NJIT Achieves Record Number of Students Earning Global Scholarships and Fellowships

At New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), students always have had the option to apply for prestigious fellowships and awards, but the university has taken things to a new level over the last two years with 23 recipients of Fulbright, Goldwater, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Boren, Gilman, and other nationally competitive fellowships and scholarships. This year alone, 15 NJIT students have received these awards, putting NJIT on par with some of the most prestigious universities in the nation.

Over the past four years, the selection of NJIT students for highly competitive honors has progressed into a steady stream of accolades that set NJIT apart from most universities. While many of the NJIT students winning these awards are members of the university’s Albert Dorman Honors College, they are also transfer students and members of the Educational Opportunity Program.

As a result of increased support for student applications, NJIT’s prestigious fellowships and awards have grown substantially. For all years prior to 2018, there were 28 total prestigious fellowship recipients from NJIT. In the past four years, NJIT students have won 39 such awards.

In 2020, NJIT’s four Goldwater Scholars doubled the previous year’s total and were the most from any college or university in New Jersey, and second-most across the nation. In 2021, NJIT broke three of its Fulbright Scholarship records by submitting 11 applications, achieving six semifinalists (with a Fulbright Canada scholarship semifinalist making seven from NJIT), and having two winners. In 2019, NJIT students, for the first time, won both a Boren Scholarship and a Goldwater Scholarship in the same year. In 2022, NJIT received three NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, four Gilman scholarships and three Boren awards, equalling in one year the number of Boren awardees from all prior years.

The link between a growing number of student awardees and the upward rise of NJIT is part of a larger trajectory of success. During the past 10 years, NJIT has earned several institutional-level recognitions, including being named an R1 (most elite) Carnegie Classification research university, a designation shared by only 106 other public universities and three total universities in New Jersey. NJIT’s research expenditures have jumped over 50% since 2014 to more than $155 million annually. NJIT has risen to the No. 33 Best Value College in The Princeton Review rankings and is ranked among the top 50 public national universities by U.S. News & World Report.

For the 2021-2022 prestigious fellowship and award winner class, NJIT students submitted 53 applications and received 15 prestigious scholarships and fellowships, nearly doubling the previous year’s notable success. Recipients during the past two years include the following, with international destinations noted in parentheses:

Boren Scholarship

Hannah Benjamin - Human-Computer Interaction, Taiwan

Samuel Carlos - Computer Science, Mathematics, and History, Taiwan

Akhilesh Kootala - Mechanical Engineering, Latvia

Zachary Lane - History, Jordan

Shahil Patel - Biomedical Engineering, India

Fulbright Grant

Kaylin Wittmeyer - Digital Design, Canada

Fulbright-MITACS Scholarship

Joseph Torsiello - Mathematics and Physics, Canada

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Internship in Science and Engineering

Akhilesh Kootala - Mechanical Engineering

Meredith Westrich - Computer Science

Gilman Award

Micaela Quisbert Mendoza - Industrial Engineering, South Korea

Destiny Adeleye - Law, Technology & Culture, South Korea

Kiaja Jones - Law, Technology & Culture, South Korea

Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship

Abdul-Rahman Azizogli - Biology

Sreya Sanyal - Biology and History

Simone Bishara - Biochemistry

Vishva Rana - Mechanical Engineering

National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Training Award

Sreya Sanyal - Biology and History

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Daniela Bushiri - Chemical Engineering

Philip Zaleski (HM) - Mathematics

Gabriela De Carvalho - Biomedical Engineering

Ayushi Sangoi - Biomedical Engineering

Jehan Shalabi - Electrical Engineering