Research News

The annual Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival is a huge, campus-wide community event that showcases the artistic and inventive spirit of Rochester Institute of Technology students, faculty, and staff.

RIT celebrated another exemplary year of research funding and honored 15 faculty and staff researchers in its newest class of PI Millionaires. The honorees, all principal investigators on innovative projects, were recognized at a reception on March 26 at the university.

RIT will be a contributing partner on a $4.5 million U.S. Department of Energy initiative to improve the operation of grid transmission and distribution systems, including how information about energy resources can be better transmitted securely.

A national institute, led in part by RIT, next month is hosting the 2024 REMADE Circular Economy Technology Summit & Conference in Washington, D.C., highlighting emerging strategies and technologies to accelerate the adoption of a circular economy.

Within Brown Hall on RIT’s campus, newly renovated lab spaces house state-of-the-art equipment allowing for essential research. One such space is the genomics lab, where Elle Barnes, assistant professor in the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, is working to help protect one of the key members of the local ecosystem: salamanders.

By exploring the point at which fiber composite materials begin to deteriorate and how the environment affects material, Amy Engelbrecht-Wiggans, an RIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering, believes there is a way to ensure longer-term reliability. To answer these questions, Engelbrecht-Wiggans received a National Science Foundation Faculty Career Development Award (CAREER).

Solitude Farmz, a 125-acre retreat located just outside of Oxford, N.Y., in the southern Finger Lakes, features a number of secluded walking trails that could serve to symbolize the long and winding path taken by Taylor Zimmer ’85 (printing) to become the steward of the bucolic property.

RIT received $1.25 million in funding from the recent appropriations bill to expand its Battery Prototyping Center. The funding will be part of national directions to strengthen the battery ecosystem in the U.S. 

The Democrat and Chronicle talks to Anthony Vodacek, professor in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, about his planned observations.

The program, founded in 2008, is part of the NYSP2I’s ongoing efforts to make the state more sustainable for workers, the public, the environment, and the economy through pollution prevention.

Catherine Shannon has joined Rochester Institute of Technology as the new executive director of the RIT and Rochester Regional Health Alliance. As the liaison between the institutions, Shannon will work to facilitate collaborations that enhance the strategic partnership.

Evan Selinger, professor in RIT’s Department of Philosophy, has taken an interest in the ethics of AI and the policy gaps that need to be filled in. Through a humanities lens, Selinger asks the questions, "How can AI cause harm, and what can governments and companies creating AI programs do to address and manage it?" Answering them, he explained, requires an interdisciplinary approach.