"So in terms of your tuition dollars you're never going to find a bargain like this anywhere else on the RIT campus, so thank you all for coming tonight"

Last night was the 2011 Imaging Science Hall of Fame Ceremony, Keynote, and After Party (cue fanfare)! It was finally revealed who this year's inductees were: Alhazen, Thomas Edison, Harry Nyquist, and Felix Nadar. You may be wondering, who are these guys? (Well probably not for Edison.) You're in luck: check out the etchings of our winners and read their citations by visiting our Imaging Hall of Fame webpage that I just updated. You can also view a video of the entire ceremony and keynote at our seminars webpage by scrolling down to December 14 in the calendar and clicking "presentation video" on the right. (Though, the video unfortunately crops out yours truly, doing my best Vanna White impression while unveiling the plaques as the winners were revealed. Oh well, I know you really wanted to see that.)

The only recorded evidence of my Vanna skills.
It looks like Thomas Edison and I are giving each other the stare down.

We had a pretty good turnout for the ceremony and keynote!

The keynote presentation for this year was really interesting (I definitely suggest you check out the video mentioned above), but I had to duck out early to set up for the AFTER PARTAYYY, woooo! This year we celebrated at Lovin' Cup in Park Point, and we had a fantastic turnout - I think we got even more attendees than when we did the after party last year. We had 38 people (undergrads, grad students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the keynote speaker himself) sign in, and there were plenty more people who joined us but didn't actually check in. So: big success! We definitely spilled outside of our little reserved area (not my fault; only 20 people pre-registered as requested, so I told Lovin' Cup 25-30 people...) and munched on a huge variety of tasty appetizers. The party didn't break up until 7:30 or so finally, and even that's mostly because Lovin' Cup needed to free up space for their "12 Beers of Christmas" tasting that was coming up at 8, which I think a few of our folks actually stuck around for. 

Everyone you can see in this picture was part of our party - and there were way more that I couldn't fit in the frame (despite hiding behind that table annoyingly in the foreground).

Overall, it was a great event. I wonder whether I should start planning something for spring so that we start getting together on a seasonal basis?

See the rest of the pictures from last night here.