RIT and RMSC win $600,000 from NASA

Funding will support ‘NASA Family Day’ events

The Rochester Museum & Science Center and Rochester Institute of Technology are on a mission to inspire and engage preteens and their families with a program highlighting NASA science and technology.

A $598,185 grant from NASA will fund the development of six “NASA Family Day” events at the museum. Themes featuring NASA missions, technology, discoveries and imagery will include the Earth as a Planet, Life in the Universe, Superhuman Physical Achievement, Communicating On and Off the Planet, Earth in the Solar System and Major Feats of Engineering. The project was funded as part of NASA’s $6.2 million Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums.

RIT Awarded Innovation Generation Grant

Rochester Institute of Technology and the Motorola Foundation Partner to Inspire Tomorrow’s Innovators

View a description of the sessions that RIT will hold here.

Rochester, New York -- June 25, 2009 – Rochester Institute of Technology today announced it has received a $30,700 Innovation Generation grant from the Motorola Foundation. The grant was awarded for a program titled, Learning Science through Innovation and Creativity: Workshops for Families. This program will engage children and parents in the science process through four monthly family workshops on physics, chemistry, biology and earth science.

The Journey of a Photon high school students visit the SMFL clean room on RIT's campus Journey of a Photon is funded by NASA through a ROSES/EPO supplement to contract #NNX07AM68G.

"Journey of a Photon" is an immersive planetarium experience centered on astronomy and detector science topics using new multi-projector display software and hardware being developed and implemented by the Rochester Museum and Science Center [RMSC] and the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]. Directed by Education and Public Outreach lead, Jacob Noel-Storr, and Principal Investigator, Don Figer, this team is working closely with a group of high school students to not only engage them in the project but foster relationships among these students, their science teachers, their local scientific community, their local science center, and the local community in general. The final product will be exhibited in the RMSC from the fall of 2009 to correspond with the International Year of Astronomy and the COPUS Year of Science (and also with our cohort of high school student's senior year). Read the Journey of a Photon group's blog HERE.