Research News

RIT has been expanding its research footprint to accommodate the university’s growing research portfolio. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), which opens this fall, is enabling the university to convert 10 existing classrooms, totaling more than 23,000 square feet, into new research space. Another 14,700 square feet of research space opened in January in Brown Hall.

RIT is building upon its successful history of semiconductor development and research through an expansion to its cleanroom facility with help from New York state.

WHAM-TV talks to Karin Wuertz-Kozak, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, about her research on disc degeneration.

Andres Kwasinski, professor in the department of computer engineering and program director of the electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. program has co-authored a new book on “Joint Source-Channel Coding” published by Wiley, IEEE Press Series. 

Diversity in Action features Jade Myers, research development specialist in RIT's AMPrint Center (page 34).

RIT will receive $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to update and expand its Semiconductor Fabrication Lab to accommodate research in semiconductor technologies and prepare the workforce for the growing domestic microelectronics manufacturing industry. The funding was included as part of the fiscal year 2023 omnibus funding package.

Karin Wuertz-Kozak described her lab test equipment as a gym for cells. Stretching and compressions tests using bioreactors—her lab equipment—can make a difference in understanding how cells respond to mechanical cues and how that affects disease progression, specifically for spinal disc degeneration, common to millions of Americans.

Microsystems engineering Ph.D. student Katelynn Fleming is hard at work making new discoveries on the moon. But her ultimate goal is to use technology to help all of us on Earth. Fleming recently won a 2022 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) award and will work at NASA centers as part of the visiting technologist experiences.

RIT recently became one of the inaugural academic partners in the BrainChip University AI Accelerator Program. As part of the partnership, RIT’s computer engineering program will receive hardware as well as lecture modules for classes detailing how the novel chips can be programmed and used to provide neuromorphic computing solutions to real-world problems.

Numerous Rochester Institute of Technology faculty, professors emeriti, and postdoctoral researchers were recognized as top-cited scientists in their fields, according to a Stanford University study published by Elsevier.

Becoming the Silicon Valley of the Northeast may have as much power as the computer chips that will soon be designed and developed in the upstate New York region. The recent Chips 101 event, hosted by RIT on Nov. 16, kept to that premise. More than 50 regional government and corporate representatives learned how computer chips are designed and manufactured—and how universities, government, and workforce development initiatives will contribute to this area.

RIT microelectronic engineering Professor Santosh Kurinec was recently honored as the IEEE’s 2022 William Terry Distinguished Service awardee. Given to a member of the IEEE’s Northeast Region 1, the award highlights an individual’s dedication and service to the engineering profession.