What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Design Lab at Rensselaer

Home
United States
Troy, NY
Design Lab at Rensselaer

Real-world engineering experiences for undergraduates that integrate multidisciplinary design solutions and deliver results.

05/04/2026

CREATE, Cultivating Resources for Employment with Assistive Technology, is a non-profit organization located in the Albany NY area that connects NY universities with rehabilitative organizations within New York state. The students from these schools wotk with the agency to create devices that support employment and other opportunities for individuals with disabilities and qualified veterans.

For the Spring 26 semester, CREATE helped the New York State Industries for the Disabled (NYSID) partner with our Capstone program to support a team of seniors. The goal was to support the local mail distribution center run by NYSID. This center performs high volume print and mail services who must open may reams of paper each day. Our Capstone students developed a device to open the reams faster than is possible currently while making this operation safe for the workers.

Today, the various schools gathered at the CREATE Symposium to share their results with posters and demonstrations of their inventions. Pictured is the RPI Capstone team, along with Sr. Project Engineer Aren Paster, with their paper opening device. Aren was also one of the featured speakers at the event.

We are continually looking for new projects from industry partners. The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

04/17/2026

This week the School of Engineering celebrated the opening of the Gene Haas Manufacturing Teaching & Learning Foundry, a shop facility in the Jonsson Engineering Center. This space is dedicated to educating the next generation of leaders and innovators in manufacturing through advanced, hands-on learning to go hand in hand with the theory and research opportunities shared by our students. The "ribbon cutting" (because it's a fabrication space, the ribbon was naturally a strip of metal!) event brought together the Mayor of Troy and representatives from the Gene Haas Foundation, RPI community, RPI alumni, industry partners, local educators, and community members to celebrate the opening of this innovative teaching and learning space. Congratulations to everyone for their hard work in bringing this transformation to completion!

The Design Lab also provides our students with hands-on experience. Our students work on challenging real world problems across a variety of technology areas and including multiple engineering disciplines.

We are continually looking for new projects from industry partners. The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

03/17/2026

The semester is moving foward, having just passed midterm! Students are actively engaged in their project with clear goals and meaningful project plans!

Two teams of students is working on a project sponsored by Eaton Crouse-Hinds involving smart programmable lighting that employs Bluetooth for configuration and setup. They are gaining insight on the development of embedded systems, manufacturing operations including configuration and testing and the practical challenges of developing test scenarios that can confirm their work.

We are continually looking for new projects from industry partners. The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

01/14/2026

Sharing a few photos from our first class days. We use a tool called Slido to create interactive pools to learn more about our students and their past experiences.

01/09/2026

Happy New Semester!

Our classes start on January 12 and for our 24 capstone teams, will be a busy time! With projects from industry partners, campus faculty, and local non-profit organizations, our students will practice the engineering design process while interacting with their clients to deliver projects of value. This project based learning approach helps prepare our students for their futures in industry, research or academia.

The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

Stay tuned for photos our our students in action as the semester gets underway!

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

01/08/2026

Our last activities of the Fall semester included the project design reviews. Each team meets with their client in person, when possible, or via Webex, to provide a final presentation on their semester's work. Highlights include concepts selected and explored, descriptions and demonstrations of prototypes, as well as feedback on the work and suggestions for future direction.

Here are some photos from these reviews.

The Design Lab is blessed with a wonderful group of partners who support our students financially as well as professionally, by meeting with the students throughout the semester to help guide their work. We are very grateful to them for their contributions to our students!

We are continually looking for new projects from industry partners. While our Spring project planning is complete, there are still openings for Fall 2026 and Spring 2027. The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

12/02/2025

Winter has dropped in on campus! The VCC is to the left and the Library is in the background.

11/22/2025

Our students get to enjoy a full week off from classes for the Thanksgiving Holiday! Last week many teams made progress building their projects while some teams are waiting for recently ordered parts. And some teams paused their testing activities to enjoy the break. When they return, there will be only 2 weeks left in our semester, with their final design reviews being held in the following week with everything wrapping up by December 22 for our winter break.

We wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving break!

We are continually looking for new projects from industry partners. The Design Lab program supports seniors from the Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Systems Engineering departments. We form cross-functional teams, as we would do in industry or on a research team, to work on meaningful challenges. As we say at Rensselaer, "Why Not Change the World?"

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu.

We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

11/20/2025

Winter lighting is starting to appear around campus. This is the tree lined walkway on the main campus in front of the Ricketts Building.

11/19/2025

With project planning in place, our senior engineering students are busy in the shop building and testing their projects! Many involve software design and debugging, others are fabricating parts while those who have their parts on hand are busy assembling the pieces for testing. Some teams are working on continuing projects which gave them a foundation to build upon for this semester.

By learning the challenges of first turning concepts into detailed designs and then the challenges associated with fabricating and assembling designs into working artifacts, students gain valuable experiences in teamwork and communications as well as project management. The Design Lab's mission of developing well rounded and talented engineers both in terms of technical expertise and professional development will help students have a strong start on their careers in industry, academia or research.

For more information about the Design Lab, including supporting our students, please visit our website: https://designlab.rpi.edu. We also invite you to view some of the videos on our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_aQLN-mc-eWDoegVcooyw/videos

Address

110 8th Street, JEC 3232
Troy, NY
12180

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://eng.rpi.edu/mdl/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Design Lab at Rensselaer posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The University

Send a message to Design Lab at Rensselaer:

Shortcuts

Want your university to be the top-listed University in Troy?