Some of NJIT’s brightest up-and-coming researchers grabbed center stage on campus at the Dana Knox Student Research Showcase, a springtime tradition that continues to highlight student ingenuity and diverse research accomplishments across the university’s six colleges.

For participants of the 18^th annual research competition, it was a special opportunity to connect with the campus community by discussing their recent discoveries and innovations, most of which have been years in the making.

Environmental safety and corporate interests tend not to match, but engineers at NJIT and Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev found a way to filter dangerous nitrate from water while also reducing the energy needed to create industrial ammonia.

Since 2011, NJIT alumnus Marc K. Raoul ’10, an emergency management specialist for FEMA, has traveled across the U.S. and its territories to help communities recover and rebuild following hurricanes, floods and pandemics. A veteran of Hurricanes Sandy (2012), Irma (2017) and Maria (2017), he’s been a damage assessor, a disaster recovery planner and a proposal reviewer for towns and cities in New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, Missouri, California, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

A collaborative research group led by NJIT has been awarded a $788k grant from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) to implement restoration and protection measures for polluted lakes and ponds within the state.

The grant is part of a $10M allocation announced by the Murphy Administration to develop water quality improvement projects across New Jersey, funding for which stems from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan that was appropriated by the state Legislature.

In daily battles with pathogens, legacy chemicals from long disappeared factories and a growing array of micropollutants, water treatment systems are often handicapped by clogged membrane filters. Replacing them regularly is both laborious and expensive.

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rutgers, Princeton and Stevens Institute of Technology joined to present respective research projects and explore potential areas of collaboration related to climate change, planetary and human health that would benefit the population of New Jersey and beyond.

Bloomberg Businessweek hosts Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec took their show on the road and across the river to NJIT’s campus for a live panel show on sustainability.

The Green Energy and Climate Adaptation Panel featured Jonathan Menard, chief research officer at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab; Dena Prastos, founder of Indigo River, an environmental consulting firm; and Dr. Som Mitra, distinguished professor of chemistry and environmental science at NJIT.

When it comes to diversity, Ken Colao leads by example.

More than a third of the 90 staffers ­— 38% — at his construction management company, CNY Group, is Black, Indigenous or other people of color (BIPOC). Also, in an industry not known for gender balance, women comprise nearly a third of the staff and have earned 62% of the promotions in the past three years. 

Students from NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering have earned first, second and third place recognitions across steel bridge, chemical car and concrete canoe events held for inter-institutional competition.

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.