News

RIT is one of 14 universities from around the globe that have collectively been awarded $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation to launch a new Biology Integration Institute. It will focus on better understanding ecosystem and climate interactions—like the thawing of the Arctic permafrost—and how they can alter everything from the landscape to greenhouse gases.

The National Science Foundation awarded RIT’s College of Science a three-year, $587,000 Building Capacity in STEM Education Research grant. The grant is part of a $1 million collaborative project that aims to extend the impact of the Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers (PEER) field school model to hundreds of emerging education researchers.

Nishant Malik, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, has developed a mathematical method that shows how shifting monsoon patterns led to the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization, a Bronze Age civilization contemporary to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

RIT welcomes a record number of first-year students today as classes begin in a semester that will look like no other due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new students were welcomed Tuesday afternoon during an online convocation that featured several speakers, livestreamed without an audience from Ingle Auditorium.

With more people staying closer to home than ever before thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, home gardening has grown in popularity. And many will want to savor the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor long after summer has gone. So a series of online classes on how to preserve food is being offered through the ongoing partnership between RIT and the Genesee Country Village & Museum.

More than 80 first-year RIT students from underrepresented populations began their college careers early and from home this summer. The students participated in the Division of Diversity and Inclusion (DDI) Summer Experience, a five-week program held virtually for the first time this year to help students successfully transition to college.

Two RIT students collaborated with faculty and co-authored their first paper which contributes to the body of knowledge surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

An RIT student is on a mission to help build detectors that could identify individual photons from distant, inhabitable planets. Justin Gallagher, a fifth-year student from Rochester, N.Y., pursuing his BS in physics and MS in astrophysical sciences and technology, is serving as project manager for a nearly $1 million grant funded by NASA to create a single photon sensing and number resolving detector for NASA missions.

The unexpected transition to remote learning during the spring semester challenged faculty across RIT to experiment, create, and deploy new methods of instruction to ensure student success. As the university gears up for in-person and online classes—or a combination of both—faculty members are applying a wide range of lessons learned from the spring to keep academic momentum moving forward in the fall.

Douglas Merrill, who inspired countless students during his 40-year tenure in the College of Science and the College of Health Sciences and Technology, has retired. He developed the Premedical Advisory Program and created the Center for Bioscience Education and Technology. And he retires with numerous honors recognizing his outstanding teaching and commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Michael Heagy has been appointed the new head of RIT’s School of Chemistry and Materials Science. Heagy comes to RIT from the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor in 1996 and has served as the chair of the Department of Chemistry since 2016.

RIT unveiled two plans that outline the actions that the university and its individual community members must take for a safe, productive, and meaningful Fall 2020 semester.