News by Topic: Grants

In a move to further enhance an already robust innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, RIT is partnering with the NSF’s I-Corps Hub: Interior Northeast Region. RIT will join a consortium of 10 renowned regional colleges and universities that will utilize $15 million in NSF funding over the next five years to implement and execute a cohesive innovation ecosystem that delivers inclusive models of education and workforce training.

Lishibanya Mohapatra, an assistant professor at RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy, hopes that a better understanding of how living cells maintain the size of their organelles can lead to therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. She earned a five-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how cells control the size of organelles.

The Image Permanence Institute, housed in RIT’s College of Art and Design, received a National Leadership Grant for Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for research into plastic deterioration of modern heritage collections, specifically their physical response to storage and display environments.

RIT is part of a major national initiative that secured more than $63.7 million to establish upstate New York as a national hub for battery research and manufacturing. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer announced that Binghamton University’s New Energy New York Proposal secured substantial funding for the new hub, Battery-NY, which will include partners such as RIT’s Battery Prototyping Center and New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology.

RIT President David Munson welcomed the community for the start of a new academic year with a call to re-energize the campus’s atmosphere to its pre-pandemic level. During his annual President’s Address in Ingle Auditorium this morning, Munson encouraged all RIT faculty, staff, and students to make a new academic year resolution to spend more time face-to-face with one another.

RIT’s Saunders College of Business has broken ground on the multi-million dollar expansion and renovation project at Max Lowenthal Hall. The project, expected to be completed in early 2024.

RIT’s open programs office has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to build external partnerships and continue supporting those doing work in the open community.

A team of faculty and student researchers at RIT are helping create a more accessibility-literate and empathetic software engineering workforce. The researchers, led by Daniel Krutz, assistant professor of software engineering, are developing free online lessons on how to create software that is accessible for those with visual, cognitive, hearing, dexterity, and other disabilities.

Underserved students from the city of Rochester with a strong interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology recently participated in an immersive, weeklong course at RIT to learn the latest about digital currency through its RIT Certified initiative.

RIT student Lazar Buntic received a earned a graduate research fellowship through the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology program to develop infrared detectors for next generation telescopes.

More than 1,000 openings in the Finger Lakes region for skilled machinists are projected in the coming years. Local academic researchers and industry partners are developing new training options to fill the expected gaps—integrating gaming and virtual reality to appeal to a younger generation of manufacturing professionals.

Increased awards for advancing biomedical technology and economic development initiatives have lifted RIT to another record year of sponsored research funding.