News
Imaging Science Ph.D.

Drones are adding a new level of precision to agriculture, giving farmers digital tools for cultivating better and more profitable crops.

New Atlas reports that NASA will fund a diffractive lightsails research project by Grover Swartzlander, professor in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science.

Croatia has a treasure trove of historically significant manuscripts, but after 800 years of fading ink and worms eating their parchment, much of the text has become impossible to read. Scientists from RIT are using multispectral imaging to make the writing legible once again and preserve the important information the manuscripts hold.

Elephant and rhino poachers in South Africa can run, but they can’t hide from drones. An imaging system created by a team led by Elizabeth Bondi ’16 automatically detects illegal hunters infiltrating national parks at night. Bondi’s deep learning system alerts the monitoring team who notifies park rangers or law enforcement of a potential threat to the animals under their protection.

While the technology has rapidly progressed, Christopher Kanan and his team are trying to make deep learning even more versatile.

Grover Swartzlander, professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, is taking solar sailing to the next level with advanced photonic materials. This new class of materials could be used to steer photons and enable near-Earth, interplanetary and interstellar space travel.

Researchers in RIT’s Center for Human-Aware Intelligence believe their work could lead to breakthroughs in everything from health care to energy management to cybersecurity.