News

RIT reached another record year in sponsored research awards, attaining more than $94 million in fiscal year 2022-2023. Some key areas of research include nanotechnology, optics and imaging science, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and growth in life sciences and health fields.

AIM Photonics hosted several days of training Aug. 15-17 in Photonic Integrated Circuits: Testing and Packaging Boot Camp, including one day at RIT.

Professor Bruce Smith has made a career of innovations in nanolithography—the process of etching complex patterns on semiconductors—and in preparing a long line of graduates for work in organizations around the globe. Celebrating 35 years as a faculty member, his retirement from RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering is a significant milestone that comes after many years of collaborating with leading semiconductor groups around the world.

RIT is among a group of area higher-education and industry partners sharing a $1 million Regional Innovation Engines Development Award grant from the National Science Foundation to help boost the next generation of lasers.

RIT is one of six U.S. universities named as part of an international partnership to improve competitiveness in computer chip design, development, and manufacturing. Micron Corp. and the National Science Foundation announced the partnership and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the 2023 G7 Summit in Japan.

Scientists from RIT, Caltech, Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute will launch a rocket on Sunday for a short flight into space with the goal of resolving discrepancies about the sources of near-infrared light in the universe.

RIT recently acquired Vanguard Automation’s SONATA 1000 3D-nanoprinter, a next-generation technology for advanced photonic packaging and integration. The new equipment will advance how the university is solving the challenges of building and using photonic integrated circuit chips, lasers, and optical fibers.

RIT will receive $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to update and expand its Semiconductor Fabrication Lab to accommodate research in semiconductor technologies and prepare the workforce for the growing domestic microelectronics manufacturing industry. The funding was included as part of the fiscal year 2023 omnibus funding package.

In a study led by RIT researchers, scientists analyzed new measurements showing that the light emitted by stars outside our galaxy is two to three times brighter than the light from known populations of galaxies, challenging assumptions about the number and environment of stars are in the universe.

A new partnership between RIT and Griffiss Institute aims to expand access to high-quality educational training, research, and entrepreneurial opportunities in Upstate New York.

The National Science Foundation will award Don Figer, director of RIT’s Center for Detectors and the Future Photon Initiative, more than $315,000 over the next year to continue work on a grant to provide the astronomy community with a new family of detectors that have very large formats, very low cost, and state-of-the-art performance.

Microsystems engineering Ph.D. student Katelynn Fleming is hard at work making new discoveries on the moon. But her ultimate goal is to use technology to help all of us on Earth. Fleming recently won a 2022 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) award and will work at NASA centers as part of the visiting technologist experiences.