Photo Spotlights

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.

RIT’s Department of Communication hosted the annual regional Conference for Undergraduate Research in Communication on April 18. Students from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia participated in the daylong event. The conference culminated with an awards ceremony recognizing top papers and posters. All presented papers will be published in a print-on-demand paperback, available through Lulu, an electronic publishing website. Here, Kaitlin Santanna, Villanova University, presented her paper, Don’t Ask Me, I’m Just a Girl: Gender Roles in the Popular Television Sitcom The Simpsons.

The College of Applied Science and Technology has a new home. The CAST Building, which features the McGowan Center for Telecommunications, Innovation and Collaborative Research, the REDCOM Telecommunications Systems Laboratory and the American Packaging Corp. Center for Packaging Innovation, was dedicated during an April 18 ceremony.

Students were treated to a barbecue and a sunny day on April 16 near the Infinity Loop. The event was held to provide information about the upcoming Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 3.

Dr. Carol Whitlock’s product development class, offered by the School of Hospitality and Service Management, has been given the Dove Chocolate Challenge (Dove-At-Home business division). Students were asked to develop new recipes using at least two Dove ingredients. They worked in the kitchens at the New York Wine & Culinary Center in Canandaigua on April 16 and presented their creations to three Dove representatives. One example was a cream puff with a rich chocolate ganache filling, topped with a decorative chocolate leaf and dusted with chocolate powder.

RIT’s Women’s Council hosted its Spring Fashion Show April 11 at Locust Hill Country Club in Pittsford. The event featured fashions and accessories from Jane Morgan Little House of Aurora, N.Y., and proceeds benefited the Women’s Council of RIT Scholarship Funds for female students.

RIT hosted the Kern Communication Conference on visual communication, visual rhetoric and visual media technologies April 10-13. Here, Paul Lester, California State University at Fullerton, spoke about the contrast between teaching in the traditional classroom and using the online program Second Life.

Linda Sanford, senior vice president at IBM and co-chair of the Business Council of New York State, gave the lunchtime address at the fourth annual IT Collaboratory Research Symposium, held April 14. The event focused on research and technology development in microsystems materials, devices and systems.

RIT’s IT Collaboratory will host its fourth annual research symposium 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, April 14, in the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies. The event will focus on research and technology development in microsystems materials, devices and systems and will feature a keynote address from Linda Sanford, senior vice president at IBM and co-chair of the Business Council of New York State.

IMAGINE RIT DISPLAY—Archeologist Bill Middleton purchased these replicas of Zapotec funerary urns at a regional market in the southern Mexican state Oaxaca. Middleton, acting chair of the Department of Material Culture Sciences and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, won grants from National Geographic and NASA to study how the Oaxaxan economy and environment changed as the region formed into the first state-society in Mexico and then collapsed into smaller city-states. At the Imagine RIT festival, Middleton will display satellite imagery obtained from NASA to look at the Oaxacan landscape. The data will provide the most accurate and most detailed landscape map that exists for the region.

Dozens of interactive design and development companies from across the country met with the next generation of designers and developers on April 3. RIT students pursuing new media design, new media development, computer graphics design and graduate design degrees had the opportunity to network with new media industry professionals and have their portfolios reviewed. Yahoo, Fantasy Interactive, Scripps Networks and BEAM Interactive were among the companies represented. Here, Andrea Perry showed her work to reps from American Greetings, Dan Weiss and Lisa Valendza.

Nano Days took place at RIT, March 31-April 4, with a lecture by Dr. Davide Mariotti, visiting professor from the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, on April 1.