Suraj Ghumwala will soon be the first cadet from NJIT's ROTC detachment commissioned into the U.S. Space Force. The computer engineering major from Rochelle Park said his childhood dream was to be an astronaut, and as the first person in his family born in the U.S. he felt a sense of service to the community, influenced by friends who also joined the military. Ghumwala chose NJIT because of its strong academics, affordability, commuting distance and diversity, and he truly felt a sense of belonging in his second semester when he switched from computer science to computer engineering…

The Assistant Speaker of the House of Representatives visited New Jersey Institute of Technology to get a closer look at how STEM education and research fuels the economic mobility of the city, region and country. U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-MA-05, toured NJIT’s Makerspace — the largest in the state — and heard from the university’s president-elect, senior vice provost of research, deans and representatives of its engineering and business schools, and its director of experiential learning. Collectively, they explained how a blend of STEM education, research and entrepreneurship primes…

A mobile medical care unit (M2CU) designed for COVID testing and vaccination is now seeing patients in a part of Queens where the infection rate is more than twice as high as in the rest of the borough. This month, Governor Kathy Hochul, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Martin Tuchman of the Tuchman Foundation, Oya Tukel of New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Martin Tuchman School of Management, and the New York City Housing Authority unveiled the city’s first implementation of the M2CU in Astoria Houses.  The M2CU project was conceived in response to challenges to clinical…

Techies call it the hands-on imperative — that the best learning is by doing — and the concept is something Mark Pothen, a mechanical engineering major, takes to heart. Pothen worked part-time this academic year as a business analyst for health care startup Axuall Inc., where he'll become an associate product manager after graduating from NJIT. Most engineers tell their story of growing up a tinkerer, whether it's electronics, Legos or just taking things apart to see how they work. Not so with Pothen, raised in diverse Teaneck, where his parents pushed him to study medicine and he planned…

There's Musk-level hype about autonomous vehicles, and then there's NJIT Associate Professor Joyoung Lee working through painstaking and vital research of how self-driving systems should behave at stop lights. He studies transportation systems as a whole, not self-driving cars specifically, but his current research makes traffic lights broadcast their intentions so artificially intelligent vehicles can decide whether to brake, maintain speed or accelerate — as the function of a yellow light is to clear the intersection, not make you screech to a halt. "That's our low-hanging fruit," said…

Scholarships enabled Jennifer Cabral and Dominic Bosi to overcome financial hurdles and study science and engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Cabral and Bosi are both first-generation students from working-class families. As such, they needed help to afford college. Generous donors supplied that, and once enrolled, they found their callings and are pursuing them with passion. Both undergraduates shared their stories at an annual NJIT brunch celebrating the impact of scholarships that also featured remarks from pioneering alumna R. Cynthia Pruett ’55 and President Joel S.…

NJIT’s student newspaper, The Vector, continues making its journalistic voice heard — the paper is the recipient of several awards from U.S. college media contests recently. The Vector was named the Corbin Gwaltney Award winner for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” (among large universities) at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 1 Mark of Excellence Awards, beating out competition from the likes of Hofstra University and Boston College.  Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) judges have praised the paper for its “visuality and a creative selection of…

The Hylander Requiem, a technology-filled cart atop mini monster wheels that is powered by self-generated hydrogen, will attempt to motor to victory this weekend at the regional round of the annual Chem-E-Car Competition. This year, Highlander Nation will be cheering loudly – and collectively – as the NJIT roadster competes against 14 other teams, including Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, on the NJIT campus, the host of the 2022 American Institute of Chemical Engineers mid-Atlantic Student Conference. The Hylander, which the team describes affectionately as “a…

Swallowing a pill is simple. Developing one the body will absorb into the bloodstream and deliver to the precise location, at the right concentration and in the optimal sequence is complex. The vast majority of pills are composed of powders, materials with properties of both solids and liquids, and they are tricky to design and manufacture because of their sometimes unpredictable behaviors. “Drugmakers face a number of fundamental problems,” says Rajesh Davé, a distinguished professor of chemical and materials engineering at NJIT who specializes in particle design. “Most drug molecules in…

U.S. News & World Report has released its 2023 rankings for the nation’s top graduate schools, with NJIT ranked among the best for graduate degree programs in engineering. The university slots in this year at No. 86 — up two positions from the prior year and 25 positions in the past eight years — and has been included on the distinguished list since 2003. The 2023 rankings mark the seventh consecutive year NJIT has appeared in the top 100. NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering (NCE), which has been providing engineering education for over 100 years, offers more than 30 master’s and Ph.D.…