Brendan Dente ’18, a chemical engineer with a talent for product design and a yen for travel, has won a Fulbright scholarship to spend the next two years earning a master’s degree at one of Europe’s major STEM hubs, the Technological University of Delft (TU Delft) in the Netherlands. He intends to spend his time there “delving deeply into molecular engineering,” a subject that focuses on the arrangement of molecules in chemical compounds in order to improve products. “I’m interested in things that you see and experience every day, such as personal care products and food,” says Dente, who…

Tara Alvarez, a professor of biomedical engineering 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 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Alvarez joined approximately 150 new fellows, who represent the top 2 percent of the medical and biological engineering community, at an induction ceremony this past weekend at AIMBE’s 2018 annual meeting at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. "It was very inspiring hearing about all of the advances in so many…

An interdisciplinary engineering team developing an enzyme-blocking drug designed to reduce levels of LDL, or “bad cholesterol,” was the winner of this year’s TechQuest challenge, announced this week at NJIT’s sixth annual Innovation Day. Senior Victoria Harbour, a chemical engineering major, and junior Patricia Iglesias-Montoro, a biomedical engineering student, (below) are synthesizing and testing a small molecule, hydrogel therapy to prevent PCSK9, an enzyme circulating in the bloodstream, from interfering with the body’s mechanisms for metabolizing cholesterol. The pair notes that people…

Innovation Day is a showcase of cutting-edge, student-led research that includes inventions that improve lives, novel business ideas, computer games and fundamental scientific research. This year, nearly three dozen student projects – from mapping applications for the transportation industry, to human control interfaces for surrogate robots, to novel drugs that target cholesterol – will be on display in the Campus Center on April 10. A growing number of these undergraduate researchers are taking their innovations on the road: to technology conferences, along commercialization pathways such…

INSTRUCTIVE BIOMATERIALS AND ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING LABORATORY Despite significant efforts, the lack of organs and tissues for transplantation poses a major hurdle in medicine. The Instructive Biomaterials and Additive Manufacturing Laboratory (IBAM-Lab) develops novel approaches to address this gap. The lab designs biodegradable polymers and hydrogels with userdefined and tunable properties; engineers medical devices, tissues and organs using 3D-bioprinting; develops material-based technologies to control stem cell differentiation; and fabricates patient-specific in vitro disease models for…

“One of the things that I’m pretty passionate about is women being competitive and not having negative connotations around being competitive… I think that sometimes women don’t embrace that enough,” said Erika Taugher ’08, ’09, a star soccer alumna who earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and a master’s in international business. “Being competitive, I think it gives you an advantage and I think it helps to motivate you… For me it gives me some fire, and that definitely applied on the soccer field and…at NJIT in terms of wanting to get top grades.” Taugher brings that same spirit —…

Who better to develop ways to encourage young people to watch after their health than other young people? Such was the reasoning behind the first-ever Horizon BlueCross BlueShield of New Jersey’s (BCBSNJ) Health Care Transformation Challenge, conducted last year. The contest asked undergraduate students attending a New Jersey higher-education institution to submit innovative marketing or technology ideas tied to one of three health care-related activities: shopping for health plans, getting preventive care or taking advantage of wellness benefits. Sixteen teams of two to four students from…

This July, soon-to-be NJIT graduate Michael Bouzaglo will be happily settled in Raleigh, N.C., as an associate systems engineer (SE) for CISCO, a leader in the information technology (IT) and networking industry. He will receive training through the CISCO Sales Associate Program (CSAP) for his new role — a hard-earned dream position for the computer technology major, who calls himself “a geek at heart.” “You don’t see CISCO products in your average Best Buy or Radio Shack or what have you…all of their products are sold from person to person [by CISCO representatives],” explained Bouzaglo. “…

The Murray Center for Women in Technology at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will hold a one-day Women Designing the Future conference—“The Environment: Doing More with Less”—on Friday, March 23. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. in the university’s Campus Center Ballrooms A and B. Conference participants will have opportunities to interact with women scientists, government leaders, entrepreneurs and social justice activists as they outline the near-future challenges posed by accelerating climate change, including disaster preparedness and basic food and water security.…

For more than 40 years, in a career that has included awards and special recognition for innovative design and successful delivery of major infrastructure projects, Alvaro J. Piedrahita, P.E. has successfully led technical design professionals on multi-million dollar transportation infrastructure projects for major airports, highways, bridges, transit and rail, and support facilities worldwide. Piedrahita has remained active in the development of large-scale projects, such as the design and construction of the New Northside Runway at Miami International Airport, his technical advisory role on…