News by Topic: Interdisciplinary Studies

Mohammed Mostajo-Radji ’11 (biotechnology) was appointed as Bolivia’s first ambassador for science, technology and innovation in February. He is typically based out of Silicon Valley, helping to encourage technology investment in Bolivia. But on March 19 he flew back home at the request of Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Áñez, to help coordinate his country’s efforts to combat COVID-19’s spread.

Nathaniel Barlow, associate professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, and Steven Weinstein, head of RIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, outline a solution to the SIR epidemic model, which is commonly used to predict how many people are susceptible to, infected by, and recovered from viral epidemics, in a study published in Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena.

A team of RIT researchers will explore how tiny particles of plastic pollution are impacting Lake Ontario thanks to new funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The multidisciplinary group will examine how microplastics are transported and transformed in the lake, where they ultimately end up and what effects they have on the ecosystem.

Victoria Maung ’20 MFA (medical illustration) is capping her college career with a Fulbright grant that will give her an international experience and a connection to her Southeast Asian roots. With the help of RIT Global, Maung, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to teach high school in Malaysia.

The Cary Graphic Arts Collection at RIT is marking Geek Pride Day with a public online lecture combining two RIT specialties that draw students from all over the world—video games and graphic communication.

All current RIT graduate students are invited to pit their problem-solving skills against each other in a university-wide competition. The Office of Graduate Education is holding online semifinals for the Graduate 3-Minute Presentation Competition. Contestants are asked to address a societal problem in a three-minute YouTube video, using their research, thesis or project, or creative work.

A multidisciplinary team of first-year students has been working to develop an imaging system that can reveal information hidden in historical documents for their Innovative Freshmen Experience project-based course. But with the shift to remote classes, the students left campus with the device nearly complete. Although disappointed, they shifted focus to the opportunities the new situation would create.

NTID is one of four international innovators selected to create cost-effective packages of high-quality accessible children’s books in languages children use and understand to serve regions of the world where children have few or no books for preschool or kindergarten.
 

Many RIT faculty, students, staff and alumni are among the collaborations here and across the nation, providing expertise to improve or create much-needed equipment and protective gear for medical personnel fighting the Coronavirus.

During a 2008 visit to RIT while she was in high school, Madeleine Rabil ’13 (3D digital graphics) learned that the university’s then-called College of Imaging Arts and Sciences had just announced the creation of a new major for incoming students focusing on 3D as a medium. “I knew immediately that RIT was where I needed to be,” she says.

The LiveAbility Lab is a partnership between RIT and the Al Sigl Community of Agencies, a collaborative network of organizations in Rochester that serves children and adults with special needs. The lab, which is located on Al Sigl’s Wolk Campus, opened in 2018. The goal is to develop a pipeline of accessible technology projects that are conceived at RIT and take root at the LiveAbility Lab on their way to development in the marketplace. 

Registration is open for the 2020 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) St. Lawrence Section Annual Conference. The event, taking place April 3 and 4 at RIT, will feature advances in the engineering field and trends in higher education.