School of Science at Rensselaer

School of Science at Rensselaer Welcome to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Science on Facebook. We embrace our educational mission on equal footing to our research mission.

Research and education come together in our students—our undergraduates engage in extensive hands-on, experiential learning, and most experience discovery first-hand through research. Areas of study include: biology, chemistry and chemical biology, computer science, IT and web science, mathematical sciences, earth and environmental sciences, and physics, applied physics, and astronomy. Research centers and constellations are:

Baruch '60 Center for Biochemical Solar Energy Research
Center for Terahertz Research
Inverse Problems Center (IPRPI)
Margaret A. and David M. Darrin ’40 Fresh Water Institute (DFWI)
New York Center for Astrobiology
New York State Center for Polymer Synthesis
Rensselaer Exploratory Center for Cheminformatics Research (RECCR)

Biology senior student Casey Ahlin has had always had a passion for Science. Outside of the classroom, her participation...
09/18/2026

Biology senior student Casey Ahlin has had always had a passion for Science. Outside of the classroom, her participation in competitive bodybuilding sparked a curiousity in physiology and how it interacts with training and nutrition. Casey was able to pursue this interest at RPI when she started research in her sophomore year in the Swank Laboratory. She investigated the mechanisms behind the decline in performance of muscles with age, using Drosophila flight muscle as a model.

In addition to winnng the First-Place Scientific Talk Award at the UMove Student Research Symposium at UMass Lowell last May, Casey was also awarded an RPI Undergraduate Resarch Award this past summer. Congratulations on all of your accomplishments, Casey!

There is one more day to sign up and join a team to participate in the new upcoming Rally Week from Sept 13-19! Partiall...
09/11/2026

There is one more day to sign up and join a team to participate in the new upcoming Rally Week from Sept 13-19! Partially sponsored by the School of Science and organized by students, Rally Week is a fun and exciting way to kick off the fall semester by participating in team activities, challenges, and events.

Learn more and join or create a team at Rallyweek.org! Link in bio.

Did you know that the School of Science offers a minor in Quantum Computing?Available to all students, the minor in Quan...
08/21/2026

Did you know that the School of Science offers a minor in Quantum Computing?

Available to all students, the minor in Quantum Computing equips students with the interdisciplinary foundation needed to understand and contribute to the emerging era of quantum enabled innovation. Requirements consist of several elective options including courses like Mathematical Foundations of Machine Learning, Quantum Computing Information, Quantum Physics I, and more.

Check out the minor and more of its elective options in our online Catalog at the link in our bio!

Assistant Professor of Computer Science M. Mohammadi Amiri and graduate student Sadia Asif have published new research t...
08/14/2026

Assistant Professor of Computer Science M. Mohammadi Amiri and graduate student Sadia Asif have published new research to address interference between task optimization and safety features in LLMs. These interferences are often the result of systematic drift and distortions during standard fine-tuning. Amiri and Asif have introduced a new fine-tuning framework that ensures that safety-mediating components remain stable while allowing task-specific learning. Dr. Amiri’s research focuses on data-centric machine learning, emphasizing the strategic use of data to enhance the capabilities, efficiency, and reliability of modern AI systems. His work develops principled frameworks for data valuation, data selection, synthetic data generation, and the efficiency, reasoning, and reliability of large-scale foundation models such as LLMs. His broader research interests include large language models, agentic AI, federated learning, and trustworthy and safe AI.

Read their published paper at the link in our bio!

Recent graduate and Physics major Calvin Brooks '26 was able to take advantage of the IBM Quantum Computer and hardware ...
08/04/2026

Recent graduate and Physics major Calvin Brooks '26 was able to take advantage of the IBM Quantum Computer and hardware on RPI's campus, and take his research all the way to the 2026 American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit.

Reflecting on his undergraduate experience, Calvin notes that, "Taking a project all the way from initial ideas to a written manuscript has been an invaluable experience. Looking back, there were many mistakes I made along the way, but learning from them has helped me develop the judgment and discipline to begin graduate school as a strong researcher. "

Read more about Quantum at RPI and featured students at the link in our bio!

Assistant Professor Ben Larson of the RPI Department of Biological Sciences was featured on a recent episode of the Scie...
07/31/2026

Assistant Professor Ben Larson of the RPI Department of Biological Sciences was featured on a recent episode of the Science Friday podcast. In the episode “Swords, cannibalism, poison: inside the world of killer microbes,” Prof. Larson describes single cell survival strategies in scarce food environments, including predatory cannibalism, which are observed under microscopes in his lab and described in his recent publication in PNAS. Dr. Larson leads an interdisciplinary research group that combines microscopy and computation to understand the regulation and evolution of complex cellular behaviors. Current work in the Larson Lab focuses primarily on the ciliate Euplotes, a cell that can walk across surfaces using leg-like appendages. The lab also makes use of comparative approaches involving diverse cells, including other microbial eukaryotes and mammalian cells, to get at general principles. Dr. Larson and his students aim to enhance our ability to understand, predict, and control cellular behaviors, which play key roles in the function of many ecosystems and in health and disease.

Want to learn more? You can find Prof. Larson's PNAS article as well as his featured Science Fridays Podcast episode at the link in our bio.

When Physics major and 2024 graduate Dylan Sheils started research in his undergraduate program at RPI, he was able to u...
07/22/2026

When Physics major and 2024 graduate Dylan Sheils started research in his undergraduate program at RPI, he was able to use the IBM Quantum Computer on campus to pursue his area of interest in the subject and inform his research, working right alongside experienced faculty.

"That experience gave me a much clearer understanding of what research looks like beyond the classroom. I learned how noise affects near-term quantum computers, how quantum circuits are compiled and used to simulate physical systems, and how to communicate results through papers, presentations, and the peer-review process. It also gave me valuable practical experience that helped me decide whether research was the right path for me. Working with Professor Rhone also helped me think more carefully about graduate school, choose a research direction, and understand what makes for a strong advisor-student fit. Now, as an Applied Physics PhD student in Or Katz’s group at Cornell studying ion-trap quantum computing, I use many of those same skills every day: reading and evaluating the literature, thinking critically about possible research directions, interpreting experimental results, and conveying research findings. My RPI research experience made the transition into a PhD much smoother and helped me find a graduate program and research direction that continue to excite me."

Congratulations to RPI's Fabian Maximilian Faulstich, Eliza Ricketts Foundation Career Development Chair in the Departme...
07/16/2026

Congratulations to RPI's Fabian Maximilian Faulstich, Eliza Ricketts Foundation Career Development Chair in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, on receiving a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project, “Nonlinear Algebra for Quantum Materials.” The NSF CAREER Award recognizes junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research and education and the integration of these efforts within their institutions’ missions.

Quantum materials are among today’s most exciting scientific frontiers, promising transformative technologies and deeper insights into collective quantum phenomena. They also present a wealth of high-impact problems in applied mathematics. Professor Faulstich’s project combines numerical analysis, algebraic geometry, and machine learning to make high-accuracy simulations of quantum materials faster and more reliable. Through this work, Professor Faulstich and his group will study materials whose complex electronic structures give rise to compelling physical phenomena such as superconductivity. Their research will help scientists in academia and industry to investigate and design materials with desirable properties for applications ranging from next-generation batteries to new quantum processors.

Students in Faulstich’s group work at the intersection of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and scientific computing. What makes the group unique is that students can draw creative connections across these disciplines and move seamlessly from rigorous mathematical theory to algorithm design, scientific software development, and real-world applications.

In an effort to highlight our continuing Quantum research, our second Student Spotlight features recent Physics and Math...
07/08/2026

In an effort to highlight our continuing Quantum research, our second Student Spotlight features recent Physics and Mathematics graduate, Alexander Weiss!

Alex adds, "Having the opportunity to learn from and work with such brilliant people really helped prepare me for the professional world. Presenting this work also gave me great opportunities to network with alumni and industry professionals, honing my ability to communicate complex ideas clearly to a wide range of audiences. The resilience and collaborative mindset I developed at RPI have been foundational as I transition into my role as an Electrical Engineer at Boeing, where I’ll be applying those exact system-level debugging and teamwork skills to systems integration testing."

Find more information about Quantum at RPI and Student Spotlights at the link in our bio.

RPI Professor Scott Forth and his research group in the Department of Biological Sciences have recently received researc...
06/29/2026

RPI Professor Scott Forth and his research group in the Department of Biological Sciences have recently received research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation to advance new science!

Cells are known to employ microtubule networks as structural support and as tracks for long-range cargo transport. The Forth Lab, along with a team of collaborators, will combine in vitro reconstitution, single molecule biophysical measurements, computational modeling, and live cell imaging to test the new idea that microtubules can be used as signaling platforms to perform complex intracellular computation, broadening our understanding of the means by which cells interpret their environment. (Image: Microtubules imaged with fluorescence microscopy).

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