Tara Alvarez, a distinguished professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT 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 National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Alvarez was one of 169 inventors from 110 research universities, governmental and non-profit research institutions worldwide inducted into the Academy in 2022 in a class that includes members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Laureates. Together, they hold more than 5,000 issued U.S. patents. With her election, there are now…

Oluwanifemi Fuwa fabricated face masks to protect people from COVID-19. Kaily Peixoto volunteered at a senior center and handed out scarves to homeless individuals at Newark’s Penn Station.  Nyssa Nixon volunteered at Isaiah House shelter through Jack and Jill of America and tutored peers as a member of the National Honor Society.   They did it all as high school students in Newark, even while achieving exceptional marks in class. And now each is embarking on her first year at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Meet the 2022 Newark Mayor’s Honors Scholars. Now in its fourth…

The CEO of an NJIT-born startup made NJBIZ’s list of the Next Generation of Leaders. John Vito d’Antonio-Bertagnolli, who holds both a bachelor’s and master’s in biomedical engineering from NJIT, where he was an Albert Dorman Honors College Scholar, leads OculoMotor Technologies (OMT), a vision therapy company that launched in 2018. The company centers around a device known as VERVE (short for Virtual Eye Rotation Vision Exercises) that holds promise as a biomarker for concussions. OMT arose out of a university lab and developed commercially with the support of VentureLink, a startup…

NJIT students have found excellent work in co-ops and internships this summer. It is a great way to gain real-world experience in their field of study, and to network with professionals in their chosen field. And, of course, the added benefit of earning money to help pay for tuition and other expenses. Hands-on, real-world experience allows students to apply what they have learned in the classroom, and bring back a more-focused approach to their studies. Additionally, such experience provides students with the opportunity to further develop important skills, such as problem-solving and…

Next up for NJIT biomedical engineering graduate Amal Shabazz: the Ph.D. program in bioengineering at the University of Maryland. But first, the Albert Dorman Honors Scholar has a 10-week summer internship at Pfizer in Andover, Mass. Her four years in University Heights were filled with helpful mentors, key internships and welcoming peer groups that collectively helped opened the door to graduate school. In an interview, she shares what she gained and where she hopes it leads. What first sparked your interest in biomedical engineering? I was always torn between studying medicine or studying…

Ayushi Sangoi, 23, a Newark, N.J., resident and researcher at New Jersey Institute of Technology has been named one of 2022’s MLH Top 50 – a list compiled each year by Major League Hacking (MLH) of the organization’s most inspiring community members. The recipients are recognized for their exceptional contributions to the tech ecosystem and STEM education. Sangoi stood out from other applicants for her unique road to becoming a prodigious hacker. A current Ph.D. candidate at the Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory, she has earned a dual degree in biomedical engineering and…

New Jersey Institute of Technology is a top 10 Best College for Engineering Majors in the U.S., according to Money. The universities in the top 10, which also include MIT, Princeton University and Georgia Institute of Technology, emerged from Money’s 2022 list of Best Colleges, which ranked NJIT No. 14 nationally. “We then ranked colleges based on the median salaries of recent alumni with engineering degrees, as well as the number and share of recent graduates earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering,” Money explained. NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering is the largest and oldest academic…

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…

Sreya Sanyal ’22 is right where she wants to be in the fight against cancer — at the cutting-edge of medical research. She’ll soon be using the breakthrough gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, often described as “genetic scissors”, to study human disease as a post baccalaureate researcher with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after graduation. For Sanyal, whose parents met and graduated from medical school in India, her journey toward a career as a physician-scientist specializing in cancer biology has deep roots, beginning at the age of 10.  “My mom was an oncologist who was…

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…