College of Engineering News
Department of Mechanical Engineering

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.

After graduating this year, Matthias Hausman, a mechanical engineering and international and global studies double major from Abington Township, Pa., will travel to Saxony, Germany, to teach English this September. As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, he will be placed in a German classroom to provide assistance to a local English teacher.

Multidisciplinary Senior Design is a required, two semester, design-based course for engineering students. Currently, more than 400 students are working on 80-plus projects.

More than a dozen RIT alumni have tapped into the craft-beer boom that has swept across the country. In the past 12 years, the number of craft breweries has more than quadrupled.

RIT's College of Liberal Arts honored student achievements in writing with 15 writing awards on Friday, March 19. This year marks the 41st year the awards were presented, though the first time the ceremony was held virtually.

When Teknic challenged a co-op student team from RIT to produce a configurable, automated machine that would use its newest motion and I/O controller called ClearCore, team members responded with a robotic bartender that automates the drink-making process.

Students on co-op are picking up more than occupational and professional skills. As the pandemic unfolded last spring and summer, they saw firsthand how companies manage even in the midst of a crisis.

Keegan Evans will take his place this summer among a group of young Air Force officers from around the globe who have been selected for the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program. The RIT Air Force ROTC cadet was selected from among hundreds of ROTC students for one of the U.S. Air Force’s most elite flight training programs.

RIT’s Multidisciplinary Senior Design program began last fall with more projects for engineering student teams than expected, despite the pandemic. From collaborations with other universities and NASA to an anthropologist needing a robotic model of a dinosaur tail, all the projects represent innovative technologies built with sustainable, user-friendly designs.

The Rochester Beacon features research by Satish Kandlikar, the Gleason Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Three new engineering doctoral degree programs at RIT were approved by the New York State Department of Education and are focused on using multidisciplinary approaches to solving today’s global challenges.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 39: Nicole Scott, director of RIT’s Native American Future Stewards Program, and Abigail Reigner, a second-year mechanical engineering student who is the regional student representative for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, discuss life as Native Americans in higher education, learning about Native cultures, and some of the unique ways RIT partners with tribal nations and organizations.