News

The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is pleased to announce staging grounds, a nine-day festival of installations, performances, and public programs exploring how culture is shaped by acts of return and re-animation. Taking place February 20–28, 2026, the festival brings together five international artists—Korakrit Arunanondchai, Jewyo Rhii, Na Mira, Samson Young, and Li Yi-Fan—whose practices illuminate how art restages experience across time. 

RPI Biology Professor Doug Swank, Ph.D., was recently awarded the prestigious Marion J. Siegman Lectureship Award from the American Physiological Society. The award recognizes researchers who have made outstanding contributions to the understanding of muscle contraction and motility. 

The Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) was recently awarded $1 million in federal funds as part of the Congressionally Directed Spending program to advance RPI research and translational efforts related to pharmaceuticals, biopolymers, and food production. 

Nina Christof knew from a young age that she wanted to be an Olympian. To get there, she had to work hard and give it her all, but she also had to learn when to pause and take care of herself.

RPI Professor Karyn Rogers, director of the Rensselaer Astrobiology Research and Education Center, and graduate student Meri Herrero Perez are among the feature interviewees in the new PBS NOVA documentary Asteroids: Spark of Life?  

A long-rumored sequence cut from Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 film Kill Bill has finally reached audiences, thanks in part to RPI’s Sarah Beth Eisinger, senior administrator in the Games & Experiential Media department.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will host the 3rd Annual RPI VEX V5 Robotics Competition Push Back Tournament on Monday, January 19, 2026.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has secured $1 million to establish a state-of-the-art manufacturing laboratory that will transform industrial hemp into construction materials, textiles, and packaging, part of a broader effort to position New York state as a leader in sustainable biomanufacturing. 

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs (TIPA), an organization that supports small and medium enterprises through technological innovation, have announced a strategic partnership to collaborate on industrial technology development.

For more than a century, scientists have wondered why physical structures like blood vessels, neurons, tree branches, and other biological networks look the way they do. The prevailing theory held that nature simply builds these systems as efficiently as possible, minimizing the amount of material needed. But in the past, when researchers tested these networks against traditional mathematical optimization theories, the predictions consistently fell short.