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. 

Facebook, Merck, Brown University, the University of Minnesota, Venture for America and the U.S. Air Force are among the destinations of standouts from the Class of 2021 at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Here’s a closer look at seven graduates. 

Roberto Adamson: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule 

Art Garfunkel once described his legendary musical chemistry with Paul Simon, “We meet somewhere in the air through the vocal cords ... .” But a new study of duetting songbirds from Ecuador, the plain-tail wren (Pheugopedius euophrys), has offered another tune explaining the mysterious connection between successful performing duos.

It’s a link of their minds, and it happens, in fact, as each singer mutes the brain of the other as they coordinate their duets.

By Andrew McMains and Tracey Regan

Two New Jersey Institute of Technology students who earned Fulbright awards this year will continue their studies in Canada on decidedly different paths.

After four years at NJIT, career prospects for Jaime Felice ’21 are about to take off, and the sky is the limit — literally.

Felice has definitely taken a path less traveled at NJIT, joining four other cadets this year in the graduating class of NJIT’s decorated Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (AFROTC) Detachment 490. In just a few weeks after Commencement, she’ll be commissioning as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, and has been selected to become a pilot.

With the spring semester nearly in the rearview, standout students, faculty, staff and alumni of NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts (CSLA) gathered virtually for a night of due recognition and positive reflection at the college’s annual year-end celebration, the 2021 CSLA Awards.

A new NJIT-led project is making learning about the abstract world of organic chemistry a fresher, interactive experience that students can now easily explore in hi-res action through their digital devices. Already, it’s created quite a reaction among young chemists and their teachers around the world. 

The new web project, called Visualize Organic Chemistry (VOC), was launched in March by students in the research group of NJIT Assistant Professor of Chemistry Pier Alexandre Champagne.

A generous scholarship enabled Charu Arya to attend New Jersey Institute of Technology, and her professors helped solidify her career path. Indeed, both financial assistance and academic support fueled her success.

Arya ’21 reflected on that fruitful journey during NJIT’s annual Scholarship Brunch, sharing a pivotal moment during her sophomore year when she reconsidered her initial decision to study medicine. 

After a year layoff, one of NJIT’s standout annual research events returned to the campus community this month — more than 30 of the university’s top student-researchers took to their webcams to present their work for a virtual audience at the 2021 Dana Knox Research Showcase, "A Glimpse Into the Future.” 

This article was originally published on NBC's LX platform with permission to republish.

It’s become all too familiar these days: the dreaded video meeting. You log in to what feels like your hundredth Zoom meeting of the day. You do the obligatory greeting and wave. And then you mute your mic.

Then, for the next hour, you try to ignore the box in the corner that shows exactly how exhausted you think you look, wondering if your colleagues will notice the pile of laundry you forgot to stash away before turning on your cameras.