News
Computing and Information Technologies BS

Matt Huenerfauth, a professor and expert in computing accessibility research, has been named director of RIT’s iSchool (School of Information). Huenerfauth takes the helm Aug. 1 from Stephen Zilora, who is stepping down after eight years of leadership.

Two visionaries in the fields of advertising, marketing and communications have been named co-recipients of the 2020 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award, presented by RIT’s Saunders College of Business. Sue Butler and Tracy Till are the first joint female recipients in the award’s 35-year history.

Alumnus Christian Rahl ’13 (applied networking and systems administration) knows a little bit about social distancing. He’s stationed at a National Science Foundation site at the South Pole, working as a senior network engineer.

Fourth-year computing and information technologies student Andrew Bentkowski has become the voice of the RIT women’s hockey team on the radio. Announcing the play-by-play action as it happens, he never gets tired of the excitement that it brings him as a fan.

College students who want to break into the computing industry can start at the upcoming WiCHacks hackathon Feb. 29 – March 1 at RIT. For the two-day hackathon, teams work together to create apps, websites, games and other software that provide unique solutions to problems.

Students from RIT Esports bested more than 300 teams from across North America to win the 2019 Hearthstone Collegiate Championship Fall Finals on Dec. 14. The RIT student team took home the top trophy and $6,000 in scholarships for playing the digital card game Hearthstone.

RIT’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences is forming a new School of Information to recognize the changing roles of information professionals. The school aims to bridge the digital divide and make computing solutions available, accessible, usable and suitable to all.

A team of Hearthstone players represented RIT and joined 20 other top colleges at the first-ever ESPN Collegiate Esports Championship. RIT became one of the top four teams in the country and the three RIT student players received $7,500 in tuition scholarships.

A team of RIT students has become one of the best collegiate Hearthstone teams in the nation, making it to the ESPN Collegiate Esports Championship May 10-12 in Houston. RIT beat out nearly 500 other collegiate Hearthstone teams to get to the first-ever ESPN esports event.

Imagine RIT visitors will help keep the skies above RIT clear during the festival on April 27, in a new video game on display at the MAGIC Spell Studios building. Festivalgoers can play “Weather Defense: A Two Stories High Video Wall Game” on six large 4K displays, mounted two stories up the atrium wall of the new 52,000-square-foot MAGIC building.

Token, an identity technology start-up founded by RIT alumni Melanie and Steve Shapiro, will receive up to $1.75 million through the New York State Innovation Venture Capital Fund.

Researchers at RIT are developing a faster and more reliable way to send and receive large amounts of data through the internet. By creating a new network protocol, researchers are essentially developing a new high-speed lane of online traffic, specifically for emergency information.