News

Spectrum News talks to Robert Rothman, adjunct faculty member in the College of Science, about scientist Charles Darwin's explorations in the Galapagos.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Matthew Hoffman, associate professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences.

Plastic pollutants, the coronavirus, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the strength of nanowires, and why freshly cut grass smells the way it does—these are some of the topics students from Rochester Prep High School explored during a mentorship program with RIT faculty. They shared their projects and new perspectives during the RIT-Rochester Prep Capstone Showcase held Feb. 6 at RIT.

Retrograde, a classical rock band formed about a year and a half ago with five RIT students, won best performance and a $500 prize in this year’s Ovation: RIT Performing Arts Showcase, held Friday night in Ingle Auditorium.

The National Science Foundation is providing RIT new funding to continue a long-running mathematical sciences research program for undergraduate students from across the country. The NSF awarded RIT nearly $325,000 to continue to serve as a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site in extremal graph theories and dynamical systems for the next three summers.

RIT has been expanding its research footprint to accommodate the university’s growing research portfolio. The Student Hall for Exploration and Development (SHED), which opens this fall, is enabling the university to convert 10 existing classrooms, totaling more than 23,000 square feet, into new research space. Another 14,700 square feet of research space opened in January in Brown Hall.

RIT is growing its Ph.D. offerings, adding one new program in the fall of 2023 and two in 2024. This fall, Saunders College of Business will offer a Ph.D. in business administration. In 2024, the College of Liberal Arts will introduce a new doctoral degree in cognitive science and the College of Science will launch a Ph.D. in physics.

People from across the university are helping RIT make substantial progress on the initiatives laid out in the Action Plan for Race and Ethnicity. Launched in July 2021, the plan unveiled an extensive series of initiatives designed to make RIT more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Scientists on the hunt for a previously undetected type of gravitational waves believe they are getting close and have refined techniques to use in upcoming observational runs. Researchers from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration outlined the most sensitive search to date for continuous gravitational waves from a promising source in a paper recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

WXXI’s “Connections” program features Professor Emeritus Roger Dube.

WUSA-TV features Amanda Preske ’09 (chemistry), founder of Circuit Breaker Labs and Because Science.

Popular Science talks to Jeyhan Kartaltepe, associate professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, about early galaxies detected by the James Webb Space Telescope.