Elisa Kallioniemi slides a circular disk over her head, stops above her right ear and clicks. Her left hand jumps. She moves it a couple of inches back, clicks again, and is suddenly speechless, mid-sentence. With a single pulse of electromagnetic energy, her device can activate or inhibit the brain’s major command centers.

What she is now trying to determine is whether multiple pulses in the motor cortex can produce longer-term therapeutic results by retraining neural circuits. Her first focus is people who have lost some control of their limbs following a stroke.

As most students were buried in final exams last December, Iniobong Ofonime took an extra assignment outside her usual work as an engineering student — rather than applying mathematics to solve problems, she decided to profile an inspirational mathematician.

Her efforts have added up to a first-place finish among undergraduates in the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) national essay competition, announced fittingly on International Women's Day.

The spirit of innovation and hands-on learning was in full force at the Newark College of Engineering's (NCE) annual First-Year Engineering Design Showcase, a highlight of National Engineers Week. This popular event, a testament to NJIT's commitment to early-stage practical engineering experience, saw NCE’s brightest first-year minds — 180 presenters on 51 teams — show their innovative projects.

New Jersey Institute of Technology Professors Vivek Kumar and Xuan Liu have been named as Senior Members in the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) 2025 class. They join 162 emerging academic inventors from 64 NAI Member Institutions across the nation recognized for their outstanding contributions to innovation.

Kumar, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Liu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, are part of the largest class to date, collectively holding over 1,200 U.S. patents.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has once again earned the prestigious R1 designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, reaffirming its standing as a top-tier doctoral university with very high research activity. This continued recognition reflects NJIT’s commitment to cutting-edge research, innovation and the advancement of knowledge.

Robert Cohen, president of Digital, Robotics, and Enabling Technology at Stryker, and a distinguished alumnus of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE). This honor, one of the highest professional distinctions in engineering, recognizes Cohen's outstanding contributions to orthopedic surgical procedures and devices, and his leadership in additive manufacturing and biomaterials.

Engineers keep deriving new applications from research into what happens when solid objects interact with fluids such as gasses and liquids — it’s useful knowledge for aerospace, energy and healthcare — but new applications in turn require more research, in an endless cycle that may soon skip a few loops because of an NJIT professor’s improvements to the hottest software in his field.

Tara Alvarez, a distinguished professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT, won first place in the inaugural Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (PMU) / National Academy of Inventors (NAI) International Patent Award competition.

Her patented technology, branded as VERVE (Virtual Eye Rotation Vision Exercises), is a virtual reality game to correct an eye motor disorder called convergence insufficiency, in which the muscles that control eye movements do not coordinate to focus on near objects, to see them singly and clearly.

NJIT hosted a National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) workshop on Urban Food, Energy, and Water (Urban FEW) in November. The event brought together researchers, technologists, urban gardeners and policymakers to tackle urban challenges related to food, water and energy security. Organized by NJIT’s Roberto Rojas-Cessa and New York Institute of Technology’s Ziqian Dong (also an NJIT alum), the workshop aimed to foster connections between academia and community stakeholders in Newark and beyond.