Caroline M. Solomon named president of RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf

After three decades of teaching, mentoring, and pioneering academic and research programs at RIT, Professor Stephen Jacobs is retiring. Jacobs worked as an adjunct faculty member in English and computing before becoming a full-time professor in 1995. As a video game expert, he taught courses in game programming and game design/narrative. Together with former faculty members Andy Phelps and Jeff Lasky, Jacobs wrote the proposal for RIT’s master’s degree in game design and development. Today, RIT’s games degrees are regularly ranked among the top 10 in the country. With RIT’s MAGIC Spell Studios, Jacobs served as one of the original associate directors—focusing on industry relations. He collaborated to produce MAGIC’s first game on the Nintendo Switch platform, called The Original Mobile Games—a partnership with The Strong National Museum of Play and Second Avenue Learning. Jacobs has also served as a steward for all things FOSS (free and open source software) at RIT. He helped create courses and programs on the subject and served as director of the Open@RIT research center. “I’m not a traditional academic,” said Jacobs. “It’s been a pleasure to spend the last 30 years as an RIT professor.” Below, Jacobs shares reflections from his time at RIT. What has your long-term partnership with The Strong National Museum of Play meant to you? I’ve been a Scholar-in-Residence since 2007. In that role, I’ve been able to serve as a member of exhibit design teams, co-create an online course in game design history that was nominated by students for an edX award as a best course, and help bring conferences to Rochester—like the upcoming 2025 Conference on BIPOC Games Studies. That kind of work, over the years, led to a Tourism Achievement Award from Visit Rochester. We also enjoy bringing classes to The Strong every year. This year the “final exam” for my History and Design of Pinball class was to demo their analog and digital games at The Strong as part of a museum-wide pinball day we co-organized. I’ve also been working with them around my research on the Jewish History of the Toy and Games Industries in Germany and the U.S, which we’re developing into an exhibit for 2026. Why do you champion open source for social good? I was attracted to this world through the One Laptop Per Child initiative. They were providing low-cost laptops to children in developing countries. In 2009, I created an honors seminar for our students to make educational games for the One Laptop Per Child community. Over 16 years that initial course grew into an immersion focusing on humanitarian open software development and an interdisciplinary minor—the only one of its kind in the world. It also led to our Open@RIT center to support faculty, staff, and students’ Open research and work. That center had us lead several workshops, join the Linux Foundation, and receive more than $1 million in awards to support its work over four years.  I received the Provost’s Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award in 2019-2020 (in part for this work) and the PI Millionaire award in 2023 for grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ‌ Alberto Bobadilla Jacobs enjoys joining students on the travel-enhanced courses. This year in Japan, students immersed themselves in the culture and visited a Japanese game studio. How have you encouraged students to make lifelong connections outside the classroom? Video games are an international industry, and it’s important to have international experiences on your résumé. I began teaching travel-enhanced courses—ones that meet on-campus for a semester with international travel before or after the on-campus work—in 2014.  These courses established a model of spending a week in one town (in Paderborn, Germany for this one), holding a game jam over the weekend with the German students (a weekend-long, video game creating marathon), and then traveling elsewhere in country for a week to visit cultural sites and game studios. I taught this again in 2017 and 2019. In 2018, I replicated the Germany model in Japan. We worked with Ritsumeikan University and the Kyoto Computer Gakuin, a long-time partner with RIT in international education. This year, in addition to the course’s regular visits to the CyberConnect2 video game studio and Hiroshima, we were able to attend World Expo in Osaka. As a result of this course, the vice president of CyberConnect2 and the global section chief of human resources for the company will be visiting RIT and The Strong to recruit our upcoming graduates to work in Japan and to explore the exhibits and research assets at The Strong.

Robots that can sense and act through touch? That is what Aayush Kulkarni, an undergraduate visiting student, taught a robot to do during his internship at RIT. Kulkarni is participating in the International Visiting Research Student Program through RIT Global, which offers students from around the world the opportunity to collaborate with distinguished faculty-researchers from RIT. The international experience is a way for Kulkarni to better understand Eastern and Western perspectives in building robotic technologies, an area he has been interested in since he started college. He also wanted to explore how robots are being used in healthcare. He began work in February with Yangming Lee, a robotics expert in RIT’s College of Engineering Technology who is developing surgical robotics technologies. The two worked to integrate the sense of touch into visual imaging and locational perception to add another feature to the evolving field of surgical robotics. “I found out that tactile sensing was something fairly new; it means giving human sense to robots to identify what it is holding,” said Kulkarni, who is a computer science, engineering, and business systems student at MIT-World Peace University in Puna, India. “This was a whole dream come true situation for me. This is something that every undergraduate student dreams-to build something innovative from scratch. Prof. Lee gave me the opportunity to do this.” Together they created tactile sensor technology that can distinguish between different types of surface environments and can be calibrated to determine appropriate pressure needed to pick up objects. Using an established open-source sensor, the platform they built could be an affordable option compared to larger, established systems. “Integrating haptic feedback allows surgical robots to sense and respond to forces during tissue interaction, such as detecting unexpected resistance or slip-enabling real-time motion adjustments that prevent damage to critical structures,” said Lee, who leads the Robotic Collaboration and Autonomy Lab . “This adaptiveness increases the safety and reliability of autonomous surgical actions, moving the field closer to enabling semi- or fully autonomous procedures in complex, variable clinical environments.” The heart of the project is the neural network and the tactile sensors, and both Lee and Kulkarni built, trained, and refined the system and tested its ability to accurately distinguish real and synthetic objects purely through touch. One of the quirkier tests was in comparing real and fake oranges. The skin of an orange is dimpled, pliant and has varied depth—variables generally found with human skin. A plastic replica orange had similar features but when compared to the real fruit, the sensor was able to distinguish one from the other because it was “taught” to recognize specific characteristics of each item. That ability to distinguish characteristics visually and tactilely could enable a robotics system such as this to distinguish human tissues, specifically those with diseases that are sometimes mistaken for one another and may require blood tests or other invasive methods to diagnose. Robotic diagnoses may be the future, Kulkarni said. “Because if we want more collaborative robots, with similar human qualities, in the future we have to do the steps now.” Before graduation, Kulkarni is required to complete a six-month internship, preferably in an international setting, and must complete or contribute to a capstone project, dissertation, or thesis project. He has written two books on cloud computing, one specifically emphasizing microservices architectures. The book on cloud computing is being used as one of the textbooks in his university. Kulkarni is also in the process of completing his third book, this one on quantum computing. He has a design patent on a quantum cloud gateway device. The six months went quickly for Kulkarni, and he’ll return to India at the end of July. After graduation Kulkarni wants to continue research in these important technological areas and start his own research lab, similar to Lee’s. “When I came here, I got the whole technological perspective because the U.S. is really developed in the technology areas of robotics and computing. I got an opportunity, and I grabbed it,” said Kulkarni. “Getting a diverse approach is always important for the field I am working in. This internship was very important to me.” To learn more Read more about the International Visiting Research Student Program through RIT Global.

RIT graduate Sammy Deol won a yearlong Fulbright Scholarship to attend graduate school in England. He will earn a master’s degree in public health in preparation for medical school.   Deol, who is from Ithaca, N.Y., graduated from RIT this year with a BS degree in biomedical sciences. He plans to become a medical doctor and welcomes the chance to conduct epidemiology and social science research in a foreign country. “Even though I want to practice medicine in the United States one day, I want to have exposure to that aspect of medicine and to have the perspective of a different healthcare system,” Deol said. He enrolled in the University of Birmingham for its proximity to one of the largest Sikh communities in England. Deol, who belongs to the Sikh tradition, is looking to contribute to research interventions addressing high rates of alcohol and drug use among the Sikh population in Birmingham. Deol became interested in the impact of addictive behaviors within a family on children’s emotional-social development and health from working in the research lab led by Stephanie Godleski, RIT associate professor of psychology. Godleski’s addiction research inspired the focus of his graduate work. “I also want to explore my culture more,” Deol said. “I am curious to see the differences between American and British Sikhism, and I think that would be a good opportunity do that, as well.” (While on the staff of the student-run Reporter Magazine, Deol wrote “A Sikh Society,” about the population in Rochester and the gurdwara, or temple, near RIT.) In addition to working with Godleski, Deol attributes his success to professors in the College of Health Sciences and Technology, and the RIT Honors Program for his personal growth and development. Deol took courses in parasitology and human immunology from Bolaji Thomas, professor of biomedical sciences. “He made sure that we strove for excellence and pushed us to go as hard as we could, which I really appreciate. He would remind us that it’s not going to be easy to get where we want to be.” Elizabeth Perry, a senior lecturer in biomedical sciences, stressed the human aspect of medicine in all of her courses, but especially in Biomedical Ethics.  “Dr. Perry would talk about the need for people who go into medicine and healthcare professions to have humility and to be able to understand patients’ problems and where they’re coming from , which I think is really important to consider,” Deol said. The RIT Honors program also shaped Deol’s time at RIT through advanced coursework, complementary learning experiences, travel money to present his research at a conference, and required service work. Volunteering at a local hospice home allowed him to see the patients as people facing their own mortality. “The Honors program encouraged me to pursue those types of opportunities and I think it made me someone who will be a stronger practitioner going into the future.”

Quang “Neo” Bui, an associate professor in the Department of MIS, Marketing, and Analytics in Saunders College of Business, has been awarded a Fulbright-University of Vaasa Scholar Award. The prestigious award is administered through the U.S. Department of State and jointly funded by the Fulbright Finland Foundation and the University of Vaasa. Bui will head to Vassa, Finland, a city often referred to as the “Nordic Energy Capital” to study cybersecurity best practices. A drastic increase in cybersecurity attacks in the United States over the last few years inspired Bui’s research that will examine how energy firms in Finland build cybersecurity resilience as part of its broader security plans. After interviewing and researching the best practices by Fortune 500 companies in the United States, he plans to interview and survey energy companies in Finland to understand how leadership, culture, and policy contributes to effective cyber defenses. “My initial analysis is that awareness and attention to digital transformations and cybersecurity tends to be lacking at the highest levels here,” said Bui. “The $10 million question is, ‘how to change it?’ I hope to find those solutions in Finland.” This award carries a personal meaning for Bui, who continues to receive inspiration from his family and fellow educators. Bui was born in Vietnam to a family of teachers: his mother currently teaches chemistry, his father, now retired, taught math and physics, and his brother is also a university professor. “My parents were role models who not only inspired me to pursue knowledge, but they also taught me to serve my community,” Bui said. “All of those experiences gave me early exposure on what it means to teach and guide young learners on their growth process. It really inspired me to decide to become a professor.” Coming to the United States in 2003, he eventually found his way to RIT. He has found inspiration and guidance from fellow professors Sean Hansen, Vic Perotti, and Emi Moriuchi. Moriuchi, whose office is next to Bui’s, is a Fulbright alumna whose experience provided the spark for Bui to pursue the award. His patient, methodical teaching style has helped students achieve in his rigorous classes. Annie Hong, a recent MIS graduate from Oradell, N.J., said his mentorship helped her find her footing in the MIS program. Now a business analyst at JPMorgan Chase, she noted that Bui’s teaching gave her practical tools at a crucial point in her life. “He helped me find my vocational identity,” Hong said. “Through his classes, I realized that data can be fun; you can use your own tools and techniques to dissect that data and turn it into a story. It grounded me and completely changed the way I saw my career.” Now a U.S. citizen, Bui said the opportunity to represent the country as a cultural ambassador through the Fulbright program is deeply humbling. “To be able to receive this award is a huge honor,” said Bui. “This is something that I take seriously to fulfill my responsibility, to represent this great country and the cultures and values we have.” Bui will travel to Finland with his wife and young son this August. His wife, who offered invaluable support and feedback throughout the application process, is especially excited about the region’s nature-focused lifestyle—and particularly the famed “sauna culture” in Finland. Their son is eagerly looking forward to visiting the Santa Claus Village. Bui plans to write frequent updates on his experiences on his LinkedIn’s blog articles.

Numerous members of the RIT community will participate in exploring the universe during the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) fourth cycle, set to begin in early July. Researchers will be co-investigators on nine different accepted proposals, including the largest of Cycle 4. Director for the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics Jeyhan Kartaltepe will work on eight programs while Director of the Center for Detectors Don Figer will continue to advance knowledge of the Arches cluster, which he helped discover. Additionally, Postdoctoral Research Associates Santosh Harish and Lilan Yang and Ph.D. student Edwin Alexani will also be involved in JWST Cycle 4 work. Rebecca Larson, who was a postdoctoral research associate with Kartaltepe until recently moving on to the Space Telescope Science Institute, is also included on numerous accepted proposals. “I think the biggest thing to look forward to is a lot of spectroscopy,” said Kartaltepe. “We’ll be getting spectra of high redshift galaxies that we first identified in COSMOS-Web, so it will be exciting to spectroscopically confirm some of them. Another program will focus on ‘little red dots,’ or the high redshift AGN candidates that we’re still trying to understand.” The JWST Cycle 4 programs that include RIT researchers are:Vast exploration for nascent, unexplored sources (VENUS): The largest Cycle 4 proposal accepted, this treasury program will observe apparently bright but intrinsically faint distant objects using gravitational lensing to further explore the first galaxies, black holes, and their evolution. (Kartaltepe, Larson) Understanding the nature of the first wandering AGN candidate in a clump: This program will take a look at active galactic nuclei (AGN), which will open new avenues for chasing distant wandering supermassive black holes and advance understanding of their connection with galaxy mergers and clump formation. (Kartaltepe, Harish) SPAM: Star-formation from photometry through the addition of medium-bands: This work will add 10 new filters to the CEERS legacy dataset. (Kartaltepe, Larson) Brightest & farthest: Confirming intrinsically luminous z~10-12 galaxies in COSMOS: This proposal aims to spectroscopically confirm 30 of the brightest, highest redshift galaxies. (Kartaltepe, Harish) A comprehensive population study of little red dots: Connecting early BH and galaxy growth: JWST has previously revealed an unknown population of dust-reddened active galactic nuclei in the early universe. This work will follow-up to measure and discover more. (Kartaltepe, Harish, Yang) MEGA spectra: Black hole growth and ISM conditions at cosmic noon: This work will create a complete census of the interstellar medium star formation and black hole growth within a targeted area. (Kartaltepe) A new window on galaxy structure: Mid-IR morphology with MEGA: No study has directly examined the morphology of the dustiest galaxies at cosmic noon. This program will describe how dust and star morphology evolves with cosmic time and varies with physical properties. It will also examine how AGN growth correlates with merger signatures in faint and obscured populations, and will shed light on how and where star formation is quenched. (Kartaltepe) A census of galaxy kinematics and outflows to z~7: The goal of this program is to reveal the spatially resolved kinematics of galaxies in the early universe in large numbers for the first time and to detect and characterize the physical and chemical conditions of their outflowing gas. (Kartaltepe) Dissecting the Arches cluster: An ideal test bed to study the metal-rich universe: For the first time, a detailed census and characterization of the heavily reddened massive cohort of the Arches cluster will be taken. This will make the cluster the prototypical template for understanding clusters and their environments in distant, metal-rich, massive star-forming galaxies, including those seen in JWST images of young galaxies in the early universe. (Figer, Alexani) ‌ NASA The Arches cluster is the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way, shown here in a Hubble Telescope image from 2015. The Arches cluster was co-discovered by Figer in the early 1990s as part of his Ph.D. thesis research. As Figer explained, the discovery of at least 150 massive stars in the young cluster was a game-changer because astronomers thought supermassive clusters only existed in the early epoch of the galaxy. In his follow-up research of the cluster using the Hubble Space Telescope, he identified the only known measurement of an upper mass cutoff. Now, JWST provides the ability to get even more detail. “We have a chance to observe fainter stars, and now we have an opportunity to go back and get better mass estimates,” said Figer. Figer has been involved in JWST since its development. As a detector scientist, he led his team to produce results that NASA used to choose detector technology in both the imager and spectrograph on the telescope, resulting in a NASA Space Act award for the work. As JWST has already proved through its first three cycles, its advanced technology is allowing for the best views ever of the universe and more information than ever before. “We see starburst galaxies all around us where we know there’s a lot of new stars being formed, but they are far away so we can’t observe individual stars,” said Alexani. “The fact that our cluster is very metal rich, very young, and in our own galaxy will provide us with a lot of spectroscopic data and we will be able to see individual stars and study them.” JWST Cycle 4 will have the largest general observer time so far, with 274 proposals selected for approximately 8,500 total hours of observations. 2,377 proposals were submitted for consideration, requesting more than 750,000 hours. The cycle’s investigations will cover a wide array of study as astronomers around the world work to uncover more mysteries of the universe.

Professor Kijana Crawford has been described as a women who has “kept an eye on the prize” during her 52-year tenure at RIT. She has watched the university grow in many ways since joining the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1973. Now, she’s prepared to move onto her next adventure: retirement. Crawford says that while she is leaving RIT on June 30, the university won’t ever leave her heart because of the “tremendous impact” the community has had on her life and her family. “RIT is a great place to raise a family, and it’s a great place to be a single parent. I raised my two daughters here,” she said. “Faculty would let them sit in on their lectures. Students used to help babysit them, and they even helped my daughters learn Mandarin Chinese and Russian and tutored them in math.” Crawford gave back just as much as she says she benefitted from the RIT community. She saw, and advocated for, changes in policy and leadership that helped the university evolve into a more welcoming, diverse campus. She mentored other faculty members, sought ways to increase and retain AALANA faculty at RIT with the formation of the AALANA Faculty Advisory Council, and always smiled in opposition to what she calls the “old white boys network.” In the 2015-2016 academic year, she was awarded the Isaac L. Jordin Sr. Faculty Pluralism Award, which recognizes faculty who make significant contributions to enhance diversity, pluralism, and inclusion in and outside of RIT. One point of pride for Crawford came this past academic year when she partnered with two colleagues—Assistant Professor Makini Beck and Associate Vice President for Academic Access and Success Phillippa Thiuri—and a group of students on a study abroad trip to Accra, Ghana. She says creating this opportunity was the last thing on her “RIT bucket list.” As she begins her next life journey, she shares some reflections on her time at RIT. What are you most proud of when looking back at your time at RIT? ‌ RIT University Photography collection (RITArc.0672), RIT Archives Crawford, second from right, instructs students in a discussion circle during class in 1982. I think that one of my earlier accomplishments was serving on a search committee for the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and being the only female and woman of color on that search team. It was a challenge. There was an internal candidate that the old white boys network wanted to emerge in the front, but there was also an internal female candidate who happened to be Mary C. Sullivan. They did not want her to emerge as part of the finalists. The committee began to put pressure on me when they realized that I was speaking up in opposition to the candidate that they wanted to emerge, and I had to do my homework to push back. I really surprised that group by not caving to the pressure—and I love surprises. I love it when people think that I am the spook who sat by the door. As a result of advocating and standing my ground, Mary Sullivan became the first female dean of the college. Another moment I’m proud of is that I was the first faculty member to introduce a course called the Homophiles and Their Society. I knew then that there was more to same gender relationships than sexual elements, and that things that happen in heterosexual relationships are also things that members of the LGBTQ+ community experience. I worked with the Gay Alliance of Genesee Valley and their leader at the time, Michael Robertson, introduced me to people in the LGBTQ+ community. They really taught and nurtured me and helped me organize the class until members of that community could take over and do it themselves. I knew it was important for their voices to be heard, not mine, and that’s why I asked many of them to come in as guest speakers to tell their own narratives. I simply used my platform, the classroom, to allow them to educate and talk about their experiences. It wasn’t my experience, and it was not my right or my place to tell students what their experience was. In that process, I learned a lot myself. How have you seen the campus community evolve over the last 50 years? When I walk around campus, it’s not only buildings changing. The student body is also changing. Their level of consciousness is much higher than when I came in 1973. It is so fascinating now to walk around campus and be among a diverse group of faculty, staff, and students. Today, when we start talking about issues in my classes, students no longer feeling inhibited about saying they’re bisexual or transgender. I'm finding that there are more white male students talking about the privilege that they have as white students, and I don't have to get into a debate about it. It’s a comfortable environment. My colleagues' level of consciousness is also higher. It's not just me solely speaking up and resisting. There are plenty of allies on campus. This is the beauty of RIT—seeing how RIT has grown and developed into a place that is inclusive. I'm seeing how organically faculty members of all colors and persuasions come together to resist policies, laws, and executive orders that are being pushed on the university. And it's not just people of color showing opposition, nor is it only within the liberal arts. It's a collective group across the institute. It's exciting to see it happen. It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better than it was in 1973. What are some of your most cherished memories from your teaching career? It’s always commencement, to be honest. It’s always an emotional time for me and I simply cannot hold it together. It is an accumulation of the students’ work and the faculty and staff’s work. When they start lining up, I enjoy seeing the creativity that comes out in terms of how students decorate their caps and the signs that they have, and the dances they do walking across the stage. I have not gone through a single commencement without tearing up. What are your post-RIT plans? I will be headed to Madison, Alabama, which is near Huntsville. I’m already a registered voter there and I plan to become more politically involved and engaged. I’ll be working very actively with the Greater Huntsville chapter of Links, Incorporated, the Greater Huntsville chapter of my sorority Delta Sigma Theta, and the Greater Huntsville Chapter of Jack and Jill Associates. I’ll work closely with them and be involved in the political process for voter empowerment. I grew up in Troy, Alabama, and was born in Tuskegee. I was the only female among the seven students that integrated the local white high school in 1965, Charles Henderson High School. The experience that I had there, how I was treated, really set the background and the seed for my activism and resistance to white supremacy. I’m eager to continue that work back in Alabama.