College of Science at RIT

Dr. Ke Xu and colleagues from @RITcomputing and @RITscience recieved @NSF funding through the CAREER Award program to tackle some of AI’s most pressing challenges. rit.edu/news/nsf-caree…

Congratulations to @RITscience Scholars! Miranda Garvey, Ella Mahnke, and Katherine Shomper are the first graduates of RIT’s Neuroscience BS program. Through hands-on research and close faculty mentorship, each developed their own path and is now preparing for what comes next, including research positions and advanced study. Read more: brnw.ch/21x2hEi

Join me in celebrating some fantastic news! Please help congratulate the following @RITscience colleagues on their well-earned promotions. School of Mathematics and Statistics Dr. Nate Barlow- Professor Dr. Adam Towsley- Principal Lecturer Dr. Susan Bateman- Senior Lecturer Connie Fitch, MS- Principal Lecturer School of Physics and Astronomy Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe- Professor Dr. Michael Zemcov- Professor Dr. Vivek Narayanan- Principal Lecturer Integratged Scienced Academy Dr. Michael Murdoch- Professor These promotions reflect not only individual excellence, but also the strength and impact of our College of Science community as a whole. Each of these colleagues has demonstrated a deep commitment to teaching, research, and service excellence, helping to shape the next generation of scientists and scholars. Please join me in celebrating their achievements and thanking them for the meaningful contributions they continue to make to the COS, RIT, and beyond.

Please join me in congratulating our fantastic colleagues who received awards at the @RITscience Honors, Awards, and Recognition Ceremony on Friday of last week for their excellent service and contributions to our community! The 2026 COS Award honorees are: Dr. Ke Xu – Excellence in Teaching Award Alisa Hall – Student Advocate Award Allyson Jefferis – Student Advocate Award Dr. Scott Williams – Leadership Award Dr. Hans Schmitthenner – Student Mentoring Award Georgeanne Hogan – Distinguished Service Award Dr. Ephraim Agyingi – Peer Mentoring Award Dr. Joel Kastner – Excellence in Scholarship Faculty Award Dr. Danae Rodríguez Bardají – Excellence in Scholarship Post-Doc Award Dr. Jacquie Ludwig – Outstanding Citizenship Award Hannah Puzio – Staff Excellence in Service Award Liz Coleman McDermott – Staff Excellence in Service Award Mollie Radzinski – Friend of the College Award Sarah Connolly – Friend of the College Award Congratulations to the awardees and all the nominees, the colleagues that supported them, and the fantastic work of the Honors, Awards, and Recognition Committee and Dean's Office staff for their support! Well done!

@RITscience faculty member Dr. Michael Zemkov and his graduate students enjoyed meeting @MozerJoel, visionary leader and former Chief Science Officer of the @USSpaceForce, at this week’s NY Consortium for Space Technology Innovation & Development held at @Cornell. #SpaceTech #RIT

Please join me in congratulating @RITscience faculty member, Dr. Christina Goudreau Collison, @CGCresearch, on being named the recipient of the Centennial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Iota Sigma Pi, the National Honor Society for Women in Chemistry. This prestigious national award honors outstanding women educators whose primary focus is undergraduate teaching in chemistry or related disciplines. Dr. Goudreau’s exceptional commitment to student success, her excellence in the classroom, and her passion for advancing chemistry education truly embody the spirit of this award. Awarded annually, this recognition celebrates educators who make a lasting impact on their students and the broader scientific community. Well done, Tina!

Research at @RITscience has led to one of the first successful launches of perovskite solar cells in a low-Earth orbit mission, proving the exceptional durability of the cost-saving material. brnw.ch/21x1wSN

Very proud to see multiple graduate programs ranked among the best in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. A special congratulations to the @RITscience, especially our Physics and Bioinformatics graduate programs. Onward and Upward! rit.edu/news/rits-grad…

.@RITscience researchers have now identified a specific spike in light that occurs at the moment of a supermassive black hole merger, providing the roadmap needed to finally observe these cosmic giants in action. brnw.ch/21x1dCK

I had a fantastic meeting with my colleague, Dr. Pritam Ganguly, from the @RITscience Science School of Chemistry and Materials Science, about a potential collaboration using computational chemistry to explore antimicrobial peptides as targets for antibiotic development. As we talked, we revisited a JBC study on diaminopimelate decarboxylase, the enzyme that catalyzes the final step in lysine biosynthesis via the diaminopimelate (DAP) pathways, converting meso-diaminopimelate (m-DAP) into lysine that was published in JBC: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… What makes this pathway particularly compelling is that m-DAP serves a dual role in Gram-negative bacteria. It is not only a precursor for lysine for protein synthesis, but also the key cross-linking amino acid in peptidoglycan. That discussion immediately brought me back to a functional complementation experiment we conducted for the study with my former student, Mary Leeman, MD. We employed the E. coli lysA mutant, which is auxotrophic for lysine, meaning it cannot grow unless lysine is supplied in the media or the pathway is restored via a functional gene. We introduced the two LysA orthologs from Arabidopsis thaliana under an inducible system: expression is turned on with arabinose and repressed with glucose, using an empty vector as a control in the lysA mutant. Early on, the results were baffling. We observed growth on lysine-free media in the presence of glucose, but no growth when arabinose was added, the exact opposite of what we expected. We repeated the experiments many times, remade media, checked plasmids, and questioned every variable possible. I remember thinking about this day and night, and then it clicked one day driving home! Under arabinose induction, the enzyme was highly expressed, rapidly converting m-DAP to lysine. While lysine was being produced, the cell was effectively depleted of m-DAP needed for peptidoglycan cross-linking, compromising the cell wall and preventing growth. Under glucose repression, however, expression was low but slightly leaky, just enough to produce lysine while still preserving sufficient m-DAP for cell wall biosynthesis. Growth, it turned out, depended not on maximizing enzyme expression, but on maintaining metabolic balance. Moments like that capture the joy of science. What initially seems perplexing often reveals something deeper if you stay with it long enough. Sometimes the breakthrough comes not at the bench, but in reflection. #ILOVESCIENCE

.@Independent published a column by André Hudson, dean of @RITScience, explaining how conflict involving Iran could disrupt global oil supplies and affect markets for petroleum-based products such as plastics, fertilizers, and chemicals. brnw.ch/21x0R9q

The @RITscience is pleased to host Dr. Bill Freeman, Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of the College of Science Distinguished Speaker Series. The Support Zipper and Its Applications to Portable Structures and Robotics Date: March 18, 2026 Time: 2:00–3:00 PM Location: Thomas Gosnell Hall, Room A300 Learn more: rit.edu/events/cos-bil…

At the @RITtigers, @RITscience, we believe that science and discovery have their greatest impact when they are accessible and understood. That’s why we are excited to launch our new Science Communication Internship starting in Fall 2026. Strong communication is an essential, yet often overlooked, step of the scientific method. After data are collected and conclusions are drawn, science still needs to be shared, discussed, and understood. Translating complex ideas into clear and engaging stories helps connect research with society, inform decision-making, and inspire the next generation of scientists. This new paid internship supports COS scholars who are interested and passionate about science communication. Interns will work alongside communications professionals and gain experience observing and participating in the entire process, from identifying research stories and conducting interviews to writing, editing, and publishing content, including social media. They will help develop research features and short articles, collaborate with faculty, student researchers, and staff, and help share the incredible work happening across the college. Along the way, interns will build a portfolio of publishable work that can support future opportunities, including graduate school, fellowships, and careers in science communication and media. Huge thank you to our colleagues in Marketing and Communications, especially Mollie Radzinski and Bob @BobFinnerty, for supporting this initiative! Learn more and apply here: rit.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eg…

Fantastic article in @ConversationUS by @RITscience and Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science Scholar Sagar Lekhak! Well done, Sagar! Keep up the great work! theconversation.com/researchers-ar…

Prof. Xu and researchers from @PittTweet placed a layer of ions between 2 atom-thick materials, showing they could use voltage to move ions back and forth to “write,” “read,” and “erase” electrical charge patterns onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.100… @RITscience @_RITEngineering @AdvPortfolio

Professor Hubbard and researchers from @ODU @JLab_News & @RITscience created a new type of compact semiconductor laser that can emit continuous ultraviolet-B light at room temperature, bringing practical UV-B lasers closer to real-world use pubs.aip.org/aip/apl/articl… @AIP_Publishing

An @RITscience imaging science Ph.D. student is bringing new insights to photography conservation with support from a @NatlParkService grant. brnw.ch/21x037x

Chaos theory explains how an incredibly small change can lead to a dramatically large, unpredictable change. A team from @RITScience has developed a new tree-based method to predict chaos using less data, fewer parameters, and a more user-friendly format. brnw.ch/21x00Sf

What a tremendous honor! So nice, it was selected twice! A stunning James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image of the Red Spider Planetary Nebula, studied by @RITscience faculty member Dr. Joel Kastner and his colleagues and students, has been selected as the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for February 3, 2026. Even more impressively, this same image was previously chosen as Astronomy Photo of the Month in October 2025. This recognition highlights the impact of RIT-led research and the collaborative efforts behind this remarkable work using one of the world’s most powerful space observatories. Learn more in the RIT news release, rit.edu/news/rit-resea… Congratulations to Dr. Kastner, his team, and all involved!

Drs. Preble & Zwickl, along with other @RITtigers researchers built the world’s first chip-scale “quantum light” wafer, making it possible to manufacture the building blocks of quantum communication systems at scale. rit.edu/news/manifesti… @RITscience @RITNEWS