Rochester Institute of Technology has received a $500,000 grant from New York State’s Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program that will be used to support the university’s AMPrint Center for Advanced Technology.
The grant was among 29 grants totaling $35.3 million statewide announced in early February by Governor Andrew Cuomo. The program, administered by the Dormitory Authority, funds renovation or construction of critical academic facilities and high-tech projects at universities across New York State.
RIT will use the grant for construction inside the fourth floor of Institute Hall, which will be home for the new centre, a research facility developing next-generation 3D print materials and applications. Several leaders within the Canadian printing industry have studied at RIT’s well-known printing-research facilities.
“Our new AMPrint center will help RIT serve as a focal point for applied teaching, research and development in additive manufacturing applications by bringing together expertise from a regional ‘eco-system’ of organizations from academia, government and corporations,” said RIT President Bill Destler.
Denis Cormier, an expert in 3D print technologies, is Director of RIT’s AMPrint Center and the Earl W. Brinkman Professor in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering. A professor of industrial engineering, Cormier’s research focus is in printed electronics, specifically the synthesis of printable nano-inks, the development or enhancement of printing processes, and the design of novel printed electronic devices.
Cormier was the original principal investigator for the Center and brought together university partners from Clarkson University and SUNY New Paltz with corporate partners that include Xerox, GE Research, Corning, Kodak and MakerBot, to design novel devices and develop next generation polymer, metal and composite technologies.
The centre will serve as both a research and teaching facility for the university’s students as well as its corporate partners, and housed in a 3,200-square-foot space in RIT’s Institute Hall. Researchers will have access to functional 3D printing and fusing equipment, direct-write printing equipment, analogue printing and surface metrology technologies. Also included will be wet-chemistry infrastructure necessary to synthesize printable nano-materials.
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