Applications to Ying Wu College of Computing Increased 50% Since 2019

Applications to study at Ying Wu College of Computing increased by 50% in the last two years.

The college received 2,979 applicants this year which is also an increase of 19% from 2020. Computer science, human-computer interaction and web/information systems also experienced large increases as individual majors.

There were 43% more applications requesting Albert Dorman Honors College status since 2019.

Activity related to the COVID pandemic was paramount in the 2020-2021 academic year. Professors James Geller and Yehoshua Perl, both of the computer science department, helped make the medical field's coronavirus ontology easier to understand by customizing software based on code written in their Structural Analysis of Biomedical Ontologies Center from 2015-2017. The developer at that time was postdoctoral researcher Christopher Ochs, who is now a senior software engineer at Nokia Bell Labs. Geller said the software will continue to be useful after a majority of people receive vaccinations and possibly for future pandemics.

Research from 20 years ago also came back into focus, with former NJIT associate dean Barry Cohen's work making its way into COVID vaccines. He was pivotal to developing an algorithm that enabled bioengineered stable messenger RNA, without which the current vaccines could not work.

The college's activities in the 2020-2021 calendar year also included the addition of free Android development courses taught by students, a virtual visit by elite technology investors, the announcement of a new major in data science and the creation of new special-interest groups from the student ACM chapter.

A student's Fulbright award for computer security, research into the reliability of artificial intelligence and further research into using virtual reality to assist vision-impaired people were also among the year's compelling developments.