News Stories

For more than 30 years, Robert Rothman has led hundreds of RIT students on tours to the Galápagos Islands to observe the wildlife and landscape that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Rothman’s A Paradise for Reptiles, an homage to the 19th century scientist, is an accessibly written guide for anyone interested in Darwin, the Galápagos, and reptiles in general.

The speedy “elevator pitch” has become an essential component of selling one’s business idea to potential investors. RIT’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship recently gave local entrepreneurs the opportunity to compete—in five minutes or less—for the grand prize in the Pull Up & ROC the Pitch competition.

Kenzie Moore, a fifth-year electrical engineering technology major from Los Gatos, Calif., volunteered with the Engineering Up afterschool program, partnered with the Rochester City School District (RCSD), which engages K-12 students in STEM-related fields.

A pair of RIT students who played a rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” on their cellos won best performance and a $1,000 prize in this year’s Ovation: RIT Performing Arts Showcase, held Friday night in Ingle Auditorium.

RIT’s School of Film and Animation (SOFA) has been ranked among the top 50 animation schools in the country by Animation Career Review, a leading online resource of information for aspiring animation and game design professionals.

An engineering researcher at RIT has discovered the means to process data using DNA. Amlan Ganguly, computer engineering department head in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, and researchers at the University of Minnesota, designed a microfluidic integrated circuit to perform complex operations through artificial neural network computations on data stored in DNA.

The ancient astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first scientist to document the theory that the sun is the center of the universe in his book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). That first edition book, along with a delicate manuscript from astronomer Johannes de Sacrobosco, that is contrary to Copernicus’ groundbreaking theory, has now found a permanent home at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Ahmad Kirmani’s research is helping to expand and improve space exploration through understanding how the metal-halide perovskite, the next-generation printable semiconductor, reacts to harsh extraterrestrial conditions and self-heals in those conditions.

RIT is set to welcome researchers and educators from across the U.S. and North and South America during the 2024 a2ru national conference. The conference will take place Nov. 14-16, and session proposals are being accepted online with a deadline of March 15 to submit.

RIT scientists will be the lead researchers on a $1.8 million NASA grant to study electromagnetic signals from merging supermassive black holes.

Motivated RIT freshman Brayden Levangie wastes no time designing his own curriculum to advance his AI and robotic research while at college. Levangie is a first-year student in RIT’s School of Individualized Study from West Boylston, Mass.

Photos from past internships, events, and research projects at Genesee Country Village & Museum stretch from floor to ceiling in the new Wehrheim Gallery on campus. Located on the first-floor of the new Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), the Wehrheim Gallery will be used to highlight work done as part of RIT’s partnership with GCV&M.