News

Troy, N.Y. - Rensselaer students enrolled in a course called Community Planning Workshop will hold an open public forum on April 8 from 3:15 to 6:15 p.m. at the Doyle Middle School for local teens to discuss the development of an area skatepark. Rensselaer students have joined forces with the Rensselaer County Skatepark Community Partnership (RCSCP) to collaborate on the planning of the county-wide facility for local youth.

Troy, N.Y. - Two hundred undergraduate and graduate students from around the country will be at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from April 3-6 for the 17th annual National Conference of Black Physics Students (NCBPS). Students gather each year at a world-class university to interact with other African American graduates, undergraduates, and working physicists. To Inspire and To Learn

Troy, N.Y. - Lakshmi Santhanam, a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is searching for molecules with properties that may someday be used as medicines able to pre-empt the damaging inflammatory response involved in atherosclerosis. Santhanam, a chemical engineering student working with Jonathan S. Dordick, the Howard P.

Troy, N.Y.-Students from the Cohoes, Green Island, Lansingburgh, Rensselaer, and Troy school districts were presented with Fortitude Awards from the Rensselaer Alliance to Increase Student Excellence (RAISE) program at a conference Wednesday, March 12.

Troy, N.Y. - A new generation of nanoscale devices is being developed based on inspiration found in nature. Grazyna Sroga, a postdoctoral research associate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is using DNA and related proteins to construct microscopic structures that may one day conduct electricity, deliver drugs, boost computer memory, or sense the presence or absence of chemicals. She is working in the laboratory of Jonathan S. Dordick, Howard P. Isermann '42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Troy, N.Y. - With acceptance letters in the mail and due dates for enrollment deposits rapidly approaching, high school students across the nation this month face a tough decision: Where to go to college? But deciding what school to attend doesn't have to be stressful. Experts offer some helpful advice to some vexing questions: How safe is the campus?

Troy, N.Y. - How do you improve on plastic, a modern material that has already changed the way we do everything from design medical devices to build cars? Embed it with specialized proteins called enzymes, says Shekhar Garde, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Troy, N.Y. - Jeffrey Trinkle, former principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, has been named professor and chair of the computer science department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Trinkle is widely recognized as an expert in robotics.

Troy, N.Y. - Although the Internal Revenue Service has significantly improved its internal processes since it implemented its first major information technology (IT) system in the 1960s, the agency has spent billions of dollars over the years on mainly unsuccessful IT initiatives. Mark Nelson, a Rensselaer management professor, recommends tips that can help such a huge organization streamline processes, increase efficiencies, potentially save billions of dollars, and prevent a cycle of multiple IT failures.

Troy, N.Y. - Entrepreneur magazine has named the technological entrepreneurship program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management and Technology one of the 25 best entrepreneurial programs in the nation. The magazine's "Top 100 Entrepreneurial Colleges and Universities" feature is slated for the April 2003 issue, and will appear on newsstands March 25.