News

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Elan Smolar Eisenberg ’25, an undergraduate with a dual major in computer science and information technology and web science (ITWS), has been selected as one of 12 members of the inaugural U.S. Women’s Cyber Team. Smolar Eisenberg will head to Tokyo in November, along with her teammates, to compete in the Kunoichi Cyber Games at the 2024 Code Blue Conference in collaboration with teams from Japan, Europe, and the United Kingdom.

Our nation’s security depends on the effective detection of nuclear materials at our borders and beyond. To address this challenge, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) physicist Moussa N’Gom, Ph.D., is leading research aimed at developing a quantum sensing probe to detect and characterize special nuclear materials precisely and without contact. Special nuclear materials are only mildly radioactive but can be used in nuclear explosives.

Juergen Hahn, Ph.D., professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has been elected to the prestigious European Academy of Sciences and Arts for his outstanding and sustained impact on science and society. He will be formally inducted into the organization in 2025.

William Gibbons, Ph.D. will join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as the new Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) on August 1. A leading music scholar, Gibbons’ wide-ranging research explores the intersections of the arts, humanities, and technology in contemporary culture, especially in video games. He will help strengthen RPI’s unique, holistic approach to learning and discovery that foregrounds the human and social context of scientific and technological progress. 

Rob Hradsky, Ed.D., has been named Vice Provost of Student Experience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He is currently Vice President for Student Engagement at Syracuse University. He will join RPI in mid-August.Recognized by a number of professional organizations, Hradsky is known nationally for his work helping students succeed and flourish during their college experience. His professional experience includes student affairs, academics, and higher education leadership.

Presented by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Storytelling and Memory will be performed by the Tanglewood Music Center’s Fromm Quartet at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Music and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer on Friday, August 2 at 7 p.m. Free admission is available by registering at https://webforms.rpi.edu/storytelling-memory-tanglewood-music-center.

Among the many challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented, disruptions in health care were among the most impactful. The pandemic was large-scale, lasted over two years, and resulted in millions of hospitalizations and 1.2 million deaths in the United States alone. Meanwhile, routine medical services were affected by the pandemic: Patients avoided health care visits for fear of contracting the virus; stay-at-home policies left patients without routine care; and there was a limited supply of services.

On July 18, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and NORDTECH will host a day-long Workforce Development Summit on the RPI campus that will bring together government, industry, nonprofits, and academic partners to address education and workforce development in chips and semiconductors critical to the prosperity and security of the nation. 

Although there is a large body of research on pests evolving tolerances for the pesticides meant to destroy them, there have been considerably fewer studies on how non-target animals in these ecosystems may do the same.

Oxygen is a fundamental requirement of life, and the loss of oxygen in water, referred to as aquatic deoxygenation, is a threat to life at all levels. In fact, in research recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Associate Professor Kevin Rose, Ph.D. and his collaborators describe how ongoing deoxygenation presents a major threat to the stability of the planet as a whole. Previous research has identified a suite of global scale processes, referred to as Planetary Boundaries, that regulate the overall habitability and stability of the planet. These processes include things such as climate change, land use change, and biodiversity loss. It has been argued that if critical thresholds in these processes are passed, then major ecological, economic, and social challenges are likely to result. Importantly, Rose and collaborators argue that aquatic deoxygenation both responds to, and regulates, other Planetary Boundary processes.