After a table saw severed the top of his right index finger, Adam Zanellato, a 20-year-old cabinet-maker at the time, had to relearn basic hand maneuvers, such as how to write and hold a fork. There were no affordable prosthetics on the market to help him regain dexterity. Several years later, he still found it hard to pick up coins from a table. A year and a half ago, he decided to restart his search, and began by contacting a friend in medical school for leads. The woman, an NJIT graduate, made this recommendation: present himself as a research project to students in…

New Jersey Institute of Technology is one of the nation’s best colleges for students seeking a superb education with great career preparation and at an affordable price, according to The Princeton Review®. The education services company profiles NJIT in the recently published 2020 edition of its annual guide, The Best Value Colleges. In order to make the list, institutions must demonstrate a stellar academic program and affordability, and offer strong opportunities for career prospects after graduation. A return on an academic investment is a highly sought-after quality. “An NJIT…

To say that third-year biomedical engineering major Juliana Yang is busy is an understatement. In addition to staying on top of her course work, the Albert Dorman Honors College student is director of public relations for the university’s Student Senate, academic chair of the Beta Eta Chapter of Delta Phi Epsilon and publications coordinator at the Office of Student Life. She also is a peer tutor in the Writing Center and steers the NJIT North American Disease Intervention (NADI), “a student health organization dedicated to raising awareness of hypertension and diabetes within the NJIT and…

Sagnik Basuray is developing a device the size of a dollar coin that will detect cancer biomarkers in patients in remission by sampling a tiny drop of blood with a dip stick. His sensor is groundbreaking not only in its simplicity, but also in its portability. It’s meant to be used at home. “Cancer patients in remission need to be kept informed at all times about the status of their disease, so a point-of-care test that they can administer themselves makes sense,” noted Basuray, an assistant professor of chemical and materials engineering. “We’re designing one that is non-invasive,…

Tara Alvarez, a professor of biomedical engineering who studies the links between visual disorders and the brain and develops novel devices to identify and treat them, has been named a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (AAO). Alvarez joined approximately 300 fellows, who are the leading scientists and clinicians in the field, at an induction ceremony this month at the academy’s 2019 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. At the conference, she gave a talk on the neural mechanisms underlying a vision therapy that helps patients with a disorder known as convergence insufficiency (CI) to…

Kamela Chandrika, a soft-spoken third-year biomedical engineering major, remembers some of the challenges she faced during her first days at NJIT — like going to the Bursar’s Office to pay her tuition bill, but not knowing how to fill out a check. Even before arriving at the university she faced school-related hurdles, particularly in navigating the application and financial aid processes. Filing a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), for instance, proved frustrating because she did not know what information she needed to complete it. And while her parents were very supportive…

One of the enduring puzzles of hearing loss is the decline in a person’s ability to determine where a sound originates, a key survival faculty that allows animals – from lizards to humans – to pinpoint the location of danger, prey and group members. In modern times, finding a lost cell phone by using the application "Find My Device,” just to find it had slipped under a sofa pillow, relies on minute differences in the ringing sound that reaches the ears. Unlike other sensory perceptions, such as feeling where raindrops hit the skin or being able to distinguish high notes from low on the piano…

A blow to the head or powerful shock wave on the battlefield can cause immediate, significant damage to a person’s skull and the tissue beneath it. But the trauma does not stop there. The impact sets off a chemical reaction in the brain that ravages neurons and the networks that supply them with nutrients and oxygen. It is the secondary effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), which can lead to long-term cognitive, psychological and motor system damage, that piqued the interest of a team of NJIT biomedical engineers. To counter them, they are developing a therapy, to be injected at the site…

One is studying computer science at NJIT, the other biomedical engineering, but they both join the university as Mayor’s Honors Scholars. Samara and Samantha Augustin — freshmen at Ying Wu College of Computing and Newark College of Engineering, respectively — are among the first recipients of the full scholarship, a partnership of NJIT, the city of Newark and the Newark Board of Education to create a pipeline between Newark Public Schools and NJIT’s Albert Dorman Honors College. Graduates of Science Park High School, the Augustins were involved there in a variety of extracurricular…

A five-woman team of undergraduate engineering students is tackling a problem experienced by a diverse and growing population: balance instability. For the elderly, people recovering from strokes and accidents or those living with disorders that affect movement, such as Parkinson’s disease, falls present the risk of grave injury. With funding from the Hearst Foundations, the team is taking aim at the mechanics that lie at the heart of the problem, determining with precision – and on a step-by-step basis – when, where and how an individual loses stability. While balance training and…