RIT Center for Imaging Science

Alex Gregor (Imaging Science undergrad student) was featured for his internship with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration! Alex has been working as an Orion optical navigation software and hardware development intern at NASA’s Johnson Space Center this summer.

He's been spending the summer analyzing and calibrating cameras for the optical navigation system used on Orion and other spacecraft in the JSC’s Electro Optics Lab.

This ultimately helps ensure spacecraft are being tracked accurately by ground equipment and can also serve as a backup system, leading astronauts home automatically in the event of a loss of communication with Earth.

Go Alex!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqPt3oD8Gu/?hl=en

The best internships bring career ambitions into sharper focus. 🔍 Alex Gregor is an Orion optical navigation software and hardware development intern at NASA’s Johnson Space Center this summer. This means he spends his workdays in JSC’s Electro Optics Lab, analyzing and calibrating cameras for the optical navigation system used on Orion and other spacecraft. Optical navigation systems have important roles in spaceflight – they help ensure spacecraft are being tracked accurately by ground equipment and can also serve as a backup system, leading astronauts home automatically in the event of a loss of communication with Earth. Alex is excited to keep learning about camera systems and contributing his expertise to NASA’s missions. “I think there is a lot of opportunity within optical navigation as we delve into interplanetary travel, and I would love to continue on to help our future navigation system be the best it can possibly be.”

🧐🔬Imaging Science was well represented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium this year. They’ve been working hard all summer and now they get to show off a bit of their research! This is how Imaging Scientists are made. Well done by all of you!

⭐️”Quantitative Principal Component Analysis in Cultural Heritage Imaging”
Sophia Leonard

⭐️”Fabrication of 3D Waveguides Using Ultra-fast Laser Inscription”
Shivani Hancock

⭐️”Digital Twins of Cultural Heritage Artifacts”
Iris Angello, Carter Laubach

⭐️”Applying and Making MISHA Accessible to Local and State History Museums”
Patrick Showers

Headed to IGARSS 2026?
Us too!!
Come meet us for a casual happy hour:

Imaging Science Meetup at Mission DuPont
Tuesday August 11, 2026
5:30pm - 7:30pm
1606 20th Street NW,
Washington, DC 20009

Research in the Center for Imaging Science doesn’t stop for the summer…but it does stop for lunch! Here’s your sign to take your lunch break.
Bon appétit! 🍔🍕🌭

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) will award $15 million over the next two years to the Rochester/Finger Lakes region of New York to establish a national hub for laser science and development. RIT is a key partner in the initiative, bolstering the region's laser technology, manufacturing, education, and workforce."

"A goal of the NSF Engine STELLAR program is to educate and build a stronger workforce in laser technologies. Students, like RIT imaging science Ph.D. student Muhammad Akif Qadeer, receive hands-on learning on ultrafast laser enabled optical fabrication and integrated photonics in Professor Jie Qiao’s Advanced Optical Fabrication, Instrumentation, and Metrology Laboratory."

RIT key partner in $15 million award to establish a national laser technology hub Rochester Institute of Technology part of $15 million NSF Engine award to bolster region’s laser technology, manufacturing, education, and workforce.

Check out Imaging Science alum Chitra Sivanandam on the Iron Butterfly Podcast!

"In this episode, we sit down with Chitra Sivanandam, whose path into the national security community is anything but conventional. With more than 25 years supporting the Intelligence and Defense sector, Chitra explores her favorite roles across a career spanning industry giants, startups, and small businesses, as well as the lessons she's learned bridging private-sector technology with government missions."

Chitra Sivanandam: Maven Gray on Remote Sensing, Failure as Fun, and Living as an Experiment (pt 2) On this very special season of Iron Butterfly Podcast, we’re going ...

Dr. Karen Braun is introducing our high school interns to the RIT campus today! We’re so excited the Imaging Science summer interns are finally here.

📆This marks the 26th year we’ve had the pleasure of introducing Imaging Science to a select group of rising seniors.

📚They’ll be embedded in the Cultural Heritage Imaging Lab and the STARLIT-ML Lab. We can’t wait to see what they discover during the next 5 weeks. Welcome to RIT!

📣📣Today, our shout-out goes to Tanya Walia! Tanya (Imaging Science grad student) was selected to receive the Steven M. Wear Endowed Graduate Fellowship!!

📚This fellowship will support her research which focuses on understanding how and why galaxies were different in the distant past compared to today.

🔭🪐Tanya is using data from the James Webb Space Telescope and is working on implementing a new image analysis software to perform “deblending” on data from space-based observatories. This work will enable more accurate estimates of galaxy properties, and will help us identify systems of galaxies that may be merging or interacting!

☀️ If you see Muskan hard at work in the lab today, make sure you congratulate her!!!

🌎 Muskan (Imaging Science Ph.D. Student) has been awarded the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation Scholarship!

Muskan is currently working on hyperspectral remote sensing, subpixel target detection, and the characterization of factors that influence detection performance.

Congratulations!! 🎉🎉

RIT Board of Trustees member Jeff Harris ’75 and College of Liberal Arts National Council chair Joyce Pratt have made a $24 million commitment to the university, as the couple’s lifetime giving now surpasses $30 million.

Donors commit $24 million to advance AI leadership, faculty excellence, and student success at RIT Rochester Institute of Technology has received a gift to advance artificial intelligence, faculty excellence, and student success.