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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.