NJIT Students Continue Accumulation of Prestigious Fellowships
Students at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have again achieved an impressive amount of prestigious awards this year with 11 students earning nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships. Their achievement continues NJIT run, with Highlanders amassing 34 of these awards in the past three years.
The increased achievements are not by chance. NJIT students have always had the opportunity to apply, and their proficiencies and experiences have long been sufficient. Rather, the increase is due in large part to the university and the Albert Dorman Honors College allocating dedicated resources to support these students in both awareness and application for awards.
As a result of increased support for student applications, NJIT’s prestigious fellowships and awards have grown substantially. For all years prior to 2015, there were 15 total prestigious fellowship recipients from NJIT. In the past five years, NJIT students have won 50 such awards.
“These awards speak to the variety and range of the kinds of programs available,” said Paul Hout-O'Connor, director for Honors Advising and Prestigious Fellowships. “Our students have always had the ability and drive — our responsibility is assisting them finding ones that are good fits, given their experience and long-term goals.”
Indeed, this year’s cohort achieves among the most diverse awards in recent memory. Further reinforcing NJIT’s accessibility for student research, coveted awards like Goldwater, National Science Foundation and Graduate Research Fellowship have again been offered and accepted by Highlanders. The international Gilman Scholarship awarded provides students with skills critical to our national security and economic prosperity. While professional development opportunities, like the aerospace-based Brooke Owens Fellowship and the New Jersey Sustainability Journalism Fellowship, offer students the chance for exceptional real-world experience
The link between a growing number of student awardees and the upward rise of NJIT is part of a larger trajectory of success. During the past 10 years, NJIT has earned several institutional-level recognitions, including being named an R1 (most elite) Carnegie Classification research university, a designation shared by only 106 other public universities and three total universities in New Jersey. NJIT’s research expenditures have jumped over 50% since 2014 to more than $160 million annually. NJIT has risen to the No. 35 Best Value College in The Princeton Review rankings and is ranked among the top 50 public national universities by U.S. News & World Report.
For the 2022-2023 prestigious fellowship and award winner class, NJIT students submitted 45 applications, and the winners are listed below. An asterisk by the name denotes an Albert Dorman Honors College scholar.
Amgen Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Milan Patel - Biomedical Engineering*
Brooke Owens Fellowship
Olivia Kolakowski - Mechanical Engineering
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Internship in Science and Engineering
Patricia Dzwill - Computer Science and Applied Physics*
GEM Fellowship Program
Samantha Augustin - Computer Engineering*
Samara Augustin - Computer Science*
Gilman Scholarship
An'Jolae Seabrooks - Mechanical Engineering Technology South Africa
Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
Jorge Duarte - Civil and Environmental Engineering*
New Jersey Sustainability Journalism Fellowship
Yukthi Sangoi - Communication and Media Studies*
National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST)
Sheetal Padhi - Biomedical Engineering*
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP)
Amal Shabbaz - Biomedical Engineering*
Sumbel Yaqoob - Environmental Science
