Research News

After a year’s hiatus due to COVID-19, the popular Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival returns virtually on Saturday, May 1, with more than 250 exhibits of projects, research and performing arts of students, faculty, and staff at RIT.

The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I)—led by RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability—has developed a free, interactive toolkit that municipalities can use to design, implement, and manage food waste programs at the local level.

Nabil Nasr, associate provost and founding director of RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, is part of an advisory board, The CLEEN Project, which recently launched the nation’s first co-operative idea database designed specifically for federal leaders in the new administration and focused on providing actionable ideas to combat climate change and advance climate justice.

Research activities for the three-year, field-based research project will be organized and led by Kelly McCauley Krish, IPI preventive conservation specialist. The study will apply data from temperature, relative humidity, and pollutant monitoring to comprehensively balance these known risks to collections when implementing energy-saving mechanical system operations.

A team of RIT researchers has been working to blast-clean some 360 door handles from buildings across campus to restore the surface copper. Copper has been found to have antibacterial properties that can kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

Nabil Nasr, RIT’s associate provost and founding director of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, has been appointed a Trustee by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, formed in 2010 to inspire a generation to rethink, redesign and build a positive future through the vision of a circular economy. 

A federal grant matched by New York state and RIT is enabling university researchers to study a competitive solution to polyethylene mulch and identify a more sustainable alternative to conventionally used plastics in farming.

RIT is leading an effort involving local companies and healthcare experts to produce a prototype ventilator designed to help meet the continuing surge of respiratory cases as a result of the coronavirus.

Tourism has surged in Croatia in recent years, bringing with it direct economic benefits but also challenging the preservation of the natural systems that make the Adriatic Coast region so attractive to visitors. Callie Babbitt, an associate professor in RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, is using a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to study sustainable solutions addressing the growing challenge of food waste management along Croatia’s Adriatic Coast.

Waste Dive talks to Nabil Nasr, associate provost, founding director of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability and CEO of the Reducing EMbodied-Energy And Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Institute, about REMADE's efforts to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions in manufacturing.

More than 140 thought leaders and executives from around the world gathered in Rochester for the third-annual RIC-RIT World Remanufacturing Conference, which featured the latest information on emerging trends and issues of critical importance to the remanufacturing industry.

Callie Babbitt, an associate professor in RIT’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, will study sustainable solutions that will address the growing challenge of food waste management along Croatia’s Adriatic coast.