Department of Packaging Science – News

Analytical thinking, complex problem solving, creativity, resiliency, and flexibility are among the top skills needed for emerging careers by 2025. Anticipating these rapid changes in the workplace—further accelerated by lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic—RIT is seizing on the opportunity to guide students to “new economy majors” that are multi­disciplinary, transformative, and future-focused.

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.

The RIT student-designers on Team Frears placed second in the 2020 Paperboard Packaging Student Design Challenge for their packaging designs of a toolkit for educators to be distributed by the national program Trees into Cartons, Cartons into Trees, (TICCIT).

CNBC talks to Carlos Diaz-Acosta, associate professor of packaging science, about consumer behavior and food-waste education.

A federal grant matched by New York state and RIT is enabling university researchers to study a competitive solution to polyethylene mulch and identify a more sustainable alternative to conventionally used plastics in farming.

When new students come to RIT, they join the ever-growing Tiger family. For John B. Lawrence and his younger brother, Jared Lawrence, the Tiger family is more than just a proximal community; it’s also based on actual bloodlines.

Undergraduate students from packaging science, graphic design and industrial design worked over the semester to improve packaging and branding identity for Milwaukee Tools and its Shockwave power drill bits as part of the Packaging Systems class challenge.

Funding from the long-time corporate partner will support two innovative packaging centers at RIT: the American Packaging Corp. Center for Packaging Innovation, a comprehensive teaching, research and testing laboratory; and the Center for Sustainable Packaging. Both centers are located in RIT’s College of Engineering Technology.

For the last several decades, volunteer groups have played a pivotal role in keeping RIT’s curriculum relevant and current with the latest industry trends. The groups of 10 to 30 leaders from a wide variety of companies come together a few times a year to offer their insights for RIT faculty and staff in nearly every college.

Team Pacman, a group of undergraduate students from Rochester Institute of Technology, placed second among 54 entries from competing universities in the recent Paperboard Packaging Alliance’s national Student Design Challenge.

Five alumni from RIT’s College of Engineering Technology were honored with Rising Star awards during a campus reception last month. Given to alumni who graduated from CET within the past five to 10 years, the awardees were recognized for outstanding achievements early in their careers, for significant public service contributions and in helping to advance the careers of new professionals.

Images of plastic bags and bottles clogging beaches and oceans have some calling for a ban on all such products. But packaging experts say it’s not that easy to eliminate a highly effective material. Instead, researchers at RIT are looking to strike a balance: Find a way to produce plastics that retain their best qualities and yet are more environmentally friendly.