From the NTID President's Office - October 2024

October 2024

The campus greenery is giving way to autumn’s colors, and as has become tradition during the month of October—Disability Employment Awareness Month—our colleagues in NTID’s Co-op and Career Center have completed another successful Career Fair for our students. Another October tradition is Brick City Homecoming and Family Weekend, and NTID has a number of special events planned. I encourage you to read on, and be part of the spirit of RIT/NTID.

Thank you for all you do for our students and our colleagues.

Gerry

Archives

Submitted by Laurie Furibondo

NSF Site Visit

NTID students and faculty played a key role in the recent National Science Foundation site visit at RIT for the multimillion-dollar “New Energy New York Engine” award. Visitors, who included a Nobel Laureate and top-level NSF program managers, met with Gary Behm, toured a precision manufacturing technology class taught by Trisha Gard-Thompson, visited the Cross-Registered Support Center led by DJ Monahan, and attended a panel discussion with cross-registered students to discuss barriers and obstacles to advanced degrees in engineering. Marriner H. Merrill coordinated the visit as part of development of new educational and training opportunities in energy storage—from technicians to PhDs. The student panel is pictured above seated with visitors and faculty behind. Dr. Stanley Whittingham, 2019 Nobel Prize winner for the development of the lithium ion battery is standing sixth from the left in a blue shirt. Student panelists (left to right) are: Cody Campbell, Yale Frink, Kayley Judd, Ulysses Hampton, and Bryan Yun.

New Research Funding

• In August 2024, NTID received another award from MITRE Corporation for $755,384 for one year. RIT/NTID subject matter experts will assist MITRE with defining standards, metrics and corresponding measures to assess the quality of Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), conduct testing and evaluations in the National Test Lab, investigate key aspects of functionally equivalent access to emergency services, and ensure that MITRE is effectively engaging with deaf, hard-of-hearing, and deafblind communities. NTID and MITRE will develop research approaches, experiments, and protocols to help the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gain knowledge into user perspectives, demographics and preferences. The project also will determine the accuracy and latency thresholds of captions in IP-Captioned Telephone Service technology to assist hard-of-hearing and deaf users with telephone calls. The project also will work to improve performance of VRS services and enable TRS to use mainstream telephony infrastructure where possible. Please congratulate Michael Stinson, Gary Behm, Linda Gottermeier, Tony Ellis, and Spencer Montan on their award.
   
• Marriner H. Merrill, associate professor in NTID’s Department of Engineering Studies, received $10,000 from aerospace and defense company, General Dynamics, as a subcontract from their Department of Defense award. Merrill and a student will examine the environmental degradation of laminated glass, which causes degradation of optical properties and costly replacement, even when the material itself is still in good condition. Analysis of ongoing testing and modeling with a range of thicknesses, materials, and integration methods to develop improved mathematical correlations between chamber and service life will be carried out. Please congratulate Professor Merrill on his award.
   

PI Prime Time

This fall, NTID’s Office of the Associate Dean of Research (OADR) is excited to announce the relaunch of PI Prime Time, a unique professional development program for NTID Principal Investigators (PIs) and their research teams. PI Prime Time will address topics related to applying for grants (pre-award), managing awards (post-award), as well as other aspects of sponsored research activity. Planned topics for this fall include:

• how to read and understand budget statements and reports,
• how to prepare a Scholarship Portfolio Development Initiative (SPDI) proposal (internal funding),
• how to work with human subjects and human subject payments, and hiring and paying students as part of your research project.

Each PI Prime Time topic will be announced via email, along with registration instructions. We encourage all interested faculty and staff to attend, and we welcome suggestions for other topics you would like to see addressed in the future. Please reach out to Heather Eaggleston or Laurie Furibondo with any questions or suggestions.

Deaf in DoD/Intelligence Research Symposium 2024

Thirty NTID students and faculty attended the third annual “Deaf in DOD/Intelligence Research Symposium” in Washington, D.C. in September. This event brings together deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists, engineers, and students from the Department of Defense and intelligence community. NTID students gave research presentations, met with hiring managers, and toured laboratories. This year, students from NTID and other RIT colleges participated. On Sept. 17, students toured the CIA or the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren and participated in networking events. The following day, the full group met at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory for more tours and technical talks. Keynote presentations were by NTID alumni Kyle “Bair” Brossoit, an explosives expert and program manager at NSWC Indian Head, and Cham Leang, a program manager in the federal government. NTID student research presentations were given by Hayden Orr, Natnail Tolossa, Brittany Morris, and Evan Strickland. All three laboratories were tremendously impressed by the quality of the students who attended, and they encouraged students to apply for co-op and permanent positions.

The trip was organized by Marriner H. Merrill with support from Mark Sommer, Marcus Holmes, Mark Jeremy, Brian Nadworny, and DJ Monahan. It was supported by the NRSC, NCCC, and the NTID Departments of Engineering Studies and Information and Computing Studies. “Deaf in DoD” was founded by Merrill and Agron Deski in 2022. Deski, now an employee at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, chaired the meeting.

Submitted by Krystina Ho

We are proud to recognize the following students for their accomplishments:

• Savannah Tellandar and Adrita Arefin ’24, Bridges alums, were featured in a Science News Explores article.
• Ulysses Hampton, a Bridges trainee, and his team, Kayley Judd, Bryan Lukeheart-Yun, Cody Campbell, and Yale Frink, participated in the panel discussion, “Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Pathways to a PhD” Sept. 25, 2024.
• Menna Nicola, ’23, ’25, accepted an offer to become a full-time associate information technology analyst at Dow, starting Aug. 2025.

Deaf Health Pathways is an immersion program offered at the University of Rochester Medical Center and led by Dr. Jason Rotoli, DHP director and associate professor of emergency medicine. The program enriches the medical school experience by offering opportunities to develop language, cultural, and medical skills pertinent to the Deaf population, thereby preparing medical students to become competent providers in Deaf health. DHP collaborates with Deaf Hub to expose second-year medical students to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community, accomplishing one of Deaf Hub’s overarching goals of promoting accessible and equitable health care for DHH professionals and patients.