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Physics BS

RIT has again been recognized as one of the best national universities by U.S. News & World Report, which also cited the university as among the most innovative, with strong undergraduate research opportunities and a highly regarded cooperative learning program.

An RIT student is on a mission to help build detectors that could identify individual photons from distant, inhabitable planets. Justin Gallagher, a fifth-year student from Rochester, N.Y., pursuing his BS in physics and MS in astrophysical sciences and technology, is serving as project manager for a nearly $1 million grant funded by NASA to create a single photon sensing and number resolving detector for NASA missions.

A team of RIT researchers is helping launch an experiment above the atmosphere to better understand extragalactic background light, which traces the history of galaxies back to the formation of the first stars in the universe.

Researchers from RIT and six other universities are teaming up to build synthetic neurons and a programmable network of such neurons in an effort to better understand the rules of life. The project is part of the National Science Foundation’s “Big Ideas” initiative— 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering.

Scientists are currently building the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will conduct the most ambitious all-sky survey of the universe to date, and RIT is thinking about ways to mine through the treasure trove of data it will produce.

A paper was recently published in Advanced Theory and Simulations by Pratik Dholabhai, Assistant Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at RIT.

Assistant Professor Michael Zemcov interviewed by North Shore News for his part in contributing to NASA’s new mission to explore the origins of the universe by performing the first near-infrared all-sky spectral survey. 

Guest essay co-written by Mishkat Bhattacharya, associate professor of physics and astronomy, published by The Conversation.

Before Elyse Rood started working on her senior physics capstone project, she didn’t envision herself working for a software company. But after the commencement ceremony on May 10, she is moving to Madison, Wis., to start a career as a technical solutions engineer at a healthcare software company called Epic Systems.

While many people flock to warm destinations for spring break, two RIT experimental cosmologists spent theirs 6,800 feet high on snow-covered Kitt Peak at the Arizona Radio Observatory. They were deploying an instrument to a 12-meter telescope for a project called the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME), which aims to study the universe’s first stars and galaxies.

R&D Magazine talks to Mishkat Bhattacharya, associate professor of physics, about his research to create a laser for sound.

A revolutionary technique developed by NTID astrophysicist Jason Nordhaus could allow for a better understanding of the fates of solar systems when their stars cease to shine.