RIT graduate pursues Ph.D. across time zones

When RIT student Miriam Rigas sought volunteer experience as a high school junior, she found a calling and a career path working with children touched by cancer. The physician assistant (PA) major from Syracuse, N.Y., is an active volunteer with her local branch of Camp Good Days and Special Times. Rigas currently sits on the organization’s advisory board and helps plan fundraising events, camper activities, and volunteer outreach in the Syracuse region. Her eight-year affiliation with Camp Good Days began with monthly activities and progressed to summer camps and program management for children with cancer or whose siblings or parents are affected by the disease. The children have taught Rigas how to listen with her heart and to see the person beyond the disease. “My interactions with the campers are something I hold dearly,” Rigas said. “It shaped what I wanted to do in PA school and the kind of provider I want to be.” As a fifth-year PA student, Rigas has spent the majority of her time off campus, working under supervising physicians in different practice areas and gaining hands-on experience with patients. To graduate, PA students must complete 10 clinical rotations, each lasting five weeks. Rigas recently completed an elective rotation in pediatric hematology and oncology at Upstate Medical in Syracuse that confirmed her long-term goal to specialize in this area. Pediatric hematology and oncology is a niche field with some opportunities for new graduates that Rigas will explore now or work toward in the future. One of the benefits of the physician assistant field is the flexibility that enables providers to change specialties without required recertification, she said. “I always knew I wanted to go into medicine,” Rigas said. “I was interested in the science and the disease processes, but I wanted to have a good amount of patient interaction, which landed me perfectly with the PA role.” Her experience interacting with pediatric cancer patients, survivors, and family members at Camp Good Days has enhanced her RIT education with interpersonal skills that are difficult to learn through textbooks, Rigas said. “At Camp Good Days, you’re working with kids who have been through more than you can even imagine,” she said. “Being able to learn from their resilience and the joy they have for life—despite what's going on in their situation—it’s just something that I think anyone could benefit from, but especially someone who's going into the medical field.” Rigas is deeply interested in how disease shapes the children’s life, how they interact with people, and how illness affects their sense of self and self-esteem. She delved into these aspects with her graduate research project, “Psychosocial Outcomes in Childhood Cancer Survivors: Well-being beyond Medical Treatment.” She shared her results earlier this year during an RIT-Rochester Regional Health Alliance poster presentation held at Rochester General Hospital. “I think it’s really important to approach people with empathy, not sympathy, to remain present and to listen,” Rigas said. “That’s something Camp Good Days has taught me and that I’ve been able to keep in mind as I have more and more patient interactions and get closer to becoming a provider myself.”

Faculty members from across RIT’s colleges are leading research initiatives on broad topics, including mental health, cell functions, smart city technologies, gravitational waves, and more. As a result, researchers who contributed to RIT receiving nearly $103 million in sponsored research awards during the past fiscal year, including 10 faculty members who reached or surpassed $1 million this past fiscal year, were praised by Ryne Raffaelle, RIT vice president for Research and associate provost, and inducted into the yearly classes of PI Millionaires.   “There were over 800 proposals submitted, that was also a highwater mark, and we are on a record pace to beat the achievements of this past fiscal year,” Raffaelle said.  Since 2001, more than 350 principal investigators— faculty-researchers working on multidisciplinary projects at the university—have been honored.  The 10 RIT faculty members recognized this year are:Corey Crane, associate professor, College of Health Sciences and Technology, works in the area of behavioral health developing and evaluating interventions that meet individualized needs to increase treatment compliance and reduce recidivism rates. Agamemnon Crassidis, professor, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, has been at the forefront of drone and UAV aircraft technology development, including advanced all attitude/orientation devices, and next-generation inertial navigation and orientation sensing systems. Parsian Katal Mohseni, associate professor, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, has an extensive background in the manipulation of material properties at the nanometer scale to enable next-generation device technologies in optoelectronics, photonics, nanoelectronics, and photovoltaic energy conversion. His most recent award is for the development of workforce initiatives for the semiconductor industry. Xumin Liu, professor, Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, an expert in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, service computing, and computing education, is expanding a project to overcome programming barriers for non-computing majors in learning and practicing data science. Lishibanya Mohapatra, assistant professor, College of Science, studies key principles required to assemble structures inside cells. Her team uses mathematical modeling in collaboration with experimentalists to investigate how intracellular structures attain their distinctive shapes and sizes, and how these properties are connected to their specific functions. Lu Sun, professor, College of Engineering Technology, focuses on multiple aspects of smart city technologies such as asset management, intelligent transportation systems, connected and autonomous vehicles, transportation infrastructure inspection, nanomaterials for pavement construction, cognitive and behavioral neuroscience in transportation safety and construction safety, and advancing scalable and quality workforce development for infrastructure jobs. Anna Christina (Christy) Tyler, professor, College of Science, has extensive expertise in ecology and biogeochemistry of freshwater and marine environments, and focuses her research on ecosystem restoration and emerging contaminants, especially plastic pollution. She serves as co-director of the RIT Collaborative for Plastics and the Environment and the Lake Ontario Center for Microplastics and Human Health. Steven Weinstein, the Harvey J. Palmer Professor in Chemical Engineering, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, is an expert in thin film flows, liquid film coating, flow stability, and asymptotic/power series methodologies; recent work includes the advancement of two-dimensional polymer science and applications, and employing self-assembly processes to create materials for next generation photonics applications. John Whelan, professor, College of Science, an expert in gravitational waves and statistical signal processing, is part of RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation.  He is one of the leaders of the international team searching for continuous gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, co-chair of the LVK Continuous Waves Observational Group, and leads RIT’s group in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Qian Xue, associate professor, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, centers her research on machine-learning-aided computational modeling for simulating complex multi-physics processes for biological and biomedical applications. She also uses computer modeling to understand neuromuscular control of flow-structure-acoustics interaction in human and animal airway, with application on voice production, speech generation, and sleep health. Several Seed Funding awardees— new researchers who submitted proposals as part of RIT Sponsored Research Services’ Grant Writers’ Boot Camp—were also recognized at the reception. “This funding is provided to kick-start their research efforts. This is the future crop of PIs that will help RIT achieve future research success,” said Raffaelle. The newest Seed Funding awardees are: Jun Han Bae, Sathwika Bavikadi, Carole Woodlock, Krittika Goyal, Mohammad Javad Khojasteh, Andrew Sonntag, MD Ahasan Habib, Frances Cooley, Ali Baheri, Ji Hwan Park, Sriniwas Mahapatro, Elliot Emadian, and Mihloti Williams. RIT received record funding last fiscal year from the National Science Foundation (NSF) ($20 million), the National Institutes of Health ($10 million), the Department of Defense (DOD) ($23 million), and New York State ($17 million). According to the most recent NSF Higher Education Research Development Survey, a national repository to detail awards and expenditures, RIT’s research expenditures rank among the Top 50 private universities, and the Top 15 private research universities without medical schools.

Whether your idea of recreation is lifting weights, playing basketball, running, doing yoga, or playing darts, RIT’s Hale-Andrews Student Life Center (SLC) is accommodating more visitors than ever, thanks in part to recent renovations and additions. ‌ Carlos Ortiz/RIT Leo Filho, a second-year software engineer major from Crown Point, N.Y., offers weight training guidance to Grace Perna, a third-year biomedical sciences major from Clifton Park, N.Y. in a new fitness room in the Hale-Andrews Student Life Center. This semester, two racquetball courts have been converted into fitness rooms. They provide spaces where clubs can meet, personal trainers can work with students, or classes in strength training and other specialized activities can be offered. The additions help ease some of the congestion in the Wiedman Fitness Center, a neighboring 16,000-square-foot multilevel gym and weight room. A renovated elevated running track above the basketball courts opened in January. The rubber track, an eighth of a mile long, replaced the original track that opened with the building in 1992. A golf simulator enables students to practice their drives, and a third pool table was added during spring break to accommodate a growing number of billiards players, some who start playing at 6 a.m. Garrison Koch, a Ph.D. student from New York City, visits the pool tables nearly every day. “We have a great group of players who play in a local league,” he said. “It’s a great stress reliever.” The billiards equipment was checked out 4,000 times last year, but that doesn’t include a lot of players who bring their own equipment and set cameras up to film themselves, said David Stevens, director of the Center for Recreational Sports. Stevens said the first week of classes this semester saw an all-time high of visits to the SLC, which has had more than 550,000 visits annually in the past two years. About 91 percent of the visits were from current students, with faculty, staff, and alumni being the other 9 percent. Students who visit the SLC do so an average of 38 times a year. And he said the amount of time the visitors are spending inside is also increasing, from an average of 71 minutes in 2021 to 88 minutes this year. “Once they come, they tend to also stay and socialize. That’s been our goal. We’re trying to create a community,” Stevens said. The center is also home for numerous wellness classes – two classes are mandatory for most RIT undergraduates prior to graduation. Many students take more than two and participate in classes involving dancing, fitness, martial arts, outdoor education, and recreation. ‌ Carlos Ortiz/RIT Jasper Emus, left, a second-year global business management major from South Salem, N.Y., and John Dominianni, a third-year computing and information sciences student from Closter, N.J., jog on a new rubber track above the basketball courts in the Hale-Andrews Student Life Center. To help make students feel more comfortable in the space, dart boards and games such as air hockey have been added to provide more variety for students interested in less rigorous activities. “We want people to come from different backgrounds, with all body types and experiences,” Stevens said. “We want everyone to feel welcomed here.” Jennifer Lewis, associate director of Recreational Facilities, said the changes were made from student feedback and suggestions. “We asked members of several student organizations what would be a priority for them,” she said. The new spaces were designed to accommodate their requests and be utilized as much as possible. “Our sports clubs and all the student organization clubs have the right to reserve this space,” she said. “This enables them to do group workouts together.” The fitness rooms are also available for open use during the school year on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for students to use for their functional training and strength training needs. Some additions can even help lure passersby to explore the center. Vending machines offering healthy snacks are now positioned near the Quarter Mile, offering even those not using the facility to come in to grab a snack. “Over the past couple of years, we’re busy all day, every day, especially evening hours,” Lewis said. Another addition, done in conjunction with Residence Life, opened in the basement of Frances Baker Hall in the fall of 2022. A fitness room opened there with treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, a rowing machine, a few stationary weight machines, and a small dumbbell area. “It’s connected to a studio where you could have a group of students practicing a small dance routine or connect to the TV to run a small fitness class,” Lewis said. Any RIT student can use the room, which is open 24/7, by entering with their ID. The space in Baker Hall was used 18,000 times last year by 2,100 unique students. It’s on pace to see 22,000 visits this year. “The room has been super popular as another alternative for students who didn’t feel comfortable coming into the big gym,” she said. “It can seem pretty intimidating for someone coming in brand new to working out or being in such a big school. And since it’s cold in the winter, you may not feel like trekking across campus, so you have the convenience of staying right inside the dorms and using the tunnels.” Lewis said the facilities and recreational options are not only used by current students, they are selling points to prospective students and appreciated by alumni. “Students come back after they graduated and say RIT had they best gym they ever belonged to. They miss it,” Lewis said.

RIT professors and staff are meeting after hours with students in residence hall meeting rooms, offering workshops, academic advice, career counseling, fitness tips, and even game nights. Campus Connect provides programs—14 this semester—that help students engage with faculty, participate in workshops, and connect with peers, all in a convenient residence hall location. Organizers want to provide students with the tools and support needed to thrive and build a community where academic and residential experiences are intertwined, empowering students to reach their full potential. They say it’s important to reach students where they are instead of having them come back to the academic side of campus after their dinner times. One evening’s topic was a discussion about the importance of attending office hours. Students showed up and sought advice because they couldn’t attend traditional office hours. The sessions are also built to help students meet others and make friends. They usually include free food and snacks and can help students prepare for exams, explore leadership opportunities, and participate in social events. ‌ Grant Bush-Resko Phil Shaw, senior lecturer for the University Writing Center, hosted a trivia night as part of a Campus Connect session, intended to engage students in the early evenings in the residence halls. The new programming came after a collaborative committee was formed to help create a sense of belonging for students and improve their success and retention. Members of the committee included David Bagley, assistant vice president and director of Residence Life; Nicole Boulais, associate vice president for student engagement and community life; Neeraj Buch, dean of undergraduate studies and associate provost for student success; Kory Samuels, associate vice president of Auxiliary Services; and Shelitha Williams, associate vice president for student development. Williams said the cross-divisional and collaborative efforts of leadership and planning teams allow opportunities to invite faculty, staff, and direct student services into the residence halls. “The engaging and creative programs are a result of this inclusive partnership for the benefit of our students,” she said. “The close proximity of these resources has offered convenient access for students to engage and be exposed to these resources.” Campus Connect now brings an educational programmatic framework as part of the committee’s “live, learn, belong, succeed” concept for new students, which coincides with the recent renovations and “Connection Hubs” in the residence halls, where activities are centered and students are urged to meet others. Ongoing renovations of Campus Connect spaces are planned this summer. One snowy, blustery evening, Phil Shaw, senior lecturer for the University Writing Program, met students in Fredericka Douglass Sprague Perry Hall for a trivia night, which included questions about RIT and Rochester. “It was quite easy for me to get to the event,” said Alex Storrs, a first-year cybersecurity major from Marlborough, Conn., who attended with friends. “The tunnels made it easy to get there. It was a lot of fun and I’m definitely glad I went. We even won some prizes.” Bagley said it is encouraging to see increased activities in the Connection Hubs and the student engagement with campus partners in the residence halls. “It’s exciting to see the continued support of the overall residential experience,” Bagley said. “The momentum and feedback will allow us to plan for more programs and events next year, especially when renovations are completed this summer.”

Two RIT students are using artificial intelligence (AI) to better support refugees and reshape how humanitarian organizations make data-driven decisions. Natalie Crowell and Olivia Croteau—who are both third-year humanities, computing, and design majors—are developing an AI tool that analyzes publicly available social media data, specifically from chat groups where refugees discuss needs related to housing, food, and other resources. For humanitarian organizations, this synthesized data can provide invaluable insights, at a low cost. ‌   A prototype of the AI dashboard being created by RIT students. The tool can translate, categorize, and map data from the social media posts of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. The students were hired to work on the project as a co-op. The tool that they create could help the United Nations Migration Agency, International Organization for Migration (IOM), improve its response to the ongoing refugee crisis in Poland. According to the United Nations, about 1 million Ukrainian refugees are now in neighboring Poland. “The goal is to make AI tools as accessible as possible to the people running humanitarian aid,” said Croteau, who is a double major studying new media interactive development. “We think that having a cheap way to collect and interact with data could be foundational to organizations like this,” added Crowell. “Especially at a time when so much funding is being cut.” How it started Crowell and Croteau met in a first-year Python coding class at RIT. They’ve been friends ever since. While Crowell was taking a course last fall for her geographic information systems immersion, she learned about new research from her professor, Brian Tomaszewski. ‌ Carlos Ortiz Brian Tomaszewski Tomaszewski, a professor in RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media, spent time researching and teaching in Poland as part of a 2023 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. He used large-language models to study the situation of forced displacement of Ukrainian refugees and sought feedback from IOM staff to publish a paper. The professor was looking for students to continue work based on his research. When Crowell told Croteau about this, they brainstormed an idea, wrote the entire proposal for their tool in one morning, and presented it to Tomaszewski. “Natalie and Olivia are just another example of the amazing students we have here, “said Tomaszewski. “They are directly on the front line of recent upheavals with the foreign assistance given by the United States, which in some sense is frustrating, but also a good learning experience at the beginning of their careers considering humanitarian work.” How it works The current prototype extracts discussions by Ukrainian refugees on the popular open-source messaging app Telegram. Each day, thousands of people will contribute to group discussions about aid. While humanitarian workers do comb through Telegram messages, it can be difficult to read them all. Crowell and Croteau are designing a tool that uses AI to assign discussions into categories that IOM has already identified. The students are taking a natural language processing (NLP) vector approach to transform sentences into a series of numbers, which then get categorized based on similarity. Some of these categories include mobility, access to education, accommodations to housing, and protection. The tool includes a fine-tuned NLP model that the students are training to detect locational references. These references are then geocoded with the latitude and longitude. The developers are also implementing AI to analyze photos and videos and translate messages into other languages. “Humanitarian aid workers typically have to deliver reports, with graphs and visual data,” said Croteau, who is from Ballston Lake, N.Y. “Having interactive data is a great way to get the message across.” The tool will include a dashboard with AI-created visualizations. Using geocoding, the tool can map data to show where resources are most needed. Additionally, the students will add confidence scores to the dashboard. It can also generate an AI synopsis of the biggest trends and most common questions of the day. “What’s great is that this data is coming directly from the people and what the people need,” said Crowell, who is from Pasadena, Calif. “As humanitarian researchers, listing the source of data is essential.” How it helps The RIT student researchers are working with Harley Emery, data and research officer with IOM Poland, to fine-tune their tool. Emery shared her personal thoughts on the project, which do not reflect the views of the organization. Emery explained that humanitarian organizations rely heavily on data to identify the locations and needs of vulnerable migrants and refugees. Without timely, accurate data, it can be difficult to identify target populations for humanitarian interventions, she said. “While IOM has many of its own methods for gathering and analyzing data on displaced people, I have yet to see a ready-to-use tool that can analyze public social media data on the fly, as this project aims to,” said Emery. “I see a tool like Natalie and Olivia’s being used as a way to rapidly analyze and summarize public discourse online—at low-cost and requiring very little time—to gain initial insights which could then be explored and verified further as needed.” While the political environment and recent funding cuts pose challenges, the students remain passionate about their work. They see a scalability factor with their project. This low-cost, high-impact tool could be applied to other global crises. Croteau and Crowell plan to write a paper about their project for the IEEE Global Humanitarian Conference. “It’s invigorating to use AI to make meaningful impact,” said Croteau. “This is about more than just tech—it’s about being part of the solution.”

This year’s poster for the annual Imagine RIT: Creativity and Innovation Festival is a literal example of what RIT takes pride in—being the intersection of technology, the arts, and design. Third-year illustration major Ava Guarino, from Limerick, Pa., started working on her submission for the poster contest not long after last year’s festival ended. About Imagine RIT The festival is RIT’s largest annual event. Tens of thousands of people from the community are welcomed to campus that day to enjoy more than 400 exhibits of technology, art, design, robotics, performing arts, engineering, research, clubs, and more. The event is campuswide and is free and open to the public, with free parking on campus and at Monroe Community College, with free shuttle buses to and from RIT. “I partake in Imagine every year on the Electric Vehicle Team, and I saw the ad about the poster contest, and said, ‘I can definitely do this.’ It was a great challenge for me to show how we can represent creativity and technology together,” she said. Guarino won $500 in Tiger Bucks for her winning design, one of nearly 40 entered in the contest this year. Some 7,800 votes were cast, and Guarino’s poster was one of the top vote-getters to make the finals. RIT President David Munson selected the winner. Visitors can receive a free copy of the poster during the festival on April 26, while supplies last. Guarino never entered the poster contest before. Her work on it began with a concept. “I wanted to focus on technology and our campus. I was inspired by all the engineers on campus and realized engineering has never been predominantly highlighted on our winning posters.” She created a printed circuit board with components representing various buildings arranged in proper position on campus. Ribbon cables attached to the circuit board spell out RIT. “I’m not an electrical engineer by any means, but I did get help from my engineering boyfriend, Daniel Zeznick (a fifth-year electrical engineering major from Pittsford, N.Y.), because I didn’t know any of the things on a circuit board. He definitely helped me compile all the research.” She started sketching the poster in a notebook and fully illustrated it in Adobe Illustrator. She estimates she spent about 100 hours from start to finish working on it. “The biggest challenge making the RIT word itself was making the ribbon cables readable,” she said. She tweaked it a few times after conducting her own market research, asking people what they saw first when they looked at the design. “I also wanted the letters to be orange because I was trying to be true to the RIT colors as well.” Guarino will once again be at the festival this year with the Electric Vehicle Team. She’s the team’s design lead this year. “There’s always so many things going on at RIT,” she said. “Imagine RIT puts everything out to show what everybody has been working on. It’s a beautiful culmination of everything we’ve worked on while showing visitors what goes on here. It’s very rewarding.” Guarino carries a 3.94 GPA and has been on the dean’s list every semester. She works as a classroom assistant for 2D design, helping first-year students with foundation courses. She also works as an assistant in the Office of Career Services. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, reading, and working out. “I’m very active. I love doing things.” When considering colleges, Guarino applied to art schools and large universities. “I didn’t want to go to just an art school. RIT was the perfect blend of creativity and technology. The arts aren’t forgotten about and taken along with technology. Both are valued. It’s interesting how technology and the arts merge on campus.” An hour after she was told she won this year’s poster contest, she received an offer for a 10-week summer internship at Fisher-Price. “It was a great day,” she said.