Health Professions and Medical Sciences News

RIT faculty-researchers will develop a game-design training system that could help astronauts maintain balance, motor skills, and other cognitive functions while in space. NASA, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, has selected six university teams, including RIT, to develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Moon to Mars exploration objectives.

Chiara Young, a fifth-year biomedical engineering graduate from Sherman, N.Y., received the 2021 Distinguished Lee Scholar award from the Patrick P. Lee Foundation. Young, who graduated in May, was presented with the award based on her integrity, leadership, and service to others. RIT has been a partner school of the Lee Foundation since fall 2019.

A pioneer of one of RIT’s earliest study abroad programs and a founding member of the biotechnology and molecular bioscience program has retired. Professor Robert Rothman from the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences taught his final courses in Genetics and Evolution and Creationism this spring, capping off an RIT career that began in 1984.

Ashley Tucker, a graduating senior majoring in biomedical sciences and biology, will travel to Nigeria at the end of the summer on a Fulbright Research award. Tucker will work with a malaria research group at University of Ibadan College of Medicine. Her research will help improve the rapid diagnostic testing for the deadly tropical disease.

Sarah Sabal secured two prestigious international scholarships—a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) and a Boren Awards Scholarship—that will allow her to spend a year intensively studying the Chinese language in an immersive setting. She is one of several students who contributed to a record-breaking year for RIT in terms of securing funding for international experiences.

Nearly 60 students will graduate this May from the College of Health Sciences and Technology’s clinical programs—physician assistant BS/MS, diagnostic medical sonography BS, and the echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound) certificate program. These students spend the final year of their programs immersed in practical work experience at clinics and hospitals in the region.

Forty members of the inaugural class of Undergraduate Research Scholar Awardees will be honored at this year’s graduation ceremonies. The recognition highlights their accomplishments in a variety of complex and demanding research areas during their time at RIT.

Once RIT secured enough antigen tests for students for the spring semester, plans for administering saliva tests were put on hold. But this did not stop faculty and students in RIT’s College of Science from creating a Plan B of new lab activities, research, and community outreach.

The Tiger Testing team employs nearly 90 students from across campus, with about 25 students majoring in degrees in the College of Health Sciences and Technology.

Ashley Mastin '21 (Medical Illustration) spent the fall 2020 semester working for the Center for BioMedical Visualization at St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada, West Indies.

RIT graduate programs are among the best in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report annual statistical survey of graduate programs.

Diana Kulawiec is a biomedical engineering major in the College of Engineering and studied at University of Canterbury in New Zealand in spring 2018 and did a co-op abroad in New Zealand in fall 2018 and spring/summer 2020.