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The fourth season of Why Not Change the World? The RPI Podcast launched today with an episode focused on research efforts to stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from spreading and infecting humans. Each episode of Why Not Change the World? brings together multiple experts from different backgrounds to explore big ideas and pressing global challenges. In this way, the podcast highlights the interdisciplinary model for research and education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

About 13 years after it was first published, a book co-authored by Nancy Campbell, the head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, exploring a complex chapter in the nation’s history of drug addiction and treatment will be republished on March 16, 2021.

The original goal of human-like artificial intelligence was abandoned decades ago in favor of less ambitious approaches, two cognitive scientists argue in a new book. If that initial vision is to be realized, they say, AI systems will require a full understanding of language and meaning, the development of which remains a daunting — but doable — challenge. In Linguistics for the Age of AI, published by MIT Press, co-authors Marjorie McShane and Sergei Nirenburg, both faculty in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and co-directors of the Language-Endowed Intelligent Agents Lab, present a novel approach to language processing for AI systems.

Using a nanopore, researchers have demonstrated the potential to reduce the time required for sequencing a glycosaminoglycan — a class of long chain-linked sugar molecules as important to our biology as DNA — from years to minutes.

The Rensselaer Plan 2024, the strategic plan that guides Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, dedicated the university to innovative teaching and research “that addresses the most compelling global challenges.” In the last year, no challenge has consumed the globe more than the COVID-19 pandemic — and the Rensselaer community has stayed true to its mission.

Envisioning an animal-free drug supply, scientists have — for the first time — reprogrammed a common bacterium to make a designer polysaccharide molecule used in pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. 

The latest board game from Maurice Suckling, an assistant professor in the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is among the most anticipated war board games of 2021, according to a leading board game website.

The era of widespread remote learning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic requires online testing methods that effectively prevent cheating, especially in the form of collusion among students. With concerns about cheating on the rise across the country, a solution that also maintains student privacy is particularly valuable.

When a pandemic and a natural disaster hit a community simultaneously, disease exposure and social distancing can limit the availability of critical personnel, leaving a community positioned for a lengthy recovery. With both types of events expected to occur with increasing frequency, a team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been running simulations to better understand how communities can weather concurrent crises.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will receive a Grants for Arts Projects award this year to support the commissioning of new time-based art works at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). Grants for Arts Projects is the principal grants program of the National Endowment for the Arts, awarding a total of nearly $25 million to support 1,073 projects in the arts across America in this first round of fiscal year 2021. This award marks the fifth consecutive year that EMPAC has received funding from the Arts Endowment.