News
David Borkholder

  • April 28, 2021

    people working on toilet seat prototypes.

    Alumni join forces to market smart toilet seat

    Alumnus Nick Conn’s vision for a one-of-a-kind smart toilet seat that will improve the health of people around the world has made giant leaps toward becoming a reality with the help of one of RIT’s most generous patrons, Austin McChord.

  • October 23, 2020

    four researchers posing for photo.

    Research team wins Catalyst Award in first year of international challenge

    David Borkholder, Linwei Wang, Caroline Easton, and Adam Smith, part of RIT's Personalized Healthcare Technology signature research initiative, recently won a Catalyst Award from the National Academy of Medicine for their project, “Improving Health for the Aging through Daily Vital Signs Monitoring.”

  • October 14, 2020

    reseacher posing in lab.

    RIT, URMC receive grant to study benefits of AI-enabled toilet seat technology

    Toilet seats with high-tech sensors might be the non-invasive technology of the future that could help reduce hospital return rates of individuals with heart disease. A joint project by researchers at RIT and the University of Rochester Medical Center will determine if in-home monitoring can successfully record vital signs and reduce risk and costly re-hospitalization rates for people with heart failure. The five-year, $2.9 million venture is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

  • September 5, 2019

    researcher and professor with toilet seat embedded with sensors.

    Podcast: Toilet Seat Measures Heart Health 

    Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 22: Heart failure costs the U.S. $34 billion a year, with most of those costs due to repeated hospitalization. David Borkholder, RIT’s Bausch and Lomb Professor of Microsystems Engineering, talks with Nicholas Conn, a postdoctoral fellow and founder of Heart Health Intelligence, about a new invention that could help patients easily monitor their health in the privacy of their own bathrooms.