Department of Biomedical Engineering

Each year, dentists in the United States perform more than 15 million root canals on infected teeth, removing the inflamed pulp and filling the emptied canal with inert materials such as rubber and cement. What remains is a mineral shell in place of a living tooth. “Teeth lacking dental pulp are more vulnerable to cracking and can respond poorly to future bacterial infections and mechanical injuries. In particular, we’d prefer to avoid killing and removing a child’s permanent tooth that is still growing, but instead, help the roots thicken and lengthen,” said Vivek Kumar, a bioengineer at...

Strapped into an exoskeleton, Damyane Evely strode heavily back and forth across a 15-foot platform, taking an occasional peek at a monitor on the wall to survey his progress — and to silently marvel. It had been more than 15 years since his spinal cord was compressed in a motorcycle accident, landing him in a wheelchair. He was relishing his verticality. Last December, Evely was the first person in the U.S. with a spinal cord injury to test the new, self-balancing Wandercraft Atalante, a third-generation exoskeleton with 12 degrees of freedom that is designed to more closely approximate...

NJIT’s student newspaper, The Vector, continues making its journalistic voice heard — the paper is the recipient of several awards from U.S. college media contests recently. The Vector was named the Corbin Gwaltney Award winner for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” (among large universities) at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 1 Mark of Excellence Awards, beating out competition from the likes of Hofstra University and Boston College.  Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) judges have praised the paper for its “visuality and a creative selection...

NJIT has landed some unexpected residents recently, and they’ll be getting plenty of “airtime” as they settle into their new home. In fact, they’ll have their own channel where you can check them (and their new crib) out, 24/7.  Two red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) have begun a rare urban nest on a sixth-story ledge of the campus’s Albert Dorman Honors College (ADHC) Residence Hall on Colden Street.  Contrary to most red-tailed hawk nests found in nature, the nesting site is so unusual that a team of NJIT faculty, students and staff have set up a YouTube livestream for...