News

More than 80 first-year RIT students from underrepresented populations began their college careers early and from home this summer. The students participated in the Division of Diversity and Inclusion (DDI) Summer Experience, a five-week program held virtually for the first time this year to help students successfully transition to college.

Two RIT students collaborated with faculty and co-authored their first paper which contributes to the body of knowledge surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

The unexpected transition to remote learning during the spring semester challenged faculty across RIT to experiment, create, and deploy new methods of instruction to ensure student success. As the university gears up for in-person and online classes—or a combination of both—faculty members are applying a wide range of lessons learned from the spring to keep academic momentum moving forward in the fall.

Douglas Merrill, who inspired countless students during his 40-year tenure in the College of Science and the College of Health Sciences and Technology, has retired. He developed the Premedical Advisory Program and created the Center for Bioscience Education and Technology. And he retires with numerous honors recognizing his outstanding teaching and commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Michael Heagy has been appointed the new head of RIT’s School of Chemistry and Materials Science. Heagy comes to RIT from the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor in 1996 and has served as the chair of the Department of Chemistry since 2016.

RIT unveiled two plans that outline the actions that the university and its individual community members must take for a safe, productive, and meaningful Fall 2020 semester.

CTV News talks to Nathan Eddingsaas, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, about the presence of microplastics in the human body.

The Globe and Mail features work by Christy Tyler, associate professor in the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences, and Nathan Eddingsaas, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science.

In a biology lab in Gosnell Hall, Professor André Hudson has been spending hours this summer testing products to see whether they are effective at killing and filtering microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The effort is part of RIT’s Infrastructure and Health Technologies task force, which is putting changes in place to make RIT’s campus as safe and clean as possible in the fall.

President David Munson reports on the progress in RIT's preparations to reopen for fall semester.

RIT's “Workplace Safety Plan in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic” focuses on the health and safety of our faculty, staff, student employees, visitors, and other invited guests, and is aligned with applicable local, state, and federal laws.