Vision and Strategic Direction

Students sit around a desktop computer looking at the screen. The left of the photo is dark with overlayed blue graphic lines that look like fiber optic wires.
 

Vision and Strategic Direction

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most significant advances of our time. As a leading technology university with world-class experts, RIT is well-positioned to play an integral role in teaching and innovation in AI and robotics.

Along with our core strength in technology and experiential learning, we have complementary strengths in the arts and design, making RIT a unique environment to study, build, and test AI. As we continue to build our excellence in AI and robotics, we must pursue our work with an understanding of ethical and socio-technical lenses. Given the interests of students, faculty, and staff, there is great potential to create living laboratories to responsibly experiment with technologies and gain rich insights into the ethics of AI.

To synergize our activities, we have created an AI task force that will help shape our AI work in the areas of research, scholarship and innovation; teaching and curriculum and experiential AI on campus.

We will continue to build our research, scholarship, and innovation in AI and robotics through strategic investments in talent, thematic hires, and research infrastructure. Concurrently, we will focus on offering the most innovative and compelling curriculum and courses.

As we embark on our plans for our future, we must continue our quest to establish RIT as a thought leader in AI by grappling with its many challenges through multidisciplinary perspectives.

Message from Dr. Munson

David Munson

I predict that breakthroughs in AI will change the way we teach our classes and will alter most of our curriculum. Researchers will employ AI techniques in a multitude of application areas, making major leaps in discovery and innovation.

And yet the most intriguing effects of AI at RIT may be on community life and in our business operations.

We already have staff members using AI in their daily work. This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can imagine AI buddies and smart, mobile robots transforming campus life over the next 10 to 20 years. We are starting to see this future emerge in industrial and healthcare settings, so I think we're in a great position to anticipate what is to come. Overall, we aspire to be an AI university, working within an ethical framework to invent a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable future.

David C. Munson Jr.
President
www.rit.edu/president
munson@rit.edu