Shekhar Garde, dean of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer, recently received the 2019 BMM Award in Science, Technology, Education and Research. Bruhan Maharashtra Mandal (BMM) is a non-profit organization in North America aimed at preserving and promoting the Marathi culture from Maharashtra, a western state in India. Every other year, BMM organizes a convention in North America. There it recognizes members of the Marathi community “for their outstanding personal achievements and contributions to society.” This year’s conference was held in Dallas, Texas.

Chanaka Edirisinghe has been appointed acting dean of the Lally School of Management, and also will serve as a member of the Deans' Council.

With strong ties to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute community, alumnus Richard Lotti ’78, MBA ’79, has recruited more than 40 Rensselaer students for a variety of Co-op positions at top-tier companies throughout California. Lotti’s passion continues through his partnership with The Arch program and his appointment to the Rensselaer Silicon Valley Executive Council.

As part of the inaugural class participating in full implementation of The Arch at Rensselaer, rising junior Jack Zhu, a physics and chemistry dual major with a concentration in materials science, is well into the summer semester. In preparation for his fall 2019 semester away, Zhu has already secured an internship abroad at ASML in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

A rover built by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students took third place in the Design Competition at the 27th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC), and won the Rookie of the Year award. The Rensselaer Rock Raiders team includes students from the School of Science and School of Engineering, and has been competing since 2014, when the team entered the NASA Sample Return Robot Challenge.

Engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are about to start work on two large-scale collaborative projects aimed at increasing competitiveness and sustainability in steel and industrial gas manufacturing.

A research article written by a team including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Doug Swank has been chosen for APSselect, a collection showcasing some of the best recently published physiological research. Swank, an expert in muscle protein and contraction, is a professor of biological sciences and member of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.

A team of students from the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer recently won a Best Performance Award for their performance during the second half of the Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) Investment Challenge, an equity portfolio management competition.

For the second year in a row, Rensselaer has been named a finalist in the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) College Game Competition. The nominated game, Grave Shadows, was created this spring by students enrolled in a game development course taught by Rebekah Arcovitch, lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Rensselaer.

Video games represent one of the largest and fastest-growing entertainment industries in the world. Newzoo analysts predicted that gamers across the globe would spend $137.9 billion on games in 2018. Beyond games, today’s interactive technology also helps shape how young people learn, drives national defense strategies via computer simulations, and assists training efforts in biomedicine, physical fitness, anti-terrorism, and much more. The highly regarded Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a leader in games studies and rankings released recently by Animation Career Review support that: The program was ranked No. 13 nationally on the list of top game design programs in the United States and No. 11 nationally among schools offering a bachelor of science degree in game design.