RIT Puts Undergrad Innovation on Display

Rochester, NY – RIT showcased its Undergraduate Research and Innovation Symposium recently. It was the capstone of the school's summer research program, with more than 150 student projects on display.

Topics ranged from web-based tools for calculating carbon footprints to the redesign of motorized wheelchairs to the creation of better ways for fish to navigate around dams.

Jon Schull is the interim director of RIT's Center for Student Innovation, which helped coordinate the symposium.

For the students, Schull says, it's about pursuing a dream. For society, it's about incubating new technologies. And for the school...

"It's part of our process of really becoming an innovation university. Many of these kids were in high school a year or two ago and they're already doing really interesting, really potentially valuable work, which will put them and us on the map."

J.T. Mengel is one of those kids. He's part of a student team that worked on improving the computer used by the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

"What we're doing is trying to find a way to improve the graphics on it so that people would want to make video games for little kids that are educational," said Mengel. "[It's] so they don't look at this laptop and say, oh that's boring, you can't do anything with it."

Mengel and other students hope their summer's work will be picked up by others and put to good use.