Photo Spotlights

New pedestrian walkway signs went up around campus recently. The names feature RIT-related people from the past and iconic spots on campus.

The 2017 REU Graduate Study and Research Symposium was jointly hosted by RIT’s seven REU programs and sponsored by RIT’s Office of the Vice President for Research. The National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates programs draw top students from across the country and expose them to different perspectives. Approximately eight to 10 students per program work with RIT researchers for 10 weeks in the following areas: accessible multimodal interfaces; computational sensing; extremal graph theory and dynamical systems; imaging in the physical sciences; materials, applications and development for organic photovoltaic devices; model-based reasoning in STEM education; and multimessenger astrophysics. To read more, go to rit.edu/news/story.php?id=62292.

Saunders College of Business named John LiDestri, CEO of LiDestri Food & Drink, as the 2017 recipient of the Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award. The award ceremony was held at Oak Hill Country Club on June 28 and included remarks by Saunders Dean Jacqueline Mozrall, right, and LiDestri, who discussed his business success in the local community.

Representatives of ASM Systems and RIT’s Center for Electronics Manufacturing and Assembly (CEMA) celebrated their expanded research and development collaboration during a half-day event on June 21. ASM installed new electronics manufacturing equipment in the center to be used for research, undergraduate and graduate courses and workforce development training. CEMA is a partner in RIT’s AIM Photonics initiative and is part of the team developing electronics packaging solutions. The new equipment and R&D efforts would be a means to contribute to this effort.

RIT’s Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC) worked with Make-A-Wish Central New York to grant a wish for 14-year-old Riley Zabele, who loves video games, especially interactive games that involve design. Riley, who has a brain tumor, and his family traveled to Rochester from Madison County on June 17 to pick up his new high-end, custom-built gaming computer created by MAGIC Center Director Andy Phelps and Associate Director Chris Egert. Riley also received several gifts donated by “friends of MAGIC,” including Vicarious Visions, Bungie, Re-Logic, Microsoft and Valve. Pictured, back row from left, are Phelps; Jennifer Hinton, assistant director, MAGIC Center; Jim Ockenden, Make-A-Wish Western New York Advisory Board; and Lou Diorio and Cristofer Sochacki, MAGIC Center co-op students. Seated in front row are Riley, left, and Egert.

The annual East House Enrichment program is taking place at RIT June 5-8 and June 12-15. The program is designed to broaden other treatment and rehabilitation services and to encourage participants who are recovering from mental illness or substance abuse disorders to pursue educational goals to achieve independence and self-sufficiency. Classes include wellness, Chinese, public speaking, creative writing and more. Here, a Creative Journaling class made a journal to write in later.

A signing ceremony for RIT’s first international dual degree agreement between Japan’s Kanazawa Institute of Technology and RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering took place June 9. From left, Jeremy Haefner, RIT’s provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, and President Satoshi Osawa, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, signed the documents.

Kimberlee Keithley is the 2017 winner of the Norman Miles Scholarship given to a student maintaining a perfect 4.0. Going into her final year at RIT, she is pursuing two bachelor’s degrees, one in chemical engineering and another in applied mathematics. As part of the recognition, Keithley shared the award with faculty-researcher and her mentor, Steven Weinstein. He is the department head of chemical engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering.

Researchers from RIT developed a high-speed internet highway for emergency first responders and managers. The new network protocol, called Multi Node Label Routing (MNLR) protocol, allows digital information to travel faster and more reliably during emergency situations. The team includes (from left), Joe Tom Job, a computer science graduate student, Nirmala Shenoy, professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies, Erik Golen, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies, and Jennifer Schneider, the Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking at RIT.

Scott Franklin, right, co-director of the Inclusive Excellence program at RIT and director of the Center for Advancing STEM Teaching, Learning and Evaluation, and his team won a Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence Initiative grant to increase diversity and inclusivity among RIT undergraduate science majors. Pictured with Franklin at the June 7 campus announcement are, left to right, Lea Michel, associate professor of chemistry and chair of Women in Science; Tina Chapman DaCosta, Diversity Theatre Program Developer; Jennifer Connelly, visiting assistant professor; and Dina Newman, associate professor of life sciences and co-director of the initiative. The grant will enable RIT to increase infrastructure, resources and expertise to involve and retain deaf/hard-of-hearing, female and African-American, Latino/a-American and Native American students and develop strategies for supporting their success.

Genesee Valley Quilt Club presented more than 600 quilts on display, as well as lectures, demos and exhibits at its biennial show June 2-4 at RIT’s Gordon Field House.

Volunteers sort items left behind by students moving out of the dorms for the upcoming Goodbye, Goodbuy! sale in August. The sale, led by students, urges students moving out of their dorms and on-campus apartments to donate their furniture, clothes, canned goods and other items. The items will be sorted and what can be reused will be sold at thrift store prices to students coming to RIT in August.