Sreya Sanyal ’22 is right where she wants to be in the fight against cancer — at the cutting-edge of medical research. She’ll soon be using the breakthrough gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, often described as “genetic scissors”, to study human disease as a post baccalaureate researcher with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after graduation.

For Sanyal, whose parents met and graduated from medical school in India, her journey toward a career as a physician-scientist specializing in cancer biology has deep roots, beginning at the age of 10. 

For biology graduate Xavier Reyes, his decision to hang up his lab coat in exchange for overalls to become an organic farmer is the best way he can move the needle on sustainability.

NJIT’s Career Development Services recognized both a graduate student and undergrad in its annual intern and co-op of the year awards.

The grad student, Pooja Kittanakere Balaji ’22, is pursuing a master’s in computer science, while the undergrad, Rivka Farrell ’23, is majoring in biology.

CDS honored Farrell for her work as a research intern at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute during the summer of 2021, and Balaji for her role in a cooperative educational experience at Siemens Digital Industries between June and December 2021.

NJIT has landed some unexpected residents recently, and they’ll be getting plenty of “airtime” as they settle into their new home. In fact, they’ll have their own channel where you can check them (and their new crib) out, 24/7. 

Two red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) have begun a rare urban nest on a sixth-story ledge of the campus’s Albert Dorman Honors College (ADHC) Residence Hall on Colden Street. 

Social distancing is nothing new in the time of COVID. But new research of the well-studied zebrafish (Danio rerio) has captured a previously undocumented behavior of the animal that takes such measures to the extreme — and the end result resembles the frenzy of a circle pit typically associated with heavy metal concert-goers.

Researchers record and model the electrical activity of circadian clock neurons in a day-active animal for the first time — a breakthrough toward better understanding what makes the circadian biological clock in humans and other diurnal species tick.

They’ve famously survived the vacuum of space, and even returned to life after being frozen for decades in Antarctic moss. But as hard as it is to kill the bizarre microscopic animal, the tardigrade, it’s harder to find one fossilized. In fact, only two have ever been discovered and formally named — until now.

It wasn’t more than a few months after she graduated with a biology degree in May of 2016 that NJIT alumna Pamela Carman swapped the university’s labs and lecture halls for a classroom all her own, just minutes from campus at Newark’s East Side High School. 

Since then, Carman has become the driving force behind an up-and-coming curriculum that is training the city’s high school seniors in the latest investigative techniques used by professional forensic scientists.

Already, she’s earned award-winning success along the way.

Players on the Highlander Chess Club at NJIT offer different reasons for the game’s appeal — its competitiveness, the mental challenge, the feeling of control — but are united on the ultimate reason: the thrill of victory.

“It feels good when you deliver a checkmate,” explained Lucas Scalora ’22, the club’s vice president. Or, as club President Jeffrey Luk ’24, put it, more bluntly, “What’s fun about chess is beating other people.”

The date is May 11, 2004. 

The TV sitcom Friends just aired the finale of its 10th and final season, Usher’s hit single "Yeah!" is giving way to Maroon 5’s “This Love” atop the Billboard Top 100 and Massachusetts is about to become the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.

But lurking under the ground, a seismic event in the insect world was also happening.