Engineering

From laptops to cars, society has come to rely on rechargeable batteries — and the demand is only growing. This surge means researchers are racing to figure out the most efficient ways to manage this type of energy storage. 

Wading into a parched stretch of the Pequannock River, Taylor VanGrouw got a jarring reminder of the fragility of New Jersey’s smaller waterways: a brown trout stranded in a shallow pool, too lethargic to swim away as he approached.

“As temperatures rise, dissolved oxygen levels decline, in the way a bottle of soda, when hot, can’t hold its fizz. Starved of oxygen, trout can’t feed or reproduce. As temperatures rise, they become more stressed and need more oxygen,” notes VanGrouw, an Albert Dorman Honors student majoring in mechanical engineering.

Several new aeronautical opportunities will provide hands-on training for New Jersey Institute of Technology students who look to the sky.

Starting this fall, NJIT will establish an official group of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary University Program, known as a flotilla. It will meet at Caldwell Airport and it's only the fifth air station out of 79 flotillas in the Auxiliary's first district, southern region, which covers metropolitan New York and beyond.

Increased computational power has dramatically improved climate modeling over the past several years, allowing scientists to better forecast long term climate evolution. Despite computers becoming faster and more efficient, cloud modeling was still a hazy prospect until a recent algorithmic improvement.

Anjali Khushalani worked in her native India as a project manager and process manager before arriving at New Jersey Institute of Technology last fall to pursue a master’s in engineering management.

Environmental safety and corporate interests tend not to match, but engineers at NJIT and Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev found a way to filter dangerous nitrate from water while also reducing the energy needed to create industrial ammonia.

Tiny particles in Earth’s atmosphere can have a big impact on climate. But understanding exactly how these aerosol particles form cloud drops and affect the absorption and scattering of sunlight is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in climate models. Ogochukwu (Ogo) Enekwizu, a postdoctoral research associate in the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, is trying to tame that complexity.

“Our task is to mimic what happens in the atmosphere by making a cloud in the lab,” she said.

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.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will receive more than $1 million for new initiatives that will bolster engineering education, as well as manufacturing and mechatronics apprenticeship training, under the federal spending bill signed by President Joe Biden.

The $1.7 trillion spending package carves out $1.3 million for the two new NJIT initiatives. The community college pre-engineering network initiative will develop community college-serving programs to strengthen the pathway and readiness for traditionally underserved students to pursue a STEM degree.