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. As always, Dana Knox presenters had the chance to connect with the campus community to explain the significant impact of research endeavors they’ve spent their undergraduate and graduate studies…

From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, two NJIT students — Danna Valentina Sanchez Hernandez and Owen West — have been named Goldwater Scholars this year by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The scholarship is recognized as among the country’s most prestigious for STEM undergraduates pursuing research careers. The NJIT Goldwater Scholars represent two of 10 statewide, and 438 total students across the United States represented by 227 institutions. Goldwater Scholars each earn a prize of up to $7,500 per year for up to two…

Vaccines remain the gold standard of protection against dangerous pathogens, but take considerable time and vast resources to develop. Rapidly mutating viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can blunt their effectiveness and even render them obsolete. To address these gaps, a multi-university team led by New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Vivek Kumar is developing a hydrogel therapy that acts as a first line of defense against viruses and other biological threats. The peptides that make up this gel prevent viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, from attaching to and entering cells. They do…

New Jersey Institute of Technology aims to be a nexus of innovation that embraces new tech, commercializes groundbreaking research, leverages its diversity and tackles global environmental and socioeconomic challenges under a new strategic plan that extends through 2030. The plan, NJIT Makes An Innovation Nexus, identifies six priorities, spells out the university’s mission to be a leader in research, innovation and entrepreneurship, and reaffirms its core values, including collaboration, social responsibility, diversity and sustainability. The priorities define student and faculty success…

NJIT has established employee resource groups (ERG) that meet regularly and encourage faculty and staff to connect outside of their direct working relationships. This month, NJIT is celebrating its Women’s Leadership and Employee Resource Group and publishing an employee spotlight on one of its members: Miosotis Hernandez, assistant director for first year engineering programs in Newark College of Engineering. Can you introduce us to your ERG? MH: I am co-chair of the Women’s Leadership ERG and our mission is to offer a safe, confidential and supportive community that aims to make NJIT…

Six NJIT researchers have secured grants in the latest round of funding provided by the New Jersey Health Foundation (NJHF), which has increased its funding in both its Community Health, Social Services and Education Program, as well as its traditional research program this year. The $4 million round of funding brings the NJHF’s total to $70 million since the inception of its annual grant program. Researchers from NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering and College of Science and Liberal Arts make up the awardees, with projects spanning innovative bone regeneration processes to research on…

Recently, the ingenuity of Newark College of Engineering’s brightest first-year students was on full display at the 2024 NCE First Year Engineering Design Showcase. Forty-two teams featured in this year’s showcase to present a wide range of innovative engineering projects originating from their fall semester introductory engineering design course — from prosthetic limbs and exoskeleton knee braces built at NJIT’s Makerspace, to traffic light clocks for improving intersections on campus, temperature-controlled fans, home security systems and more. The friendly competition, which first…

Hundreds of students in NJIT’s introductory engineering course, Fundamentals of Engineering Design 101, are having a greater shared experience during the fall 2023 semester than any incoming class since the 1990s. Back then, Newark College of Engineering began customizing the FED syllabus for each major field. Chemical engineering students may have learned more about compounding and processing, while civil engineering students learned the basics of surveying and transportation systems. Now the FED sections are unifying once more. With so many fields of engineering sharing overlapping…

New Jersey Institute of Technology’s rise in national rankings continues, with U.S. News & World Report placing NJIT No. 86 among national universities for 2024 — a jump of 11 rungs from 2023. The latest ranking is indicative of a consistent trend over the past four years — as NJIT climbed from 118 to 103 to 97 and now 86 — and supports the findings of other publications that rate U.S. universities, including Money and The Wall Street Journal, which placed NJIT as the second-highest ranked public institution nationally. In key areas like student social mobility and value…

A little-known R&D facility, operated by NJIT’s New Jersey Innovation Institute with the U.S. Army Picatinny Arsenal for its primary client, is beginning to thrive one year after moving off-campus. The facility is called COMET — Collaborative Operationalized Manufacturing Engineering and Training — located about 30 miles northwest of NJIT’s Newark campus, close to Picatinny, which is the Army headquarters for conventional weapons development. COMET hosts students and faculty throughout the year, not just from NJIT but from various institutions, who all share civic and scientific…