The Imagine RIT: Festival of Creativity and Innovation, held at the Rochester Institute of Technology, attracted a large audience on Saturday.
Ann Lelapi, Senior Director of Events and Conferences at RIT, said that the creative student projects featured at the festival emphasized the university’s focus on innovation and community engagement.
"It's just a wonderful opportunity for our campus to be able to showcase what it is that we do here — state-of-the-art technologies and innovation, as well as our creative fields of study," she said.
Lelapi added that the students get very into their projects and that she's always impressed by their innovations.
"The students really do a great job at taking these high-level, very intricate fields of study — whether it's robotics, computer sciences — and bringing it down to a level that everyone can understand and also have fun with," she said. "So it's implementing these different things and making them something that's enjoyable."
Evalisse Caraballo, a fifth-year mechanical engineering major, introduced a respirator designed for individuals with beards or unique facial features, addressing inadequacies in traditional designs.
"Traditional half-face respirators don't provide a proper seal for someone with a beard or nonstandard facial features," she said. "Our solution features custom nose pillows that go up the nose and a scuba mouthpiece that fits within the mouth to create that proper seal."
Caraballo also emphasized the goal of inclusivity in design.
"I'm hoping that people can be able to feel like they can go to work as themselves or do their hobby as themselves without having to, you know, change something that could be a big part of their personality," she said.
Joseph Schneggenburger, an electrical engineering major, designed a notification system for deaf athletes. His innovation was inspired by an incident he witnessed at a frisbee tournament he attended.
"And a person that they were guarding took off, and they went right into the endzone to go score. And everybody was yelling and screaming, and nobody could get this person's attention. And I just felt so appalled by that," Schneggenburger said.
His project aims to improve communication for deaf athletes, especially in loud environments.
The weekend's festival showcased RIT’s dedication to providing an educational environment that fosters innovation and inclusivity through the technologies presented and the broad community engagement facilitated.
This story is reported from WXXI’s Inclusion Desk.
