Five of this year’s Governor’s STEM Scholars are from New Jersey Institute of Technology — the most from any college in the state and the university’s highest total in a single year. The Highlanders are among a select cohort of 16 college-level scholars and a larger pool of 111 that includes high school students interested in STEM. Each college scholar plays a leadership role, sharing expertise and offering guidance to a group of about a half-dozen high schoolers as they tackle global problems at a local level. “These exceptional Highlanders have the knowledge, experience and skills to…

Alumni from NJIT are impressing Mike Reagan, who leads 250 people for the New York/New Jersey region of international technology consultancy CGI Inc., because the Highlanders among them stand out for backing up solid training with invaluable soft skills. “They have risen to be the cream of the crop,” said Reagan, senior vice president, who’s an electrical engineer and transitioned into management. “What I do not hire is someone with a resume of 4.0 and nothing else. Give me the 3.2 who was part of a couple of clubs, involved in student government and has a personality.” Four alumni,…

Imagine the ability to leverage sensitive data with full-fledged compliance and security. Encryptech, a cloud computing service focused on handling sensitive data securely, was created by sophomore S-STEM scholar Jonathan Kozlik and his collaborator with a goal to make the training of regulatory-compliant AI models on sensitive data both affordable and scalable. Their innovative pitch for Encryptech at HackMIT caught the attention of Avalanche, a renowned platform for decentralized finance and enterprise-grade blockchain solutions. Impressed by their vision, Avalanche invited the team…

When a representative from the highly-competitive International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) personally congratulates you on your win, it’s an indication of growth and greater things to come. It signifies that student talent and tenacity thrive when mentored by great leaders. Such is the case with the Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) Programming Club, led by senior computer science major and president Jaden Nguyen and their coach, Assistant Professor Martin Kellogg, who scored in the top 20 for two of their four teams among 83 competitors from some of the most…

With artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT rapidly gaining traction among students and teachers alike, it’s no surprise the topic took center focus at NJIT’s 8th Annual STEM Forum for School Leaders, “Leading the Digital Transformation in Our Schools.” The event, hosted by NJIT’s Center for Pre-College Programs, attracted educators from across N.J. to hear from an expert panel of NJIT researchers, education law specialists and district leaders on an array of topics — from ethical concerns of AI in schools, to strategies for implementing such technologies as positive learning tools…

Distinguished Professors David Bader and Guiling “Grace” Wang and Professors Cristian Borcea and Vincent Oria in the Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) served as part of Governor Phil Murphy’s AI Task Force for the state of New Jersey, a team comprised of industry leaders, academic experts, consumer advocates, and government innovators tasked with establishing programs, trainings and tools that advance the state’s leadership in AI. Recommendations by the Task Force were recently published in The Report to the Governor on Artificial Intelligence, which aims to create economic opportunities…

Potentially deadly mathematical errors are prevalent among mobile applications used in clinical and emergency room settings, but a team of researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology's Ying Wu College of Computing has found provable solutions that may save lives. The applications, known as medical score calculators, can be downloaded by anyone and are popular among less experienced health care staff. But the apps are rife with errors, sometimes because of flawed source data from medical reference tables and other times due to bad implementations from developers who don’t understand the…

Ph.D. candidates Nhi N Nguyen, Mahmoud Nazzal and Khiem Ton recently presented two papers at the 31st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2024) that could aid future breakthroughs in improving the trustworthiness of Large Language Models (LLMs) when generating code. The research has the potential to be a game changer in the use of generative AI for many sectors of industry and academia, especially software development. ACM CCS is a competitive, top-tier venue in the field of security and privacy with a 16.9% acceptance rate for papers. The conference brings together…

Coders, more than most people, spend hours upon hours clacking away at their keyboards, so they’re prime candidates for an invention that helps improve your posture — and so TheBackPak won this year’s edition of HackNJIT, earning $1,500 for its student developers. TheBackPak uses gyroscopes and a microcontroller to gauge its wearer’s posture and report their status to a mobile phone application. It learns about each individual wearer, building a custom dataset. Its developers were NJIT students Matthew Tujague and Ricardo Vergara, Victor Jiminez from NJIT's Albert Dorman Honors College and…

Angel Cazares, an S-STEM scholar and president of the Hispanic and Latin Association of Computing College Students (HACCS) at NJIT, has been awarded the distinguished 2024 eBay HSI Battle of the Brains Scholarship. This recognition celebrates Cazares' academic dedication and leadership in technology and innovation, marking a significant milestone in his journey and reinforcing NJIT’s growing reputation for developing young leaders and problem-solvers. Cazares recently represented NJIT at the renowned HSI Battle of the Brains competition, a 16-hour event where teams from Hispanic-Serving…