NJIT Honors College Creates Interdisciplinary Research Pipelines

There’s a formula for summer fun. For most undergraduates, it includes shore town getaways, hikes, Netflix, and general frolicking. At NJIT, research is the missing variable. It’s become a summer tradition, as much part of the culture as pizza and bagels.

Undergraduates at NJIT enjoy a high degree of interdisciplinary research training throughout the year, but summer is a time to hone skills that can turn research into real world solutions. Several undergraduate research, innovation, and design (URI) programs are at students’ fingertips and the eight-week Honors Summer Research Institute (HSRI) at the Albert Dorman Honors College offers individualized training rarely found elsewhere. It’s part of an interdisciplinary research pipeline that NJIT has painstakingly built over the course of decades.

“It’s not just how you do the research, but how you communicate it,” said Lorna Ronald, director of honors advising & prestigious fellowships. “You’re not going to get funding to do your research if you can’t talk about your research.”

That funding component is important. With more funding comes more research. The goal of the Honors College is to ensure that undergraduates can develop proof-of-concept prototypes, learn the ropes of peer review, and prepare to eventually pitch their research to gain funding. It’s a sort of pipeline that pumps undergraduates into prestigious fellowships and academic programs across the world.

Many students have taken their research experience to a masters or doctoral program, or even straight to a private business after college. NJIT is proud of this. The school is leading the state in scholarships from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program, a federally funded program to fund highly qualified mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.

"In the case of research, you’re creating knowledge, that’s an incredible thing to be doing. So, we have undergrads taking on projects that in other places graduate students would be doing." - Lorna Ronald

“We’re being strategic here,” said Ronald. “Any of these funded research programs will help the students explore other opportunities. The intent is to do it early on and it can take them places.”

NJIT offers several URI programs that include McNair Research Fellowships, Provost Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowships, URI Student Seed Grant Program, New Jersey Innovation Acceleration, and grants from the National Science Foundation. These programs culminate every summer in the URI Summer Research Symposium and award ceremony.

“I loved seeing my peers in HSRI at the symposium,” said Nishita Vootukuru, a biochemistry student in the HSRI program who received an honorable mention award in bioscience and bioengineering for her project, titled, “Effects of Osteopontin on Cardiomyocytes as Related to Myocardial Infarction.” “After weeks of reviewing each other's projects virtually, I enjoyed getting to connect with the HSRI cohort in-person and watching the final presentations.”

Vootukuru is one case of HSRI success. She follows in the footsteps of her predecessors, such as Joey Torsiello, a senior majoring in applied physics and mathematics who went from HSRI, to the URI Provost Summer Research program, then won the Goldwater Scholarship. This summer, he was awarded the Fulbright Canada-MITACS Globalink scholarship.

Core to HSRI’s effectiveness is its interdisciplinary framework. Students have a front-row seat to various academic disciplines, as do the URI Symposium judges who awarded Elizabeth Kowalchuk an honorable mention for combining her studies in architecture and history to research early 20th Century German architecture in medieval historical context. Or take Jada Evans, who studies law, technology, and culture. She teamed up with Pia Kapoor, a biology student to research indigenous data sovereignty and accessibility in Brazil. 

“I had the chance to learn about a lot of others’ research,” said Shafia Talat, who participated in the 2021 HSRI program and presented research on urban food forests. “It helped me think differently about my own research. That was for the betterment for all of our research. It brought out the best in us.”

It’s not hard to see the pipeline at work. Sreya Sanyal, a senior studying biology and history, and URI Provost Summer Research Fellow, placed second at the research symposium for her project, “Opsonization of SARS-CoV-2 to develop a COVID-19 antiviral.”

The Provost Summer Research Fellowship gave Sanyal what the pipeline is designed for: funding.

“I really appreciate the funding,” said Sanyal. “It had a really big effect on me. I found it helped connect me to other labs. There is a lot of opportunity for collaboration in terms of techniques and better materials and getting perspective on your work. As an undergraduate, it’s a great opportunity to work like that over the summer, get paid, and gain networking opportunities.”

Sanyal’s experience is what NJIT academics and advisors call a “high-impact practice” that excels at a medium-sized technical college with lots of research funding and undergraduates.

“This is a massive strength of NJIT,” said Ronald. “Certain types of experiences really transform your undergraduate education. Research is one of them. Study-abroad is another. They really are transformative. You get ownership. In the case of research, you’re creating knowledge, that’s an incredible thing to be doing. So, we have undergrads taking on projects that in other places graduate students would be doing.”