Research News

Graduate education at RIT has evolved over the last 60 years, and now, the university has officially created the RIT Graduate School, replacing the RIT Office of Graduate Education.

NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award winners are among an elite group of research faculty on campus and across the country. CAREER Awards are just one of several indicators of a university’s growing research initiatives, funding sources, and faculty innovation.

Rui Li, an assistant professor in RIT’s Ph.D. program in computing and information sciences, received a NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and grant to develop machine intelligence that can actually grow when given new information.

RIT faculty-researchers will develop a game-design training system that could help astronauts maintain balance, motor skills, and other cognitive functions while in space. NASA, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, has selected six university teams, including RIT, to develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Moon to Mars exploration objectives.

More than 50 students are expected to earn their Ph.D. degrees by the end of June. The hooding ceremony, which will also include Ph.D. recipients in the class of 2020, is May 15.

After a year’s hiatus due to COVID-19, the popular Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival returns virtually on Saturday, May 1, with more than 250 exhibits of projects, research and performing arts of students, faculty, and staff at RIT.

Quinn Kolt, a fourth-year applied mathematics and computer science double major from Solon, Ohio, has been awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate research scholarship in the fields of math, natural sciences, and engineering in the United States.

Researchers at RIT are using augmented and virtual reality as part of a modern training platform to help address the skilled labor shortage in manufacturing. Using artificial intelligence and augmented or virtual reality applications as a training strategy can support novice trainees and retain the knowledge of master machinists and manufacturing engineers.

With more than $4 million in support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other organizations, Associate Professor Mehdi Mirakhorli and his student team are developing tools and techniques to help coders take an architectural approach to software design.

School of Individualized Study student Harrison Canning and his business partner, Colin Fausnaught, a 2019 software engineering graduate from RIT, formed the BCI Guys, which stands for brain-computer interface technology. They recently launched an online educational series to lower the barrier of entry and inspire others to join the field.

Computing researchers at RITare teaming up with Fortune 500 company JLL to explore augmented reality within the commercial real estate and property management space.

For too long, cybersecurity has been an afterthought. In a preemptive strike on cyber­security threats across the world, RIT has created the Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI). Late last fall, the GCI opened the doors to its 52,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility on campus. With the institute, RIT is on its way to becoming one of the best places in the world for cybersecurity education, training, and research.