Computing and Information Sciences News

RIT’s digital humanities and social sciences program has opted for a new name: humanities, computing, and design (HCD). The new name more accurately reflects the skillset graduates leave with, and it is more recognizable among prospective students, their families, and employers.

Scientists from RIT are turning studio photography technology on its head to help museums and other cultural heritage institutions preserve historically significant artifacts.

RIT remains one of the nation’s best universities for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education-services company features RIT in the just-published 2023 edition of its book The Best 388 Colleges.

RIT has been recognized by Gizmodo, a design, technology, science, and science fiction website, for its offerings related to the top Degrees of the Future for 2022. RIT was named for its specialties in cybersecurity, environmental engineering, game design, and computer graphics.

Explore, discover, and get involved were some of the suggestions the newest RIT students received during Thursday’s New Student Convocation, which included welcomes from administrators, their new Student Government president, and even some levity featuring RIT President David Munson who pretended he needed to finish his college education.

RIT students participated in this summer’s Studio930 design consultancy, an interdisciplinary studio that focuses on the development of assistive healthcare solutions by leveraging the use of technology, art, and design. The 10-week long summer experience concluded with a student exhibition inside RIT’s LiveAbility Lab, a close partnership between RIT and the Al Sigl Community of Agencies. 

Rochester Business Journal reports on Wayfair's gift of roughly $850,000 in server equipment to RIT’s Computer Science House. The donation was facilitated by RIT alum Fred Oettinger, who works at the company.  

A team of faculty and student researchers at RIT are helping create a more accessibility-literate and empathetic software engineering workforce. The researchers, led by Daniel Krutz, assistant professor of software engineering, are developing free online lessons on how to create software that is accessible for those with visual, cognitive, hearing, dexterity, and other disabilities.

When RIT’s Computer Science House put out a call for hardware donations last year, Fred Oettinger—an alumnus and staff engineer at Wayfair—got an idea. He knew that Wayfair had just what they needed. Wayfair, one the world’s largest destinations for the home, has gifted RIT’s Computer Science House (CSH) about $850,000 in server equipment.

A hospitality workforce training program run by Saunders College of Business is responding both to the needs of underserved immigrants and refugees seeking meaningful work and an industry that has been devastated by staff shortages wrought by the pandemic.

RIT will establish two new endowed professorships in the College of Science thanks to a $2 million donation from Jeffrey Harris ’75 and his partner, Joyce Pratt. RIT matched their donation with $4 million in funding as part of a $20 million challenge to encourage alumni, parents, and friends of the university to support faculty recruitment, retention, and research critical to RIT’s priorities and trajectory.

RIT will begin offering two new Ph.D. programs beginning in the fall of 2023: business administration and cognitive science. Today, RIT enrolls 300 students in 11 Ph.D. programs.