Colorectal surgery is a hands-on activity, but in recent years the effectiveness of traditional assessment methods in evaluating surgeons’ technical skills has been called into question. A team of collaborators with ties to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is responding by pioneering the use of virtual reality technologies to train and objectively evaluate colorectal surgeons without putting any patients at risk.

Small animals at the base of the freshwater food chain can rapidly adapt to salt pollution – from sources like winter road deicing, agriculture, and mining – but at a price.

A new frontier in the science of circadian rhythms – whose disruption is linked to major diseases like cancer and diabetes – suggests a previously unknown mechanism at work in our daily biological cycle.

The Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) has recognized E. Bruce Watson, a geochemist and Institute Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with its highest honor, the Roebling Medal, bestowed for scientific eminence in the broad field of mineralogical science.

The National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year grant totaling more than $4 million to the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to support research that could benefit the more than 5.7 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease.

A natural “battery” of briny liquids and volcanic minerals may have produced Mars’ organic carbon, according to new analysis of three Martian meteorites by a team including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

An enzyme activated in diabetics has been found to cause previously aligned cells in a blood vessel to reverse their orientation, creating misalignments that allow veins and arteries to leak three times more blood proteins than normally constructed blood vessels.

Lake George, N.Y. – The world’s most advanced environmental monitoring system – developed through The Jefferson Project at Lake George – is being used to understand and protect Skaneateles Lake, a central New York drinking water source now threatened by toxic algae. Building on a connection through the New York State Harmful Algal Bloom (HABs) Initiative launched in late 2017, the Jefferson Project installed a custom-designed robotic sensing platform on Skaneateles, and began collecting data just prior to an early-August HABs event this year.

Building on what nature has provided, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have improved the efficiency of a leaf and branch compost cutinase that  breaks down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the plastic used in clear and colored plastic water bottles and many other products.