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. 

Engineering $200 fuel cells capable of powering windmills, designing high-performance sunblock from scratch, quantifying how much copper is used to coat a modern penny — these were among the many unusual, pressure-packed challenges that stood before 250 of New Jersey’s top high school chemists, all arriving at NJIT last week with a goal that they’d been training towards for months.

Victory, at the 34th Annual New Jersey Chemistry Olympics.

This month, the annual celebration for International Women’s Day came with a new campaign theme, “Balance for Better.” That message was in full voice last week at NJIT, as more than 200 young girls from New Jersey’s schools visited campus to learn about and showcase their abilities in all-things science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) for national Pi Day.