News by Topic: Entrepreneurship

As the nation’s reshuffled economy rebounds from the pandemic, RIT students graduating from a university renowned for its academic rigor combined with successful internships and co-op experiences are leveraging multiple job offers into their top choices.

After going virtual for 2021, thousands of people came to the RIT campus on Saturday for an in-person Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival, which featured more than 250 exhibits throughout the campus from more than 1,800 students and faculty.

Three student teams showed what technology, the arts, and design means at RIT. They designed technology to help astronauts keep physically fit in space, incorporated virtual reality to enhance signing and captioning support for the Deaf, and built a modern sculpture of the human body made of computers.

Aaron Gordon ’13, CEO of Optic Sky, an advertising and digital experience production company; Franklyn Athias ’85, CTO and senior vice president for Xfinity Mobile Retail Convergence; and Erin Sarofsky ’98, ’00 MFA, an award-winning creative visionary, discussed how the pandemic opened up the eyes of many industries to the future.

RIT will confer honorary degrees to four outstanding individuals at its 2022 commencement ceremony on May 6: Kimberly Bryant, founder of the nonprofit organization Black Girls CODE; Josephine King Olsen, former director of the Peace Corps; G. Peter Jemison, a member of the Heron clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians; and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine.

The TAD Competition features 22 projects developed by current RIT students that have the potential to enrich many disciplines and expand the boundaries of technology, the arts, and design.

RIT’s Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, created to help students invent and problem solve through experiential learning, offers multidisciplinary student teams a stipend for the unique opportunity to examine their businesses and, for some, move them to the next level of development.

Accomplished alumni are returning to campus to discuss the future of technology, art, and design as part of the Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival on April 23. The Imagine RIT Futurists Symposium is from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Wegmans Theater, RIT MAGIC Center. It will also be available to watch as a livestream.

Circle Optics, a member company of RIT’s Venture Creations technology business incubator, has earned two significant investments totaling $800,000 to further advance its panoramic imaging technology. As a result, the company enters the second quarter with $2.5 million in total contract awards.

RIT’s College of Art and Design hosted a dedication ceremony on Friday marking the recent completion of a “transformational” renovation of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences and honoring the alumnus whose gift made it possible. The event honored Chance Wright ’18, ’19 and his mother, Pamela Mars Wright, whose $3.5 million gift fueled the renovation and reconfiguration of the third floor of Gannett Hall.

Organizers of RIT’s Creative Industry Days saw an increased number of companies, students, and industry participants over last year, as the 17th annual event went virtual for the second consecutive year.

Leaf Corcoran ’11 (computer science), who founded itch.io—an online marketplace for indie game developers in 2014—is one of the key organizers behind an online campaign that has raised more than $5.6 million to benefit the people of Ukraine.