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.

Submit a Newsmaker

October 2025

  • October 17, 2025

    Esa Rantanen, associate professor in the Department of Psychology, presented three research papers from AWARE-AI’s Research Track on Cognitive Models for AI at the 69th Human Factors and Ergonomics Society International Annual Meeting ASPIRE, Oct. 13-17, in Chicago. The papers were “A Neural Hypervector Model of Memory-Driven Spatial Navigation,” with Will Gebhardt, a Ph.D. student in computing and information sciences; “The Future of Human Factors: Expanding Opportunities in Higher Education,” with students Bea Pulido, Theresa Haas, and Marley Reynolds from the experimental psychology master’s degree program; and “Whither Human Factors in the Era of AI?” written by Rantanen.

  • October 15, 2025

    Richard Fadok, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, co-curated the exhibition “Smash the Crash” at the Frontispace Gallery. The exhibition gathers students and faculty that explore the structural violence of architectural glass.

  • October 13, 2025

    Kristoffer Whitney, associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society, and Jolie Crunelle ’25 (biomedical engineering), ’25 (science, technology and public policy), co-published an article with University of Sussex about the biomedical use of horseshoe crabs, titled "Crabs, cures and conservation" in The Biologist, the magazine of the Royal Society of Biology.

September 2025

  • September 17, 2025

    Igor Polotai, a fourth-year game design and development and history double major, published the study “The RIT Iceberg: A Case Study Documenting Collegiate Student Folklore and Traditions” in the Journal of Folklore and Education. The ongoing research covers the folklore, secrets, myths, and culture of RIT and the university’s student population and advocates for more scholarly research in the field of collegiate folklore.

  • September 8, 2025

    Bharat Bhole, chair of the Department of Economics, co-authored and published “Tacit Collusion By Pricing Algorithms” in Economic Inquiry with Sunita Surana. This article contributes to the debate about the potential of pricing algorithms to collude and earn supra-competitive profits without explicit communication.  

  • September 8, 2025

    O. Nicholas Robertson, associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, published "West Indian young men’s perspectives on African American crime" in International Criminology. The paper examines West Indian Young Men's perceptions of West Indian criminality relative to African American criminality. It is one of the first papers to examine intra-racial differences in perceptions of criminality in the United States.

  • September 3, 2025

    Muhammad Salar Khan, assistant professor of public policy, recently served as a member of the Government Accountability Office’s Expert Panel on AI for federal small business contracting and the Small Business Innovation Research / Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs. The panel examined the barriers and opportunities of using AI to advance innovation and efficiency in federal small business programs. The panel’s recommendations will be presented to the Small Business Administration, members of Congress, and other stakeholders. Khan joined 10 other experts representing institutions and organizations, such as Harvard University, MIT, UC Berkeley, Intel Corp., and OpenAI.

August 2025

  • August 27, 2025

    Eunju Kang, senior lecturer in the Department of Public Policy, attended the 28th World Congress of Political Science July 12–16 in Seoul, South Korea. Kang presented as the primary author of the paper “Public Health Inequities of Infant Mortality in the United States as Political Outcomes."