From The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Via
5.27.24
Evrim Yazgin
Rendering of the photonic topological insulator. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Physicists have produced a tiny device made of a special material called a photonic topological insulator. The device could help in researching the fundamental properties of matter and light.
Understanding such details, the researchers say, could also lead to the development of more efficient lasers used in medicine and manufacturing.
The study is published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Topological insulators are materials which allow no electrical current to run inside, conducting electricity on the surface of the material. A photonic topological insulator works much the same way, but instead of electricity, it only allows photons – particles of light – to move along its surface.
Making use of this property, physicists can use the material to produce a quantum simulator – a device in which quantum effects can be studied.
“The photonic topological insulator we created is unique,” says Wei Bao, an assistant professor at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). “It works at room temperature. This is a major advance. Previously, one could only investigate this regime using big, expensive equipment that super cools matter in a vacuum.”
“It is also a promising step forward in the development of lasers that require less energy to operate, as our room-temperature device threshold – the amount of energy needed to make it work – is 7 times lower than previously developed low-temperature devices,” Bao adds.
The device is made from halide perovskite, a crystal composed of caesium, lead and chlorine, and a polymer etched into a pattern on top of the lab-grown crystal.
Crystal and polymer plates were then sandwiched between sheets of various oxide materials. The product is an object only about 2 micrometres thick and 100 micrometres across. This makes it roughly as thick as a red blood cell.
Shining laser onto the device revealed a glowing triangular pattern, a result of the topological nature of the material.
“Being able to study quantum phenomena at room temperature is an exciting prospect,” says Shekhar Garde, dean of the RPI School of Engineering. “Professor Bao’s innovative work shows how materials engineering can help us answer some of science’s biggest questions.”
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Founded in 1824, The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is America’s first technological research university. Rensselaer encompasses five schools, 32 research centers, more than 145 academic programs, and a dynamic community made up of more than 7,900 students and more than 100,000 living alumni. Rensselaer faculty and alumni include National Academy members, members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, National Medal of Technology winners, National Medal of Science winners, and Nobel Prize winners. With nearly 200 years of experience advancing scientific and technological knowledge, Rensselaer remains focused on addressing global challenges with a spirit of ingenuity and collaboration.
Rensselaer is addressing the global challenges facing the 21st century—to change lives, to advance society, and to change the world.
From renewable energy to cybersecurity, from biotechnology to materials science, from big data to nanotechnology, the world needs problem solvers—exactly the kind of talent Rensselaer produces—to address the urgent issues of today and the emerging issues of tomorrow.
Built on a hillside, RPI’s 265-acre (107 ha) campus overlooks the city of Troy and the Hudson River. The institute operates an on campus business incubator and the 1,250-acre (510 ha) Rensselaer Technology Park.
RPI is organized into six main schools which contain 37 departments, with emphasis on science and technology. It is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities: Very High Research Activity”. RPI’s faculty and alumni included multiple engineers.
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on 5 November 1824 with a letter to the Reverend Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which Van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school’s first senior professor and appointed the first board of trustees. The school opened on Monday, 5 January 1825 at the Old Bank Place, a building at the north end of Troy. Tuition was around $40 per semester (equivalent to $800 in 2012). The fact that the school attracted students from as far as Ohio and Pennsylvania is attributed to the reputation of Eaton. Fourteen months of successful trial led to the incorporation of the school on 21 March 1826 by the state of New York. In its early years, the Rensselaer School strongly resembled a graduate school more than it did a college, drawing graduates from many older institutions.
Under Eaton, the Rensselaer School, renamed the Rensselaer Institute in 1832, was a small but vibrant center for technological research. The first civil engineering degrees in the United States were granted by the school in 1835, and many of the best remembered civil engineers of that time graduated from the school. Important visiting scholars have included Joseph Henry, who had previously studied under Amos Eaton, and Thomas Davenport, who sold the world’s first working electric motor to the institute.
In 1847 alumnus Benjamin Franklin Greene became the new senior professor. Earlier he had done a thorough study of European technical schools to see how Rensselaer could be improved. In 1850 he reorganized the school into a three-year polytechnic institute with six technical schools. In 1861 the name was changed to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A severe conflagration of 10 May 1862, known as “The Great Fire”, destroyed more than 507 buildings in Troy and gutted 75 acres (300,000 m^2) in the heart of the city. The “Infant School” building that housed the Institute at the time was destroyed in this fire. Columbia University proposed that Rensselaer leave Troy altogether and merge with its New York City campus. Ultimately, the proposal was rejected, and the campus left the crowded downtown for the hillside. Classes were temporarily held at the Vail House and in the Troy University building until 1864, when the Institute moved to a building on Broadway on 8th Street, now the site of the Approach.
One of the first Latino student organizations in the United States was founded at RPI in 1890. The Club Hispano Americano was established by the international Latin American students that attended the institute at this time.
In 1904 the institute was for the fourth time devastated by fire, when its main building was completely destroyed. However, RPI underwent a period of academic and resource expansion under the leadership of President Palmer Ricketts. Named president in 1901, Ricketts liberalized the curriculum by adding the Department of Arts, Science, and Business Administration, in addition to the Graduate School. He also expanded the university’s resources and developed RPI into a true polytechnic institute by increasing the number of degrees offered from two to twelve; these included electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, chemistry, and physics. During Rickett’s tenure, enrollment increased from approximately 200 in 1900 to a high of 1,700 in 1930.
Another period of expansion occurred following World War II as returning veterans used their GI Bill education benefits to attend college. The “Freshman Hill” residence complex was opened in 1953 followed by the completion of the Commons Dining Hall in 1954, two more halls in 1958, and three more in 1968. In this same time frame (1966) Herta Regina Leng was appointed as RPI’s first female full professor. She is now honored there with an annual lecture series. In 1961, there was major progress in academics at the institute with the construction of the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator, then the most powerful in the world, and the Jonsson-Rowland Science Center. The current Student Union building was opened in 1967.
The next three decades brought continued growth with many new buildings and growing ties to industry. The “H-building”, previously used for storage, became the home for the RPI incubator program, the first such program sponsored solely by a university. Shortly after this, RPI decided to invest $3 million in pavement, water and power on around 1,200 acres (490 ha) of land it owned 5 miles (8.0 km) south of campus to create the Rensselaer Technology Park. In 1982 the New York State legislature granted RPI $30 million to build the George M. Low Center for Industrial Innovation, a center for industry-sponsored research and development.
In 1999, RPI gained attention when it was one of the first universities to implement a mandatory laptop computer program. This was also the year of the arrival of Shirley Ann Jackson, a former chairperson of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under U.S. President Bill Clinton, as the eighteenth president of RPI. She instituted “The Rensselaer Plan”, an ambitious plan to revitalize the institute. Many advances have been made under the plan, and Jackson has enjoyed the ongoing support of the RPI Board of Trustees. However, her leadership style did not sit well with many faculty; on 26 April 2006, RPI faculty voted 149 to 155 in a failed vote of no-confidence in Jackson. In September 2007, RPI’s Faculty Senate was suspended for over four years over conflict with the administration. On 3 October 2008, RPI celebrated the opening of the $220 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. That same year the national economic downturn resulted in the elimination of 98 staff positions across the institute, about five percent of the workforce. Campus construction expansion continued, however, with the completion of the $92 million East Campus Athletic Village and opening of the new Blitman Commons residence hall in 2009. As of 2015, all staff positions had been reinstated at the institute, experiencing significant growth from pre-recession levels and contributing over $1 billion annually to the economy of the Capital District. That same year, renovation of the North Hall, E-Complex, and Quadrangle dormitories began and was later completed in 2016 to house the largest incoming class in Rensselaer’s history.
RPI was originally located in downtown Troy, but gradually moved to the hilltop that overlooks the city. Buildings that remain from this time include Winslow Chemical Laboratory, a building on the National Register of Historic Places. Located at the base of the hill on the western edge of campus, it currently houses the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory.
After World War II, the campus again underwent major expansion. Nine dormitories were built at the east edge of campus bordering Burdett Avenue, a location that came to be called “Freshman Hill”. The Houston Field House (1949) was reassembled, after being moved in pieces from its original Rhode Island location. West Hall, which was originally built in 1869 as a hospital, was acquired by the Institute in 1953. The ornate building is an example of French Second Empire architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Another unique building is the Voorhees Computing Center (VCC). Originally the St. Joseph’s Seminary chapel, it was built in 1933 and acquired by Rensselaer in 1958, and after renovation served as the institute’s library from 1960 until the completion of the new Folsom Library, in 1976. The Folsom Library, located adjacent to the computing center, has a concrete exterior that was designed to harmonize with the light gray brick of the chapel; architecturally, it is an example of the modern Brutalist style. Subsequently, the university was unsure of what to do with the chapel, or whether to keep it at all, but in 1979 decided to preserve it and renovate it to house computer labs and facilities to support the institute’s computing initiatives. Today the VCC serves as the backbone for the institute’s data and telephony infrastructure.
In 2008, RPI announced the purchase of the former Rensselaer Best Western Inn, located at the base of the hill, along with plans to transform it into a new residence hall. After extensive renovations, the residence hall was dedicated on 15 May 2009, as the Howard N. Blitman, P.E. ’50 Residence Commons. It houses about 300 students in 148 rooms and includes a fitness center, dining hall, and conference area. The new residence hall is part of a growing initiative to involve students in the Troy community and help revitalize the downtown. RPI owns and operates three office buildings in downtown Troy, the Rice and Heley buildings and the historic W. & L.E. Gurley Building. RPI also owns the Proctor’s Theater building in Troy, which was purchased in 2004, with the intention of converting it into office space. As of 2011, Rensselaer had signed an agreement with Columbia Development Companies to acquire both Proctor’s Theatre and Chasan Building in Troy and launch a redevelopment.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has five schools: the School of Architecture, the School of Engineering, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, the Lally School of Management & Technology, and the School of Science. The School of Engineering is the largest by enrollment, followed by the School of Science, the School of Management, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the School of Architecture. There also exists an interdisciplinary program in Information Technology that began in the late 1990s, programs in prehealth and prelaw, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) for students desiring commissions as officers in the armed forces, a program in cooperative education (Co-Op), and domestic and international exchange programs. Altogether, the university offers over 145 programs in nearly 60 fields that lead to bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. In addition to traditional majors, RPI has around a dozen special interdisciplinary programs, such as Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS), Design, Innovation, and Society (DIS), Minds & Machines, and Product Design and Innovation (PDI). RPI is a technology-oriented university; all buildings and residence hall rooms have hard-wired and wireless high speed internet access, and all incoming freshmen have been required to have a laptop computer since 1999. Nationally, RPI is a member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) and the NAICU’s University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN).
With the arrival of President Shirley Ann Jackson came the “Rensselaer Plan”, announced in 1999. Its goal is to achieve greater prominence for Rensselaer as a technological research university. Various aspects of the plan include bringing in a larger graduate student population and new research faculty, and increasing participation in undergraduate research, international exchange programs, and “living and learning communities”. So far, there have been a number of changes under the plan: new infrastructure such as the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) have been built to support new programs, and application numbers have increased. In 2018, Rensselaer received a record number of applications: 20,337. According to Jared Cohon in 2006, then president of Carnegie Mellon University, “Change at Rensselaer in the last five years has occurred with a scope and swiftness that may be without precedent in the recent history of American higher education.”
The ability to attract greater research funds is needed to meet the goals of the plan, and the university has set a goal of $100 million annually. Fourteen years later, in FY2013, research expenditures reached this goal. To help raise money the university mounted a $1 billion capital campaign, of which the public phase began in September 2004 and was expected to finish by 2008. In 2001, a major milestone of the campaign was the pledging of an unrestricted gift of $360 million by an anonymous donor, believed to be the largest such gift to a U.S. university at the time. The university had been a relative stranger to such generosity as the prior largest single gift was $15 million. By September 2006, the $1 billion goal has been exceeded much in part to an in-kind contribution of software commercially valued at $513.95 million by the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE). In light of this, the board of trustees increased the goal of the $1 billion capital campaign to $1.4 billion by 30 June 2009. The new goal was met by 1 October 2008.
In anticipation of RPI’s 200th anniversary, an updated version called the “Rensselaer Plan 2024” was announced in 2012.
In 2016, Jackson announced during the Fall Town Hall Meeting that the institute was in the final stages of organizing a new capital campaign which it would launch in 2017 to meet the goals of the Rensselaer Plan 2024. The goal of the campaign was cited as being primarily for the support of financial aid for undergraduate students and the expansion of on-campus research facilities to accommodate planned increases in doctoral and graduate enrollment. The fundraising goal of the capital campaign was $1 billion, with over $400 million raised prior to the campaign going public.
Ambitious spending on the Rensselaer Plan has led the university into financial difficulties, with its credit rating lowered by several agencies.
U.S. News & World Report ranked Rensselaer very highly among national universities in the U.S., very highly in undergraduate education, and in “Most Innovative Schools”. The same rankings placed Rensselaer’s undergraduate engineering program very highly among schools whose highest degree is a doctorate, and its graduate program is ranked very highly out of 218 engineering schools.
The Leiden Ranking has placed RPI very highly among the top 900 world universities and research institutions according to the proportion of the top 1% most frequently cited publications of a university. The Economist ranked Rensselaer very highly among four-year non-vocational colleges and universities and Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings placed Rensselaer very highly among the top 50 universities for technology in the world. In 2016, Rensselaer was listed among the top ten universities for highest median earnings.
Civil liberties organization FIRE has given RPI its “Lifetime Censorship Award” “For its unashamed, years-long record of censoring its critics and utter disinterest in protecting students’ rights”.
Rensselaer is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity”. Rensselaer has established six areas of research as institute priorities: biotechnology, energy and the environment, nanotechnology, computation and information technology, and media and the arts. Research is organized under the Office of the Vice President for Research. Rensselaer has operated 34 research centers and maintained annual sponsored research expenditures of over $110 million.
One of the most recent of Rensselaer’s research centers is the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, a 218,000 square-foot research facility for fundamental and applied research in biotechnology. The primary target of the research center is biologics, a research priority based on data-driven understanding of proteomics, protein regulation, and gene regulation. It involves using biocatalysis and synthetic biology tools to block or supplement the actions of specific cells or proteins in the immune system. Over the past decade, CBIS has produced over 2,000 peer-reviewed publications with over 30,000 citations and currently employs over 200 scientists and engineers. The center is used primarily to train undergraduate and graduate students, with over 1,000 undergraduates and 200 doctoral students trained. The center has numerous academic and industry partners, including the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. These partnerships have resulted in numerous advances over the last decade through new commercial developments in diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, and regenerative medicine which are a direct result of research at the center. Examples of advancements include the creation of synthetic heparin, antimicrobial coatings, detoxification chemotherapy, on-demand biomedicine, implantable sensors, and 3D cellular array chips.
Rensselaer also hosts the Tetherless World Constellation, a multidisciplinary research institution focused on theories, methods, and applications of the World Wide Web. Research is carried out in three inter-connected themes: Future Web, Semantic Foundations and Xinformatics. At Rensselaer, a constellation is a multidisciplinary team composed of senior and junior faculty members, research scientists, and postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students. Faculty alumni of TWC has included Heng Ji (Natural Language Processing). The Constellation received a one million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for continuing work on a novel data visualization platform that will harness and accelerate the analysis of vast amounts of data for the foundation’s Healthy Birth, Growth, and Development Knowledge Integration initiative.
In conjunction with the constellation, Rensselaer operates the Center for Computational Innovations which is the result of a $100 million collaboration between Rensselaer, IBM, and New York State to further nanotechnology innovations. The center’s main focus is on reducing the cost associated with the development of nanoscale materials and devices, such as those used in the semiconductor industry. The university also utilizes the center for interdisciplinary research in biotechnology, medicine, energy, and other fields. Rensselaer operates a nuclear reactor and testing facility–the only university-run reactor in New York State–as well as the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator, which is currently being upgraded under a $9.44 million grant from the US Department of Energy.
In 2024, Rensselaer, in partnership with IBM, unveiled a new quantum computer on campus, aiming to further quantum computer research for both the university and the New York State area.
The Rensselaer Polytechnic is the student-run weekly newspaper. The Poly printed about 7,000 copies each week and distributed them around campus until 2018 when the newspaper switched to online-only distribution due to budget concerns. Although it is the Union club with the largest budget, The Poly receives no subsidy from the Union and obtains all funding through the sale of advertisements. There is also a popular student-run magazine called Statler & Waldorf which prints on a semesterly basis.
RPI has an improvisational comedy group, Sheer Idiocy, which performs several shows a semester. There are also several music groups ranging from a cappella groups such as the rusty pipes, Partial Credit, the Rensselyrics and Duly Noted, to several instrumental groups such as the orchestra, the jazz band and a classical choral group, the Rensselaer Concert Choir.
Another notable organization on campus is WRPI, the campus radio station. WRPI differs from most college radio in that it serves a 75-mile (121 km) radius[142] including the greater Albany area. With 10 kW of broadcasting power, WRPI maintains a stronger signal than nearly all college radio stations and some commercial stations. WRPI currently broadcasts on 91.5 FM in the Albany area.
The RPI Players is an on campus theater group that was formed in 1929. The Players resided in the Old Gym until 1965 when they moved to their present location at the 15th Street Lounge. This distinctive red shingled building had been a USO hall for the U.S. Army before being purchased by RPI. The Players have staged over 300 productions in its history.