Photo Spotlights

President Destler’s E-Vehicle Autocross kicked off the Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 3.

The RIT Orchestra will join Professor Thomas Warfield, the School of Interactive Gaming and Media, and the RIT/NTID Dance Company in ...and Melodies Unheard, a multimedia performance honoring Robert Panara and inspired by his own poetry. The performance runs from May 1-3 in the Robert F. Panara Theatre.

Rochester City Scholar Hassan Robinson is majoring in information technology in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. Robinson, who is on target to graduate in May, is part of the first graduating class of the Rochester City Scholars program. To read more, go to www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=50630.

Joel Frater, assistant provost for diversity at The College at Brockport, has had the opportunity to meet with students, faculty and staff during his time at RIT to hear their thoughts on leadership—an experience that he said has been invaluable. To read more, go to www.rit.edu/news/athenaeum_story.php?id=50667.

Holi, a celebration of spring, was part of SpringFest sponsored by OASIS April 26. The festival symbolizes love and colors by singing and dancing with dry colored powder and water. From left, RIT students Hassan Jehan, Jayjeet Gohain Baruah and Devansh Punjala.

RIT Rescue Shelter Club hosted the second Annual RIT Community Dog Walk on April 27. Proceeds benefited local rescue organizations Paws and Purrs and Four-Legged Friends.

RIT Women in Computing joined several other universities around the world on April 26 as part of the International Women’s Hackathon. Participants created apps, games or websites during a 13-hour period.

RIT’s College of Liberal Arts co-sponsored “Globe at the Movies,” a film symposium celebrating the multifaceted nature of global films, on April 24. The free symposium, organized by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, provided guests with opportunities to screen six internationally released films and participate in question-and-answer sessions with directors and film scholars. Here, a standing-room-only crowd viewed The Upside Down Book—a documentary about one family’s journey of discovery—written, produced and directed by Hinda Mandell, assistant professor of communication at RIT.

Dan Wang, a fourth-year professional photographic illustration student, was one of three photography students from New York who photographed the new 2015 Corvette Z06 convertible before it was revealed at the New York International Auto Show. His stunning shots of the Corvette received the most votes, declaring him the winner of the student competition. The grand prize is $5,000. For more information, go to http://s.chevy.com/voteZ06.

The co-owners of Century Mold Inc. and Parlec Inc., Ronald Ricotta, left, and Michael Nuccitelli, were honored with the 2014 Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award during a luncheon hosted by RIT’s Saunders College of Business on April 22 at Oak Hill Country Club. The award was created in 1984 and annually goes to a successful individual who developed a business that improved the Rochester economy or whose innovative management skills have changed the course of an existing business.

Three student teams from RIT were among 13 teams from nine colleges competing in the third annual NYSP2I Research and Development Student Competition. The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute challenged teams of full-time students enrolled at any institute of higher education in New York state to identify a specific activity at their university or in their community with a large environmental footprint. Teams were then required to design innovative solutions to reduce the issue’s impact. The teams presented their ideas at the Golisano Institute for Sustainability on April 22 as part of an Earth Day celebration.

Liisa Kauppinen, former president of the World Federation of the Deaf, visited RIT/NTID the week of April 14, presenting to numerous groups on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Kauppinen is a long-time WFD consultant for the United Nations and its special agencies and has been awarded the U.N. Human Rights Prize, among other international recognitions.