The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private research university in Henrietta, New York, a suburb of Rochester. It was founded in 1829. It is one of only two institutes of technology in New York state, the other being the New York Institute of Technology.

RIT enrolls about 19,000 students, of whom 16,000 are undergraduate and 3,000 are graduate students. These students come from all 50 states in the United States and more than 100 countries. The university has more than 4,000 faculty and staff. It also has branches abroad in Croatia, Kosovo, Albania, and United Arab Emirates. The university is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".

The university began as a result of an 1891 merger between Rochester Athenæum, a struggling literary society founded in 1829 by Colonel Nathaniel Rochester and associates, and The Mechanics Institute, a Rochester school of practical technical training for local residents founded in 1885 by a consortium of local businessmen including Captain Henry Lomb, co-founder of Bausch & Lomb. The name of the merged institution at the time was called Rochester Athenæum and Mechanics Institute (RAMI). The Mechanics Institute was considered as the surviving school and took over The Rochester Athenæum's 1829 founding charter. From the time of the merger until 1944, many of its students, administration and faculty staff alike, not only celebrated the former Mechanics Institute's 1885 founding charter, but its former name as well. In 1944, the school changed its name to Rochester Institute of Technology, re-established The Athenæum's 1829 founding charter and became a full-fledged research university.

The university originally resided within the city of Rochester, New York, proper, on a block bounded by the Erie Canal, South Plymouth Avenue, Spring Street, and South Washington Street (approximately 43°09′09″N 77°36′55″W / 43.152632°N 77.615157°W / 43.152632; -77.615157). Its art department was originally located in the Bevier Memorial Building. By the middle of the twentieth century, RIT began to outgrow its facilities, and surrounding land was scarce and expensive; additionally, in 1959, the New York Department of Public Works announced a new freeway, the Inner Loop, was to be built through the city along a path that bisected the university's campus and required demolition of key university buildings. In 1961, a donation of $3.27 million from local Grace Watson, for whom RIT's dining hall was later named, allowed the university to purchase land for a new 1,300-acre (5.3 km²) campus several miles south along the east bank of the Genesee River in suburban Henrietta. Upon completion in 1968, the university moved to the new suburban campus, where it resides today.

In 1966, RIT was selected by the federal government to be the site of the newly founded National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). NTID admitted its first students in 1968, concurrent with RIT's transition to the Henrietta campus.

In 1979, RIT took over Eisenhower College, a liberal arts college located in Seneca Falls, New York. Despite making a 5-year commitment to keep Eisenhower open, RIT announced in July 1982 that the college would close immediately. One final year of operation by Eisenhower's academic program took place in the 1982–83 school year on the Henrietta campus. The final Eisenhower graduation took place in May 1983 back in Seneca Falls.

The microelectronic engineering program, created in 198

2 and the only ABET-accredited undergraduate program in the country, was the nation's first Bachelor of Science program specializing in the fabrication of semiconductor devices and integrated circuits. In 1990, RIT started its first PhD program, in imaging science – the first PhD program of its kind in the U.S. The information technology program was the first nationally recognized IT degree, created in 1993. In 1996, RIT became the first college in the U.S. to offer a Software Engineering degree at the undergraduate level.