NJIT celebrated its undergraduate Class of 2026 at Prudential Center in Newark, honoring baccalaureate degree candidates from across the university’s colleges in a ceremony centered on service, achievement, alumni connection and the responsibility to use an NJIT education with purpose.

Samantha Montalbine '26 always knew that she liked engineering. She was team captain of her middle-school robotics team in Brooklyn, and at Freehold Township High School she took engineering classes and served as president of the Technology Students Association.

But when Montalbine applied to New Jersey Institute of Technology's Newark College of Engineering, she was uncertain about which engineering track would be the right one for her. She ended up choosing mechanical engineering for an unconventional reason.

Solar flares are among the most violent events in the solar system, releasing energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs and propelling particles to near-light speed in seconds.

Yet only a small fraction of those particles ever escapes into interplanetary space. Why do so few make it out of the Sun’s atmosphere — and what happens to the rest?

Those questions have driven Meiqi Wang’s research since she arrived at NJIT as a Ph.D. student in 2019, years of work that earned her NJIT’s Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award at Commencement 2026.

After Mia LoRe walks across the stage at Commencement 2026, she’ll step right into a new career in digital forensics with the Bronx District Attorney’s Office.

This summer, LoRe will join the Bronx DA’s Digital Forensics Lab as a Digital Forensic Examiner II, examining digital evidence tied to criminal investigations.

Her role spans analyzing data recovered from phones, computers and online accounts — from text messages and call logs to social media activity and location records. The work also increasingly involves cybercrime cases tied to artificial intelligence.

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.

Jessica Dineen did not arrive at NJIT expecting to become an interior designer. But over time, she found a field that matched the way she wanted to think, create and solve problems.

Now, as the Bronx native and first-generation college graduate prepares to begin her next chapter as a junior designer at Fogarty Finger in Tribeca, Dineen is leaving NJIT with more than a degree. She is leaving with a stronger sense of purpose, a sharper professional vision and the confidence to trust herself when the path ahead calls for both ambition and risk.

Continuing our Senior Success Series, we’re spotlighting undergraduate seniors honored at the 2026 HCSLA Awards as they prepare for Commencement.

Like many computer science majors in the NJIT class of ‘26, Jonathan Malave hoped he might land a job at a name-brand software company such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple or Google.

But when an opportunity appeared on LinkedIn to work for WMG Inc., which makes software for the nuclear waste industry, Malave decided to apply. “I came across this out of nowhere, just applying for some jobs and trying to make anything stick. And then I saw that it was nuclear waste. That’s really cool! I didn't think anything was going to come of it.”

NJIT’s Jordan Hu College of Science & Liberal Arts (HCSLA) celebrated 44 years on May 6 with its annual awards ceremony, headlined by a special guest appearance from paleontologist and famed “dinosaur hunter” Dr. Kenneth J. Lacovara.

Held in the Central King Building’s Agile Strategy Lab, the event brought together students, faculty, and alumni alongside President Teik C. Lim to recognize the past year’s achievements across NJIT’s most academically diverse college, from the humanities to STEM sciences.

Before she ever toured NJIT, Natalia Peña had already made up her mind.

A scholarship offer from the Albert Dorman Honors College changed what college looked like for Peña and her family, easing the biggest question hanging over her future. “For the first time, my worries about how I would afford college faded,” she recalled in remarks this spring at NJIT’s Scholarship Luncheon.