Engineering

Techies call it the hands-on imperative — that the best learning is by doing — and the concept is something Mark Pothen, a mechanical engineering major, takes to heart.

Pothen worked part-time this academic year as a business analyst for health care startup Axuall Inc., where he'll become an associate product manager after graduating from NJIT.

U.S. News & World Report has released its 2023 rankings for the nation’s top graduate schools, with NJIT ranked among the best for graduate degree programs in engineering. The university slots in this year at No. 86 — up two positions from the prior year and 25 positions in the past eight years — and has been included on the distinguished list since 2003. The 2023 rankings mark the seventh consecutive year NJIT has appeared in the top 100.

A small indigenous Ecuadorian community now has clean spring water thanks to a passionate group of engineering students at the NJIT Chapter of Engineers Without Borders. The initiative started in 2016 as part of an independent project led by Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Jay Meegoda. Students in his classes were tasked with the design and implementation of a spring cap to clean and increase the supply of water from a natural spring in the Cotopaxi Province. 

NJIT Associate Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Shawn Chester won the coveted Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which recognizes special achievement in applied mechanics for researchers under the age of 41.

Her 20s have been a busy time for Dina Ayman: earning two degrees at NJIT in the same year, working at Intel and Microsoft, teaching at her alma mater and starting a consultancy dedicated to diversity and inclusion.

Along the way, she achieved her dream of working at the intersection of engineering and technology, and became a role model for women interested in STEM. And now Forbes is recognizing all that, by naming her to its 2022 list of 30 Under 30 in Enterprise Technology.

A research paper on metal carbides and nitrides is paying dividends for NJIT’s Meng-Qiang Zhao — seven years after it was published.

For the third straight year, Zhao, an assistant professor of chemical and materials engineering at NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering, has made Clarivate’s list of Highly Cited Researchers. Why? Chiefly because peers continue to cite the paper, which introduced a faster and safer way to synthesize MXenes, a family of novel 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides, according to Zhao.

Andressa Marangon, a senior electrical and computer engineering major at New Jersey Institute of Technology, won a $1,000 scholarship from the IEEE Electron Devices Society for her role in improving the brightness and power consumption of blue LEDs that technologically lag behind their red and green cousins.

That might not affect your iPhone or TV anytime soon, she said, but it's important for applications such as healthcare products and industrial machinery.

Nearly half of adolescents and young adults with lingering symptoms of concussion suffer from an eye coordination disorder that causes blurred and double vision, headaches and difficulties concentrating. There is no proven method for treating the condition when it occurs after a head injury.

Xiaoyang Xu, a chemical and materials engineer at NJIT who specializes in nanomedicines, has secured a $1 million award from the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation to develop the next generation of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.

Xu’s immediate goal is to improve protections against COVID-19. He is designing a nano-sized delivery vehicle for gene-based medications that can be stored much longer and at higher temperatures than the current mRNA shots deployed against the virus, including by freeze-drying.