Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) today announced two special honorands for its Bicentennial Commencement celebrations. Astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman ’97 will return to RPI as the Bicentennial Commencement Speaker, and Emily Warren Roebling, who led the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge to completion, will receive a posthumous honorary degree, the first to be awarded in the history of RPI.Reid Wiseman ’97

We all know how a bad night’s sleep can affect how we feel. In fact, the disruption of our sleep has been implicated at many levels of human disease, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and disorders associated with aging.

Just shy of 50 teams of students from area high schools and around the world will compete at the 2024 New York Tech Valley FIRST ® Robotics Competition at MVP Arena March 22-23, 2024. Inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute hosted the first regional event in 2014 and has been a major sponsor ever since.

With the CHIPS and Science Act, the United States’ commitment to becoming a global leader in semiconductor manufacturing once again was formalized. After the recent global chips shortage, combined with the pervasiveness of chips in our everyday products from refrigerators, to cars, to watches, it is now a national priority to ensure that semiconductors are produced domestically for economic and security reasons.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) launched a new higher education course to help address semiconductor industry education and workforce development needs. The course, Topics in Microelectronics Manufacturing, is targeted toward advanced undergraduates and early graduate students and has already attracted high enrollment. This course, co-taught by James Lu, curriculum chair of RPI’s electrical, computer, and systems engineering (ECSE) department, and a team of leading industry experts from GF, aims to introduce students to the state-of-the art chip manufacturing technologies and to amplify their interest in chips-centric careers.

Faculty from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute served as experts in an exchange of information about developments in the field of sustainable energy, large-scale environmental change, and innovative and interdisciplinary research into energy storage and smart systems in the built environment on a recent visit by two members of the U.S. Congress.