(Rensselaer civil engineering students shared some thoughts about their experience at the 2014 Geo-Wall competition, held this February in Atlanta by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Rensselaer team placed third!) Every year, Rensselaer Professor Tarek Abdoun encourages his students to form a team and participate in the GeoWall competition, which is held annually […]

(Rensselaer senior Lynnette Lacek and junior Colleen Lamberson, co-presidents of university’s chapter of the Global Medical Brigades, wrote this guest post about their recent work in Panama.) In January, Rensselaer’s chapter of Global Medical Brigades traveled to the Darien Province in Panama to provide medical care to the indigenous Embera and Wounaan tribes. It was […]

Rensselaer professor Eddie Ade Knowles will be featured in a documentary about renowned jazz and soul artist Gil Scott-Heron airing Wednesday night. Knowles, an accomplished drummer, was a member of Gil Scott-Heron and the Midnight Band in the 1970s. He played the conga drums that were the beat behind one of Scott-Heron’s most notable works, “The […]

On Lake George, from the deck of the survey ship Mintaka, the threat to boats cruising past Shelving Rock near The Narrows is apparent in high resolution detail. Lurking beneath the water, where charts indicate consistent (if shallow) water, are intermittent formations of jagged hull-ripping rock ledge. Although the educated boater would be warned from […]

(Rensselaer civil engineering doctoral student Jingjing Tian iwrote this post about her experience at a huge shake-table experiment she and her adviser, Professor Michael Symans, attended last year. They are part of a multi-university research project dedicated to making buildings more resilient to earthquakes.) A full-scale, multi-story wood-framed building with soft ground story was constructed […]

Nuclear engineering expert Emily Liu is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer. We ask Emily about her work: Q: Your research is fascinating! It spans from nanomaterials, to radiation damage, to nuclear threat detection. What is the overall problem you are trying to solve? A: My research targets a […]

If you wanted to learn to speak Chinese – really speak Chinese at a level that allowed you to converse with native speakers at a high level and conduct business in China – you’d have to go to China, right? Not necessarily, thanks to the work of some Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professors. They’re working to […]

(Photo: John Killings / Rensselaer Union) The princesses on campus last weekend weren’t waiting around in a tower to be rescued by a prince. They weren’t tripping over their own glass slippers on the way home from a fancy ball. And they certainly weren’t sleeping, waiting for a magical kiss to wake them. These princesses — […]

(We’ve been following Daniel Angerhausen, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, in his quest to conduct research aboard NASA’s flying observatory, SOFIA. From anticipation in April, to disappointment in May, we are pleased to at last report success and joy. Congratulations Daniel!) “So I spent the night at 42,000 feet on a billion […]

I grew up in Schenectady and as a kid one of my favorite Electric City excursions was a trip to the science museum and, even better, the planetarium it contained. I have fond memories of snuggling into the reclining planetarium chairs and watching as stars, planets and constellations were pointed out, visiting the museum’s optical […]