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Neel Patil, a new graduate in computer science and applied mathematics, is following his Pi Kappa Phi fraternity brothers like All-Star baseball outfielder Jim Edmonds and broadcaster Rich Eisen into the sports business.

Patil will be a software engineer at FanDuel starting in July. It’s a perfect fit for the diehard basketball fan, who said he’s never made money from betting on his favorite NBA team, the Boston Celtics, because he always picks the over — he can’t stand to admit that they might not dominate, even when it’s a fiscally irrational decision.

His lifelong passion for baseball led Owen West, a rising junior from Point Pleasant Beach majoring in biomedical engineering, to dive into pharmaceutical research and become one of two NJIT winners of the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for 2024.

Preaching patience, courage and resilience, MGM Construction Co. President and CEO Marjorie Perry urged the Class of 2024 at New Jersey Institute of Technology to become lifelong learners as they apply their imagination to real-world challenges.

Perry, an NJIT alumna who serves on its Foundation Board of Directors, called on the undergraduates earning bachelor’s degrees to be “agents of change in our communities” and build a future “that we can all be proud of.”

New Jersey Institute of Technology served up a full day of fanfare as its advanced degree graduates walked across the stage in the Wellness and Events Center in three commencement ceremonies on May 15. The 2024 class comprises more than 1,400 graduates and reflects the institution’s steady growth and upward trajectory.

Here, we conclude a two-part series in which winners of the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award at this year’s College of Science and Liberal Arts Awards share memorable experiences that highlighted their path to success at NJIT, while they also look ahead to plans after Commencement 2024.

Isaiah Rejouis, B.A. Biology

A special group of NJIT’s graduating seniors is finishing undergraduate life with a flourish — their achievements across the humanities and STEM sciences recently earned them the Outstanding Student Award at the College of Science and Liberal Arts Awards this month.

In the first of a two-part series, we catch up with this year’s winners who share their successes and memorable moments at NJIT, as well as exciting plans following Commencement 2024.

Speaker after speaker reinforced what Kevin Belfield, dean of the College of Science and Liberal Arts at New Jersey Institute of Technology, said about the university’s Math Success Initiative: “It takes a village to put a program like this together.”

The speakers were at a campus ceremony celebrating the first students to experience MSI and graduate from NJIT: Okyere Boateng, Brian Herrera-Calle, Catherine Ochoa and Steff Pitti.

Close to 100 Albert Dorman Honors College scholars from Introduction to Research Writing and Introduction to Research Methods presented their semester's research, with topics ranging from TikTok influencer marketing to an analysis of healthcare in the United States.

While thousands traveled westward and northward from New Jersey through bumper-to-bumper traffic to reach the totality of the solar eclipse on April 8, NJIT undergraduate physics students Anneliese Schmidt ’24 and Joseph Visone ’25 were finally able to relax. For them, the race to the eclipse was over, having finally finished deploying instrumentation in upstate New York to explore the question — How does the eclipse change the space environment near Earth?

NJIT’s annual celebration of its top student researchers kicked off at the 2024 Dana Knox Student Research Showcase, which once again highlighted a stunning array of innovation and discovery from every corner of the STEM disciplines.

Now in its 19th year, the showcase competition featured 68 diverse research projects presented by students from NJIT’s six colleges at the university Campus Center.