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New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) emerged triumphant at the recent American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Metropolitan Student Symposium, showcasing their engineering prowess and securing top positions across multiple competitions.

Held at Stony Brook University from April 12-14, the symposium featured competition among 13 universities from New Jersey and New York. NJIT students, under the guidance of several advisors, demonstrated exceptional skills and innovation, earning accolades in various categories and earning spots in society-wide finals.

An all-freshman team, Rackify, was the top NJIT winner and third overall at this year’s MakeNJIT hardware hackathon, creating a smart bicycle rack that automatically locks your ride by activating an RFID reader and extending an arm through the spokes or frame.

Accomplished computer science and engineering professors at New Jersey Institute of Technology were among the featured speakers at a conference about creating “smart” cities that was organized by two centers of NJIT’s Martin Tuchman School of Management: the Leir Research Institute and Hub for Creative Placemaking.

Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Guiling “Grace” Wang talked about her research into developing responsive traffic signals whose timing adjusts based on the volume of traffic. Artificial intelligence is central to that project.

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.

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?

Rizwan Baig, chief engineer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, visited NJIT to give a presentation on building the 21st-century transportation system. His talk, covering the architectural, design, construction and asset management aspects of the agency, highlighted the agency’s plan to revitalize infrastructure that is essential to economic growth and vitality.

Two NJIT projects have been awarded as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) Program. The $1.2 million program funded 16 different student-based projects throughout the country to research and develop innovative solutions that address environmental and public health challenges.

The NJIT projects will tackle water quality and the detection of “forever chemicals” in the air. 

Jorge Alberto Medina '23 grew up with electronics. He recalls watching his dad disassemble and rebuild electronic equipment, and leafed through stacks of monthly electronics magazines as his light reading material. The exposure grew into a passion, and Medina set his sights on a journey that ultimately brought him to NJIT.

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.

It has been close to 50 years since Bob Medina ’75 graduated from NJIT as an engineer, and when he looks back at his journey, he marvels at how NJIT gave him the tools to excel. In fact, he still has the slide rule he used in class, in the days before calculators were allowed and laptops existed.