New Jersey Institute of Technology is expanding student entrepreneurship through a grant from Santander Bank that supports the university’s Entrepreneurial Experience program, a Center for Student Entrepreneurship initiative that connects students with coursework, mentorship, experiential learning and opportunities to develop ventures of their own.

Childhood friends from Bergen County — two seniors and an alumnus — are jointly forming a startup company, MechSense Labs, to apply what they’ve learned at New Jersey Institute of Technology in designing emergency rescue equipment.

MechSense’s first invention is a robotic rover called NodeRover, employing artificial intelligence to make its own decisions and ad-hoc wireless mesh networking to stay in touch, especially in dangerous situations or hard-to-reach locations that are too risky for human responders.

When Sepehr Rahimi came to NJIT to study cell and gene therapy, he was looking for more than classroom knowledge. He wanted to work where science met real-world application.

He found that connection quickly. An NJIT experience shaped by industry led him to an internship at BioCentriq, then to a full-time role as the organization grew and evolved into MADE Scientific.

One of the most pervasive global pollution problems of the 21st century is a group of human-made chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). Used since the late 1930s in consumer and industrial products to repel water and resist stains, these compounds earned the nickname "forever chemicals" because they don't naturally break down over time. As a result, PFAS has accumulated for decades in air, water and soil worldwide.

Richard Calbi, director of Ridgewood Water, was astonished to discover the extent of PFAS contamination in New Jersey drinking water when the state adopted pollution standards for the industrial chemicals in 2020. 

“The first thing we did was determine if we were affected and found them in every one of our 52 groundwater wells. We couldn’t find water to buy that didn’t have PFAS in it. We had to reimagine and rebuild our entire system to accommodate new filters,” Calbi said. 

For the fifth year running, NJIT’s Startup Job Fair brought a buzz to campus, as hundreds of students turned out to meet face-to-face with CEOs of local startups inside the Central King Building recently.

The space hummed with activity, drawing a strong turnout of early-stage companies eager to connect with NJIT’s entrepreneurial-minded talent.

Inspiration often sprouts in unexpected places. For electrical engineering students Kermina David '27 and Santiago Garcia '27, the taste of a tropical fruit swiftly ripened into an interest in greenhouses. It then branched into a quest to help farmers manage greenhouse crops more efficiently.

Yusuf Karyagdi is building a business to upcycle leftover material from his father’s stone fabrication company into high-end artwork — and in turn taking first place, plus a $3,000 check, in the student category at NJIT’s 2025 New Business Model Competition.

About 100 people entered the competition, with the final eight in the student and community categories giving live presentations.

Entrepreneurship lessons are being added to introductory engineering courses at New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2026, where students will be motivated to learn front-end product research and digital drafting by designing their own products.

The adjustment is the second recent change to MET-103, Engineering Graphics and Introduction to CAD, which in 2025 gained additional laboratory time for students to practice using the complex software.