Two New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) professors are part of a consortium of 10 organizations that received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to use technology to assist agencies that manage wildfires, water quality and biodiversity. Ying Wu College of Computing professors Xinyue Ye, Shaohua Wang and team will create what the NSF calls an "Open Knowledge Network" for spatial decision-support technologies. The goal is to create prototype tools and methods that will make it easier for machines to find and understand internet data, known as a semantic web, to help…

Students from the Hunterdon County Computer Science and Applied Engineering Academy came to NJIT on Nov. 22 to participate in a study of the impact of virtual reality (VR) on learning and knowledge retention.. The event, organized by NJIT professor Lori Watrous-deVersterre, had two goals. First, to expose high school students to the world of academic research, and second, to give NJIT professors and their graduate students access to high school students to take part in user studies. “It’s a win-win for both sides,” Watrous-deVersterre said. Watrous-deVersterre said the students took part…

NJIT now has a chapter of the Google Developer Student Club. Google formed the international organization two years ago to teach real-world information technology skills that aren't necessarily taught in college classrooms. It's also a way for the software giant to promote its products and recruit new employees. "Developer Student Club launched in 2017 as a pilot in India to help solve the challenges university graduates were facing securing employment in the tech industry. We aimed to provide students with the resources, opportunities and experience necessary to be industry-ready, all…

NJIT welcomed 35 data science students to its newly opened NJIT@JerseyCity location this semester, with a goal of doubling that number in the spring and reaching 500 students in three years, Ying Wu College of Computing Dean Craig Gotsman said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony held December 5 at the new location. Gotsman said the current students are primarily working professionals in the finance and tech industries from companies located in Jersey City and also in New York City. Hudson County quickly became a technology hub following the Sept. 11 attacks and was bolstered again after Hurricane…

David Bader, distinguished professor of computer science, is the director of NJIT’s new Institute for Data Science. His interests lie at the intersection of data science and high-performance computing, with applications in cybersecurity, massive-scale analytics and computational genomics. Dr. Bader works closely with researchers in academia, industry and government to develop the next generation of computing capabilities and has advised the White House on the National Strategic Computing Initiative. What is NJIT’s new Institute for Data Science? The growing abundance and variety of data we…

Programmers can tell you what machine learning does and how it works, but they can't really prove why it works. Enter the mathematicians. The what and how of machine learning are well documented — it's software that examines big data to find meaning and possibly suggest actions, based on looking for patterns and complicated statistics — and now NJIT mathematics professor Zuofeng Shang is among a small group of researchers worldwide who want to understand and document the underlying mathematical principles of it. Shang received $250,000 in National Science Foundation grants during the last…

For Elena Prokhorova, the decision to begin taking master’s level courses while still a computer science undergrad came down to personal interest, as she wanted more options than what was available in the undergraduate catalog.  While reviewing potential classes for her senior year, she also skimmed the list of graduate-level computer science courses and found those courses more appealing. She mentioned this to her advisor and learned of NJIT’s BS-MS program. Now, Prokhorova is preparing to graduate in December with a bachelor of science (BS) in Computer Science and already has nine…

Data science has reached a point where techniques such as deep learning can beat humans at recognizing objects, although experts are still figuring out how to make explainable predictions from massive data, NJIT distinguished professor David Bader said. Bader leads the university's Institute for Data Science in collaboration with the Ying Wu College of Computing, Newark College of Engineering, Martin Tuchman School of Management, and College of Science and Liberal Arts. He also advises the National Strategic Computing Initiative, founded in 2015 under President Obama through the White House’…

Anupriya Gotkhindi was listening to a lecture in her machine learning graduate class when she noticed a sign language translator having difficulty trying to decipher the complex issues being taught and the technical terms used by the instructor. That problem was the inspiration for her team’s project at the recent GirlHacks Hackathon at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The event was the first ever hackathon at NJIT specifically designed to promote and encourage women in STEM. Gotkhindi’s team topped dozens of teams to win the top prize at the event. For their project, “Sign…

Catarina DeMatos’ experience with Facebook started with a surprise in the fall of 2018.  She walked into her CS 114 class and learned her instructor was Miki Friedmann, a Facebook software engineer and a visiting faculty member at NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing. Friedmann was teaching the class as part of Facebook’s Engineer-in-Residence program, whose primary objective is to increase the number of women and minorities entering the high-tech world. The program includes many extracurricular activities ranging from technical interview preparation workshops to dedicated support from…