Research Awards and Recognition

RIT became recognized as a doctoral university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in 2016 because of its growing research activity.

A bar chart showing the amount of sponsored research dollars awarded to RIT researchers. The totals are as fallows, in millions of dollars: 2016, 73; 2017, 61; 2018, 78; 2019, 74; 2020, 82.

Major Grants

January 17, 2022

RIT professor Poornima Padmanabhan honored with NSF CAREER Award

Scientists look to space for origins of the solar system; chemical engineers like Poornima Padmanabhan are searching for the origins of life based on minute systems of molecules. Padmanabhan recently received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for “Chirality and polymer thermodynamics: frustration and amplification.”
October 22, 2021

RIT’s Image Permanence Institute receives $375,543 federal grant from IMLS

The Image Permanence Institute at RIT has received a National Leadership Grant award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that will identify critical preservation challenges associated with 3D printed materials and technologies found in museums and develop resources that will support 3D printed object preservation.
October 19, 2021

RIT/NTID project hopes to reduce global deaf literacy gap

Early childhood development professionals often face challenges when teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing youth to read. A new project spearheaded by NTID is hoping to effectively bring literacy education to deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.

NSF CAREER Awards

2021

Pratik Dholabhai

For “Interface-mediated Ionic Transport in Mismatched Complex Oxide Heterostructures: Role of Misfit Dislocations”

2021

Christopher Kanan

For “Brain-inspired Methods for Continual Learning of Large-scale Vision and Language Tasks”

2021

Rui Li

For “Co-evolution of Machine Intelligence and Continuous Information”

2020

Mehdi Mirakhorli

For “Synthesizing Architectural Tactics”

2020

Michael Murdoch

For “Computational Model of Perceived Color and Appearance in Augmented Reality”

2019

Ifeoma Nwogu

For “A Computational Approach to the Study of Behavior and Social Interaction”

2019

Ben Zwickl

For “Learning to Solve Problems in context-rich environments: A Naturalistic study in STEM Workplaces, research labs, project-based and lab courses”

2018

Jing Zhang

For “Development of High-Efficiency Ultraviolet Optoelectronics”

2016

Amlan Ganguly

For “Energy-Efficient Datacenters with Wireless Interconnection Networks”

2015

Casey Miller

For “Magnetocaloric Effect in Metallic Nanostructures”

2015

Mishkat Bhattacharya

For “Theory of Optomechanical Nanorotation Sensing – Approaching the Quantum Regime”

2014

Linwei Wang

For “Integrating Physical Models into Data-Driven Inference”

2013

Callie Babbitt

For “Environmental impacts of reusing, recycling and disposing of lithium-ion batteries after they have been used in electric vehicles”

2010

Seth Hubbard

For “Strain Balanced Quantum Dots for high Concentration Photovoltaics”

2010

Reynold Bailey

For “Graphics: Gaze Manipulation”

2004

Sara Schley

For “Deaf Children and Young Adults: Predicting School, College and Labor Success”

PI Millionaires

Since 2000, RIT has recognized 115 principal investigators and researchers who have achieved $1 million or more in funding by inducting them into a class of “PI Millionaires.”

Current faculty in this group include:

Seed Funding

RIT awards researchers seed funding of $5,000 for proposals written during the fall semester and later refined over the course of a two-day Grant Writers’ Boot Camp.

Yewande Abraham

For “Creating Informed and Engaged End Users in High-Performance Campus Buildings for Improved Energy Efficiency and Enhanced Comfort”

Duygu Akdevelioglu

For “Wearable Technologies and Consumer Engagement in Social Media”

Nasibeh Azadeh Fard

For “Monitoring and Improving Length of Stay and Readmission Rates Using Learn Management Techniques”

Makini Beck

For “Advancing Culturally Relevant STEM Learning Experiences for Underrepresented Students”

Chris Campbell

For “The Use of Keyword Error Rate to Determine the Quality of Automated Speech Recognition Systems”

Ke Du

For “Highly Efficient Capture and Detection of Deadly Zaire Ebola virus (EBOV) via Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) Hierarchical Nanostructures”

Kyle Dunno

For “Development of Bioplastic Packaging Solution for the Transport of Apples”

Geo Kartheiser

For “Learning to Sign Before Birth”

For “Chasing Ancestors, Part 2: Searching for the origins of American Sign Language in East Anglia, 1620-1851”

Yu Kong

For “Vision-based Few-Shot Prediction via Adversarial Similarity Networks”

Rui Li

For “A Principled Model Selection Method for Deep Learning in Protein Function Analysis”

Yangming Li

For “Robotic Collaborative Perception and object Manipulation for Effective and Affordable Elder Care”

Guoyu Lu

For “Arctic Sea Ice Image Reconstruction and Localization”

Nishant Malik

For “Integrating dynamical systems and machine learning to study paleoclimate data”

Michael Mior

For “Benchmarking Integration of Relational and Non-Relational Data Systems”

Alexander Ororbia

For “Neurocognitively-Motivated Conversational Assistants Based on Distribution Representations”

NIH Boot Camp Seed Funding

RIT also offers an advanced boot camp focused on the National Institutes of Health. Participants in the NIH Boot Camp submitted proposals for seed funding to help develop competitive proposals or revise proposals to specific NIH programs in the coming year. 2019 awardees will receive up to $10,000 and include:

Jason Kolodziej

Kate Gleason College of Engineering

Elizabeth Ruder

College of Health Sciences and Technology

Michael Schertzer

Kate Gleason College of Engineering

Nicole Trabold

College of Health Sciences and Technology