Research News

WXXI talks to Grover Swartzlander, professor in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, about the Diffractive Solar Sailing project.

New Scientist talks to Jeyhan Kartaltepe, assistant professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, about the James Webb Space Telescope's first scientific images. (This content requires a subscription to view.)

NASA announced new funding for a project led by RIT alumni, faculty, and students that could power spacecraft to orbit the sun’s poles for the first time. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program will provide funding to the Diffractive Solar Sailing project led by Amber Dubill ’20, ’20 MS of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Dean Sophia Maggelakis will be leaving RIT to become the senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Maggelakis joined RIT as an assistant professor in 1990, became head of the School of Mathematical Sciences in 2001, and became dean of the College of Science in 2010.

Libraries and museums across the country have begun recapturing lost and obscured text on historically significant documents thanks to low-cost spectral imaging systems developed by faculty and students at RIT.

The BBC features research by Christopher Thorstenson, assistant professor in the color science program.

A team of RIT scientists is poring over NASA data for new insights about Earth’s youngest, closest neighbors. Joel Kastner, a professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and School of Physics and Astronomy, received nearly $400,000 for a NASA archival study to advance our understanding of newly formed stars and planets.

Astrophysical sciences and technology Ph.D. student Olivia Young earned a competitive fellowship from the National Science Foundation to develop machine learning algorithms that will help scientists use radio telescopes to study transient objects such as pulsars and fast radio bursts.

Associate Professor Ben Zwickl will head to the University of Oslo this fall to research what he calls one of the most understudied aspects of the undergraduate physics curriculum.

Associate professor Michael Murdoch received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to develop new techniques to study visual adaptation in augmented and virtual reality.

Environmental science alumna Sydney VanWinkle ’19, ’21 MS will head to Madagascar this fall to study the impact that conservation initiatives have on local communities and the environment as part of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Worldwide experts will soon gather at RIT to discuss the central role photonics plays in advancing quantum technologies. RIT and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, are partnering to host the Photonics for Quantum 2022 event June 6-9 at the RIT campus.