News

Troy, N.Y. — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $250,000 grant to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and four other independent colleges and universities in New York state to support development of a rapid and direct system of resource-sharing for academic libraries. The consortium of libraries, known as ConnectNY, shares library holdings, making the collections of all participating members readily available to students, faculty, and staff.

Troy, N.Y. - Kevin Craig, director of core engineering and associate professor of mechanical, aeronautical, and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Patricia Search Will Work With International Team To Develop Courseware for Aboriginals

Troy, N.Y.—About a dozen community service-minded students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are skipping a trip to the beach or the ski slopes and instead spending the upcoming spring break swinging hammers and pouring cement at a Habitat for Humanity project in John's Island, S.C.

Troy, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today announced the appointment of two new faculty members, thereby completing its Future Chips Constellation, the first of several "critical mass" groupings of world-caliber faculty in focal research areas. The new faculty are Shawn-Yu Lin, Ph.D., a recognized authority in photonics research, and Christian M. Wetzel, Ph.D., a research pioneer in semiconductor device design and manufacturing.

Troy, N.Y. – Physical Review E has announced the publication of an article by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have replicated and extended previous experimental results that indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach for plasma confinement.

Troy, N.Y. - The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute a $2.7 million, four-year grant to develop new tools for drug discovery. The grant, awarded in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will support basic research intended to produce effective pharmaceuticals faster and more economically.

Troy, N.Y. — The Academy of Electronic Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has received double recognition for pioneering innovative multimedia courseware to help undergraduate college students grasp the basic concepts of engineering systems, from cars to computers chips, to complex music synthesizers.

Troy, N.Y. - Ricardo Dobry, director of the Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center and professor of civil engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Dobry was elected for his fundamental contributions to multiple aspects of geotechnical earthquake engineering, according to NAE's announcement of 76 new members and 11 foreign associates.

Borca-Tasciuc Examines Effects of Heat and Energy Transfer at the Nanoscale