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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

Office of the Vice President for Research

Signature Research Thrusts

  • ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, AND SMART SYSTEMS

    In Energy, Environment, and Smart Systems, we explore renewable technologies, energy efficiency, and the understanding of global environmental change to preserve the bio-diversity of the planet.

  • BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE LIFE SCIENCES

    In Biotechnology and the Life Sciences, we are creating new routes to drug discovery and development, and understanding the fundamental mechanisms of disease, from Alzheimer’s and diabetes to cancer.

  • MEDIA, ARTS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

    Research in Media, Arts, Science, and Technology facilitates new approaches to networking, advanced visualization, sensor design, haptics, and multiscale modeling and simulation, which are supported by the core capabilities of EMPAC.

  • COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

    Enabled by the capabilities of the CCI, Rensselaer has developed important programs in Computational Science and Engineering focused on high performance computing, big data, and data analytics, which supports research and innovation across a broad front.

  • NANOTECHNOLOGY AND ADVANCED MATERIALS

    Our excellence in Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials builds from the fundamental understanding—experimental, theoretical, and computational - of the underlying atomic and molecular properties of a wide range of nanostructured materials. We now are developing robust, affordable, and sustainable methods for manufacturing new functional hybrid materials, and the hierarchical systems and products based upon them.

In the News

  • At age 15, RPI grad preps for med school

     January 2, 2019 -

    Julian DuPont has been tutoring and mentoring fellow college students in organic chemistry ever since he was a freshman, which sounds thoroughly ordinary until one considers the point spread.

  • Online Shopping Was Supposed to Keep People Out of Traffic. It Only Made Things Worse

     December 21, 2018 -

    At the tail end of a three-hour drive from upstate New York to Boston, Professor José Holguín-Veras stared morosely through his windshield at the signs of a transportation apocalypse. “I’m surrounded by trucks and nothing is moving,” he grumped into his cellphone. “This is what the future looks like.”

    Then he couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of running late for his presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the subject of — you guessed it — traffic jams.

  • Tonight: RPI Students Present Sensory Experience On Lake George

     December 21, 2018 -

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers at Lake George have been collecting data on the Adirondack lake as part of the Jefferson Project, a collaboration between RPI, IBM, and the FUND for Lake George.

    As part of a special exhibit tonight at RPI’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, students have taken data and transformed it into a sensory experience that includes visual and audio field recordings, as well as data visualization and sonification to explore the data in a unique way.