News
School of Physics and Astronomy

Researchers at RIT are part of a new study that could help unlock the potential of superfluids—essentially frictionless special substances capable of unstopped motion once initiated.

WROC-TV talks to Michael Richmond, professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy and director of the RIT Observatory, about the asteroid Psyche.

Two electrical engineering students are refining an attitude control system and are seeking ways to reduce the impact of atmospheric heat that changes a spacecraft’s orientation during launch. Both students will share information about their work for CSTARS-2 during the 2021 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

WROC-TV talks to Michael Richmond, professor of physics and astronomy, about the future of commercial services for space travel.

The National Science Foundation renewed its support of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) with a $17 million grant over five years to operate the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center (PFC). RIT will receive $703,000 over the next five years to contribute research to the NANOGrav PFC.

Led by principal investigator Michael Zemcov, an assistant professor in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy and Center for Detectors, the experiment aims to better understand extragalactic background light, which traces the history of galaxies back to the formation of the first stars in the universe.

NASA talks to Michael Zemcov, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, about the amount of light in space coming from outside of galaxies.

WHAM-TV features Jeyhan Kartaltepe, assistant professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy

RIT students Emily Wilson and Teresa Symons are co-recipients of the Outstanding Graduate Woman Achievement Award for their dedication and leadership on RIT’s Graduate Student Advisory Council. Wilson and Symons are Ph.D. students in the astrophysical sciences and technology program in the School of Physics and Astronomy and co-chairs of the Graduate Student Advisory Council.

Andrea Ghez, a 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics for her research in discovering one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe—the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy—will be a 2021 RIT commencement speaker on May 14 and 15. Ghez joins Eric Avar ’90 (industrial design), Nike’s vice president and creative guide of innovation design who was honored with the College of Art and Design Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, as the university’s first-ever dual commencement speakers.

When the James Webb Space Telescope—the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope—becomes operational in 2022, one of its first orders of business will be mapping the earliest structures of the universe. A team of nearly 50 researchers led by principal investigator Jeyhan Kartaltepe and other scientists at RIT and University of Texas at Austin will attempt to do so.

Scientific American talks to Jeyhan Kartaltepe, assistant professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, about the program she is leading to use the James Webb Space Telescope to study thousands of the earliest galaxies in the universe.