News by Topic: Women

Over the last year, RIT students, alumni, faculty, and staff have worked to give back to the Rochester community by leveraging art and design. From providing creative outlets for young students to making a shelter to protect residents from the weather, RIT community members are dedicated to giving back to the city where they blossomed into the professionals they are today.

Four RIT faculty members are opening up soft matter physics, sometimes known as “squishy physics,” to a new generation of diverse scholars. Moumita Das, Poornima Padmanabhan, Shima Parsa, and Lishibanya Mohapatra are helping RIT make its mark in the field.

Associate Professor Jeyhan Kartaltepe has her hands full studying data from the most powerful observational instrument ever made, while continuing to bolster her reputation as a teacher and mentor. Her work has gotten the attention of the astronomy community worldwide.

RIT’s VEX Robotics team placed 10th overall among 96 collegiate teams in the recent VEX Robotics World Championships in Dallas. Closing a strong 2023 season, the team was also recognized for excellence in technical designs and the overall quality of its program.

Elle Holland discovered her dream job as a genetic counselor while still in high school, and she came to RIT to become a scientist as the first step toward her career goal. She is one of several 2023 graduates finding careers in health care.

The tech employment landscape is changing, and RIT graduates are taking their skills to a variety of organizations—to support accessibility for health and wellness companies, to provide coding for data center equipment, and to develop software for sophisticated HVAC systems—and more.

Essay written by Hinda Mandell, professor in the School of Communication, published by The Boston Globe. (This content requires a subscription to view.)

Thousands of visitors at the 2023 Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival got to see what’s on the horizon in the areas of technology, the arts, and design. Festivalgoers traversed RIT’s campus on Saturday, exploring more than 350 exhibits.

RIT’s Women in Computing organization is partnering with Wegmans to support diversity and inclusion in the computing industry. Wegmans is committing $200,000 throughout the next five years to the WiC group to support its work in advancing all women and gender minorities in computing.

They didn’t know it then, but RIT students taking Debra Meiburg’s wine courses back in the late 1990s were learning from a bona fide master—literally.

A career in community health inspired Maricela Marquez ’18, ’22 MS to grow in her profession as an advocate for Latino patients. For Marquez, this meant advancing her career at Rochester Regional Health by enrolling in RIT’s health systems management Master of Science program.

Nicole Rotondo ’16 (mechanical engineering) always wanted to be in motorsports. Taking her passion for cars and racing, she built an engineering career that put her on the fast track with Honda’s Performance Development (HPD) team.