Student Highlights: Class of 2020

STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS

Dorman Scholars Class of 2020

Biology Major Chloe Jelley As a sophomore, Chloe Jelley began working as an understudy to evolutionary biologist and ant expert Phil Barden at NJIT’s Department of Biological Sciences. There, she studied ant fossil collections from his fieldwork and eventually investigated both living and extinct prehistoric ant species from around the world.

Her research was showcased at NJIT’s Undergraduate Research Symposium and at the 2019 Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting, where she won an undergraduate President’s Prize for her first-ever formal presentation on the comparative morphology of ant eyes. Chloe furthered her study during an expedition to Madagascar’s dry forest of Ankarafantsika National Park, conducting one of the area’s first samplings of leafy-dwelling ants that dominate the expansive forest canopy.

“The Madagascar trip really solidified that I wanted to pursue a career researching ants and got me applying to schools for it,” said Chloe, now a student in Cornell University’s Ph.D. entomology program. “I think the research I’ve done at NJIT is the thing I’ll think most about looking back at my time as an undergrad.”

Med Student Sravya Vegunta This fall, Sravya Vegunta started her studies at New Jersey Medical School. She is excited to rotate through the various medical specialties, which she said should help her decide on a clinical discipline to pursue. What she is certain about is that she aspires to deliver direct patient care, conduct clinical research and, down the road, engage with Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization. In her first two years at NJIT, she assisted Distinguished Professor Namas Chandra in the university’s Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine (CIBM3), in characterizing the changes in microglial cells and monocyte infiltration after blastinduced traumatic brain injury. She won a silver medal for her work at NJIT’s 2019 Dana Knox Showcase, which recognizes undergraduate and graduate researchers.

Of the CIBM3 opportunity, she remarked, “I was learning from day one. I was doing handson experimentation and analyzing data independently. I had the opportunity to publish my work as well as present it multiple times. The experience definitely exceeded what I thought I would be able to achieve as an undergrad.”

Astrophysics Researcher Samantha Lomuscio Applied physics graduate Samantha Lomuscio worked with astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where she conducted high-energy astrophysics research to detect Jupiter in a way that has never been done successfully — through gamma-ray emissions. Her exploration began when she was one of eight students selected last year to participate in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program for the physical sciences. She continued working remotely with the museum throughout this past summer, until the next phase of her research career began. She is now at the University of Virginia, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in astronomy.

“Looking back, my AMNH experience gave me the opportunity to learn about high-energy astrophysics and the mechanisms behind gamma-ray emission in more in-depth than ever,” she said. “It’s given me scientific knowledge that I will take with me through graduate school, but it’s also helped me affirm that I want to pursue science and astrophysics research as my career, and helped me develop confidence in myself that I am capable of accomplishing this in the future.”

Engineer Niyam Shah For his senior capstone project, civil engineering major Niyam Shah went big: He and his teammates designed a 40-story commercial tower with a thick concrete core and X-patterned steel bracing for an empty lot on Manhattan’s building-jammed West Side. Shah, who hopes to make a career of building “very tall” steel buildings, is now at the University of Texas at Austin to pursue a master’s degree in structural engineering. As a Highlander, Shah was nominated for NJIT’s Outstanding Senior Award and served as the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Student Senate representative. He was also the 2019 vice president of NJIT’s American Society of Civil Engineers student chapter.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, however, is the founding in 2018 of NJIT’s chapter of the professional engineering fraternity, Theta Tau, which bridges all of the engineering disciplines. “We had to create an organization from scratch: recruit members, find locations to meet and hold events and people to help administer them, secure funding and communicate with other groups to coordinate activities,” he recalled. “As in a business, we had to identify all of our stakeholders.”

Sustainable Designer Erin Heidelberger Erin Heidelberger, an architecture graduate, has continued her education as a master’s student at Georgia Tech in the High Performance Building Lab, where she says she looks forward to making strides in sustainable design. While at NJIT, she developed a proposal that converted a last-mile shipping warehouse into a building to house flexible workspaces, dedicated office spaces, laboratories, a makerspace and an event space. Focusing on sustainable design, the proposal retained the original structure grid and adapted the program inside. “I’ve grown so much as both a person and an architect, and I have learned so many lessons that I will take with me through life,” said Erin of her time at NJIT. “This was all made possible by the faculty members and my classmates who I had the opportunity to work with over the years.” Coder Ayushi Sangoi While still in high school, Ayushi Sangoi had already sketched out a design for a medical device — a cushion to support people with hip fractures. She also was among the first women chosen nationally to be a Kode with Karlie (now Klossy) Scholar at the Manhattan-based professional coding boot camp. A double major in biomedical and computer engineering at NJIT, who was named Newark College of Engineering’s “outstanding engineer” for the class of 2020 and recently inducted into the International Honor Society of IEEE, Ayushi helped develop a novel vision therapy device as a senior capstone project that generates and analyzes streams of data on eye movements in need of rapid and precise analysis. The device, embarking on clinical trials at children’s hospitals nationwide, was developed in NJIT’s Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory, where Ayushi has joined the lab’s director, Tara Alvarez, as a Ph.D. student.

“Ayushi has an incredible gift for coding, an understanding of science and clinical medicine, and the ability to work on a team,” Alvarez said. “She’s the whole package.”