Fall 2025

What a semester it's been so far! We struggled to put together this newsletter because there were just so many accomplishments. From our students making waves at IGARRS, welcoming new faculty, DIRS hosting ROCX2025 and, of course, the Center celebrating our 40th Anniversary, we didn't know where to start! We hope you enjoy our snapshot of the fall semester.

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Can you imagine, winter is here again, and the first white dusting has come and gone… well before Thanksgiving. We did have a bumper fall - sunny skies and mid-70’s, along with a record-breaking Industrial Associates and 40th Imaging Science Bachelor of Science Program reunion. We also celebrated our very own Dr. Erich Hernandez-Baquero as the 2024-25 RIT Graduate Alumni of the Year, while PhD student Segar Lekhak dusted the competition in the RIT Graduate School’s 3MT thesis competition (advised by Dr. Emmett Ientilucci). However, we also said goodbye to Dr. Joe Hornak after 41 years at RIT; Joe retired after spring 2025.

The students are, well, cooking with gas. Our 10-strong senior class is lining up jobs, so if you are looking for a highly trained imaging scientist, jump fast! Our 13-strong freshman class is in the throes of the Freshman Imaging Project, advised by Drs. Karen Braun and Jim Ferwerda. They are developing systems to extract digital twins for cultural artifacts (working with RIT’s Cary Collection), specifically for papyrus parchments and cuneiform tablets. The “in-betweeners” - sophomores and juniors - are doing what all of you have done, navigating Fourier and computer vision, among other classes. Shout-out to Alex Gregor, our Imaging Science Club (ISC) president for this year; Alex is cooking with gas and leading the charge by inviting industry leaders to meet with the ISC and share their stories and experience. Thank you to those of you who are engaging with our students and plowing back into the program! Speaking of sharing experience…

The 40th Reunion (October 24-25, 2025) was an exciting, humbling, and a learning experience. We had a joint breakfast (thank you to Pano Spiliotis and Eoptic for sponsoring!), we unveiled “Fourier art” by alumna Juliet Fiss, hosted open lab tours and senior project posters, and finished Friday with a dinner at a local golf club. Eran Steinberg (Class of ‘91; FotoNation) delivered the keynote talk. No slideshow. No pictures. Just pure wisdom regarding the place of imaging science in the evolving industry – I have come to realize that, while “AI for imaging” is critical, “imaging for AI” will define our role as imaging scientists. We finished off a wonderful reunion on Saturday morning at RIT’s Tait Reserve, where a six-person panel (Mike Foster, Raft; Sumat Mehra, FotoNation; Ricardo Motta, Attom Research; JD Parkes, Parry Labs; Erin Percy, Peraton; Pano Spiliotis, Eoptic) shared their feedback, followed by audience questions and discussion. Eran’s message from the previous night, as well as a need to expose our students to business skills resonated with everyone. Thank you to all our Imaging Science alumni for visiting, and sorry to those who were unable to join us. There is always next time – I keep reflecting on how we really are a “family”, given the bond we initiated in Carlson. As for building new bonds, the Industrial Associates certainly are doing that.

The Industrial Associates program has grown under the capable leadership of Mrs. Jaclyn McKelvey (Outreach Coordinator). We welcomed seven companies to our fall event (October 22-23, 2025), shared student resumés, and hosted interviews; I believe a few job offers were extended. If you or your company are interested in joining, please contact Jaclyn @ jmmcis@rit.edu. Small plug from my side: Industrial Associate membership fees are used exclusively to offset event costs and then are applied towards undergraduate student support, e.g., travel grants, publication costs, etc.

I will call a halt here, leaving you to peruse the news and events below. I remain grateful to be a part of the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science community. The Center has some work to do as we evaluate our role in training the next generation of imaging specialists. We also are navigating changes in the federal/agency landscape, but we have the horsepower to do this - excellent, committed, and student-centric faculty. Another Churchill quote for you: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Perhaps corny, but so true.

Cheers, until till next time.

Jan van Aardt (jan.van.aardt@rit.edu; 585-475-4229)

In July we were overjoyed to welcome a new assistant professor to the Center: Dr. Benjamin Chin! Ben studies visual perception and visual action in people--similar to what one might learn in the Vision & Psychophysics class. One area he is particularly interested in is visual accommodation, which is the process by which human beings control the power of the lenses in their eyes to focus light from objects at different distances. This process is similar to the auto-focus of a camera. Ben plans to run experiments measuring how the optics of the eye change during visual accommodation and to build computational models from the resulting data.

Specifically, he intends to model how the accommodation response evolves over time. He is also interested in collecting hyperspectral imagery in the visible range, for both outdoor and indoor environments, with co-registered distance information. Such work may help us understand how accommodation is affected by spectral variations in light. Additionally, it may inform theories of how myopia (short-sightedness) develops in children. Currently, there is strong evidence that outdoor light exposure protects against developing short-sightedness, but it is still unclear what exact property of outdoor light has this protective benefit.

We are looking towards a bright future and can't wait to see what The Center, Dr. Chin, and the students can achieve together!

The Cloud Machine

EFIP - The Extended Freshman Imaging Project is a chance for Imaging Science students to continue research and development after their freshman year. Thanks to the Charles and Karin Hoffman Endowed Fund, three second-year students, Sophia Leonard, Justin Hogancamp, and Alexander Johnson were able to spend their summer working on the “cloud machine.” Originally developed by RIT Photoscience seniors, the device calculates cloud coverage using color banding techniques. Now, EFIP is pushing it further by integrating machine learning to enhance accuracy and functionality. The ultimate vision? To compare this ground-based data with satellite imagery and help establish ground truth for atmospheric studies. Cheers to hands-on, student-driven innovation! Stay tuned — the forecast looks bright for EFIP.

Big congratulations to Ph.D. student Diane Knauf! As part of Dr. Emmett Ientilucci's grad seminar class this past spring, Diane wrote a research proposal that impressed our faculty so much, they encouraged her to submit it for funding. With some guidance from Dr. David Messinger she did just that—and it was awarded!

Her project, Historic Photographic Silver Mirroring Documentation and Quantification Utilizing Polarized Imaging, is being funded by the National Park Service. The project leverages Diane’s experience in art conservation with a new interest in polarized imaging to study mirroring on various types of photographic materials. It is for one year and will pay Diane’s stipend (and a little tuition) for the fall and spring! 

Way to go, Diane—we can’t wait to see the impact of your work!

Dr. Joseph Hornak, Professor of Imaging Science, Chemistry, and Magnetic Resonance Laboratory Director, announced his retirement back in the spring semester and spent his last summer with the Center. He is officially a retired man since July 2025, and while we are sad to lose such an important staple in our community, we wish him the happiest retirement as he moves on to his next chapter. Dr. Hornak has been named professor emeritus for the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science for his notable contributions at RIT.

"It is with mixed emotions that I announce my retirement from RIT and the Center for Imaging Science. I joined The Center for Imaging Science in 1989 as the Wiedman Professor of Medical Imaging.  My affiliation with CIS gave me experiences I could never have had elsewhere. I have worked and lived in Italy and Germany; lectured at universities in China, Italy, Peru, and the USA; and educated learners in literally every country through The Basics of MRI and NMR hypertext books. I thank the numerous students and colleagues who helped make me and the RIT Magnetic Resonance Laboratory look good. I am asked, what will I do in retirement?  The answer is: what I have not been able to do enough of while working.  This includes...

Key: sleep late, spend time with family, train, read, fix things, walk Luna, and get recertified." - Dr. Joseph Hornak

Dr. Emmett Ientilucci, Dr. John Kerekes, and Ph.D. student Sagar Lekhak all attended IGARSS 2025 in Brisbane, Australia this past August. IGARRS or the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium is the flagship conference of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS). Dr. Ientilucci chaired a special session on "UAV-based Multi-sensor Identification and Mapping of Surface and Buried Explosive Ordnance." 

Sagar Lekhak presented his paper "Uncertainty Quantification in Landmines and UXO Classification using MC Dropout" and was selected, out of 101 submissions, to participate in the Three Minute Thesis competition!! Sagar won second place with his three minute topic “No More Deadly Butterflies: A Smart Multi-sensor Drone System for PFM-1 Landmine Detection.”

Meet Alex, the new Imaging Science Club president. As many of you remember, the Imaging Science Club is extremely active and an integral part of the CIS culture and community. They host speakers every Friday throughout the semester and are highly engaged with RIT campus wide events.  

What's your name? My name is Alex and I am the President of ISC!

What year are you? I am a third year, undergraduate Imaging Science major

What are you looking forward to? I am really looking forward to the classes I will be taking this semester. I am excited to delve deeper into the methods of imaging and the behavior of photons.

What are you nervous about this semester? This semester I am absolutely nervous about the onslaught of interviews I will be signing up for to get an internship for next summer. Wish me luck!

Alex Gregor, ajg8933@rit.edu

Meet Leiani, the new Imaging Science Club Vice president.

What's your name? Leiani Butler - Vice President  

What year are you? I am a third year, undergraduate Imaging Science major

What are you looking forward to? Doing research with the Center for Detectors :)

(Multispectral Imaging System for Historical Artifacts)

The MISHA Summer Seminar (MSS) 2025 was the first week-long seminar hosted by the CHI (Cultural Heritage Imaging) Lab, which is a collaboration between RIT’s Museum Studies Program (College of Liberal Arts) and the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. During this week-long workshop, participants from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S. gained skills in multispectral imaging literacy by learning how to capture and process data from the MISHA, a free, open-source, and low barrier-to-entry imaging system developed at RIT through NEH funding. The research is led by Drs. Juilee Decker and David Messinger. For more information, see https://www.rit.edu/chipr/misha or email misha@rit.edu. 

In addition to lectures and demonstrations by Decker, Messinger, and Dr. Roger L. Easton, Jr., the sessions were supported by enlisting the expertise of a number of researchers, including Leah Humenuck (Ph.D. candidate in Color Science), RIT alum and Fulbright Scholar Izzy Moyer (BS, Museum Studies ’24), and Tom Rieger (BS, Photo, ’74). Two high school interns, Kali and Jamayla, and three CHI lab interns, Kaitlyn Kavanah, Lilli Kelley, Bella Paniccia, Alec Rouleau, also supported the event. The MISHA Summer Seminar 2025 was funded by the estate of Catherine Carlson and by Peter A. Blacksberg RIT '75 Columbia MBA '93.

Peter Blacksberg '75

by Mollie Radzinski

Carlos Ortiz/RIT

In early September, Imaging Science's Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing (DIRS) Laboratory (DIRS) hosted ROCX 2025 - an open-community, major data-collection experiment. Led by John Kerekes (principal investigator) and Nina Raqueno (lead coordinator), with support from Joseph Sirianni, the effort brought together over 60 scientists and engineers from 20+ organizations to collect remote sensing data to share with the research and education community. Participants set up their experiments, collected data, and shared best practices in the field.

“The goal is to provide data that are useful for educational and research purposes to the global community,” said John Kerekes. “We have a history of putting data sets out on our websites and other websites that scientific researchers can use as part of education and training, as well as to research new methodologies to analyze the remote sensing data.”

Rolando Raqueño

"While the collection is complete, the work will continue. By the summer of 2026, all data will be processed and made public for instructional or research purposes. The data collected will be used for decades. The DIRS staff will disseminate results through special sessions at major conferences and peer-reviewed journal special issues over the coming months and years."

Rolando Raqueño

The Center thanks Nina and John for the extreme effort, organization, and plain hard work it took to bring this experiment together. It was an amazing display of collaboration among the Imaging Science community, we are lucky to have you. 

Friday, November 7, was a big day for Imaging Science. RIT honored the 2024-25 Distinguished Graduate Alum of the year, Dr. Erich Hernandez-Baquero and CIS Ph.D. student, Sagar Lekhak, walked away with the first place prize in the 2025 Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition. 

Erich has left a profound mark through his service of the USA (Air Force) and as an industry leader (VP at Raytheon). Congratulations to Erich! Erich was acknowledged at the 3MT Competition hosted by the Graduate School. It was a delight that Erich was there to see the 3MT first place prize presented to Sagar! Congratulations, Sagar and Dr. Emmett Ientilucci, as his PhD adviser!

The Imaging Science 40th Anniversary was simply amazing. We celebrated 40 years of the Bachelor’s program in Imaging Science but imaging science has been around much longer. Over 100 Imaging Science alumni, faculty, staff, and students connected and reunited over a two-day open house, dinner, and panel discussion breakfast at the beautiful Tait Preserve. The uniqueness and energy of the CIS culture was in the air, as we celebrated our long-lasting relationships and built new ones. Guests toured open labs and viewed student poster presentations. We also dedicated our new art piece in the Carlson atrium, Butterfly Network by Juliet Fiss ’09, which celebrates the beauty of the fast-Fourier transform.

At dinner at the Locust Hill Country Club, Eran Steinberg gave a thought-provoking keynote talk about the future of imaging science in the era of AI. The panel discussion hosted by Mike Foster, featured Erin Percy, Ricardo Motta, Pano Spiliotis, Sumat Mehra, and John Parkes. Panelists and attendees shared their views on AI integration, multi-modal data management, and the importance of industry relationships with The Center. Some key conversations included:

Thank you to Eran, Erin, Ricardo, Pano, Sumat, Michael and John, we cannot wait to turn this discussion into action.

The Center for Imaging Science officially launched our new Industrial Associates (IA) program last spring, and since then, we've been steadily growing. We’ve teamed up with Motion Picture Science, Color Science and Photographic Science, with the goal of connecting industry and academia. The IA program is striving to help our students and faculty adapt to industry needs, provide industry partners with educational insights and provide a space for our students and industry partners to network and foster relationships. While things are still fairly new, so far it’s been a success.

Last spring we held our first IA roundtable and we gathered feedback from industry members on their needs and insight into the workforce. This sparked a curriculum rejuvenation and a move towards adapting a more flexible curriculum based on the rapid evolution in industry and Imaging Science.  Last spring also marked our first day of campus interviews, resulting in over 30 interviews with students in the Center. 

This fall, we had the chance to connect with our Industrial Associates members—Applied Image, Circle Optics, The Aerospace Corporation, and Peraton—during the welcome lunch. While IEEE and NextCorps Luminate couldn’t join us this time, we were excited to also welcome Labsphere, Corning, and Eoptic as guest companies. During the welcome lunch our seniors presented their senior research topic and our director, Dr. Jan van Aardt was able to update everyone on Center news.

The following day we were delighted to participate in the Industrial Associates Symposium, cohosted with The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester. Stand-out events during the symposium were Imaging Science Ph.D. student, Sagar Lekhak's presentation: No More Deadly Butterflies: A Multi-sensor Drone and AI Against PFM-1 Landmines and the student poster session. 

Industrial Associates Student Poster Presentations

Manisha Das Chaity

Simulating Remote Sensing Spectral Features of Fire-Prone Ecosystems: A Physics-Based Virtual Scene of the Greater Cape Floristic Region

Jose Nazareno Gabriel Macalintal

Exploring Hypersharpening Algorithms on Cultural Heritage Datasets

Gian-Mateo Tifone

Time To Move On: Analyzing Algorithm Performance on Cultural Heritage Imagery

Diane Knauf

Silver Mirroring on Historic Photographs: Documentation Utilizing Polarized Imaging

Sophia Leonard, Justin Hogancamp, Alexander Johnson

Comparison between Methods of Cloud segmentation: Color banding vs Machine

Tiyasa Sarkar

Information Measure of Radiance Fields for Neural Representation

Sagar Lekhak

Drone-based Multi-sensor Data Benchmarking, Analysis and AI Fusion for Demining

Rohaan Nadeem

Trustworthy Navigation

Muskan Kingrani

ROCX 2025: An Open Community Remote Sensing Data Experiment 

We wrapped up Industrial Associates week with a day of on campus interviews with the students. An incredible amount of growth and action came from last spring's IA events and we can't wait to see how our new partnerships and collaborations shape our future. If your interested in becoming an Industrial Associates member, reach out to Jaclyn McKelvey, jmmcis@rit.edu

RIT research reveals new details in the Red Spider Nebula

New images of the cosmic object published in ‘The Astrophysical Journal’ and featured as ESA’s Webb picture of the month

Rehabilitating vision loss with virtual reality

Associate Professor Gabriel Diaz is using VR to study the effects of cortical blindness on the processing of visual information used to guide behavior.

NASA’s Chandra Finds Baby Exoplanet is Shrinking

Attila Varga,Ph.D. student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who led the study and co-author Dr. Joel Kastner, Professor Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science comment on Baby Exoplanet Shrinking

How to Land Research Opportunities - TigerTalk Blog 

"Imaging Science student, Gian-Mateo Tifone, turned a simple conversation with his professor into a summer research project using multispectral imaging to uncover hidden text in the Archimedes Palimpsest, and that experience is now fueling his senior project."

Timothy Gallagher

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Timothy Gallagher, October 3 1945 - August 8, 2025. Tim was an institution in the early days of CIS as the all-around engineering support based in the Remote Sensing Lab. We send our deepest condolences to family and friends. Tim will be missed dearly. 

Alice Marion Bleiler

Marion Bleiler (February 4, 1939 - September 4, 2025) long-time CIS admin, has passed away. Marion is remembered for her kind soul and support of students. She was a stalwart at CIS for many years. We send our sympathies to family and friends. Marion will be fondly remembered. 

RIT Imaging Science

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