Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has established the Office of Strategic Alliances and Translation, a new area within the university that incorporates a number of key translational activities at RPI, including intellectual property and technology licensing, large-scale corporate partnerships, initiation and growth of start-up ventures, and translational campuses, including the Rensselaer Technology Park, as well as translational activities in New York City.

A team of researchers led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Jonathan S. Dordick, Ph.D., Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has illuminated a new possibility for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19 in research published in Communications Biology.

Today, it was announced that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will become the first university in the world to house an IBM Quantum System One. The IBM quantum computer, intended to be operational by January of 2024, will serve as the foundation of a new IBM Quantum Computational Center in partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). By partnering, RPI’s vision is to greatly enhance the educational experiences and research capabilities of students and researchers at RPI and other institutions, propel the Capital Region into a top location for talent, and accelerate New York's growth as a technology epicenter.

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.

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.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Martin A. Schmidt ’81 presided over the 217th Commencement Ceremony, his first as president. During the ceremony, which was held at the East Campus Athletic Village, Rensselaer awarded a total of 1,988 degrees — 152 doctoral degrees, 390 master’s degrees, and 1,446 bachelor’s degrees — to 1,957 students, some of whom earned multiple degrees. Approximately 1,500 students attended the ceremony.