NJIT Honors College Summer Research Tradition Funds Record Number of Scholars

NJIT’s Honors Summer Research Institute scholars added to their curriculum this summer as the undergraduates focused on a wide range of research projects that will help build their knowledge as they seek future career goals. 

In its sixth year, the Honors Summer Research Institute (HSRI) hosted a record number of Scholars, more than doubling in size, and awarding over $90,000 in grants. The HSRI provides participants with an eight-week interdisciplinary workshop sequence that helps them develop their research projects and communication skills.

The HSRI is generously funded by the donors to the Dorman College Dean's Fund for Student Development, Vatsal Shah ’08, ’09, ’14, (Moonshot Grant for Engaged Scholarship), Langan Engineering (Civil and Environmental Engineering), ANS Geo (Civil and Environmental Engineering), and the Martinson Foundation. 

The funding allows Dorman and Dean's Scholars to spend the summer developing their research skills, deepening their understanding of analytic methods and ethics, and preparing to present their work for continued funding. Many HSRI participants go on to apply for prestigious fellowships from the Goldwater, Fulbright, or National Science Foundation. Others take their experiences into start-ups or graduate schools. All of them develop what President Teik C. Lim calls "power skills" and are better prepared to create new knowledge and present and promote their ideas.

“Undergraduate research opportunities are a unique strength of NJIT and Albert Dorman Honors College,” said Burcak Ozludil, associate dean of the Honors College. “Through involvement in research and guidance in HSRI, we want the scholars to understand the broader significance of their research and the power of what research can do for our world. It is an experience that not only can transform their education, but also help them understand their place in the world.”

Here, a few of this year’s scholars share details on their research projects and what takeaways they gained from this opportunity. 

Sagnik Chowdhury ‘24

Chowdhury’s research project titled The Effect of Deepfakes on College Students' Political Opinions originated from his interest on the impact the internet has had on people's real life behaviors in the past few years. 

“Misinformation, such as conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccination, influenced millions of people, many of whom died because they were not vaccinated,” said Chowdhury. “Deepfake technology has recently become much more accessible, capable of making videos that could fool a casual viewer, and this is a big threat to our nation's stability. We are extremely politically polarized, and I wanted to study how this new vector for misinformation could contribute to that division.”

While he continues the project and is still collecting data from participants, the cyberpsychology major has drawn some preliminary conclusions. Participants had around 80% accuracy in distinguishing between real and deepfake videos. “There was also a slight decrease in [positive] attitudes towards the Democratic party after exposure. Because the study was not conducted in real world conditions, this might not be generalizable”, he noted. “Also, deepfake technology is still improving, so that will likely lead to reduced accuracy [of information] in the future.” 

Chowdhury highlights that he learned a lot about the process of creating and conducting research surveys and about analyzing the data collected. The cyberpsychology major from East Brunswick, NJ knows that this experience will help him with his future work. “I hope to do further research on a similar topic in my capstone project, and this has helped provide some exploratory results that I can follow up on. 

“I also plan on attending graduate school, so this has given me really important exposure to the research process,” he said. 

Oliwia Gorska ‘25

Ever since she was young in her native Poland, Gorska wanted to work in a molecular biology department. She reached out to Dr. Sara Casado-Zapico because she was really interested in working with her. 

Gorska would have been happy to join an existing project in the Interdisciplinary Forensic and Biomedical Sciences Lab, but when she told her she wanted to participate in HSRI she decided to assign her to a completely new project, Epigenetic Signatures for Age-at-Death Estimation in Human Remains.

“When I heard this I was more than overjoyed since I always wanted to work with DNA and epigenetics itself is a very new field of study,” said Gorska. “We have qualitative data from at least two separate human remains which showcase that it is possible to read the methylation levels. 

“Part of my research also includes checking if it is possible to find out the methylation levels on partially degraded DNA, so by decreasing the amount of used DNA in one sample. Until now we have seen that it is possible to assess the methylation levels with DNA concentration as low as 25ng.”

Gorska knows this experience will help her continue her biology studies in graduate school. “The last couple weeks have been a little bit hectic. I loved every part of my research and I am continuing with this project for the fall semester. 

“My future goal is to go into research so I hope that this will allow me to get into a good graduate school so I can continue my studies.”

Don Bonifacio ‘25

Last year, Bonifacio took a class on business and management, and that really got him interested in how financial data can be used in machine learning applications. 

The Stafford Township, NJ native had conducted machine learning projects on his own in the past and wanted to apply and enhance his experience in the field as he set on to work on his research project titled Tax Fraud Detection Using a Machine Learning Approach. “The thing with dealing with corporate fraud is that it is intentionally hard to detect or identify just based on the fact that fraud itself has a nature of concealment,” said the Albert Dorman scholar. “And it doesn't help that data can be messy at times and there are so many ways to manipulate that data. 

“Computers can definitely aid in identifying corporate tax fraud; although, no model is perfect. But, by working to create better, more efficient methods of corporate tax fraud detection, I can definitely see how these systems can ultimately promote corporate tax compliance.”

Bonifacio, who’s a computer engineering major, felt comfortable during his research. “I really felt like I understood the topic as well as research in general,” he said. 

He feels that this particular experience will be of great value to him as AI and machine learning becomes an increasingly important application. “The field of machine learning is quickly growing. AI and machine learning is the future and having this experience in this field, as well as the field of finance and accounting, can give me a better skill set to incorporate into my future career. 

“As a computer engineering major, working with machine learning in a career is very likely, so working on this research project helped develop my skills and expose me to many of the key concepts.”