Computer Science department chairs from several New Jersey universities and community colleges met at the Ying Wu College of Computing’s (YWCC) NJIT@JerseyCity location to discuss the state of computer science education with a focus on improving access for a broader diversity of students as part of a forward-looking AI workforce.   Newly-appointed YWCC dean Jamie Payton, whose work has centered on expanding racial, ethnic and gender diversity in technology, opened the meeting by stressing the value of building a network of partnership institutions that can share information and best…

Spotifeel is a new computer program to help scientists evaluate the relationship between your mood and your playlist, developed by NJIT rising senior Rain Nutt for her undergraduate summer research. Existing efforts tend to evaluate all listeners by the same set of music, whether they like the songs or not, so Nutt decided to gauge them on their own choices. Any loss of objectivity in a study would be countered by an increase in the test subject’s comfort level, she asserts. “You can work from where they are, instead of them coming to you,” she stated. The method gauges a Spotify user’s 25…

Jamie Payton is the new dean of NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing. She met with NJIT News for a Q&A session about her views on computing education and questions about current events in computing. The following transcript is lightly edited for clarity. Her Roadmap to NJIT NJIT News: Northern New Jersey is incredibly dense and diverse. How do you like it here so far? Jamie Payton: I do really like it! I've lived in Philadelphia for a number of years. I really understand that style of interaction. One of the things I found — I grew up in Oklahoma — it's a very different style of…

An international collaboration seeks to innovate the future of how a mechanical man’s best friend interacts with its owner, using a combination of AI and edge computing called edge intelligence. The project is sponsored through a one-year seed grant from the Institute for Future Technologies (IFT), a partnership between New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).  Assistant Professor Kasthuri Jayarajah in NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing is researching how to design a socially assistive model of her Unitree Go2 robotic dog that will…

Materium Technologies, a startup company with deep NJIT roots, is bringing data science innovations into the slowly evolving field of solar energy panels. Startups are always a gamble, but the Materium team has a good hand, with two pair of Highlanders — recent alumni Sheldon Fereira (M.S. ‘23) and Scott Daniel (M.S. ‘24), advised by Professor Nuggehalli Ravindra and Adjunct Instructor Michael Jaffe. Their collective scientific expertise spans the worlds of artificial intelligence, applied physics, biomedical engineering, and semiconductors. Their idea evolved throughout 2023 and the…

The latest graduate studies rankings from U.S. News & World Report continue to boost the national standing of New Jersey Institute of Technology in the fields of engineering and computer science, with both programs ranking in the top 100. NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering (NCE) ranks No. 80 on the publication’s list of the Best Engineering Schools in the U.S. — the ninth consecutive year that NCE has made the top 100. “NJIT’s enduring placement in the top 100 reflects our intentional investment in hiring first-rate faculty, building and maintaining world-class research facilities and…

In data analysis, it’s the outlier information that is usually the most interesting, yet sometimes that information goes unrecognized by the most common evaluation methods because they make inaccurate assumptions. But now Michael Houle, a senior university lecturer at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Ying Wu College of Computing, along with collaborators in Australia, Denmark and Serbia have become outliers themselves for developing the math to prove that breaking those assumptions can work better than conventional methods. “Outlier detection, one of the most fundamental tasks in data…

New Jersey Institute of Technology served up a full day of fanfare as its advanced degree graduates walked across the stage in the Wellness and Events Center in three commencement ceremonies on May 15. The 2024 class comprises more than 1,400 graduates and reflects the institution’s steady growth and upward trajectory. NJIT Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs John Pelesko, participating in his first commencement exercises as provost, called the ceremonies to order. Pelesko, himself a 1997 alumnus of NJIT as the very first Ph.D. graduate in mathematical sciences, implored…

New Jersey Institute of Technology has named Jamie Payton, professor and chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Temple University, to lead its Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) as dean beginning July 1, 2024. YWCC is presently the largest college at NJIT and is a key element of NJIT's drive to become a nexus of innovation under its new strategic plan. Its three departments, Computer Science, Data Science, and Informatics, prepare students to enter burgeoning fields that also are research priorities of NJIT, such as software engineering, cybersecurity, information…

For two decades, the Ying Wu College of Computing Capstone Program has been an instrumental part of NJIT’s academic experience. The program places students in real-world assignments with leading companies, government organizations and community stakeholders to produce creative, multidisciplinary-driven solutions. A capstone project is a graduation requirement for all seniors with options to work on sponsor company or organization assigned proposals, choose the CISCO entrepreneurship track (using CISCO based platforms) for solving problems in network and information security, or create their…