NJIT's Robotics Club took home gold at their first competition held here in Newark, besting the competition which included Dartmouth, Rutgers, and Seton Hall universities. The victory qualifies Highlander robotics for the World Championships, April 27-29 in Dallas. The club also qualified in 2020 but that event was canceled due to the COVID pandemic. "We received a lot of good feedback from the people who attended," club president Umair Khan said. "The practice court we chose had just the right space for a VEX U competition. Overall, we exceeded our expectations for our first ever VEX U…

New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Paul Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center and the Martin Tuchman School of Management hosted their first “Innovation in Real Estate” symposium, a day featuring academic leaders, government officials and technology, real estate and construction professionals. The theme of innovation was made clear early by Ron Bekkerman, strategic advisor and former CTO of Cherre Inc., a real estate data integration platform. Bekkerman, one of the earliest data scientists to jump into real estate, says his field is about repeatedly extracting…

NJIT’s Career Development Services hosted its marquee event, again besting attendance and participation numbers over its previous career fair. Taking a page out of the logistics-improvement playbook of participating companies like UPS, Johnson & Johnson, Raytheon and others, CDS implemented changes to improve candidate and employer efficiency and experience. The event included the introduction of Fast Pass, a program which allows for pre-registration sign-in to alleviate initial queuing, a complete redesign of the physical layout to reduce choke points in movement, and extended the event…

A new event on campus, Byte into Hardware, aims to remind us of the joy in exploring hacker culture's physical roots. The hardware hackathon will take place April 1-2 with themes focusing on accessibility and sustainability. Breadboards, microcontrollers and sensors will be everywhere, in contrast to the annual NJIT ACM chapter's HackNJIT, which skews to the software side. Registration is here. Student organizers are from the electrical and computer engineering department, and specifically from the NJIT IEEE chapter. But it's open to all, as there are there are bountiful hardware angles…

Since 2011, NJIT alumnus Marc K. Raoul ’10, an emergency management specialist for FEMA, has traveled across the U.S. and its territories to help communities recover and rebuild following hurricanes, floods and pandemics. A veteran of Hurricanes Sandy (2012), Irma (2017) and Maria (2017), he’s been a damage assessor, a disaster recovery planner and a proposal reviewer for towns and cities in New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, Missouri, California, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He was back at NJIT in 2021 to help operate FEMA’s campus-based COVID-19 vaccination…

Ecevit Bilgili, a professor of chemical and materials engineering who boosts the therapeutic efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs through nanoengineering, while also lowering the cost to design and manufacture them, has been elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). In his Particle Engineering and Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology Laboratory, Bilgili and his team develop, for example, nanoparticle formulations and processes that enable the immediate release of poorly water-soluble drugs and enhance the performance of long-acting injectable drugs. “We work with…

NJIT's Entrepreneur Society hosts an annual startup job fair, providing students with the opportunity to pursue careers and meet directly with the founders of new local companies. Hundreds of students attend, many looking for the perfect match, while others were there to network or learn about the startup experience from the dozens of companies present. Aravindakshan Sarma, studying for an M.S. in information systems, said he's looking for a full-time job and prefers working at a startup rather than a large company. "I'm trying to see if I fit somewhere … Probably as a data analyst or…

By Deric Raymond and Perla Alay Cut, color, clarity and carat are the four Cs of the diamond industry. Aether, a new company producing lab-grown diamonds, is pushing to add one more — carbon origin. As the demand for sustainable and ethically sourced products continues to rise, the market for lab-grown diamonds has also grown. While Aether is one of several companies producing lab-grown diamonds, they are the leader in sustainability. Aether is the first carbon negative diamond company, a deeply personal goal for Aether’s chief technology officer and NJIT alumnus Anthony Ippolito. Ippolito…

The robotics club at New Jersey Institute of Technology is hosting a Vex U competition in March that's open to university teams from around the world. Hosting their own event has been a longtime goal for the current crop of NJIT robotics club members, along with the generation before them. But now, after reaching the World Championship level in 2020 and substantially growing their club membership, officer Yash Patel believes it's time to produce their own show. "I'm expecting 150-200 people," said Patel, who serves as the event organizer, team captain and robotics club treasurer. Early…

Two of New Jersey Institute of Technology’s online graduate programs placed among the top 50 in this year's U.S. News & World Report rankings of American universities, with another breaking into the top 100. NJIT was ranked No. 29 for its information technology programs, a two place jump from last year; and No. 47 for engineering, a 16-place rise. In addition, NJIT’s online master’s business program was ranked No. 95, and the online MBA was No. 132. All ranked programs saw improved scores over last year, according to the publication. "NJIT’s online graduate programs consistently rank…