News Stories

RIT will begin offering two new Ph.D. programs beginning in the fall of 2023: business administration and cognitive science. Today, RIT enrolls 300 students in 11 Ph.D. programs.

Gabby Garcia, a fourth-year industrial design student, is one of six finalists in the 2022 Funniest Person in Rochester (FPIR) Contest presented by Comedy @ the Carlson. The annual competition is open to any Rochester-area comedians, and winners are determined through audience votes and a panel of judges.

Jorge M. Rodriguez ’15 (online Executive MBA), chief executive officer of Salt Lake City-headquartered Sorenson Communications, has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and information technology industries—including in both domestic and international markets.

Kamal Rana, an imaging science Ph.D. student from India, has been using his skills to help identify landslide triggers and develop models for forecasting landslides.

When audiences head to Cinemark theaters to catch a movie this July, they’ll also see a commercial produced by students from RIT and NTID. The short film, Say Cheese, was awarded the grand prize in the Coca-Cola Refreshing Films (CCRF) program.

The public will soon get its first glimpse at images from the most powerful observational instrument ever made. NASA will reveal the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images and spectra on July 12. RIT faculty closely involved with JWST will make media appearances to explain the significance of this momentous scientific achievement.

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, RIT’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship is once again hosting its Business Pitch competition, open to all businesses operating within Monroe County. The winner will be awarded $25,000.

Research at RIT into new energy-efficient materials for computing could improve the bottleneck that often occurs when retrieving large amounts of data, hindering processing throughput and energy efficiency.

NASA announced new funding for a project led by RIT alumni, faculty, and students that could power spacecraft to orbit the sun’s poles for the first time. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program will provide funding to the Diffractive Solar Sailing project led by Amber Dubill ’20, ’20 MS of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

In response to requests from students, RIT is adding more all-gender bathrooms and locker areas across campus. And soon, people of all genders can be using the same bathrooms at the same time, as RIT plans to incorporate all-gender bathrooms in some buildings, which will provide privacy in stalls, with common areas to wash hands.

Dean Sophia Maggelakis will be leaving RIT to become the senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Maggelakis joined RIT as an assistant professor in 1990, became head of the School of Mathematical Sciences in 2001, and became dean of the College of Science in 2010.

Jonathan Hopkins, a beloved member of the interpreting team for the College of Art and Design, has retired. But many others know Hopkins from his work as an interpreter for a wide range of activities at RIT including sports games and practices, stage performances, Native American events, and art classroom sessions.