Undergrad Exploring Human-Disrupted Ecosystems Becomes NJIT's First Udall Scholar
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 scholars from across the U.S.
“Receiving the Udall Scholarship, especially as NJIT’s first recipient, is both humbling and exciting,” said Shahinian ’26, an environmental science major and Albert Dorman Honors College scholar from Somerville, N.J. “Both of these opportunities give me a platform to keep exploring how we can better understand and protect our ecosystems.”
At NJIT, Shahinian is exploring human-disrupted ecosystems — specifically, how pollinators inhabiting New Jersey’s roughly 10,000 abandoned or underused industrial sites, known since the 1990s as brownfields, are impacted.
It’s already led to a notable discovery: bees from brownfield sites have noticeably shrunken heads — narrower than those from natural areas — possibly reflecting developmental effects from exposure to heavy metals and other pollutants common at these locations.
“New Jersey’s native bees are declining, and a significant portion of their limited habitat is polluted brownfields,” Shahinian explained. “The narrower heads we found in brownfield bees may suggest pollution is harming their development and possibly their ability to pollinate. Since native bees support so many plants and wildlife, it’s crucial to understand how pollution and land use affect them if we want to protect and restore these populations.”
Shahinian’s research began as a first-year student in Associate Professor of Biology Phil Barden’s lab, examining Pheidole ants preserved in 16-million-year-old amber from the Dominican Republic.
The project, comparing the anatomy of the long-extinct ant species with their modern relatives, offered Shahinian an initial window into evolutionary patterns and traits linked to extinction risk.
“My goal at the Barden Lab has been to find out what morphologies are more likely to go extinct, with the hope of shedding light on the modern insect extinction crisis,” Shahinian explained — a crisis highlighted in a recent analysis showing insect populations have declined by 45% over the past four decades.
These questions led Shahinian to develop a new project in NJIT’s Urban Ecology Lab under biology professor Caroline DeVan.
“Dr. DeVan had collected hundreds of bee specimens from brownfield sites years ago and still had them preserved at the lab. At the same time, I’d been reading findings published last year showing how heavy metals from historic mines inFrance stunt brain development and cognition in bees,” Shahinian recalled.
“I saw an opportunity to start a new project and find out whether pollution at these brownfields had affected New Jersey’s bees in the same way.”
Uncovering Developmental Disruption in Brownfield Bees
Using morphometric and imaging techniques learned in the Barden Lab, Shahinian and a small team of NJIT undergraduates — Sabrina Gerace, Vita Infurna and Linda Morin — began analyzing specimens of the native species Halictus ligatus, collected by DeVan from the Meadowlands and Liberty State Park, among other sites, over a decade ago.
“It made sense to look for similar pollution effects in bees at these sites. Liberty State Park, for example, has an old train depot and the Meadowlands has a capped landfill, both sources of heavy metals in the soil,” Shahinian explained.
The project has included 60 female specimens, split evenly between brownfield and non-polluted greenfield sites — comparing traits such as head length, head width and intertegular distance (the gap between the two wing bases) as an indicator of body size.
Results showed that bees from brownfields not only exhibited narrower heads, but less physical variation overall than those from greenfields.
“These narrower heads potentially point to brain shrinkage from heavy metal pollution, which can harm bees’ foraging and pollination, and in turn, threaten the survival of native plant life,” Shahinian said. “We also found less trait diversity in brownfield bees, possibly because capped landfills and other disruptions at these sites create homogenous, compacted soils where they nest.”
“In contrast, greenfields usually have diverse soils that support a wider range of bee traits and body sizes. Studies show species with narrow trait ranges are more vulnerable because they’re less able to adapt to environmental changes.”
The research won the undergraduate poster award at the 2024 Entomological Society of America regional conference in Harrisburg, Pa., but Shahinian says there’s still much to learn.
“We’d like to resample these sites now to see if these changes have persisted or gotten worse over the past decade,” he said. “If the differences are growing, it might mean the problem is escalating. If they’re stable, it could point to ongoing developmental issues.
“We’re also exploring Geographic Information System data to analyze pollution levels alongside plant metrics, which could offer insight into resource availability over time and help explain the morphological differences we’re observing.”
In addition to his pollinator research, Shahinian has studied how certain bacteria can clean up mercury pollution under Assistant Professor Lijie Zhang through NJIT’s BioSMART REU, and researched fungal pesticides for invasive earthworm species in Assistant Professor Kyle Wickings’ lab at Cornell Agritech under the Cornell Summer Scholars Program.
This summer, he will investigate potential hormone-disrupting effects of PFAS through Rutgers’ RISE and SURFprograms.
Outside the lab, Shahinian is vice president — and incoming president — of NJIT’s student chapter of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists, founded by Gerace and fellow environmental science major Alex Millo. The club organizes invasive species removal at local sites like Branch Brook Park and hosts events for students interested in environmental careers.
“It’s been rewarding to work with other NJIT students on local conservation projects,” said Shahinian, who after earning his bachelor's plans to pursue a Ph.D. focused on environmental disruptions, toxicology and conservation. “I hope to keep making an impact.”
