21 car century insurance: RIT Admissions News & Events

Campus Spotlight

Mechanical engineering technology alumnus Mike Jeffries '11 spoke to undergraduates in a Fundamentals of Engineering class about how he took his fascination with building robots and built a career in developing advanced aerospace technology systems. Jeffries' competitive robot, Bombshell, and his Chaos Corp. team are the 2016 Battle Bots national runners-up. When he is not building competitive Battle Bots, Jeffries is a research technologist in the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems program at Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Theme Park Enthusiasts sweep awards in national engineering competition

Rollercoaster lovers are probably used to ups and downs, but six members of RIT's Theme Park Enthusiasts made a clean sweep in Orlando, Florida, by winning every award in a national competition to design amusement park rides. The Ryerson Invitational Thrill Design Competition, hosted by Universal Creative, invited teams from four colleges to create theme park rides or make modifications to existing rides. There were awards for each challenge and an overall award; the RIT team won all four. And they were surprised with offers of internships by Universal Creative, the research and development group responsible for designing rides and attractions for Universal Parks & Resorts theme parks. Read More >>

Graduate's company wins Apple Design Award

After graduating from RIT, John Traver '10 (motion picture science) began working for a post-production company and soon became frustrated with video collaboration offerings for the creative industry. "We were working on multiple projects with freelancers and clients and found it extremely difficult to manage them," Traver recalled. "We looked to see if there were solutions for our industry and were pretty disgusted with the options available." Most software was "really expensive, really poorly executed, or both," Traver discovered. So he and Emery Wells, the post-production company's owner, set out to spend a few months building a better solution. Last June, frame.io—the New York City-based company's video collaboration platform—was one of only 12 apps to win the Apple Design Award in San Francisco. Read More >>

Future Stewards Program grows community of Native scholars

Native Americans make up only 1 percent of college students in the U.S. and are often the first in their families to go to college. Naomi Lee was in that 1 percent. Accepted at several universities, Lee chose RIT for its academics and proximity to family on Cattaraugus Indian Reservation near Buffalo, N.Y. She excelled in science as an undergraduate and continued in graduate school at the University of Rochester as a biomedical research assistant. Today, Lee '05 (biochemistry) is a post-doctoral researcher of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of New Mexico. It took some time for her to accept that her identity as a Native American was equally bound to her identity as a scientist and leader. Read More >>