Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Ge Wang, Ph.D. — Clark & Crossan Endowed Chair Professor, director of the Biomedical Imaging Center within the Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and this year’s winner of the Wiley Distinguished Faculty Award — and Albany Medical College’s Joshua Goldwag ’20, a medical student and previously Ge Wang’s research student at Rensselaer, have jointly published an article in Nature Machine Intelligence on the DishBrain experiment and its applications. Last October, Cortical Labs revealed that they “taught” human and mouse cells in a dish to work together to play the Pong game by providing feedback to the cells. They called it DishBrain. It was the first time that scientists stimulated biological cells in a structured/feedback-driven way.

The iconic Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public 140 years ago, on May 24, 1883. Since, millions of vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists have crossed the Brooklyn Bridge as they travel into Lower Manhattan.

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Albany Medical College were awarded a $3.3 million grant over five years by the National Cancer Institute to use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve targeted drug therapy in HER2-positive breast cancer treatment. HER2-positive breast cancer tends to grow and spread quickly, but targeted treatments improve outcomes.

When most people think of crystals, they picture suncatchers that act as rainbow prisms or the semi-transparent stones that some believe hold healing powers. However, to scientists and engineers, crystals are a form of materials in which their constituents – atoms, molecules, or nanoparticles – are arranged regularly in space. In other words, crystals are defined by the regular arrangement of their constituents. Common examples are diamonds, table salt, or sugar cubes. 

We all remember 2020. At the grocery store, toilet paper shelves were empty. Cleaning supplies and disinfectants were treasured finds. Rattled consumers, concerned that they would run out of essential items, swiftly stockpiled products until they disappeared from shelves. In the media, it was referred to as “panic buying.”

There are more than 80,000 sheep and lambs living on over 2,000 farms in New York State. Their wool has many uses including clothing, carpets, furniture, bedding, insulators, fertilizers, and more. However, about 10-15% of wool is wasted during the sorting and cleaning processes. Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are aiming to turn that waste into a new profit source for farmers, and produce an eco-conscious, high-performance yarn in the process.

Building on novel experiments with amyloid fibrils — a type of protein aggregate associated with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s —  a new set of experiments using serum albumins, the primary constituents of blood protein, was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) in March aboard SpaceX 27. This is the fourth time the experiment is being conducted on the ISS.

Steven Cramer, professor in the Isermann Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named Institute Professor, one of the highest and most prestigious honors bestowed upon a Rensselaer faculty member.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) launched a new higher education course to help address semiconductor industry education and workforce development needs. The course, Topics in Microelectronics Manufacturing, is targeted toward advanced undergraduates and early graduate students and has already attracted high enrollment. This course, co-taught by James Lu, curriculum chair of RPI’s electrical, computer, and systems engineering (ECSE) department, and a team of leading industry experts from GF, aims to introduce students to the state-of-the art chip manufacturing technologies and to amplify their interest in chips-centric careers.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Daniel Gall has been named the Robert W. Hunt Professor of Metallurgical Engineering. Gall, a professor in the department of materials and science engineering and a world-renowned expert in advanced materials for computer chip interconnects, focuses on developing atomic level understanding of thin film growth and on the electronic and optical properties of advanced materials. He is studying electron transport in nanowires and epitaxial metal layers and is renowned for his work on the resistivity size effect and its impact on interconnect lines in integrated circuits.