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Continuing the year-long celebration of its Bicentennial, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute hosted a weekend of events bringing local communities together around shared achievements and excitement about what the future holds. “It’s wonderful to see all our community members enjoying this special time with us,” said Martin A. Schmidt ’81, Ph.D., president of RPI. “Technological innovation and creativity play a starring role in the festivities. I hope that spirit inspires us to make our next century a time of vitality and growth for RPI, the Capital Region, and the nation.”

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Richard Gross, Ph.D., Constellation Chair of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, has been selected as a member of the 2024 class of fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS Fellows Program honors members of the ACS “for their outstanding achievements in and contributions to the science and the profession and for their equally exemplary service to the Society.” Gross is one of 37 members this year with the distinction.

Many engineers share a similar origin story: An early passion for taking things apart, seeing how they worked, then making them better — or transforming them into something brand new. At RPI, that drive to learn, tinker, and invent now has a headquarters in the Douglas A. Mercer ’77 Innovation and Exploration Laboratory, which officially re-opened its doors on September 25 after a year-long renovation. 

Optimizing an investment portfolio to maximize returns while minimizing risk is the ultimate goal for investors and their advisers. However, there is no set path and challenges always arise. One such limitation is the high-dimensional, small-sample problem (HDSS). HDSS refers to a portfolio with a large number of assets but little historical data, leading to unreliable portfolio optimization and resulting in weak investment performance.

Blanca Barquera's investigation into the energy-generating processes of Bacteroides, the most abundant member of the gut microbiome, and their impact on our well-being holds the promise of significant advancements in human health. Barquera is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recently welcomed Susan Margulies, Ph.D., leader of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering, to its campus to learn about RPI research and education capabilities, participate in a workforce development panel discussion, and give a presentation on NSF programs and opportunities to RPI community members and representatives from the University at Albany, Siena College, and Union College. 

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) will host a bipartisan team of two former Members of Congress as part of the Congress to Campus program. The Honorable Elizabeth Esty, U.S. Representative for Connecticut’s 5th congressional district covering central and northwest Connecticut from 2013 to 2019, and The Honorable John J. Faso, who represented the 19th Congressional District in upstate New York from 2017 to 2019, will engage with area university and high school students and take part in a community town hall at RPI’s Curtis J. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at 6:30 p.m. on September 17. The town hall is free and open to the public with online registration (https://webforms.rpi.edu/congress-campus-community-town-hall).

Today, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Hokkaido University of Japan announced their plan to explore collaborative opportunities in semiconductor education and research contributing to semiconductor workforce development initiatives. 

Ozioma Ozioko, a doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is on a mission to give her home country of Nigeria — and the rest of the world — ready access to solar energy. “Growing up, the power supply was very unstable. Sometimes we could go for a week without power. I remember my brothers and I doing our homework by the light of a kerosene lamp,” Ozioko said. “Nigeria has abundant solar energy resources, but the cost-effective utilization of these resources is a challenge. I want to change that.”

The Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program and the Department of Arts in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences have earned certification from SideFX as a Houdini Certified School Partner.