News

Heat pipes are devices to keep critical equipment from overheating. They transfer heat from one point to another through an evaporation-condensation process and are used in everything from cell phones and laptops to air conditioners and spacecraft.   Normally, heat pipes contain porous metal wicks that return liquid to the heated end of the pipe where it evaporates. But engineers are working to develop wickless heat pipes that are lighter and more reliable. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute initiated the Constrained Vapor Bubble (CVB) project to study these wickless heat pipes for use in near-zero gravity environments for aerospace applications.  

Aquaporins are proteins that serve as water channels to regulate the flow of water across biological cell membranes. They also remove excess salt and impurities in the body, and it is this aspect that has led to much interest in recent years in how to mimic the biochemical processes of aquaporins potentially for water desalination systems.   An international team of researchers co-led by Georges Belfort has discovered water, in the form of “water wires,” contained in another molecule—the imidazole—a nitrogen-based organic compound that could be used as a potential building block for artificial aquaporins. The findings were recently published in Science Advances by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Belfort is Institute Professor and professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

[The Jefferson Project at Lake George is conducting ongoing research into how human activities may be affecting the lake. This guest blog by Devin Jones, a former postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Jefferson Project Director Rick Relyea, summarizes recent research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The Jefferson Project is a […]

A team of researchers is using network analysis techniques – popularized through social media applications – to find patterns in Earth’s natural history, as detailed in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).  

The Center for Financial Studies in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will host a one-day workshop titled Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Financial Services. The workshop will take place on April 27 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Auditorium on campus.

The U.S. Department of Energy will fund research into a novel approach to improving efficiency of next-generation supercomputer simulations with an award to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doctoral candidate Caitlin Joann Ross.

Jennifer Pazour, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named an inaugural recipient of the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D (WiSTEM2D) Scholars Award.

Nanomaterials expert Ganpati Ramanath, the John Tod Horton ’52 Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named a fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS) “for developing creative approaches to realize new nanomaterials via chemically directed nanostructure synthesis and assembly and for tailoring interfaces in electronics and energy applications using molecular nanolayers.”

Michael “Miki” Amitay, the James L. Decker ’45 Endowed Chair in Aerospace Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has received a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study the phenomenon of flow separation on aircraft wings, which could lead to improved aerodynamic performance in future-generation air vehicles.

Carolina Motter Catarino, a graduate student in chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded £10,000 from the Lush Prize, which is a collaboration between cosmetics company Lush and research organization Ethical Consumer. As the largest prize fund for the complete replacement of animal experiments, it funds projects working to end animal research in toxicology (chemical testing).