Honors Student Is the First at NJIT to Receive Prestigious Fellowship

Donald “Will” Andrews, NJIT’s first-ever recipient of the Humanity in Action Fellowship, attributes his selection for the distinguished summertime program to his choice of study at the university: industrial engineering.

“There probably weren’t that many engineers that applied … so that made my application stand out from the start — like, ‘hey, look, we have an engineer from Kentucky applying for this social sciences fellowship in Europe,’” said Andrews laughingly.

Senior Success: Samantha Lomuscio, Cosmic Gamma-Ray Hunter

Exploring remote, exotic locations is a long-standing tradition among college students. For applied physics major Samantha Lomuscio ’20, that destination during her senior year has been Jupiter, nearly 390 million miles away.

Working with astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where she began conducting high-energy astrophysics research last summer, her goal has been to detect the solar system’s largest planet in a way that has never been done successfully — through gamma-ray emissions.

Students' Unique Platform for Face-Shield Production Hits Close to Home

For the students behind The CommonHealth Project — a collaborative, community-based initiative aimed at rallying volunteers for production and distribution of urgently needed personal protective equipment (PPE) — the pandemic is deeply personal. Mark Pothen ’22, a mechanical engineering major at NJIT, for example, hears stories from his mother, a physician working on the front line at Mountainside Hospital.

Senior Success: Sravya Vegunta Is Going to Medical School

“It’s a little bittersweet to have to leave without being able to say proper goodbyes to everyone,” lamented Sravya Vegunta, a senior Albert Dorman Honors College (ADHC) scholar, about graduating from NJIT during the coronavirus pandemic.

“But I’m definitely glad to be moving on to that next stage, because it’s something that I’ve been looking forward to for so long,” she added, speaking from her Monroe Township home where she is staying inside with her parents and younger brother.