The Princeton Review continues to recognize New Jersey Institute of Technology as one of the best universities in the U.S. NJIT is featured in this year’s edition of the educational services company’s guide, The Best 391 Colleges. Just 15% of all four-year colleges and universities made the guide, which NJIT has been in since its inception in 1992. The selections are listed alphabetically. The Princeton Review also recognizes NJIT in a string of national ”best” lists, including Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Public Schools), Top 20 Best Career Placement (Public Schools), Top 50 Game Design:…

A first-of-its-kind study traces the rise of ant- and termite-eaters, revealing how mammals returned to the evolutionary table — at least a dozen times — to hone traits for feasting on the social insect bonanza that exploded after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Mammals have developed some unusual eating habits over the past 100 million years, but a new study has uncovered the surprising lengths some have gone to satisfy one of the more peculiar — a taste for ants and termites. Findings published in Evolution reveal that mammals independently evolved specialized adaptations for…

Microplastics and nanoplastics — tiny fragments shed from everyday plastic products — are increasingly found in our food, water, soil and even inside the human body. Their accumulation has been linked to fertility issues, metabolic disorders and other potential health risks in animal models. Yet detecting these pollutants has remained a time-consuming challenge. To combat this challenge, researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers have developed a powerful new method that can detect microplastics and nanoplastics in as little as 10 seconds, using a streamlined approach…

Less than 13% of our plastic waste is truly recycled today, with most consumer plastics either downcycled into lower-quality products or joining the billions of tons discarded in landfills and oceans each year. But what if our plastics could be endlessly recycled, like aluminum? As Director of NJIT’s Polymer Laboratory for the Advancement of Sustainable Technology and Innovative Chemical Synthesis (PLASTICS), Trevor Del Castillo aims to do just that. His lab is developing new plastics with potential to be chemically recycled back into virgin plastic at the end of their life. The prospect,…

For the fifth straight year, New Jersey Institute of Technology is a Top 50 Best Value College in The Princeton Review’s annual ranking of public institutions. At No. 27, NJIT is the only university in New Jersey included in the Top 50 Public School ranking. The university has been a staple of The Princeton Review’s broader list of Best Value Colleges since its inception in 2018. That too is a highly selective list: less than a third of the universities and colleges that the review considered made the cut this year. In addition, NJIT is now top 10 on The Princeton Review’s list of the …

Jordan Hu ’89, CEO of RiskVal Financial Solutions, and a distinguished alumnus of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has been named the 2025 New Jersey winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. The honor celebrates entrepreneurs who are building and leading high-growth, innovative companies that are transforming industries and creating positive impact. Founded in 2001, RiskVal is a global software-as-a-service provider specializing in pre-trade fixed income analytics and portfolio risk management. Its flagship solutions — RVFI and RVPortfolio — deliver real-time…

How do organisms adapt — or fail to adapt — to dramatic environmental changes, particularly those caused by human activity? It’s a question driving Brock Shahinian’s research at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), leading to two of the nation’s most prestigious undergraduate honors: a 2025 Goldwater Scholarship and distinction as NJIT’s first-ever Udall Scholar. The Udall Scholarship honors Morris and Stewart Udall, recognizing future leaders in environmental fields, Tribal policy and health care, with 55 students nationwide chosen this year. The Goldwater Scholarship includes 441…

The Sun’s corona—the outermost layer of its atmosphere, visible only during a total solar eclipse—has long intrigued scientists due to its extreme temperatures, violent eruptions, and large prominences. However, turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere has caused image blur and hindered observations of the corona. A ground-breaking recent development by scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Solar Observatory (NSO), and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), is changing that by using adaptive optics to remove the blur. As published in Nature Astronomy, this…

Katya Cunha took the stage at Commencement 2025 amid a wave of major honors — NJIT’s Presidential Award, selection as Jordan Hu College of Science and Liberal Arts' gonfalon carrier and the sole national recipient of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors Undergraduate Award, a distinction that may now help launch her career as a forensic chemist. Cunha said a pivotal moment in her incredibly successful undergrad journey came at the end of her first year when she watched NJIT’s President’s Medal winners honored at Commencement 2022 — a medal awarded to just one undergraduate and…

Alexis Palmere is riding the wave of excitement from commencement day, and with good reason. The biochemistry major from West Orange graduated summa cum laude and is set to begin her chemistry Ph.D. studies at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall. When asked about her personal NJIT highlight, Palmere pointed to her research. “I always knew I wanted to be in a STEM career, which brought me here, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. Biochemistry just fits all my interests in one major. Starting to do research at NJIT kind of changed my whole perspective on my next steps. I…