Office of Faculty Recruitment News

WXXI talks to NTID President Gerry Buckley about NTID’s $1.65 million grant from the National Science Foundation .

The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.65 million to DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students, which will be used to transition the program into a resource center. The goal of the DeafTEC Resource Center is to increase the number of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in highly skilled technician jobs in which there continues to be underrepresentation and underutilization of such individuals in the workplace.

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.

New research is helping scientists around the world understand what drives language change, especially when languages are in their infancy. The results will shed light on how the limitations of the human brain change language and provide an understanding of the complex interaction between languages and the human beings who use them.

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.

RIT again boasts some of the top programs in the world to study game design, according to the latest international rankings from The Princeton Review. RIT’s game design and development program was ranked eighth at the undergraduate level and seventh at the graduate level on the 2019 list.

RIT graduate programs are among the best in the nation, according to the U.S. News annual statistical survey of graduate programs published today. RIT master’s degree programs in engineering, business and physician assistant feature in the U.S. News & World Report 2020 edition of Best Graduate Schools.

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.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 9: In the digital age, how can you be so sure that the photo, video or audio being shared on social media hasn’t somehow been altered or manipulated? Associate professor of photography Christye Sisson and motion picture science undergraduate student Owen Thompson discuss media forensics and its role in protecting us all from fake news.

RIT’s first regional conference on Innovations in Global Health will showcase humanitarian efforts on campus and connect with other researchers in the area.