Erick Mejia’s fascinating story is adding another chapter as the Ecuadorian-native is now the first in his family to graduate college. Never forgetting his roots, the digital designer looks for ways to include his love of his home culture and country in his work.

“I moved here in 2011, knowing a little bit of English, almost nothing at all. I was missing home every single day, missing Ecuador, and nature,” said Mejia. “Over here, there's not much nature, we have the city, so coming to the city was a big change for me.”

The Hillier College of Architecture and Design (HCAD) kicked off its year-long celebration of two very important milestones – the 50th year anniversary of the New Jersey School of Architecture and the 15th anniversary of the School of Art & Design. 

The Design Showcase is the college’s flagship fundraising and networking event, which provides a chance for members of the Hillier College community to connect personally and professionally. This year’s event took place in the Jewel Box of One Gateway Center in downtown Newark, made possible by Onyx Equities. 

Hillier College of Architecture and Design (HCAD) transformed its gallery and packed its lecture hall for the college’s highly-anticipated signature event that celebrated student and alumni work, and hosted a presentation and Q&A by architect Andrew Whalley, chairman of Grimshaw.

NJIT has been ranked the top school in New Jersey for students to study game design, according to Animation Career Review. NJIT also reached No. 20 for schools in the East.

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.

A virtual museum of robot design is now open that curates the work of faculty, staff and students from Hillier College of Architecture and Design, Newark College of Engineering and Ying Wu College of Computing.

A student who majored in digital design at New Jersey Institute of Technology has earned an award from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to hone her animation and storytelling skills at one of the best animation programs in the world.

Hannah Kum-Biocca, an assistant professor at NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, won two awards for an augmented reality project that she submitted to the EuroXR 2020 conference in Valencia, Spain.

In her project, visitors to physical museums can wear a Microsoft Hololens headset to gain additional information about artifacts, such as looking at a real painting by Vincent van Gogh and seeing a virtual 3-D image of the painter himself standing in his bedroom and art studio, while talking about it in his own words. 

Undergrads Suzanne Hlinka ’21 and Nada Boules ‘21 have been applying the skills in game development and interior design that they’ve picked up at NJIT, and Mother Earth is thanking them for it. This past year, the pair of students began artistic projects promoting a more sustainable planet, and now, their creative talents have been recognized with the “Jim Wise Scholarship for Theatre: Communicating the Environment Through Art.”