NJIT’s largest and oldest college invited students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends to join together for NCE’s 25th Salute to Engineering Excellence celebration. The annual event honors the contributions and impact of the NCE community and features the college’s upcoming star students, dedicated faculty and staff, impactful alumni and industry partners.
NCE Dean Moshe Kam’s message set the tone for the evening, affirming the engineering college’s dedication to a diverse student body and faculty makeup in light of the public discourse surrounding diversity initiatives in education. Reflecting the university commitment to DEI goals, Kam highlighted NJIT’s latest incoming class — underrepresented minorities account for a record 42% — as a demonstration of the positive impact of NJIT and NCE policies.
“NCE is known for its contributions to human welfare and the civic infrastructure, from transportation to water resources and from pharmaceutics to signal processing and medical imaging,” said Kam. “While these are the areas where NCE has historically had the greatest impact, public deliberations … on DEI policies may require more of our energy and time in the near future. The faculty and leadership of NCE will be at the forefront of this debate, enthusiastically and willingly.”
Alumni Honorees
It is the college’s distinct privilege to search through NCE’s more than 40,000 living alumni to identify the select few that will receive annual recognition. This year, four Highlanders have been chosen for their notable contributions to the engineering society here at NJIT, and abroad. Click their names to read their bios.
NCE Outstanding Alumni Awards
Andrew P. Christ, P.E. ’94, ’01
Mike McDermott ’88, ’89
Newark College of Engineering Spirit Award
Marjorie Perry ’05
Outstanding Industry Partnership Award
Urban Tech Consulting Engineers, Wei Wang ’95, Ph.D., P.E.
Faculty and Staff Honorees
Eight faculty and staff members of NCE were also recognized, highlighting their service to the students, the department and the university community. Faculty and staff bios can be found by jumping to page 11 in the program.
NCE Excellence in Teaching Award
Kathleen McEnnis
Saul K. Fenster Innovation in Engineering Education Award
Prateek Shekhar
NCE Outstanding Advising Award
Vivek Kumar
NCE Rising Star in Research Award
Angelo Tafuni
NCE Excellence in Teaching by an Adjunct Faculty Award
Yusuf Oni
NCE Outstanding Administrative Staff Award
Patrice Edwards
NCE Outstanding Support Staff Award
Monteria Bass
NCE Dean’s Service Award
Eric Hetherington
Student Honorees
Seven awards recognized 14 students plus a student organization. These outstanding awardees include students researching biomedical devices, prolific publishers and future industry leaders. Student bios start on page 19.
NCE Outstanding Student Organization Award
IEEE Student Chapter
Saul K. Fenster Innovation in Design Award
BME Capstone Team: Gabriela De Carvalho, Thinuri Fernando, Supriya Iyer, William Kuo, Ketan Patel
Madame Mau Outstanding Female Engineering Student Award
Chelsea Castillo
NCE Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award
Liang Zhang
NCE Outstanding Graduate Student Award
Jorge Medina
NCE Departmental Outstanding Seniors
Arun Aryal, Philip Baranowski, Nicholas Carrillo, Ymer Dinoshi, Elizabeth Mundkowsky, Justin Pace
NCE Outstanding Senior Award (Overall)
Elizabeth Mundkowsky
