Research News

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.

RIT’s Future Photon Initiative (FPI) and L3Harris have entered into a new industry partnership to develop quantum technologies. The partners will begin developing next steps for experiments and analysis focused on quantum information processing for communication, sensing, and computing.

Linwei Wang has been named the new director of the Personalized Healthcare Technology signature research initiative at RIT, and Adam Smith has been named Creative Director, a new position with the group.

Professor Rajendra Raj and Associate Professor Xumin Liu have received a National Science Foundation award to develop a hands-on data science course for non-computing majors. The course will first be offered at RIT and then across the country, in an effort to promote computing for all.

Natural gas-hydrates—crystalline compounds of gas molecules—are found in permafrost and marine sediments. While these gas hydrates can be used as alternative energy resources, they also pose a danger in terms of global warming. RIT researchers Patricia Taboada-Serrano and Yali Zhang developed a comprehensive model to better validate location of gas-hydrate deposits in marine sediments.

Seventeen interdisciplinary teams of students presented their innovative designs developed this summer in the Studio 930 design consultancy.

Several RIT research labs are ramping up work after several months of down time due to COVID-19. With the approval to reopen and prepare for fall classes, faculty-researchers have put in place some of the recommended guidelines for lab usage—from occupancy to cleaning protocols.

RIT Ph.D. candidate Mehdi (Aslan) Dehghani secured an internship at bio-device company after his team's research paper was published nationally.

Researchers at RIT and the University of Rochester discovered an alternative to successfully purify biological particles to better understand how cells communicate with one another.

Nathaniel Barlow, associate professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, and Steven Weinstein, head of RIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, outline a solution to the SIR epidemic model, which is commonly used to predict how many people are susceptible to, infected by, and recovered from viral epidemics, in a study published in Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena.

A team of RIT researchers will explore how tiny particles of plastic pollution are impacting Lake Ontario thanks to new funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The multidisciplinary group will examine how microplastics are transported and transformed in the lake, where they ultimately end up and what effects they have on the ecosystem.

RIT honored its 2020 class of Distinguished Faculty—Manuela Campanelli, Satish Kandlikar and James Perkins. The Distinguished Professor designation is given to tenured faculty who have shown continued excellence over their careers in teaching, scholarly contributions, lasting contributions in creative and professional work and service to both the university and community.