Newsmakers

Highlighting the professional and academic accomplishments of College of Liberal Arts students, faculty, and staff.

Newsmakers are a quick and easy way to acknowledge the professional and academic accomplishments of RIT students, faculty, and staff, such as publishing an article in a scholarly journal, presenting research at a conference, serving on a panel discussion, earning a scholarship, or winning an award. Newsmakers appear in News and Events as well as the "In the News" section on faculty/staff directory profile pages.

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September 2026

  • September 16, 2026

    Richard Fadok, assistant professor, and Conerly Casey, associate professor, both in the School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Sciences, were recognized by the Central New York Humanities Corridor with inaugural Outstanding Working Group Awards on Sept. 14. Fadok co-organizes the Urban Natures working group, and Casey, the War Ecologies group.

  • September 14, 2026

    Michael Peechatt, computing and information sciences Ph.D. candidate, presented “Modality-Time Masking for Robust Multimodal Confusion Detection” at the 2026 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Conference in Puebla, Mexico. The research was co-authored by Reynold Bailey, professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Cecilia Alm, professor of psychology and artificial intelligence program director.

  • September 9, 2026

    Eunju Kang, senior lecturer of public policy, presented at the annual American Political Science Association meeting, Sept. 3-6, in Boston. Kang's papers, “The Political and Institutional Factors of Extreme Heat Vulnerability,” and ”Capacity to Collaborate across Jurisdictions,” both explored local and state governments in the United States.

  • September 3, 2026

    Ben Willmott, director of operations and administration in the School of Performing Arts, has been elected to the Executive Committee of Arts Administrators in Higher Education (AAHE) as vice chair for 2026-2027 and chair for 2027-2028. AAHE is a network of arts administration professionals across roles and disciplines from colleges and universities around the country.

  • September 2, 2026

    Jessica Hardin, department chair and Honorable Barber B. Conable Endowed Chair in Global Futures, co-edited the metabolic injustice issue of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography's. Her research traces how scientists and popular media have repeatedly used Nauru’s high rates of obesity and diabetes as a cautionary tale about modernization, diet, and Indigenous bodies.

August 2026

  • August 27, 2026

    Christine Keiner, chair of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, published “Organism X and the Oyster Commons: The Chesapeake MSX Disease Crisis as a Space of Inquiry for Advancing Laboratory-Based Aquaculture, 1959–1969” in Spaces of Inquiry: Making Science and Technology in the Modern World. The essay addresses scientific and political responses to the alarming spread of a non-native marine pathogen during a pivotal period for emerging fields of environmental science.

  • August 25, 2026

    Muhammad Salar Khan, assistant professor of public policy, was invited to share his expert perspective at the Town of Henrietta’s public hearing on proposed data center regulations. Khan addressed key considerations for balancing digital infrastructure growth with community needs, including energy and water demands, infrastructure costs, transparency, cumulative impacts, and the need for adaptable regulations as technology evolves.

  • August 21, 2026

    Michael Brown, associate professor of history, presented his paper “Being Sicilian in ‘Smugtown, USA’” at the American Association for Italian Studies annual conference at the University of Sassari on June 5 in Sardinia, Italy. The paper proposes Rochester as a distinct and important site in the Sicilian diaspora. Placing the work of Rochester-raised writer Jerre Mangione and filmmaker Frank LaLoggia into conversation, Brown links their nationally significant representations of Sicilian American life to specific moments in and features of Rochester history.