Brooke Flammang, assistant professor of biological sciences at NJIT, has been named winner of the 2019 Steven Vogel Young Investigator Award by the scientific journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

Flammang is the third-ever winner of the international award, started in 2017 in honor of biomechanics pioneer Steven Vogel. The honor is externally nominated by the journal to annually recognize early career excellence in the journal's field, and is open to researchers in the 10 years after completing their Ph.D. 

J.K. Rowling. Ursula K. LeGuin. Connie Willis.

By the time NJIT humanities professor Elsa Sjunneson-Henry left the stage at Ireland’s Convention Centre Dublin on the evening of Aug. 18, she would share a certain place among such historic stars of science fiction literature. 

Though, the distinction she now shares with them also makes her a “first” in that literary universe.

Walking through NJIT’s green spaces and residence hall courtyards Labor Day week, it’s not uncommon to hear pockets of conversation burst to life among the campus’s bright-eyed freshman newcomers, often of the different roads they’ve traveled to begin their collegiate journeys here at the start of the fall semester.

Among them is Julia Lizik. A four-hour drive up I-95 with her mother from their home in Frederick, Maryland, was Lizik’s road to NJIT, though the reasons behind her arrival are part of a rather new academic experience at the university. 

It was an intense seven-week program of math enrichment in algebra, pre-calculus and calculus, coupled with college and SAT prep, and on-campus recreation. When it concluded Aug. 9 at a ceremony in the Campus Center Atrium, the 35 rising 12th-graders who participated in the inaugural NJIT/Newark Math Success Initiative (MSI) looked back on their accomplishments with pride and happily accepted their certificates of achievement.

Like many young New Jersey commuters making the morning trek through the Lincoln Tunnel into New York City, Jenessey Amparo-Rosario Morel would shuffle through her phone’s music playlist to find familiar star names like Rihanna, Shakira and Jay-Z. However, for Morel, those particular popular artists would also become clients, and even her new boss, as she entered work for her first day of a three-month co-op role this past February. 

As lead engineer of a self-driving car project, you are tasked with teaching the AI to drive. You realize that the AI may have to make a decision between putting the car’s occupants at risk or prioritizing the safety of those outside the car. What do you do? 

The above scenario, adapted from a real-life case, is part of a game called “Apperception”, a smartphone-based educational game developed by a team of ethics researchers led by Britt Holbrook, assistant professor of philosophy at NJIT.