Photo Spotlights

Refugee children from Mary’s Place joined RIT alumni and graduate students on a tour of Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on May 5. Dave Kelbe (orange shirt), a doctoral candidate in imaging science, arranged the outing.

Four people were inducted in RIT’s Innovation Hall of Fame on May 4. From left to right, Kevin Surace ’85; Robin Cass, representing the School for American Crafts in honor of the late Aileen Osborn Webb; Patricia Moore ’74; Dean Kamen and President Bill Destler.

A record 35,000 spectators discovered the latest in the arts, science, technology and entrepreneurship on May 5 at the Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival. The festival, with Time Warner Cable as the premier sponsor, involved 2,700 participants and more than 600 volunteers. The festival has now drawn more than 140,000 visitors in five years. In 2013, the festival will be held May 4.

More than a dozen teams in the inaugural E-Dragster Race, this year’s kickoff event to Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival, took off on May 5. Participants, who included RIT students, faculty and staff, competed with electric-powered dragsters in time trials. The winning car, Hot Wheelz (shown here), from the Women in Engineering team, won a banjo from President Bill Destler’s personal collection.

Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit was the subject of the 27th RIT Big Shot on May 3. More than 1,500 students, faculty and community volunteers, manned with flashlights and flashes, lit up the historic Rochester landmark while RIT photographers shot a 30-second exposure from a nearby platform.

Sculptor and MacArthur-award winner Elizabeth Turk engaged an audience of more than 150 people during her May 2 presentation, “Emptiness of Matter,” wrapping up the 2011-2012 season of the Caroline Werner Gannett Project’s “Visionaries in Motion V” series. Turk discussed her tools, methods, drawings and preparations, and she revealed her sources of inspiration, as well as some of her creations. Go to www.cwgp.org and click on “Celebrating Six Visionary Years” to read comments about the series from past speakers.

“He was an entrepreneur, a risk taker and always did it his way,” John Del Monte, president of E.J. Del Monte Corp., said about his father, the late Ernest J. Del Monte Sr., during a luncheon on May 3 at Oak Hill Country Club. John Del Monte accepted the 2012 Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award in honor of his father, who founded his company in 1953, established Delcrete Building Systems and owned several Marriott franchise properties. The Vanden Brul award was established in 1984 and the annual event is sponsored by RIT’s E. Philip Saunders College of Business.

The RIT community gathered May 2 for a reception in appreciation of Georgia Gosnell, left. Her $5 million commitment to the university creates the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences in the College of Science. The naming comes in recognition of her late husband, who served as chairman of RIT’s Board of Trustees from 1987 to 1992. RIT President Bill Destler, right, joined the celebration.

RIT Hillel sponsored a free falafel pita tasting on April 30 in front of the Student Alumni Union. The event was a celebration of Israel’s 64th Independence Day on April 26.

Tracey O’Dowd and Mike Higham share some love with dogs from Scottsville Veterinary Adoptions. The pooches visited April 27 as part of the Spring Festival but had to depart early because of the cold weather.

In partnership with the George Eastman House, RIT and Visual Studies Workshop, photographers from Magnum Photos documented Rochester April 14-29. Students researched, assisted and scouted locations for the photographers—who, on April 28, discussed the project and signed books at the George Eastman House. Here, RIT Professor Willie Osterman, right, project coordinator for RIT students, talks with Jim Goldberg, one of the Magnum photographers, during the book signing. Magnum Photos is an agency owned by its photographer members and founded in 1947 by documentary photographers.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand convened leading experts from industry, government and academia for a summit at RIT’s Center for Student Innovation on April 27. The event focused on strategies to bring about a manufacturing renaissance to upstate New York. Golisano Institute for Sustainability Director Nabil Nasr looks on.