News

Troy, N.Y. — To provide essential data for the rebuilding of the ravaged levees in New Orleans, engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will be studying small-scale models of sections of the flood-protection system. The researchers will replicate conditions during Hurricane Katrina by subjecting the models to flood loads, supplying important information to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepare the city for next hurricane season and beyond.

Troy, N.Y. — Alhussein Abouzeid, assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Abouzeid will use the projected five-year, $400,000 grant to investigate dynamic wireless networks with applications in environmental sensing, disaster response, and connecting homes within a community. 

Troy, N.Y. — Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design.

Troy, N.Y. — More than 450 area students and their families came to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today to participate in the eighth annual Black Family Technology Awareness Day. The workshops, designed to spur young people’s interest in pursuing careers in science and engineering, were hosted by Rensselaer’s Office of Institute Diversity. Rensselaer’s Black Family Technology Awareness Day is part of a nationally celebrated week of the same name. The theme for 2006 is “Preserving Our Legacy Through Technology.”

New composites could remove buzz from speakers, sting from golf clubs Troy, N.Y. — A new study suggests that integrating nanotubes into traditional materials dramatically improves their ability to reduce vibration, especially at high temperatures. The findings could pave the way for a new class of materials with a multitude of applications, from high-performance parts for spacecraft and automobile engines, to golf clubs that don’t sting and stereo speakers that don’t buzz.

Leaders of New York’s major research universities and institutions today called upon lawmakers in Albany to act quickly and establish a state fund to support stem cell research.

TROY, N.Y. — Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered an alternative way to produce heparin, a drug commonly used to stop or prevent blood from clotting. The findings could enable the current supply of the drug — now extracted from animal organ tissue — to be replaced or supplemented by the synthetic version. The new process also can be applied as a tool for drug discovery, according to the researchers.

Institute to host forum on innovation and economic development Feb. 3 Troy, N.Y. — Following the State of the Union address by President George W. Bush, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson has urged Congress and the Administration to move quickly to enact a comprehensive, fully funded national innovation agenda. 

Troy, N.Y. — Calling for a renewed national focus on science and technology, in an open letter to President George W. Bush Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson has urged the President to use the State of the Union to outline a national agenda to “spark a legacy of innovation.” 

Troy, N.Y. — A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, and the Russian Academy of Sciences has used sound waves to induce nuclear fusion without the need for an external neutron source, according to a paper in the Jan. 27 issue of Physical Review Letters. The results address one of the most prominent questions raised after publication of the team’s earlier results in 2004, suggesting that “sonofusion” may be a viable approach to producing neutrons for a variety of applications.