Innovative Research Projects to be Presented at RIT Aug. 13

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A. Sue Weisler

Visitor’s to Friday’s Undergraduate Research and Innovation Symposium will learn about how Corey Mack plans to convert intermodal shipping containers into low-cost, sustainable housing. Mack is one of the many undergraduates who will present their research during the symposium.

Research projects by undergraduate students from across Rochester Institute of Technology’s eight colleges will be presented Friday at the 15th annual Undergraduate Research and Innovation Symposium in RIT’s Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies.

Many of the symposium’s participants spent their summer working as Undergraduate Summer Research Fellows, a program that RIT’s Center for Student Innovation helped to coordinate. The Center for Student Innovation joined numerous RIT colleges and the RIT-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation to award summer fellowships that included a $3,000 stipend. Visitors to Friday’s symposium will learn about what they’ve been working on.

Corey Mack, a mechanical engineering technology major, has developed a system to convert intermodal shipping containers into low-cost, sustainable housing. Mack says he isn’t the first to use such containers for housing purposes, but he claims to have developed a system that can mass produce them inexpensively. Upon graduation, he plans on opening a business that will make it happen. Jen Smith, a chemical engineering major, has been trying to simulate a blood clot using treated milk. Doing so would enable other researchers in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering to test their heart pump efficiently and inexpensively.

Student presentations will take place between 9:30 a.m. and noon, and 2-5:30 p.m. RIT alumna Jennifer Indovina will deliver a keynote address at 1 p.m. Indovina is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tenrehte Technologies, a clean technology company that produces wireless consumer electronic products. Tenrehte’s first product is the PICOwattTM Smart Plug, which is an energy saving outlet adapter that gives consumers remove control over the amount of power devices consume.