News by Topic: Faculty

Guest essay by David Schwartz, associate professor of interactive games and media, published in The Conversation.

The Nobel Prize-winning project that hunts for gravitational waves— ripples in space and time—is about to begin the longest and most sensitive observational run to date. And several RIT researchers are preparing to pore over the new data to help uncover some of the universe’s biggest mysteries.

Assistant Professor Ben Zwickl has earned a prestigious National Science Foundation award to explore how lab-based, project-based and work-based learning environments can teach sophisticated problem-solving skills not attainable in lecture courses.

As The Benjamin Forman Collaborative Research Professorship, Victor Perotti acts as a facilitator for research alliances that benefit students and faculty that find value in building a portfolio around unique interdisciplinary partnerships. 

Teams of three to five students will have 48 hours to mine a complex data set pertaining to a real-world problem. Teams will test their statistical analytic and data science skills to find the best solution.

Four alumni from the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences in the College of Art and Design—each of whom has been recognized as either a Pulitzer Prize winner or finalist in the last decade—will visit the RIT campus March 19-22 for a series of special events.

RIT Associate Professor Suzanne O’Handley has been selected by the Council on Undergraduate Research and the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation as the 2019 CUR-Goldwater Scholars Faculty Mentor Awardee. O’Handley, a faculty member in RIT’s School of Chemistry and Materials Science, was chosen from 10 finalists for her considerable achievements as a dynamic scholar, teacher and mentor.

WHAM-TV talks to Agamemnon Crassidis, professor of mechanical engineering, about the issues surrounding Boeing 737 Max jets.

Advanced audio technologies being developed are helping to preserve the unique sounds of historic sites from recording studios in Nashville, Tenn., to a pre-Columbian archeological site in Peru. Sungyoung Kim, an associate professor of audio engineering technology at RIT, is leading a team of researchers to develop a set of tools using advanced augmented and virtual reality technology to preserve and replicate the acoustics of historical venues.

Iris Rivero, an engineering professor at RIT, has found that compatible combinations of polymers and biomaterials can be successfully used to fabricate “scaffolds,” 3D-printed structures that signal the body to begin its own tissue regrowth. This research moves a step closer to the possibility of “smart,” 3D-printed bone, skin and cartilage tissue replacement.

A classic scenario plays out in action films ranging from Baby Driver to The Italian Job: criminals evade aerial pursuit from the authorities by seamlessly blending in with other vehicles and their surroundings. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) has RIT researchers utilizing hyperspectral video imaging systems that make sure it does not happen in real life.

Risa Robinson has taken a different approach to assessing e-cigarette usage, and it’s turned up some attention-getting results. Robinson studies users in their own environments, puffing on their own e-cigarettes, rather than on test machines in lab settings. And what she’s found is that they are puffing as much, if not more, than traditional cigarette users, resulting in potentially higher exposure to harmful substances.