Alongside the wave of excitement at Commencement 2022, NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts recently decorated their star students at its annual awards ceremony. Here, a diverse group of graduates who shared CSLA’s Outstanding Student Award look back on their NJIT journey and the successes they’ll take with them. Linda Msinjili, Biology B.S.   Where did you grow up and what led you to NJIT? I grew up in Tanzania and moved to the U.S. when I was twelve years old. My interest in NJIT came…

The bachelor’s that Donald “Will” Andrews earned at New Jersey Institute of Technology is in industrial engineering, but his heart is in international development. The 2022 graduate’s interest in global issues traces back to high school, when he participated in the Model United Nations, and accelerated after his second year at NJIT, when he tackled a Humanity in Action Fellowship that examined democracy and pluralism in modern Germany in the context of the Holocaust. The summer 2020 fellowship was to take him to Berlin, but alas, COVID-19 shifted it to Zoom instead. Now, his sights are set…

Marcos Molina, a chemical engineer with a penchant for complicated algorithms, made a tough call when deciding among Ph.D. programs at several graduate Ivy League institutions. In the end, he chose to pursue theoretical and computational research at Princeton. “It allows me to be closer to family and friends, and I enjoyed the atmosphere when I visited,” said Molina, who has been a star researcher in Professor Gennady Gor’s research laboratory.  Gor recognized his potential even as a first-year student and Molina hit the ground running. His very first project led to what student…

Jada Evans had a plan when she arrived at New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2019 and achieved it – and then some – ­in just three years. Beyond a finding a major that matched her dual interests in law and technology and honing her skills as a writer, the Albert Dorman Honors College Scholar immersed herself in campus and real-world opportunities, be it clubs, an internship, mentoring high school students or working as a teaching assistant. Such service and scholarship earned her the Spirit of “Doc” Award from the College of Science and Liberal Arts, the Albert Dorman Future Leader Award…

Crisis presents opportunity, and given the pandemic, war in Ukraine, structural racism, climate change and questions around the world’s supply of energy, food and water, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson called on the Class of 2022 at New Jersey Institute of Technology to take on such challenges with the goal of improving lives. “The possibilities before you are very great. The needs of humanity also are very great. And we are counting on you to help us meet them,” said Jackson, who has led RPI since 1999. “So, as you go about your lives and your careers, let…

Pradnya Desai, a senior computer science major, made it her mission to accomplish as much as possible during her four years at NJIT, amassing an impressive resume that includes multiple awards and recognitions for her work combining technological invention with a desire to positively affect  society. Her most recent achievement, a startup idea called Ad-Connect, recently won the Audience Choice Award for Best Pitch at the 2022 University Pitch Competition of The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE-NJ), which includes $500 and a one-year membership to TiE. The project previously received a $3,000…

Sreya Sanyal ’22 is right where she wants to be in the fight against cancer — at the cutting-edge of medical research. She’ll soon be using the breakthrough gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, often described as “genetic scissors”, to study human disease as a post baccalaureate researcher with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after graduation. For Sanyal, whose parents met and graduated from medical school in India, her journey toward a career as a physician-scientist specializing in cancer biology has deep roots, beginning at the age of 10.  “My mom was an oncologist who was…

Charis Hwang packed a lot into her four years studying business at New Jersey Institute of Technology, including three internships and a cooperative educational experience. That thick undergraduate resumé may explain why even before completing an accelerated master’s program, she landed a job with global consulting firm PwC. In fact, her last internship, during the summer of 2021, was at PwC, where she found a calling. “What I really loved about my internship was that each day was never quite the same, I was working on tasks with direct impact for our client and I was constantly…

Sydne Nance's journey from NJIT architectural summer camp to track star to chapter president to professional designer was fueled by the confidence she gained through the university's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP). Nance, an Albert Dorman Honors scholar of Westampton, New Jersey, will start full-time at Studio 1200 after graduation, a Short Hills-based interior design firm founded in 2006 that takes on a variety of projects ranging from small residential to large hotel renovations. Nance has been serving as an architectural intern at Studio 1200 since August, gaining valuable work…

Joseph Kennedy has arms for volleyball, but now he's also armed with a B.S. in business from Martin Tuchman School of Management and will make Georgetown University his next stop for an M.S. in finance. Kennedy, from Tucson, Ariz., discovered at 15 that he preferred the rush of volleyball more than the deliberacy of golf, which was his childhood passion. He also found that among 50 schools offering Division 1 men's volleyball, only NJIT provided the high-caliber academics of Albert Dorman Honors College and proximity to Wall Street. Off he traveled to Newark, carrying so many high school…