO of Hammer Packaging Corp., has been recognized by RIT for his business success in the Rochester community. The E. Philip Saunders College of Business named Hammer as recipient of the 2008 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award. Hammer, on screen, was honored during a noon luncheon on April 23.

Nadia Pasicznyk, an accounting major at the E. Philip Saunders College of Business, was among 52 RIT students, alumni and other business professionals who recently spent a day teaching students at Kodak Park School No. 41 about business and economics.

President Bill Destler on April 25 unveiled the official poster for this year’s Imagine RIT Innovation and Creativity Festival. Carly Schonberg’s design was selected from 32 student entries to promote the May 3 festival. In another contest, Georgi Unkovski was recognized as the creator of the festival’s YouTube video clip.

Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO of Xerox offered a broad perspective on the advantages of sustainable practices as a presenter at the university’s Presidential Colloquium. Following her address, Sustainability: Crisis and Opportunity, she pledged $2 million on behalf of Xerox to benefit The Golisano Institute for Sustainability at RIT.

IMAGINE RIT EXHIBIT—A simple idea to wallpaper classrooms with images, movement and sound using digitally networked projectors has taken hold and is inspiring professors across campus to dive into a new way of teaching. The approach is simple, flexible and easily adapted to traditional learning environments and more experimental, active classrooms that incorporate screen displays. A variety of immersive and wide-view large projection displays will be showcased at Imagine RIT May 3. The prototype immersive classroom shown above will be on display in the Color Science Building. Here, Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is projected across the screen. Color scientist Roy Berns uses spectral information from the painting to simulate what it would look like under different light sources. Berns is the Richard S. Hunter Professor in the Munsell Color Science Laboratory in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science in the College of Science. The immersive display program is directed by Mitchell Rosen, also a faculty member in Color Science and Imaging Science.

Marcia Birken and Anne Coon have spent more than 20 years exploring the links between mathematics and poetry in their research and in the RIT classroom. Their new book, Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry, examines counting patterns, patterns in form, fractal patterns and patterns for the mind—such as proof, paradox and infinity. The book grew from Birken and Coon’s interdisciplinary course Analogy, Mathematics and Poetry (later renamed Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry). Birken is professor emeritus in the School of Mathematical Sciences, and Coon is senior associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and professor of English.