The research leaders who work, study, and innovate at Rensselaer share a common focus: unearthing new opportunities for solving the 21st century’s most challenging problems.

As our world becomes more interconnected and interdependent, solving complex problems requires the skills, drive, and imagination needed to approach life’s puzzles in more innovative ways. Tackling those problems requires both exceptional resources and curious minds.

Rensselaer nurtures a “low walls” research culture that facilitates strong interactions among faculty and students from all schools, departments, centers, and laboratories. Our researchers freely share expertise and equipment, methods and media, and, most importantly, ideas.

World-Class Facilities

In recent years, Rensselaer has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build world-class facilities that allow our research leaders to advance the frontiers of human possibility. For example, at our Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, students and faculty members collaborate to make breakthrough discoveries in the life sciences. One team at the center is conducting pioneering research on peptide imbalances that could help unlock the mystery of Alzheimer’s disease.

Rensselaer also structures research activities in ways that help spark new and dazzling insights. As the name implies, our research constellations bring together some of the brightest stars in academia in teams that include undergraduates as well as faculty members and graduate students.

The Tetherless World Research Constellation focuses on radically expanding the capabilities of the World Wide Web. Other constellations, organized around topics such as “Future Chips” and “Biocomputation and Bioinformatics,” pursue — and realize — equally heady goals in areas that range from unleashing the awesome curative powers of stem cells to transforming organic diodes into light-emitting “wallpaper”.

Ideas Serving Humanity

Projects like these reflect key facets of Rensselaer’s philosophy: embracing discovery, creativity, and imagination for its own sake, while always keeping an eye toward how brilliant ideas can serve humanity.

From creating a synthetic replacement for the blood-thinner heparin to examining the design of the New Orleans levees, our researchers continue to honor the vision of our founder, Stephen Van Rensselaer, who believed in “the application of science to the common purposes of life.”