NJIT Magazine Fall 2012 by NJIT

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the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Connections S m a l l e s t

Breakthroughs on the nanoscale frontier

Disciplines and Departments Dovetail New faculty bring interdisciplinary talents to NJIT

Moving On NJIT grads and todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job market

Executive Summary

A Message from NJIT President Joel S. Bloom B r in g in g I t A l l T o g e t h e r

Join us for the live broadcast of Joel Stuart Bloom’s inauguration as the eighth president of NJIT. September 14, 11:30 a.m. eastern time, or afterward at www.njit.edu/inauguration.

N J I T M a g a z in e Fall 2012

It has been a long time since American universities could be described as “ivory towers,” institutions where most faculty and students engaged in intellectual pursuits that distanced them from the everyday world beyond the campus. The World War II G.I. Bill was a major factor in bringing the university and the larger world closer together. For hundreds of thousands of veterans, higher education led to fulfilling careers and material prosperity in post-war America. In the 21st century, economic and social forces are compelling even stronger ties between universities and commerce, industry and government. These forces are also accelerating internal change at many universities, specifically in the way academic departments interact with each other and how students can best be served with programs that integrate academic disciplines. The quality of NJIT’s commitment to essential innovation and to carrying out other key aspects of the university’s mission was recently affirmed in the very positive reaccreditation report issued by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Covered in greater detail on page 3, the report commends our success in “providing a first-class education and college experience to a diverse student body.” As a school focused on science and technology, NJIT has always had a connection with the private and public sectors. Newark Technical School was founded to forge this connection in its home city. Significant change now under way at NJIT will add a new dimension to our economic engagement and the manner in which students are prepared for productive careers. In this edition, the feature “Disciplines and Departments Dovetail” describes the interdisciplinary initiative that is bringing a wide range of knowledge and talents together to promote progress in three vital areas: convergent life science and engineering, sustainable systems, and “digital everyware” – ubiquitous computing. The article introduces new members of the NJIT community who will help to energize this initiative. In addition to fostering scientific and commercial advances, an environment where collaboration at every level is the norm will mirror the workplaces in which the majority of students will build their careers. Interdisciplinary cooperation is not wholly new at NJIT, as shown in “Making the World’s Smallest Connections.” Research Professor Reginald Farrow, recipient of the 2012 Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal, assembled a team of experts in fields that included physics, chemistry and biology to create an enzyme-enabled biofuel cell using carbon nanotube technology. Our new program spanning departments and disciplines will support such exciting teaming to a significantly greater degree. While research is of paramount importance at NJIT, we are equally dedicated to providing talented young women and men with the knowledge and skills needed for personal achievement and for the prosperity of our nation. “Moving On” highlights the employment success that 2012 NJIT graduates have had in a very challenging economy. We are bringing more talented people and greater resources together at NJIT to ensure that this success will continue for the graduating classes to follow.

Jean M. Llewellyn Executive Director Office of Strategic Communications Dean L. Maskevich Editor Christina Crovetto MS ’03 Assistant Editor Babette Hoyle Production Coordinator Skelton Design Design Editorial Advisory Board Robert A. Boynton, Charles R. Dees, Jr., E. Perry Deess, Ian Gatley, Kirstie Gentleman, Kathryn Kelly, Carol Pilla, Jacquelynn G. Rhodes, Henry Ross, Anita Rubino ’83, Steven Saperstein ’84, Andrew E. Scherer, Michele Scott ’93, Donald H. Sebastian, Nancy SteffenFluhr, Sheryl Weinstein. NJIT Magazine is published by New Jersey Institute of Technology, Office of Strategic Communications. Its mission is to foster ties with alumni, university friends and corporate partners and to report on relevant issues, particularly those in education, science, research and technology. Please send letters of comment and requests to reproduce material from the magazine to: NJIT Magazine Office of Strategic Communications University Heights Newark, NJ 07102-1982 Dean.Maskevich@njit.edu Joel S. Bloom President Charles R. Dees, Jr. Vice President University Advancement Robert A. Boynton Executive Director Alumni Relations On the web: http://magazine.njit.edu

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Features pag e 10

Making the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smallest Connections Research Professor Reginald Farrow, recipient of the 2012 Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal, leads a team helping to make nanoscale breakthroughs in fields ranging from energy to medicine. page 14

Disciplines and Departments Dovetail New faculty are joining NJIT to advance an interdisciplinary initiative with broad implications for life in the 21st century.

d e pa rt m e n t s 2 Abstracts

NJIT news in brief 7 p oint by point

Athletics update 8 g iving

NJIT development news 22 a lumni circuit

Class notes, alumni calendar, and more 3 3 at the edge

Leading-edge achievements by faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of NJIT

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Moving On NJIT graduates offer skills that give them a decided edge in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s challenging job market.

Detail of a scanning electron microscope image of carbon nanotubes, page 13. NJIT MAGAZINE

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abstracts

“It’s well established among musicians that proper posture and breathing improve sound quality and are directly linked to exceptional instrument control and mastery. What’s less understood is the influence of chair design on the ability to achieve these goals.” That’s what David Brothers, assistant professor of interior design at NJIT’s School of Art+Design, says of his motivation to create a chair that will help musicians feel better and play better. Brothers is working to design a chair configured to reduce the back pain that is an occupational hazard for musicians, who are required to sit for long periods, most often on a chair that doesn’t accommodate their physical needs. The office furniture industry has produced many chairs that reflect the latest insights of medical professionals and ergonomic experts into facilitating workplace tasks while preventing health issues for individuals who must remain seated for extensive periods, says Brothers. Musicians are similarly expected to practice and perform while seated for prolonged periods.

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Photo: Jed Medina

Ergonomic Musical Chairs David Brothers with a prototype of an ergonomically beneficial musician’s chair.

“But little attention has been paid to professional musicians. There are equally significant questions to address for the health and performance of people whose offices happen to be practice rooms and performance halls, and whose sitting requirements, though distinctly different, are just as physically demanding as the contemporary knowledge worker.” One design proposed by Brothers can be “tuned” to the individual preferences and body characteristics of each musician for their

instrument type and playing style. It features a seat that can be tilted forward to reduce the strain of backward pelvic rotation, as well as adjustable seat height and backrests for proper lumbar support. The chair is flexible to allow for movement, and its lightweight carbon fiber frame provides exceptional strength to absorb the dynamic stresses produced when musicians are performing. Brothers based his design on 18 months of research, including interviews with professional musicians and observational studies of orchestra and ensemble groups. He concentrated on the ergonomic issues of sitting for musicians playing string, brass and woodwind instruments. “As a furniture designer, I found it odd that performers from all three of those orchestral sections sat in identical chairs when what they are doing seems so fundamentally different. The study addresses the question of whether the specific physical requirements of playing an instrument could lead to a unique chair design. I see this research as the beginning of a long-term effort to design, fabricate and test a series of chairs with working musicians to assess the viability of the proposed strategies in real-world applications.” n http://art.njit.edu

“ In meeting and exceeding each of the commission’s 14 Characteristics of Excellence, we have fulfilled the responsibilities inherent in the accreditation process as a true measure of our commitment to quality in higher education.” — NJIT President Joel S. Bloom

Middle States Accredits NJIT

U.S. Labor for the 21st Century

Compliments University on a Disproportionate Educational Impact Given Its Means The Middle States Commission on Higher Education has reaffirmed NJIT’s accreditation for the next decade. According to the report issued, “NJIT is making a disproportionate impact in higher education given its means. In particular, NJIT is providing an admirable service to first-in-family students attending college. The students are excellent, well-trained, and graduates are highly successful after leaving the university. NJIT’s success in providing a first-class education and college experience to a diverse student body is enviable.” The entire report is available at www.njit.edu/middlestates/ evaluation.php. “I am pleased to report this positive outcome, the result of a comprehensive three-year effort by the Board of Trustees, university administration, alumni, faculty, staff and students,” said NJIT President Joel S. Bloom. The Middle States evaluation team’s report confirmed that NJIT meets or exceeds all 14 standards outlined in the commission’s “Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education.” The team read NJIT’s Self-Study Report, considered detailed reports on each standard, and reviewed substantial additional documentation provided by the NJIT steering committee.

“I want to extend my congratulations and thanks to the entire NJIT community for the diligence, tenacity and integrity it has taken to bring this important process to success,” Bloom added. “In particular, I want to thank Professor Norbert Elliot, chair of the NJIT self-study. The accrediting process has indeed strengthened and sustained the quality and integrity of our university, and we have again demonstrated our fulfillment of public confidence. In meeting and exceeding each of the commission’s 14 Characteristics of Excellence, we have fulfilled the responsibilities inherent in the accreditation process as a true measure of our commitment to quality in higher education.” To be eligible for federal financial aid, an institution of higher education must be accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in the Middle Atlantic region. Although the organization is non-governmental, it offers a revealing self-examination process for educators by educators. This accreditation is

authorized by and answerable to the federal government. The organization is composed of selected veteran educators, who volunteer their professional services on behalf of the accrediting agency to oversee the educational integrity of colleges and universities. A Middle States review, a multi-year process, initiates an in-depth self-examination and encourages, advances, assists and sustains the continuous improvement of the institution and student-learning outcomes. n

NJIT and the Newark Workforce Investment Board (NWIB) have received a total of some $8 million from the U.S. Department of Labor to assist local institutions with development of innovative strategies to prepare workers for the 21st-century economy. In cooperation with the NWIB, industry partners, local community colleges and other business alliances, NJIT will provide training in high-wage, high-demand information technology occupations to help fill vacancies that otherwise would go to foreign labor using H-1B visas. n www.njit.edu/continuing/

open Houses at njit If you’re thinking about graduate work at NJIT or know someone considering NJIT after high school, coming to campus for an open house is a great way to learn about programs and admissions procedures in person. Undergraduate open houses: Sunday, October 21, 2012 and Sunday, February 24, 2013. www.njit.edu/admissions/openhouse

Graduate (Thursdays): October 11, November 8, December 6, 2012; January 10, March 7, April 11, May 16, 2013 www.njit.edu/admissions/visit/graduateopenhouses.php

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Photo: Jed Medina

More Fresh Water for the World

Top Awards for High Tech Products to shorten brain surgery, manage computer security and boost communications bandwidth earned three hightech companies based at NJIT’s Enterprise Development Center (EDC) top awards at the 2012 Venture Conference sponsored by the New Jersey Technology Council. The medical innovator Endomedix, Inc. (www.endomedix. com) was awarded the laurel Best Life Science Company. Endomedix recently received their first patent, related to the company’s core technology of producing an all-natural, nonblood-derived tissue sealant. An initial application will be a spray-on surgical hemostat to control bleeding indicated for use in brain surgery. The product is expected to shorten the typical craniotomy procedure by 30 minutes. This translates into less time that the patient’s skull must be open and less anesthesia, reducing morbidity and the

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possibility of infection. Allweb Technologies Inc. (www.allwebtechnologies. com), focused on addressing the password overload and identityfraud challenges stemming from online activity, was accorded the Best Information Technology Company award. The plethora of passwords required to log on to websites causes major issues such as forgotten passwords, account lockdown and other headaches, and the inclination to use relatively simple passwords increases the possibility of identity fraud. Organizations incur significant expenses in contending with these issues. Allweb plans to launch a unique, convenient cloud-based service for password management and biometricsbased user identification. The company has also developed a fast, scalable and highly accurate fingerprint matching system that can be used for real-time individual identification. ATC Labs (www.atc-labs.com) garnered the Best Communications Company award.

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A third of the world is already short on fresh, potable water, a shortage that’s expected to increase to 50 percent by 2025. But recently patented technology developed by Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering Kamalesh K. Sirkar and colleagues at NJIT provides a new resource for confronting this crisis through advanced desalination of seawater. The direct-contact membrane distillation system devised by Sirkar and his team could double the amount of potable water obtained from the same amount of brine processed with reverse-osmosis technology, today the most widely used alternative for desalination. Patented under the title “Desalination Devices and Systems Using Porous Hydrophobic Hollow Fibers and Hydrophobic Porous Coatings,” the technology described also makes it feasible to process brine with salt concentrations of up to 20 percent. Reverse osmosis as currently implemented does not work when salt content exceeds six percent. While significant work remains to be done before this application can be commercialized for desalination, membrane separation processes are used throughout the world by the chemical, food, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to separate, purify or concentrate liquid solutions, cellular suspensions and gaseous mixtures. Sirkar is an internationally recognized expert in the field. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is also Foundation Professor, Membrane Separations and director of the Membrane Science, Engineering and Technology Center at NJIT. n

http://chemicaleng.njit.edu

Based in New Jersey and India, ATC Labs has a proven technology platform for audio and video compression and processing. A key customer, Sirius XM, achieved a nearly 30-percent gain in bandwidth efficiency on its Sirius Satellite audio service using this technology. ATC

recently launched three products for internet radio and for the rapidly expanding FM broadcasting industry in India, where 800 new stations are projected to be on the air in the near future. n www.njit-edc.org

“ Civil engineering majors love hands-on projects. They put in endless hours of work because they love to design and build.” — John Schuring, NJIT professor of civil engineering

Engineering Proteins to Order

Photo: Ricky Kharawala

It was a sweep of a weekend in April for two teams of NJIT civil engineering students. For the seventh consecutive year, the Steel Bridge Team won the regional competition that was held at New York City College of Technology, while the Concrete Canoe Team paddled to victory in an equally exciting metropolitan contest at Denville’s Cook Pond. Competing in the concrete canoe challenge for the first time in 10 years, the women and men of NJIT built a craft whose design and performance beat seasoned teams from Rutgers, Stevens, The College of New Jersey and participants from five other schools. The scaled-down, 20-foot long structures created for the steel bridge competition must be lightweight yet strong enough to sustain a 2,500-pound load. NJIT placed first for design, lightness, efficiency and economy, as well as first-place overall. The team’s effort topped other universities that included Columbia, Cooper Union

and NYU Polytechnic Institute. The canoe competition was judged in several categories, one of which was how fast the concrete creations could be rowed across the pond in a sprint (200 yards) and an endurance race (800 yards). NJIT team members took second place in each race and placed highly in the three other categories: a research paper describing the design of the canoe, a presentation about the design, and a display of the canoe’s mold. “I’m super proud of both teams,” said John Schuring, the NJIT professor of civil engineering who advises the teams. “Civil engineering majors love handson projects. They put in endless hours of work because they love to design and build.” Corporate partners in the steel bridge competition were Acrow Corporation and Schiavone Construction Co. Support for the concrete canoe competition was provided by CME Associates, Dewberry, Louis Berger Group, Moretrench Corporation, HNTB Corporation, ASCE North Jersey Branch and Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. n

Associate Professor Edgardo Farinas

http://civil.njit.edu

Photo: Dan Sobko

Winners in Concrete and Steel

The long-term goal of Associate Professor Edgardo Farinas, chair of the Chemistry and Environmental Science Department, is to engineer proteins “designed to order.” He’s pursuing this objective with the help of nearly $340,000 provided by the National Institutes of Health. “My more specific aim is to stabilize G protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs, which are membrane proteins involved in almost every physiological process,” says Farinas. GPCRs transmit most cellular responses across cell membranes through an array of extracellular stimuli, and irregular control of such proteins can lead to pathological conditions. Accordingly, as drug targets, they are of very great importance in the pharmaceutical industry. Determining crystal structure is necessary to investigate the molecular details of activation/ deactivation processes. However, doing so is difficult because GPCRs are difficult to crystallize in the required stable form. Hence, a robust and efficient

protein engineering system is needed to optimize these proteins for structural determination. Farinas is researching optimization using an approach that mimics natural evolution. The method is called directed or laboratory evolution. An unstable protein becomes the parent of a “library” of offspring proteins. The library is then screened for a particular fitness – in this case, stability. Once an offspring with more of the requisite fitness is identified, it becomes the parent for another round of laboratory evolution. This is done in iterative cycles until the desired degree of fitness is achieved. In 2008, Farinas received a National Science Foundation CAREER award for his project “New Tools for High-Throughput Screening of Protein Libraries: Engineering Metalloproteins Displayed on Bacillus Subtilis Spores.” The prestigious award recognizes teacher-scholars most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. n http://chemistry.njit.edu

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E ND NOT E S Professor Ali Akansu, Electri-

Forging Ahead with Electronic Health Records The New Jersey Health Information Technology Extension Center (NJ-HITEC) established by NJIT continues to forge ahead as a national leader in helping physicians implement and achieve Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHRs). NJ-HITEC has earned this leadership by exceeding member requirements, developing a staff of subject matter experts and implementing innovative programs. Launched with a $23 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NJ-HITEC has also assisted in delivering over $20 million of federal incentive money to Garden State physicians. “We’ve embarked in a new direction since exceeding the grant’s 5,000 member milestone,” says Executive Director Bill O’Byrne. “With over two-thirds of our members at ‘go live’ status in the implementation of their EHR system, we are committed to assisting them succeed in meeting the Meaningful Use requirements for receiving federal incentive dollars.” Over 900 NJ-HITEC member doctors have attained Meaningful Use, making New Jersey one of the nation’s leaders in provider usage of EHRs. In addition, NJ-HITEC and NJ Medicaid have partnered to provide qualified physicians with the same services as outlined in the federal grant. This partnership is the first of its kind, serving as a national model. But NJ-HITEC has

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not stopped there. O’Byrne explains, “We are here to assist all New Jersey physicians with achieving successful utilization of their EHR system. We are advocates for the effective use of health information technology in delivering high-quality patient care and patient-case management. If a physician does not qualify for either the federal or state program, for an appropriate fee, we will assist that provider as well.” In furtherance of federal law, NJ-HITEC is developing a sustainability plan to continue its mission after the federal grant expires. Through its partnerships with health organizations, hospitals, state agencies and physicians, as well as the expertise of its staff, NJ-HITEC is involved in a number of initiatives promoting the growth of health information technology. There are growth opportunities in patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), accountable care organizations, clinical health data predicative analytics and aggregations, cloud computing solutions and many more. NJ-HITEC’s goal is to remain in the vanguard of health information technology in New Jersey. n For more information about NJ-HITEC, visit www.njhitec.org or call 973-642-4055.

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cal and Computer Engineering, traveled to Cesme, Turkey to give a plenary talk titled “Financial Signal Processing and High Frequency Trading: A Killer App for Smart Clouds” at the 13th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications. In Istanbul, he gave a plenary talk, “A Vision for the Future of the Global Village: An Electrical Engineer’s Perspective,” at a conference dedicated to the centennial celebration of the Electrical Engineering Department of Bogazici University. Professor Nirwan Ansari, Electri-

cal and Computer Engineering, delivered a keynote address, “On Wide Area Network Optimization,” at the 4th International Conference on Communications, Mobility and Computing in Guilin, China. Associate Professor Roberto Rojas-Cessa, Electrical and

Computer Engineering, was the general co-chair of the 35th IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, held for the first time on the NJIT campus in May. The program included keynote speakers in the areas of network security, communications and wireless networks. Distinguished Professor Atam Dhawan, Electrical and Computer

Engineering, will serve as co-editor of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine. The publication bridges the engineering and clinical worlds, focusing on detailed descriptions of advanced technical solutions for a clinical need along with clinical results. Stephen Pemberton, Federated History, spoke to physicians about hemophilia at a special meeting of the Medical History Society of New Jersey, delivering the society’s Morris Saffron Lecture. Pemberton

is the author of The Bleeding Disease, a history of the medical and social efforts to manage hemophilia in the U.S. over the last century. Associate Educational Opportunity Program Director Crystal Smith has been elected to the

national board of the Minorities in Engineering Division (MIND) of the American Society for Engineering Education. MIND works to increase the participation of Black, Hispanic and Native/Pacific Islander Americans professionally and at all levels of engineering education. Associate Vice President of Continuing and Distance Education Gale Tenen Spak was

among the speakers discussing “The Next 150 years: Campus of the Future” and “Expanding Community Engagement in the Future” at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. The festival is an international exposition of living cultural heritage produced annually on the National Mall by the Smithsonian Institution. Events for 2012 centered around three themes: “Citified: Arts and Creativity East of the Anacostia River,” “Campus and Community” and “Creativity and Crisis.” University Lecturer John Wiggins, Engineering Technology,

has been appointed to the Technology Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for the 2012-2013 accreditation cycle. ABET is a non-governmental organization that accredits postsecondary education programs in applied science, computing, engineering and engineering technology. An attorney and licensed Professional Engineer in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Wiggins will serve as a representative of the American Society of Civil Engineers, of which he is a Fellow.

Correction: The caption for the photo taken at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) on page 11 in the spring 2012 issue misspelled the name of Jony Sheynin, who is a graduate student in the joint NJIT-UMDNJ biomedical engineering doctoral program.

point by point

The latest news about NJIT sports: www.njithighlanders.com

Photos: Larry Levanti

Great West and Garden State Baseball Honors

Tripp Davis

The NJIT baseball team closed out a winning season with recognition by the Great West Conference (GWC) and New Jersey Collegiate Baseball Association (NJCBA). Three players were selected for the 2012 All-GWC Team: Junior left-handed pitcher Tripp Davis was named to the All-GWC First Team while catcher Bryan Bleakley ’12* and utility player DJ Roche* were named to the second team. Four team members were voted onto the 2012 NJCBA Division I All-State Team. Ed Charlton, the Highlanders centerfielder who started every game (49), earned Rookie of the Year honors while Bleakley was named to the second team and freshmen Bill VanMeerbeke and Mike Rampone were selected for the All-Rookie Team. NJIT is one of eight schools whose players are eligible for the NJCBA Division I All-State Teams, joining Fairleigh Dickinson (Teaneck), Monmouth, Princeton, Rider, Rutgers, Saint Peter’s and Seton Hall. The teams are chosen at an annual meeting with representatives of each school (usually the head coach) holding one vote and being restricted from voting for their own players. n

The NJIT women’s tennis team captured its second straight Great West Conference title.

Women’s Tennis Serves Up Great West Wins The NJIT women’s tennis team captured its second straight Great West Conference (GWC) title, topping second-seeded Seattle, 4-1, at the 2012 Women’s Tennis Championships. With a school-record 21 wins, NJIT became the first team to win back-to-back conference championships in the program’s sixth season competing at the Division I level under head coach Mike Sowter. Last season the Highlanders finished with a 17-8 overall mark. Ksenia Kuzmenko,* a sophomore, and Monika Graff,* a junior, were named to the GWC First Team while rookie Carolina Zanotta was recognized on the

Ksenia Kuzmenko

GWC Second Team and named GWC Newcomer of the Year. Graff was also named Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Northeast Regional winner of the Arthur Ashe Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship. The ITA Arthur Ashe Award recognizes outstanding individuals in all divisions at the regional and national levels. It is presented to student-athletes who exhibit exceptional sportsmanship and leadership on the court, as well as for scholastic and extracurricular achievements. Graff, a mechanical engineering major from Lohmar, Germany, earned ITA ScholarAthlete recognition last year. She finished with a team-leading 23-4 overall record in her second season at NJIT and went 15-2 at third singles, 2-0 at the second spot, 1-0 at fourth singles and 6-2 in tournament play. n

Monika Graff

*Dorman honors scholars

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giving

Learn more and contribute at www.njit.edu/giving

For Progress in College and in Life “I have been inspired by donors such as you who make it possible for students like me to make progress in college and in life.” Johanna Cepeda ’12, a management major, shared these thoughtful words with those gathered for the university’s 2012 Scholarship Brunch in the spring. Cepeda was one of two student speakers introduced by NJIT President Joel S. Bloom. Also speaking was Marvin Castellon,* a biomedical engineering major who hopes to one day become a physician or tissue engineer. “Scholarships motivate me to continue moving forward so that I may one day give back to schools that have helped me,” Castellon said in appreciation of the assistance he has received. Scholarship donors, students who benefit from their generosity, and university administration

Student speaker Johanna Cepeda ’12

and staff gathered in the Campus Center for the annual event, which offers an opportunity for students to greet their benefactors in person and to discuss their academic and professional goals. For the 2011-2012 academic year, 930 students received nearly $2.7 million in assistance from annual, endowed and alumni scholarships. Alumnus Darryl P. Riley, vice president of Kellogg North America Research, Quality and Technology, shared his inspiration for establishing the Janet McIntosh Riley Scholarship in memory of his mother, a longtime NJIT employee. After graduating with a BS in chemical engineering in 1983, Riley continued to keep in touch with NJIT faculty and staff members. NJIT Vice President for Human Resources Ted Johnson, who had worked with Riley’s mother earlier in his career, suggested establishing a scholarship to honor her legacy. “I had contributed to NJIT through the Annual Fund, but

Student speaker Marvin Castellon and President Joel S. Bloom

thought that establishing the scholarship in the name and memory of my mom would be meaningful and rewarding,” Riley said. “It would continue to provide for young people who come to NJIT in pursuit of an educational dream and also provide me with an opportunity to tell them about my mom, the woman after whom the scholarship is named.” A new memorial scholarship announced at the event bears the name of Congressman Donald M. Payne. It will support talented minority students who are the first in their families to attend college. In a quarter century as a government leader and even more years as teacher, community activist and humanitarian, Congressman Payne dedicated his professional life to breaking down economic, educational and social barriers. He had long been a special friend to NJIT, and had aided the university through his tireless efforts to make higher education more affordable.

Darryl P. Riley ’83

Members of Donald M. Payne’s family were on hand for the announcement of the new scholarship honoring the legacy of the late congressman and friend of NJIT. Roberta Renard, President and CEO of Renard Communications, has also established a new memorial scholarship. It is a $100,000 commitment for her second endowed scholarship at NJIT, the Jeannine and Monroe *Dorman honors scholar

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“ Scholarships motivate me to continue moving forward so that I may one day give back to schools that have helped me.” — Marvin Castellon

Camarata Memorial Scholarship, dedicated to the memory of her parents. Like the Renard Communications Endowed Scholarship, the new one will support minority students enrolled in Albert Dorman Honors College. Renard is the founder and publisher of Diversity/Careers in Engineering & Information Technology, and through her publication and scholarship support provides needed resources for

groups traditionally underrepresented in technology – women and minorities. Another highlight of this year’s gathering was the opportunity it gave the first recipients of the Dr. Timothy N. Chang Memorial Scholarship to meet with Mrs. Daphne Chang, wife of the late NJIT faculty member honored by this gift. Funded by the Chang family and an outpouring of contributions

made in memory of Dr. Chang, the scholarship assists students enrolled in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who demonstrate a commitment to innovation, research and community service. Dr. Chang, who passed away in February 2011, was a professor and associate chair for graduate studies in his department, and was repeatedly recognized for excellence in teaching. n

For more information about establishing and supporting scholarships at NJIT, contact: Colleen Vandervort, Scholarship Coordinator 973-596-8505 or colleen.m.vandervort@njit.edu

U.S. News & World Report — Your contribution counts! Alumni contributions are a key factor in U.S. News & World Report’s widely read college rankings. Every donation, no matter how small, counts toward raising NJIT’s ranking and helping the university provide world-class programs in education and research, serving exceptionally talented young men and women.

Photos: David Hollander

Members of Donald M. Payne’s family were on hand for the announcement of a new memorial scholarship honoring the legacy of the late congressman.

For 2012, consider a contribution to NJIT NEXT, the comprehensive campaign that’s surging ahead toward its goal of $150 million. The campaign, about to enter its public phase, will position NJIT to excel and compete successfully for top students and faculty, funding and recognition in the years ahead. Your contribution will count in sustaining excellence and boosting NJIT’s prominence across the nation. www.njit.edu/giving/campaigns/ njitnext.php

Mrs. Daphne Chang with the first recipients of the Dr. Timothy N. Chang Memorial Scholarship.

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Photos: Doug Plummer

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Making the World’s Sm a l l e s t

Connections

Research Professor Reginald Farrow, Department of Physics, and the group he leads have discovered how to make the world’s smallest probe for investigating the electrical properties of individual living cells. Larger electrical probes have been extremely important in understanding these properties, as indicated by the Nobel Prizes awarded to the inventors of two previous generations of probes. Farrow’s probes use carbon nanotubes that can be spaced a small fraction of a micrometer apart, allowing minute parts of a single cell to be studied with many nanoprobes. Furthermore, the larger probes restrict cell functions while the new nanoprobes do not. Besides increasing basic knowledge of cell physiology, these probes have practical applications such as testing the toxicity of drugs, since the distribution of electrical charges in a healthy cell changes markedly when it becomes distressed. Carbon nanotubes are very strong, electrically conductive structures a single nanometer in diameter. That’s one-billionth of a meter, or approximately ten hydrogen atoms in a row. Farrow’s breakthrough is a controlled method for firmly bonding one of these submicroscopic, crystalline electrical wires to a specific location on a substrate. His method also introduces the option of simultaneously bonding an array of millions of nanotubes and efficiently manufacturing many devices at the same time. The technical community has been quick to recognize Farrow’s achievements, and he has brought substantial recognition to NJIT. For his success, Farrow has been honored with the 2012 NJIT Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal.

Being able to position single carbon nanotubes that have specific properties opens the door to further significant advances. Other possibilities include an artificial pancreas, three-dimensional electronic circuits, and fuel cells with unparalleled energy density. Powerful technology Farrow’s cutting-edge work with nanotubes has already had a key role in advancing the development of a unique biofuel cell. Research Professor Zafar Iqbal, Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science, had created a potentially more efficient alternative to conventional batteries that employs an enzyme to convert sugar into electrical energy. Iqbal’s design incorporated positive and negative plates, an anode and cathode, in a configuration similar to that found in all fuel cells. Farrow and his team connected one end of a nanotube electrically to a circuit and an enzyme to the other end. They also fabricated an array on a single plate with multiple nanoscale biofuel cells. Since each is so small, there is negligible internal resistance, which typically causes substantial energy loss. The power density is the highest ever achieved using the enzymes selected. [continued]

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Inspired by the laser Farrow says that reading about the laser as a young teenager is what started him on the path to becoming a scientist. “I was fascinated by the laser. I also learned that it was created by physicists, and that physicists worked at a place called Bell Labs. So I decided that I was going to become a Bell Labs physicist.” Earning BS, MS and PhD degrees in physics, that’s exactly what Farrow did. For more than two decades at AT&T Bell Laboratories and the spinoff Agere Systems, Farrow worked in materials science. He applied his expertise mainly to electron microscopy and the challenges of fabricating increasingly complex integrated circuits with extremely small components. But he also had the goal of one day moving to the academic world as a 12

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Research Professor Reginald Farrow is the recipient of the 2012 NJIT Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal.

researcher and teacher, a transition eventually facilitated by his friendship with NJIT Professor of Physics Gordon Thomas. Farrow met Thomas, then a graduate teaching assistant, as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester. Many years later, it was Thomas who invited Farrow to join him at NJIT, which he did in 2004. Since then Farrow has supported his work with major government grants, including funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center. This support, and Farrow’s dedication to fostering intellectual synergy among diverse disciplines, has produced intellectual property with a wealth of potential for new commercial technology and for NJIT. In addition to his technical knowledge of microelectronics, Farrow came to NJIT with a strong personal interest in biophysics and experience connecting efforts by teams with wide-ranging abilities. Early on at the university, he collaborated with Thomas on a project which engaged the full scope of his professional background and interests. That effort

produced the recently patented SmartShunt™, a unique device for monitoring cerebrospinal fluid pressure in individuals suffering from hydrocephalus or brain injury. While contributing to the SmartShuntTM project, Farrow simultaneously investigated how to make things work in another area – and on a much smaller scale. The cellular connection Several years before joining the NJIT faculty, Farrow completed a major project at Bell Labs that involved the precise vertical alignment of minute integrated circuits and interconnection with micron-sized wires, thus increasing the density of circuit components and their operating efficiency. This work and his growing interest in the electrical properties of living cells led him to think about the potential – and far greater difficulties – of making electrical connections to cells without impairing their physiology. At NJIT, Farrow was able to investigate ways to make this cellular connection. He determined that the most promising approach was to use carbon nanotubes. And

Photo: Doug Plummer

Illustration: Alokik Kanwal

“Imagine electrical circuits that have billions of highly efficient submicron-sized batteries powering individual components,” Farrow says. “We’ve created new engineering that can scale down the AA batteries in a television remote to the molecular level. But it’s engineering we can use to create power sources on a larger scale as well, devices that are much lighter and contain less toxic material than the typical battery.” It’s engineering that could also lead to minimally invasive physiological monitoring, targeted drug delivery, brain and spinal stimulation, and other medical applications using nanoscale devices powered by the body’s own glucose and oxygen. Farrow’s work with carbon nanotubes has put his name on three patents as lead inventor. But in speaking about this success, Farrow emphasizes its cooperative, multidisciplinary character. Of the biofuel cell effort, he says that it was Iqbal who laid the groundwork with his expertise in converting chemical energy into electrical energy, and that in-depth knowledge of enzyme chemistry and electronics was required as well. He also cites the nanofabrication skills of Assistant Research Professor Alokik Kanwal, who came to NJIT as a postdoc in 2008. “When it comes to efforts like this, you really need lots of different expertise to make things work.”

— Research Professor Reginald Farrow

each connection necessary would have to be made with just one nanotube. Ever since the discovery of carbon nanotubes decades ago, researchers have tried to overcome a daunting obstacle to realizing their usefulness. These structures are so small that it is extremely difficult to manipulate them individually into a specific position or orientation. The applications envisioned by Farrow required precise positioning of single nanotubes with specific electrical properties. The solution was electrophoresis, the electrically directed motion of particles in a fluid. Farrow refined the technique by guiding a team that included PhD students Amit Goyal ’07 and Sheng Liu ’08. One day after running a test, Goyal came to Farrow with a scanning electron microscope image that showed a single nanotube oriented nearly vertically in the center of a much larger

Scanning electron microscope image of carbon nanotubes deposited on metal inside windows approximately 100 nanometers in diameter in silicon nitride. The nanotubes were deposited using electrophoresis.

hole on a substrate. Their expectation was to see multiple nanotubes in each hole. It turned out that an electrical field forms around the holes under the right conditions and can be used to guide individual nanotubes to a metal at the bottom of the hole. “Amit thought he might have done something wrong,” Farrow recalls. “I told him he had done something wonderful, positioning an object one nanometer in diameter using a technology a hundred times easier than any other technique. Magic does happen in science at times.” Educator and researcher As gratifying as his research has been, Farrow says that another aspect of being at NJIT gives him even greater satisfaction. “The students,” he says without hesitation. “What we do at NJIT is transformational. We take students from every background and help them become professionals who can succeed in many, many fields. It doesn’t happen with every student, but it does happen with most. Watching that transformation and being part of it has to be the most rewarding experience for anyone who’s a professor.” It’s Farrow’s hope that the skills and knowledge NJIT students acquire will sustain U.S. leadership in science and technology, and that the necessary resources will be available. But he does acknowledge the international dynamic of scientific research and progress in the 21st century.

awa r d w i n n e r s

“ We’ve created new engineering that can scale down the AA batteries in a television remote to the molecular level.”

Excellence in the Search for New Knowledge Initiated in 2008, the NJIT Board of Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal honors individuals who have been NJIT faculty members for at least five years and whose work has significantly advanced knowledge in their field of expertise as well as the reputation of the university. In 2012, Research Professor Reginald Farrow joins the four other exceptional members of the NJIT community who have been awarded the NJIT Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal since its inception: 2011 – Haim Grebel Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering 2010 – David B. Rothenberg Professor of Humanities 2009 – Kamalesh K. Sirkar Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Foundation Professor in Membrane Separations 2008 – Philip R. Goode Distinguished Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for SolarTerrestrial Research

“The search for answers to the questions we have about the world around us is happening in many places. The beauty of the human mind is that curiosity and creativity does not speak any one language.” n Author: Dean L. Maskevich is editor of NJIT Magazine.

Conceptual illustration showing how a series of nanoscale biofuel cells would power an integrated circuit. The power for each complementary metal oxide transistor in this latch circuit is supplied by a pair of enzymes (glucose oxidase on the right and laccase on the left). Each enzyme transfers electrons from the conversion of sugar and oxygen through a carbon nanotube, which is connected to the circuit. Since the power is generated very close to where it is needed, the device is highly efficient. The scale varies with the generation of the integrated circuit, but with the current state of the art spacing between the glucose oxidase and laccase could be less than 200 nanometers.

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New NJIT faculty will energize the university’s interdisciplinary vision for education, research and economic engagement

Disciplines and Departments Dovetail The talents of more than 20 new faculty members will soon add momentum to NJIT’s strategic plan for making a major impact on the quality of life in the 21st century. This interdisciplinary initiative is focused on three vital areas – convergent life science and engineering, “digital everyware” – ubiquitous computing – and sustainable systems. The women and men joining NJIT to serve a growing student body bring expertise that spans diverse supporting clusters. These include advanced manufacturing, architecture, design and construction, “big data,” biochemistry, business systems, material science and engineering, and sensing and control. NJIT’s academic status and interdisciplinary strategy have attracted people at various stages of their careers, and who offer NJIT both distinctive abilities and new resources, says Provost Ian Gatley. For example, hydrologist Michel Boufadel, who will join the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was head of the civil engineering program at Temple. He has grants from organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Michel has funding to continue investigating effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and he has worked on the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf,” Gatley says. “I’ve heard him speak on several occasions, and his talks were tremendously exciting.” Gatley says that enthusiasm for NJIT’s interdisciplinary commitment was very apparent during the search process. “Everyone interviewed spoke about how the problems they work on are inherently interdisciplinary, how they like to work on teams, how they look forward to collaborating with colleagues across disciplines.” 21st-century expectations Donald Sebastian, NJIT’s senior vice president for research and development, emphasizes that connecting with real-world issues is at the heart of expectations for a technological research university. “Academic disciplines are the core of the university and the framework for learning. However, their alignment with industries of the future is not as obvious as with those sectors that have prevailed over the last century. Our strategic research thrusts are designed to make those 21st-century connections explicit.” [continued]

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“ Technology must focus on defining approaches that are both economically realistic and environmentally responsible, and that takes systems thinking.” — Donald Sebastian, NJIT senior vice president for research and development

Sebastian says that convergent life science and engineering, digital everyware and sustainable systems – themes that transcend departments or colleges – shaped NJIT’s hiring plan. Sustainable systems build on NJIT’s long history of environmental engineering research but go well beyond traditional boundaries of that field. We must use technology to mitigate our footprint and coexist with the natural environment, yet without regressing from the quality of life we have come to expect. This covers everything from abundant energy to the basics of food, potable water and adequate housing – all of which require efficient industrial production and transportation systems scaled to an ever-growing population. “Technology must focus on defining approaches that are both economically realistic and environmentally responsible, and that takes systems thinking,” Sebastian says. There is also a transformative synergy between the life sciences and a host of other disciplines. Experts in biology and clinical medicine are collaborating with colleagues in fields ranging from mathematics to every branch of engineering. Over the last decade, NJIT created biomedical engineering and biological sciences departments to anchor collaborations across the campus. These efforts are yielding insights into basic physiological processes, new therapies and pharmaceuticals, and innovative medical devices. The combination of broadband wireless networking and highly functional portable electronics linked to high-powered cloud computing systems will mainstream digital technology into applications that have yet to be imagined. NJIT’s strategic focus on this area promises further advances in high-speed wireless signal processing, network security, nanoscale electronics, user interface design, “big data” systems, e-commerce and social interaction. The economic implications of NJIT’s interdisciplinary vision are substantial. Too often, scientific discovery produces useful knowledge that cannot be translated into practical applications until other problems are resolved – and these often lie outside of the professional

boundaries of the individual researcher. More than ever, they lie outside the boundaries of a single discipline as well, and that is why teaming is critical if academic research is to make an impact on commercial innovation. This environment also mirrors the world in which the majority of NJIT students will build their careers. Some will enter academia but most will not, and students will benefit greatly from studying at a school that fosters positive connections between the cultures of the academic and commercial communities. Among those energizing the vision Convergent Life Science and Engineering Bharat Biswal, professor and new chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department, comes to NJIT from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Expert in neuroimaging, he is developing new methods for studying brain functions and pathology. Cristiano L. Dias, assistant professor, Physics, pursues multidisciplinary research that uses physical models and high-performance computing to describe phenomena in molecular biology. He comments, “Rational design of drugs for medical purposes requires a molecular understanding of nature’s robots, i.e, proteins. My research contributes to this effort from a computational perspective in which physics meets chemistry, biology and computer science.” Eric Fortune, associate professor, Biology, is

fascinated by animal behavior. His studies include measurements of animal behavior that, when coupled with sophisticated quantitative approaches, can be applied in brain experiments to discover the cellular mechanisms that control behavior. Engineers can, in turn, translate these insights into improved control systems for use in robots and prosthetic devices. Simon Garnier, assistant professor, Biology,

is engaged in research related to fields that include ethology, experimental psychology, cognitive and social sciences and swarm

Cristiano L. Dias (top), Eric Fortune and Ji Meng Loh

intelligence. He is mainly interested in the emergence of intelligent collective behaviors in groups of social animals. Mei Liu, assistant professor, Computer Sci-

ence, works at the intersection of medicine and computation. Recent research has focused on using electronic health records to increase awareness of adverse drug reactions. Ji Meng Loh, associate professor, Mathemati-

cal Sciences, investigates spatial data analysis and visualization, and related statistical methodology. Applications range from functional magnetic resonance imaging and epidemiology to astronomy. Digital Everyware Cesar Bandera, assistant professor, School

of Management, is working on mobile or “m-health.” Through his company, Cell Podium, Bandera has support from the National Institutes of Health to develop applications for environmental public health outreach and training via smart phones. Cesar Bandera

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Students will benefit greatly from studying at a school that fosters positive connections between the cultures of the academic and commercial communities. James Cicon, assistant professor, School of Management, uses advanced computer methodologies to analyze the views expressed by investors, managers, analysts, and others. Once quantified, the results are used as explanatory variables in models of corporate and market behavior.

intelligent systems for biomedical applications, visual computing, human-computer interaction, and digital arts and design. He comments that he is “particularly passionate about building human-centered applications that benefit people and society through advanced computing techniques.”

Xiaoning Ding, assistant professor, Computer Science, is working in various areas of experimental computation, including operating systems, cloud computing and distributed systems, computer architecture, and database systems. He has been awarded the prestigious Computing Innovation Fellowship funded by the Computing Research Association and the National Science Foundation.

Sustainable Systems

Lian Duan, assistant professor, Information

Wenbo Selina Cai, assistant professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, is expert in operations management and dynamic pricing decisions. She is interested in researching questions related to economically sustainable energy systems and health care.

Systems, focuses on large-scale data mining. His work can be applied in marketing, social networking, bioinformatics and other areas. Abdallah Khreishah, assistant professor,

Electrical and Computer Engineering, has a scope of research spanning network coding, wireless networks, congestion control, cloud computing, network security, and database systems for large projects. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the UAE Research Foundation. Bernadette Longo,

associate professor, Humanities, is motivated by questions about our relationships with technological devices. She says, “My work looks at how we feel about making electronic communication and computing devices that are almost human. How are our human relations affected when we include machines in those human-tohuman relations?”

Catalin Turc, associate professor, Mathemat-

ical Sciences, is interested in scientific computing, computational electromagnetics, and numerical analysis. His work has wideranging utility in fields such as electronics and energy. Songhua Xu, assistant professor, Informa-

tion Systems, has research interests that span information retrieval and management,

Michel Boufadel, professor, Civil and En-

vironmental Engineering, is a Professional Engineer and Professional Hydrologist. His work has encompassed floodplain delineation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, contamination in urban streams, and oil spill research.

Martina Decker, assistant professor, College of Architecture and Design, explores how new materials might generate solutions to challenges such as water quality, energy generation and conservation, emissions and waste reduction, and health and safety. She says, “Materials engineered on a molecular level can be infused with very specific properties. These high-performance materials have great potential for giving us the tools to respond to important issues, especially in architecture and sustainable design.” Keith Krumwiede, associate professor, Col-

lege of Architecture and Design, is bringing expertise in urban design to NJIT from Yale. His particular emphasis is on high density, affordable housing intended for a sustainable urban environment. Jesse LeCavalier, assistant professor, College of Architecture and Design, has research interests that include “big box” retail structures and their effect on urban form and organization. His studies have a special emphasis on how these entities interact with local retail areas and residential neighborhoods.

Michel Boufadel (top), Martina Decker, Jesse LeCavalier and Wen Zhang

Alison Lefkovitz, assistant professor, History, specializes in the legal and gender history of the 20th-century United States and the evolving relational structures that sustain society today. Her recently completed book manuscript The Politics of Marriage in the Era of Women’s Liberation examines legal, political, and cultural challenges to marriage from the establishment of President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women until the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. Wen Zhang, assistant professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, has investigated the implications of introducing nanomaterials in environmental systems, and he is broadly interested in sustainable design and manufacturing. One of his goals is to integrate cutting-edge research from diverse disciplines into environmental science and engineering curricula. n

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Moving On “ NJIT has opened many doors for me.” — Christopher Early, Class of 2012

Photo: Larry Levanti

t’s well-known that NJIT graduates have the edge in knowledge, and one look at the hiring outcomes for the Class of 2012 reveals that they also have the edge in a lukewarm and highly competitive job market. Nearly 50 percent received job offers upon graduation, which is twice the national average for all college graduates this year, as reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). NJIT graduates are beginning their careers at companies that include AT&T, ExxonMobil, Merck, Forbes, Deloitte & Touche, Boeing, Skanska, Samsung, Verizon Wireless, Lockheed Martin and BASF. “We fully expected these positive outcomes,” says Greg Mass, executive director of Career Development Services (CDS) at NJIT. “We have seen a significant increase in the number of employers recruiting our students this past year. Organizations participating in our career fairs and on-campus recruitment programs increased by thirty percent to 485 employers during the 2012 academic year. The number of technological job postings increased by twenty-one percent to over 3,200 during this same period. These numbers are strong signals that by the time we conclude our first employment survey 2012 will be the strongest employment outcomes year for our graduates since 2008.” The CDS employment, salary and graduate school report for the graduating class is compiled from multiple sources. These include the NJIT graduating-student satisfaction survey, and hiring-results information submitted by students and employers who have used the

university’s career center. A follow-up report provides information about employment outcomes for graduates six months out. They’re in Demand “Companies are eager to hire NJIT graduates because they possess advanced technological knowledge and skills,” Mass says. “Moreover, employers state that NJIT graduates possess a keen ability to apply their know-how to real workplace challenges.” Students earning degrees in majors such as computer and information science and engineering had the best chances of landing jobs after graduation, according to a 2012 job outlook report published by NACE. Scholarathletes Daisy Gallegos and Christopher Early are two examples of this trend. Gallegos, who received her master’s degree in computer science in May 2012, excelled both in the classroom and as co-captain of the NJIT women’s cross-country team. While

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Rodriguez, Gallegos and Early are in the ranks of NJIT students who have added leadership experience to their already-long rosters of achievements. working toward her bachelor’s degree in information technology, Gallegos completed two internships. At AT&T in Middletown, New Jersey, she was a project manager in the Information Technology Department, and one summer worked at the Vanguard Group in Malvern, Pennsylvania, as a security operations analyst. She spent a second summer at Vanguard as a mobile application developer. Now, master’s in hand, Gallegos will be working as a consultant at Deloitte & Touche. A varsity swimmer, Early received a bachelor’s in computer engineering at NJIT’s 2012 commencement ceremony. He completed internships at McGraw-Hill and Credit Suisse, where he landed a position as an IT business analyst. “NJIT has opened many doors for me with internship opportunities and involvement in a wide array of organizations,” Early says. “This exposure improved my interpersonal skills and prepared me for life after college.” As an undergraduate, Daisy Gallegos served as president of the NJIT student chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and Daisy Gallegos will be working as a consultant at Deloitte & Touche.

Photo: Jed Medina

was a member of Phi Eta Sigma, the freshman honor society, as well as Omicron Delta Kappa, the national leadership society. In 2011 Gallegos received NJIT’s Presidential Leadership Award, which honors student leaders who have enhanced campus life. Christopher Early chaired the Albert Dorman Honors College recruitment committee, arranging tours and special events for high school students considering NJIT.

Christopher Early was hired by Credit Suisse as an IT business analyst.

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Taking the Lead As president of the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders at NJIT, Paul Rodriguez joined more than a dozen civil and mechanical engineering students, faculty, and staff volunteers who helped the residents of Milot, Haiti, to improve their water supply. Rodriguez, a Ronald E. McNair scholar who added a master’s in environmental engineering to the bachelor’s in mechanical engineering he earned from NJIT, will be working as an

engineer at Hatch Mott MacDonald. Rodriguez, Gallegos and Early are in the ranks of NJIT students who have added leadership experience to their already-long rosters of achievements. In addition to assisting students in gaining experience related to their major at private-sector companies, CDS helps to match students seeking to volunteer their talents with nonprofit organizations and social service agencies in direct need of technological help. “The students contribute their knowledge and skills toward improving communities, and in return they enhance their own lives and add value to their resumes by getting experience in their field,” says Mass. A Fair Advantage Students seeking full-time, part-time, and summer positions can connect with numerous employers at NJIT’s twice-yearly career fairs. “The number of employers attending this year’s spring fair was the largest ever,” says

“ The number of employers attending this year’s spring fair was the largest ever. We added 50 recruiting organizations to the 125 participating in 2011.” —Greg Mass, executive director of Career Development Services at NJIT

Author: Christina Crovetto is assistant editor of NJIT Magazine. www.njit.edu/cds

Paul Rodriguez, a McNair Scholar who received a master’s in environmental engineering, has joined Hatch Mott MacDonald.

There were 175 recruiters at the spring 2012 career fair.

Photos: Jed Medina

Mass. “We added 50 recruiting organizations to the 125 participating in 2011.” Perhaps even more important was the diverse representation of employer industries, Mass says. “We work very hard to ensure that we recruit organizations seeking students from all NJIT majors.” Some 20 percent of NJIT’s May 2011 graduates reported finding jobs through the career fairs. “Survey results thus far for our May 2012 graduates indicate that this trend will continue,” says Mass. In all, some 1700 students attended each fair, which was expanded to both the campus gym and the Naimoli Family Athletic and Recreational Facility to accommodate the significant increase in employers and students. “Our students were very pleased with the career fairs this year,” Mass says. “They told us that they greatly appreciated the event being held on campus and felt that the employers with whom they met appeared to be serious about hiring.” Along with career fairs, CDS offers oncampus recruitment, which gives employers an opportunity to interview graduating students and recent alumni. Employers can register online, post jobs for students and alumni to view, and select students for on-campus recruitment. While the majority of new degree holders pursue full-time employment upon graduation, this year sixteen percent of bachelor’s degree and four percent of master’s degree recipients indicated that they will enroll in full-time graduate or professional schools for the fall 2012 term. In addition to affording a decided edge in today’s job market, NJIT degrees are excellent credentials for further education. This year NJIT graduates have been accepted to prestigious graduate programs at schools that include Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. n

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Photos: Scott Jones Photography

alumni circuit

Excellence Honored Each year, a highlight of the Salute to Engineering Excellence sponsored by Newark College of Engineering is the presentation of Outstanding Alumni Awards. The ceremony also spotlights a notable corporate partner and NCE students who include exceptional seniors – young men and women soon to join the generations of proud NJIT alumni. For 2012, four NCE graduates garnered awards for their engineering and entrepreneurial achievements at the March event.

Joseph A. Branco

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Alumnus Joseph A. Branco is president of the construction company EIC Associates. He’s responsible for general administration of the firm, with special emphasis on finance, bonding and insurance. Branco, who has two degrees from NCE – a 1974 bachelor’s in civil engineering and a 1977 degree in architecture – co-founded the firm in 1998. Branco launched EIC with Andre B. Ameer, who earned his NCE bachelor’s in civil engineering in 1978. Ameer, executive vice president of EIC, is responsible for all of the firm’s field construction operations. Before founding EIC, both Branco and Ameer worked for EE Cruz and Company, a firm owned by 1963 civil engineering alum Edward Cruz that hires many NCE graduates. “We talked about starting a business, so we decided to stop talking and do it,” says Ameer. “All we had was our engineering knowledge, but more importantly engineers have a certain mentality. We are problem solvers, whether it’s in business or in construction. We never throw in the

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“ All we had was our engineering knowledge, but more importantly engineers have a certain mentality. We are problem solvers, whether it’s in business or in construction.” — Andre B. Ameer

towel. We always get the job done. That’s what helped our business.” Ameer characterizes EIC as a medium-sized construction company that excels at specialty construction projects. Recently, for instance, the firm constructed a park, called Pier C, which extends over the Hudson River on the Hoboken waterfront. The project involved doing considerable marine work, an EIC specialty. EIC also dredged and cleaned up a contaminated tract of land in Bayonne; that land is now the Bayonne Golf Club.

Andre B. Ameer

Bhavesh Adani is executive vice president and co-founder of cyberThink, Inc. The firm provides information technology services to companies in the pharmaceutical, financial and computer industries. Started in 1996, the company now employs more than 300 people in the United States and India. Adani received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from NCE in 1988. To go from a cash-strapped graduate student to a leader of a major tech company is no small feat, and Adani credits NCE for helping him launch his career. His big break came, he

says, during his second semester when, on the basis of his academic achievement, NCE awarded him a teaching assistantship. That job came just as his bank loan was running dry. “I had just eight dollars left in my pocket and the teachingassistant job allowed me to continue my education uninterrupted,” Adani recalls. “I’m grateful to NCE for that. My NCE education also served as a valuable springboard into the tough job market. It enabled me to seek challenging positions in companies such as JP Morgan, AT&T and Transax Systems.” Just before starting cyberThink in 1996, Adani worked as a database administrator and project manager for Transax Systems. He played a major role in building the first Windows-based tariff and rate-retrieval system. Three colleagues he met at Transax would become his founding cyberThink partners. Adani says the four of them came up with

Bhavesh Adani

the idea for cyberThink during “an informal chat over lunch.” Leon K. Baptiste is president and chief executive officer of LB Electric Co. His firm designs,

We want to hear from you! Do you have news about your career, your family, an avocation? Share it in a class note for NJIT Magazine. And be sure to let us know if you have a new address. On the Web, use the form at www.njit.edu/alumni/classnotes. By e-mail, send news and photos with your graduation year(s) to alumni-classnotes@njit.edu.

installs and maintains conventional and alternative electrical systems for companies, schools, hospitals and government agencies, in addition to providing other related services. Baptiste graduated from NCE in 1991 with a degree in electrical engineering and started his company at the NJIT Enterprise Development Center. He also received a 2012 Achievement Award from the NJIT Alumni Association, and there’s more about his accomplishments in this issue. This year’s Outstanding Corporate Partnership Award was presented to Valcor Engineering Corporation, a supplier of fluidcontrol components to clients in the aerospace, nuclear, industrial and scientific fields. Valcor was founded by the late Morton A. Krietchman, who graduated from NCE in 1944 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Krietchman founded Valcor in 1951 in a small industrial loft in Newark. For many years, Valcor has provided generous scholarship support for NJIT mechanical engineering majors. Among the outstanding NCE seniors honored was Julia Gayner.* She received two top awards, being named the Outstanding Senior in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the NCE Outstanding Senior. Other seniors recognized this year were Olakemi Akinlabi, Otto H. York Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering; Michael Anderson,* Mechanical and Industrial Engineering;

Tia Montalto, Engineering Technology; Mary Youssef,* Biomedical Engineering; and Luz Angela Zidziunas,* Civil and Environmental Engineering. The recipient of the Madame Mau Outstanding Female Engineering Student Award was Lisha Malkani,* a biomedical engineering major enrolled in the accelerated BS/MS program. Priya Radhi Santhanam ’09, a chemical engineering major, won the NCE Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Having completed her master’s in chemical engineering, she is now a PhD candidate. n

Via U.S. mail to: Robert A. Boynton, Executive Director,

Alumni Relations, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Eberhardt Hall NJIT Alumni Center, Room 218, 323 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Newark, NJ 07102-1982

*Dorman honors scholars

A Tradition Continues 2012 Alumni Achievement Awards Alumni Weekend in May once again brought graduates back to campus for activities and events that included the annual presentation of Achievement Awards by the NJIT Alumni Association. Six alumni were honored for singular accomplishments in fields spanning energy, biomedical technology, global infrastructure development and telecommunications, and for a deeply felt sense of service to NJIT and their communities. The Alumni Association also honored Gail Clarke ’44, who died in January, with a posthumous Meritorious Service Award. Clarke’s many years of support for his alma mater included serving as president

Visiting the NJIT Campus Center, where Leon Baptiste and his company installed 160 solar panels in 2004.

of the Alumni Association and with his wife, Dee, participating on the Leadership Circle Council of the NJIT Annual Fund. In 2004, the music of the carillon that the Clarkes donated to NJIT was first heard on campus, a gift presented with the intention of inspiring reflection on how a “creative combination of science and art can make life better.”

Leon K. Baptiste ’91 Ample Energy for Success The success that Leon Baptiste has achieved since earning his degree in electrical engineering resonates with energy. It’s the entrepreneurial energy he has invested in building LB Electric and the energy he helps to provide

through conventional and alternative electrical technologies. Baptiste, who grew up in Newark, briefly attended Cheney University in Pennsylvania. Deciding that NJIT would be a better match, he transferred to both a new school and a promising career path. Baptiste gives substantial credit to NJIT’s Educational Opportunity Program for setting him on that path, towards becoming an electrical engineer and launching his own business. One of Baptiste’s EOP advisors recommended an internship with Nordling Dean Electric Company that introduced him to the field and led to the part-time job he needed to continue his studies. Baptiste says guidance

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alumni circuit a lu m ni achi evem en t awa rd s, provided by other faculty and staff mentors at NJIT, as well as his EOP counselors, was invaluable in charting the positive direction of his life. “Having someone to guide you when you are a student makes a huge difference. I’ll never forget the help I received.” Full-time employment with Nordling Dean followed graduation, and Baptiste spent a total of 18 years with the company. But in 2000 Baptiste decided that he was ready to take a major entrepreneurial step and start his own company. Since then, he has achieved success across a broad spectrum of services offered through LB Electric and several subsidiaries. Baptiste and his employees are expert in designing, installing and maintaining all types of electrical power systems, including solar and wind equipment. In 2004, he installed the 160 solar panels on the roof of the NJIT Campus Center that now help to meet the center’s power needs. Subsidiary LB Glass Enterprise specializes in glass curtain wall construction that can incorporate photovoltaic technology. Branching out in still another related area, LB Training provides instruction in the installation and maintenance of power systems, with particular emphasis on solar energy. The range of business initiatives that Baptiste oversees as president and CEO of LB Electric has become increasingly diverse since he founded his company over a decade ago. He takes special satisfaction in

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“ Learning to work effectively with the many different personalities one will meet in life is very important. Join a club, a sports team. It will help you develop the ability to meet challenges creatively as part of an organization.” — Peter A. Cistaro ’68

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being at the forefront of making renewable energy technology part of our everyday power picture. He adds that it is equally satisfying to help ensure that power resources of every type are installed and utilized with the greatest possible degree of safety and efficiency. Baptiste has also maintained a close connection with NJIT, one that reflects the importance he places on the mentoring that gave him direction as a student. He is a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department’s Advisory Board, and an industry advisor to the Interdisciplinary Design Studio (IDS) program in Albert Dorman Honors College. The multi-year IDS program allows students to take an innovative technological concept all the way to commercial development, and perhaps follow Baptiste on the path to entrepreneurial success.

Peter A. Cistaro ’68 Encouraging People to Do Their Best Reflecting on his four decades with the utility company PSE&G, Peter Cistaro says that his greatest satisfaction as a manager was helping people use their talents to the fullest and do the best job possible. This focus even factored into Cistaro’s decision to major in industrial engineering at NCE after graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School in Elizabeth. “I felt that industrial engineering was a good balance between learning about technology and

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Retired from a long and fulfilling career at PSE&G, Peter Cistaro recently enjoyed a trip to the Grand Canyon with his wife, Mary Ann.

developing management skills,” Cistaro says. “At the time, it was the best option for someone like me.” And of his NCE experience, he does not hesitate to say that some of his professors were “awe inspiring.” Wanting to remain in his home state after graduation, Cistaro accepted a job with PSE&G and started on the career from which he would retire in 2007 as a vice president. His first assignment was assisting a district manager, a post he later held himself. Over the years, he moved on to positions of increasing responsibility in labor relations, marketing, quality assurance, and customer service. Sharing his thoughts on management, Cistaro cites the concept of “servant leadership.” He explains that a good manager is someone who helps people do their jobs better by encouraging them, by providing the right tools, and by working to put the necessary processes in place. “It’s very different from management

through fear, pounding on the table and expecting to get the best from people.” Cistaro urges students today to take a broad range of courses, and to develop the interpersonal skills that lead to success in the workplace. Technical knowledge is vital, he says, but also learn from the humanities. “Learning to work effectively with the many different personalities one will meet in life is very important. Join a club, a sports team. It will help you develop the ability to meet challenges creatively as part of an organization. You will always be part of an organization, a member of some team.” Cistaro has long made it a priority to help the young men and women who followed him at NJIT. In addition to sponsoring the Cistaro Family Scholarship, he has generously contributed time as a member of the Leadership Circle Council and the NCE Board of Visitors, which he chaired for several years. A member of the Board of Trustees since 2002, he chairs the board’s Advancement Committee. Shortly before retirement, Cistaro made another commitment to what he holds especially valuable in life. Heeding the suggestion of his pastor at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Parsippany, he began five years of study to become a permanent deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. Ordained in 2009, Cistaro assists at Mass, administers some sacraments, and ministers to patients in hospitals and residents of nursing homes. “It’s about people,” he says. “That’s the heart of what I am.”

“ When I started, I never imagined that I would work and live in such a variety of places.” — Michael J. Corbo ’81

Robert C. Cohen ’83, ’84, ’87 From Aerospace to Surgical Implants When he graduated from Livingston High School, Robert Cohen enrolled at NJIT as a mechanical engineering major with soaring thoughts of work in the aerospace field. He’s now engaged on a very different frontier. Cohen is developing innovative joint implants as chief technology officer and senior vice president for research and development at Pipeline Biomedical Holdings. Along the arc of his career, he has been awarded over 20 patents and has had numerous peer-reviewed publications. Cohen’s transition to pioneering technology for the human body began with part-time employment as an undergraduate senior. Professor Michael Pappas ’59, ’64 hired him to help with drafting and detailed engineering for knee, hip and shoulder implants produced by

The hip prosthesis that Robert Cohen is helping to develop can mean both better mobility and faster recovery.

the company that Pappas had co-founded. One of the venture’s innovations was the famed New Jersey Low Contact Stress Knee. After completing his bachelor’s, Cohen studied for a master’s and taught physics as a graduate assistant, receiving the MS in 1984. Pappas was the advisor for his thesis, a finite element analysis of a hip joint. Seeking broader experience in the rapidly growing joint-implant industry, Cohen left academia and joined a company founded by alumni Robert Averill ’62, ’66 and Alex Khowaylo ’63. Yet he didn’t sever all connections to NJIT, and in 1987 added an MS in engineering management to his academic credentials. The company, Osteonics, became a significant orthopedic implant division of Stryker. Cohen advanced rapidly through the ranks to direct a large technical R&D group responsible for the design of joint reconstructive systems. But entrepreneurial opportunity again beckoned, and Cohen rejoined Khowaylo at a start-up, Implex, introducing novel hip and knee implant designs combined with a newly developed biomaterial that encourages bone fixation to the implants. Success led to acquisition. Implex became part of Zimmer, the world’s largest orthopedic implant company. Cohen served as vice-president and general manager of New Jersey reconstructive implant operations and president of Zimmer’s spinal implant division. However, reluctant to leave New Jersey when his position was to move out of state, Cohen looked closer to

home. A very attractive opportunity presented itself in 2007 – to help build another startup, Pipeline Biomedical, in partnership with his former colleague Alex Khowaylo. Based in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey, their company is developing leading-edge hip and knee prostheses designed for younger, more active patients that require removing less bone for implantation. They are also combining their new generation of implants with robotic bone preparation. The objective is to assist the surgeon in making bone cuts and implant placement as precise as possible for a prosthesis that provides long-term performance. Pipeline Biomedical continues developing new technologies for joint-replacement surgery. One advance involves coating implants with a pharmaceutical material that can promote bone growth and increase bone density around the implant. Potential benefits include a faster return to daily life for recipients and an increased likelihood of clinical success. This translates into greater patient satisfaction, with less chance of the need for revision surgery at a high cost to the patient and medical facility. An active member of the NCE Board of Visitors, Cohen has also connected with NJIT to move Pipeline Biomedical’s R&D program forward. The company is making use of a live-cell lab at the NJIT Enterprise Development Center to confirm the safety and efficacy of the innovative coating on their implants. And where do Cohen and his colleagues plan to manufacture

their breakthrough products? In New Jersey, in Morris County, where he says they will take the manufacturing process of metal laser sintering to a new level. Commenting on the siren song of offshore manufacturing, Cohen says that there are very good reasons to keep the production of sophisticated products such as prosthetic implants much closer. “It’s been my experience that the efficiency and speed with which it’s possible to go from design to a finished product can definitely compensate for higher costs that may be involved. We have the talent and everything else needed to turn a good idea into a high-tech product quickly and profitably.”

Michael J. Corbo ’81 A Career Out of the Blue “My career started with an interview I didn’t have, and with a letter that came out of the blue,” says Michael Corbo, today a senior engineering associate who has spent more than thirty years working for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering. Corbo, whose bachelor’s is in electrical engineering, explains that when he was a junior he tried to sign up for a preliminary “practice” interview with Exxon Corporation but the list was full. Instead, he just submitted his resume. Then, “out of the blue,” he received a letter asking if he would be interested in a summer internship at the company’s refinery in Bayway, New Jersey. “I’ve always assumed that I received the letter because I sent my resume, and Exxon liked what they saw,” he says.

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alumni circuit a lu m ni achi evem en t awa rd s, Corbo’s internship led to an offer of full-time employment upon graduation. He had a choice of three assignment locations and opted to join the Central Engineering group at the Exxon research and engineering facility then located in Florham Park, New Jersey. There he became involved with instrumentation and control systems, the field in which he has built a career that has taken him to the U.S. Gulf Coast, Canada, Europe and Asia. “When I started, I never imagined that I would work and live in such a variety of places,” Corbo says. “It’s been eyeopening, and fun learning the different cultures.” A specialist in automated process control technology, he has relocated to projects in Louisiana, Texas, Holland, Singapore and Thailand. Another leg of his career brought him back to Florham Park, to head the group he first joined after completing his NJIT degree.

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Corbo is also applying the extensive technical acumen he has gained over the years to work with the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the International Society of Automation (ISA). He chairs the API subcommittee on instrumentation and control systems, and is ExxonMobil’s representative to the ISA subcommittee on safety instrumented systems. Now based in Texas, Corbo is one of several senior instrumentation and process-control engineers who help to oversee the complexities of operating ExxonMobil’s five U.S. petrochemical complexes, which include Baytown, Texas; Baton Rouge and Chalmette, Louisiana; Joliet, Illinois; and Torrance, California. They’re among the 120 technical professionals who staff a Central Engineering satellite office in Houston. Central Engineering, headquartered in Virginia, located this expertise in

Michael Corbo is on call in Texas to provide process instrumentation expertise.

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Jeanie and Fabian Hurtado with their boatman and guide on the Nile.

Texas to make it available more rapidly to U.S.-based operations. Corbo has also been highly recognized within ExxonMobil over his career, having received the ExxonMobil Engineering Award for Excellence in 1991, 1995 and 2005 for his leadership and initiative. Most recently, he received consecutive ExxonMobil Capital Efficiency Awards in 2011 and 2012 for identifying and implementing cost-effective solutions in his area of expertise on several large capital projects. Asked to share his thoughts about our society’s energy needs, Corbo says that we have to continue developing and making the best use of global petroleum resources. But he does add that we need to bring alternative energy technologies online, including wind, solar and biofuels. There’s even an ExxonMobil initiative on the alternative-energy frontier under way not far from Corbo’s office. It’s a pilot project that may one day be scaled up to augment our energy supply with biofuel obtained from algae.

Fabian Hurtado ’75 Embracing the World For Fabian Hurtado, life has been an international odyssey that began when he immigrated with his parents to the U.S. from his birthplace in Pereira, Colombia. Settled in New Jersey, Hurtado had two abiding aspirations – to become a civil engineer and a good soccer player. As it turned out, his prowess on the soccer field led to NJIT. Hurtado joined the GermanAmerican adult soccer league as a teenager, proving himself to be an outstanding player. Teammate Bob Miller ’72 and coach Alex Malone encouraged him to consider NJIT as the best choice for both earning an engineering degree and pursuing his passion for soccer. Recognized as one of the best players in the college arena, Hurtado was selected for the NJIT Hall of Fame, named an All-American, and drafted by the Dallas Tornado professional soccer team in 1975. Yet engineering held more appeal for Hurtado

“ I am very proud of what I see Americans working to accomplish in many parts of the world.” — Fabian Hurtado ’75

than pro soccer. He moved on to engineering positions in Nevada and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he worked with fellow engineering alumnus Alfredo Teran ’75. A licensed Professional Engineer, Hurtado also served the city of Maitland, Florida, as city engineer and assistant public works director. Hurtado says that his education at NJIT “opened up the world for me.” That’s been literally true as his engineering career has taken him to Central and South America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East accompanied by his wife, Jeanie. Hurtado also says that some of the most gratifying assignments on his professional itinerary have involved working on projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. State Department. Life for the Hurtados has had some unexpected moments of excitement in recent years, such as when they were evacuated from Egypt in the midst of the civil unrest that toppled the government of Hosni Mubarak. “We thought it would be a one-day demonstration. We soon discovered, along with the rest of the world, that the massive protest was going to last a lot longer.” But Hurtado emphasizes that experiences like this have been very much the exception as he and Jeanie have traveled extensively for pleasure as well as for work. Thus far, they’ve been to some 60 countries. “I am very proud of what I see Americans working to accomplish in many parts of the world,”

Hurtado says. “We’re doing our best to help a lot of people. I also think that when we live in another country we really get to understand each other better. You learn that most people everywhere just want to enjoy life together.” After the completion of recent projects that included one in Iraq, Hurtado and his wife have returned to Florida. The expectation is that their stay in the U.S. will be brief, and that a new assignment will soon take them to another distant and interesting spot on the globe.

Ying Wu ’88 Building Telecom Bridges Ying Wu, chairman of China Capital Group, is in the business of connecting people and countries, specifically the United States and China. One of his main goals is to bring the benefits of advanced telecommunications technology developed in the U.S. to the people of his native country. The demand for access to telecom services is growing rapidly in China, which Wu says presents major opportunities for U.S. companies. Since earning his master’s in electrical engineering at NJIT, Wu has become a widely known and widely respected figure in the field of telecommunications and international economic development. In 2003, China Central TV named him one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Persons” in that country’s economy. But Wu recounts that when he came to the U.S. for graduate study at NJIT he had less than $30. In China, he had been

Ying Wu also received the Edward F. Weston Medal for Professional Achievement at Celebration 2011.

teaching at Beijing Polytechnic University, now Beijing University of Technology. It was a time of significant change in China’s relations with Western nations, and talented individuals were encouraged to improve their knowledge and skills abroad. The downside was that the Chinese government could not provide resources adequate to fund this quest. Researching his options, Wu had determined that NJIT would be a good place for him to gain the academic credential he wanted. And at NJIT he found a very welcoming environment, along with the teaching assistantship he needed to complete his degree. “I really liked how my professors brought real-world problems into the courses,” Wu says. “That’s a very important foundation for a good education and for success later on.” The success that Wu himself achieved after graduation began with work at Bell Communications Research and AT&T Bell Labs. Wu subsequently set an entrepreneurial course that led to producing wireline and wireless products based on U.S. technology for markets in Asia. In 1991, he co-founded Starcom Network Systems Inc. in New Jersey, which several years later merged with Unitech Telecom, Inc., a California developer of digital and wireless transmission systems. Wu became executive

vice president and vice chairman of the board of directors of the new UTStarcom, as well as the founder and CEO of its Chinabased subsidiary, UTStarcom (China) Ltd. In addition to his current business commitments as chairman of China Capital Group, Wu is a consultant to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and senior Internet consultant to the government of Shenzhen City. Located in Guangdong Province near Hong Kong, the Shenzhen area became China’s first Special Economic Zone and one of its most successful. Further recognition has been accorded Wu in being named an honorary professor at Beijing Industrial University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Generously acknowledging the role that NJIT has had in his success, Wu pledged $1.5 million in 2005 to establish the Ying Wu Endowed Chair in Wireless Communications in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. More recently, he helped to organize the NJIT Alumni Association’s most distant Regional Club, in China, and presided at the group’s first gathering. The dozen PhD alumni attending elected Wu the first chair of the club by acclamation. n

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class notes Mal & Friends NJIT Magazine invites new correspondents to join Mal Simon in sharing news about class members and alumni organizations. Professor emeritus of physical education and athletics, Mal was director of physical education and athletics, and men’s soccer coach, for 30 years. In 1993, he received the Cullimore Medal for his service to the university. If you would like to be a regular correspondent, don’t hesitate to send an e-mail to the editor of NJIT Magazine: dean.maskevich@njit.edu.

First, the latest news from Mal – Ed ’63 and Sharon Cruz pulled

out all the stops as gracious hosts at the 2012 Florida soccer alumni reunion held at Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island. Blessed with perfect weather, activities were nonstop from the opening night’s reception to the ending morning’s brunch at their exquisite beachfront home in Boca Grande’s historic district. In between, alumni and guests, including NJIT’s new President and First Lady, Joel and Diane Bloom, enjoyed the town’s Strawberry Festival, soccer, golf, cocktails and dinner, and the infamous Las Cubanas mariachi singers at the Coral Creek Country Club, and simply taking walks and relaxing on the beach. Making their debuts at the reunion were Libby Hamilton ’77, Andy ’63 and Barbara Handwerker, Alex ’63 and Irene Khowaylo, Gerry ’67, ’71 and Joanne Kurth, Bill Morris ’82, ’93 and Stan ’64 and Joan Pukash. Gerry was a member of the NCE soccer team and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, and president of the Class of 1967. He spent 30 years with IBM in engineering, sales, marketing, business and financial planning, and consulting.

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After retiring from IBM in 1997, Gerry joined INTECO, a small technology consulting firm, as general manager. In 1999, he brokered the sale of the company to Gartner Group, a large consulting firm from which he retired in 2004. His many retirement volunteer activities include being a court-appointed child advocate and member of the Service Corps for Retired Executives. He also runs in marathons and 5k races. Gerry and Joanne are snowbirds and take one big vacation a year, which has included a 42-day crosscountry trip and an African safari. Stan played baseball for four years for Coach Paul Hausser. He knew many of the members of the soccer team and volunteered to be the team’s manager in his senior year. After graduation, Stan started his career with Automatic Switch Company in Florham Park, New Jersey, as an application engineer. He stayed with Automatic Switch for 43 years, retiring in 2007 as vice-president of international sales. Stan and Joan have been married since 1968 and live in Chester, New Jersey.

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NJIT President Joel S. Bloom (standing, fifth from left) and his wife, Diane, made the first of what attending soccer alums hope will be many future appearances at their Florida reunions.

Diane and I were guests of the Class of 1962 at the 2012 Alumni Weekend gala. I am always awed when I hear about the professional accomplishments of NJIT alumni and this group was no exception. Following are some of their stories. Bob Averill ’62, ’66 was cofounder with Alex Khowaylo ’63

of three medical device companies, each of which was sold to a Fortune 500 corporation. He served as director of Meditech, Inc., which was sold to 3M Corporation. He was an executive with Osteonics Corporation, which was acquired by Stryker Corporation, and served as director of Implex Corporation, which was sold to Zimmer Holdings, Inc. Bob holds 28 patents for a variety of orthopedic devices. He’s retired but actively serves on the Board of Directors of Axion Power International, Inc. Bob and his wife Gerri, who he married while an undergraduate at NCE, live on Cupsaw Lake in the hilly mine town of Ringwood, New Jersey.

While at NCE, Bob Fierro ’62 joined the Motor Club and Photography Club and was staff photographer for the Nucleus. He went to work for Mackay Radio and Telegraph, where he learned about the emerging world of solid-state logic. Bob joined a new group of engineers formed to develop high-speed data communications over international circuits. In those days, high speed meant 1200 baud, and international communications was over telephone bandwidth undersea cable. Bob was the first person to send and receive 1200 baud data between New York City and Geneva, Switzerland. He spent the next four years deploying high-speed data circuits for the military and participated in the planning for NASA’s Apollo program. After a few years in management, he knew this was not his niche. Returning to engineering, he started his own company, which specialized in turnkey design, development and manufacture of communications and control systems.

“ I am always awed when I hear about the professional accomplishments of NJIT alumni.” — Mal Simon

Starting on his dining room table, he eventually grew his company to two plants with more than 30 employees. His first big break was a contract with CBS to design and deliver a black box that would take the stream of election-results data and display the results automatically for television cameras to photograph. He then contracted with ABC to design and develop a communications system that would allow taping and broadcasting events from multiple venues at the 1976 Olympics. This system was also used for the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. A classmate, Tom Duffy, asked Bob if he could design a 1200 baud modem for AT&T Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. What was supposed to be a short-term assignment turned out to be longterm, and Bob spent 18 of the next 20 years at Bell Labs, later Lucent, on a wide range of projects. After a stint with a startup company, Converge, in Florham Park, New Jersey, Bob retired. His leisure life lasted only six months when he decided to work in the mortgage business. Eight years later, he retired for good. Bob, who holds a U.S. Coast Guard Master’s License, loves to sail and fish and spend time restoring his two classic sail and power boats. A member of the Lavallette Yacht Club, he helps to run the club’s racing program. Bob and his wife, Kathleen, live in Island Heights, New Jersey. Marshall Lerner ’62 came from

California for the reunion. At NCE, he was a member of Tau Epsilon Pi Fraternity and was inducted into the Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Eta Sigma honor societies. Marshall is managing

partner of the intellectual property law firm of Kleinberg & Lerner L.L.P. based in Los Angeles. He received his JD degree with honors from George Washington University in 1965 and is a member of the bars of California and the District of Columbia. Marshall was a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a patent advisor in the Office of Naval Research. He has lectured on intellectual property at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management, Santa Monica College and the USC Marshall School of Business, where he is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Marshall and his wife, Jacqueline, live in Beverly Hills. Vic Passaro ’62 was inducted into the Phi Eta Sigma and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies at NCE. He worked for international companies such as ITT designing telecommunications systems and satellites while working in Europe and Japan. Back in the States, he led a software group for Computer Sciences Corp. developing the first Off Track Betting (OTB) system for New York City.

As director of engineering for a Singer telecommunications division, Vic developed the first handheld portable inventory terminal. Moving to RCA, he managed an advanced systems group that developed international switching systems. While vice president for an international bank, Vic was responsible for various online and terminal-based projects. Retiring in 1997, Vic and his wife, Nancy, who live in Manhattan, have been

enjoying international travel and cruises. They especially enjoyed living in Rome for three months. James Quintiere ’62 recently retired from the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland and is now an emeritus professor. Jim has over 130 journal publications and is the author of two books, Principles of Fire Behavior and Fundamentals of Fire Behavior, and is co-author of Enclosure Fire Dynamics. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has received numerous awards and medals for his work in fire-safety science and engineering. Jim lives in Laytonsville, Maryland, and maintains a condo in Margate, New Jersey, where he plays accordion for the Durning String Band that marches in Mummers parades. John Roth ’62 spent his entire

professional career at Monsanto Company, with three career paths. He first worked in machine design and process development, where he earned one patent. His next path was in manufacturing, where he progressed from engineering and maintenance superintendent to plant manager at a grassroots facility in Chicago. His third career path was in human resources, advancing from manager of compensation to director of all human resources staff for Monsanto Chemical Company. John retired in 1996 as director of human resources for the Saflex Division, a $600 million international business operating on four continents. His retirement activities include writing short stories, collecting golf antiques, and playing golf with other antiques. John has been married to his

high school sweetheart, Elizabeth Joyce, for 49 years. They live in Mills River, North Carolina. Ervin Schoenblum ’62, ’65

worked for Bendix in Teterboro, New Jersey, as an electrical and aeronautical engineer for four years. While at Bendix, he earned a master’s degree at NCE and taught some EE courses in the evening division. In 1966, Erv decided to move in a different career direction and entered a full-time program at the Harvard Business School, earning his MBA in 1968. He joined the Management Consulting Department of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell in New York City and remained there until 1980. During that time, he managed about 200 consulting projects in a broad range of areas. In 1981 Erv joined a leveraged buyout firm that acquired companies, improved and sold them at a profit. After two years, he decided to go off on his own as a consultant, providing expert testimony on economic issues in litigation proceedings. He remains active in this work, finding it stimulating and educational. An outstanding tennis player at Passaic High School, Erv continued his tennis at NCE, playing first singles for four years. He met his wife, Diana, at NCE’s famous Friday night dance club. They have been married for 48 years and live in Wayne, New Jersey. Michael V. Vasilik ’62 has over

40 years of experience in research, development, engineering, manufacturing and management. He has held senior management positions in high-tech corporations and as a consultant for the federal government on advanced research

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class notes and development projects. He served for 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel. His assignments included working for the assistant secretary of the Air Force and representing the U.S. on advisory boards and committees with senior scientists, engineers and leaders from NATO countries. Michael earned a PhD in industrial engineering and operations research from Arizona State University. He also earned a Diploma in International Relations and National Security Policy from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Michael is actively involved in community and church activities and is a volunteer at the Lehigh Valley Health Network. He continues a lifelong program of physical fitness and participates in various sports. A highlight of the reunion was two performances of the famous “e to the x” cheer by Leona Balkenende Seazholtz ’62, Virginia Thomas Sulzberger ’62, ’66 and Edith Jeffrey ’62.

I had written about Leona and Virginia after their 45th reunion. And now, five years later, Edith overcame her modesty to send her story, which will be featured in a future NJIT Magazine. I guarantee it will blow your mind as it did mine. You will also learn in a future Mal and Friends column how learning to ski on the NCE ski deck had a positive impact on the life of Jack Wagner ’74. Keep the news coming to mjs@njit.edu.

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1953

1974

1998

Charlie Wilson (ME), MS ’58

Richard C. DelCore (ME) writes

shares the news that he has been appointed to the Environmental Assistance and Protection Board of Forsyth County, North Carolina. Charlie and his wife, Liz, moved to North Carolina a few years ago. They recently had the pleasure of a visit from Coach Mal Simon and his wife, Diane. Liz chairs the Peace and Social Concerns Committee at her church and is a dedicated gardener. Charlie arranges programs for the Sierra Club and prefers kayaking, swimming and hiking over gardening.

“I recently retired from Procter & Gamble after 37 years with them. My career at P&G started in manufacturing management, then to finance and accounting, then human resources and finally global marketing. My final role was global leader for brand entertainment and VP of P&G Productions. I am now consulting in the marketing and entertainment area. My experience and success at P&G is largely attributed to the engineering training I received and my ability to apply process thinking and problem solving to the various businesses I worked on.”

Manuel Gonzalez (Arch) has joined Cuhaci & Peterson Architects, based in Orlando, Florida.

1960 Manny Pokotilow (EE), managing partner at the law firm of Caesar, Rivise, Bernstein, Cohen & Pokotilow, has received the Pennsylvania Bar Institute’s Arthur Seidel Distinguished IP Service Award. The award was presented “in recognition of his commitment to the highest standard of excellence in intellectual property law.”

1967 Patrick M. Coullahan PE (IE)

was presented with the Society of American Military Engineers Wheeler Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Military Engineering at the SAME National Medals and Honors Awards Ceremony held in conjunction with the society’s 2012 national meeting in St. Louis. He was recognized for actions as chief, construction and operations, of the Alaska District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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1980 Kenneth (Ken) Drake AIA

(Arch) has joined EYP Architecture & Engineering as a senior project executive supporting the firm’s government, corporate and higher-education sectors.

1988 Colonel Brant V. Dayley (Envi-

ronmental Eng) recently became garrison commander at Fort Bliss, Texas. Commissioned as a Regular Army second lieutenant in the Air Defense Artillery, he has held a variety of operational and staff assignments over more than two decades of service. Francesco Liberti (Eng Sci-

ence), MS ’92 (Environmental Eng) is a vice president in the Operational Risk Division at Morgan Stanley, where his work focuses on environmental and operational risks across various businesses.

1999 Gopinath Kokkonda MS (Computer Science) writes “I am the managing director of an IT solutions integrator/consulting firm providing Web, mobile, digital marketing and staffing solutions.”

2000 Jeff Starr (Mgmt) has been

named Boys’ Basketball Coach of the Year in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, for the second time in recognition of leading Arundel High School, his alma mater, to a 24-2 record.

2009 Karen Patten PhD (Information

Systems) was recently named a Scholar of the Month by the Office of Research at the University of South Carolina, where she is an assistant professor of integrated information technology. Karen’s two co-authors of the recently published book Information Technology for Small Business include NJIT Associate Professor Katia Passerini.

2011 Danielle L. Green MS (Mgmt, Information Systems) has been promoted to program director at New Jersey Advocates for Education, a non-profit foundation.

2012 Ravi Trivedi (Computer Science)

has accepted a position as a software engineer at TATA Consultancy Services.

I n Me m o r i a m The NJIT community has been saddened by the deaths of the following alumni: Victor Lindner ’53 Harry Elder ’54 Leroy J. Ducharme ’56 Henry Paulson ’60 William J. Parkinson, Jr. ’72

Also noted with sadness is the passing of John Walker Ryon III, professor of computer science.

Clear Sailing Electrical engineer Claus Kinder ’75, who recently joined Zumtobel Lighting, Inc. as CEO/COO, also volunteers on the executive board of the Clearwater organization as treasurer (www.clearwater. org). Launched in 1969, the Clearwater is a replica of the majestic sloops that sailed the Hudson River in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was conceived and built to focus

attention on dire pollution in the river and the need for better stewardship of our global environment. Named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, the Clearwater has sailed as America’s environmental flagship for more than four decades. It has been the heart of educational programs, social advocacy and musical celebrations like the annual Clearwater Festival – inspiring

Proudly Presented Traveling to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, alumnus Stanley Barauskas had the honor of presenting four 2012 graduating cadets with awards on behalf of the “Bald Eagles” – retirees of North American Aviation, Inc. The awards, endowed by the company’s retiree organization, are given for excellence in astronautics, aerodynamics and basic research. A 2011 NJIT Alumni Achievement honoree, Barauskas’ role as an engineer in the aerospace field included contributing to the success of the Apollo, Skylab

millions of people to support positive environmental action such as the measures that have greatly improved the Hudson River.

Stanley Barauskas ’61 presenting awards for excellence in basic research to U.S. Air Force Academy cadets Cody O. Deacon and Mark W. Boyer.

and Space Shuttle programs. Of his recent experience as a Bald Eagle representative, he writes: “The three days I spent at the Air Force Academy participating in the North American Aviation Awards for outstanding cadets

and then attending their graduation the following day were very rewarding and inspiring. I was extremely impressed with the young men who received awards for their excellent academic performance.

“They stand ready to make a significant contribution to our nation’s defense and improve the lives of all U.S. citizens. It was a great honor to be able to recognize these young men for their accomplishments and witness their graduation and entry into the U.S. Air Force as second lieutenants. They are fine examples for others to follow and our Air Force is truly enhanced by their joining its ranks.”

NJIT MAGAZINE

FALL 2012

alumni Calendar s a v e t he d a t e !

Third Annual EMBA Business Conference Thursday, October 18 NJIT Campus Center “Political Strategies and Business Realities in a Time of Transition” In a year characterized by global changes and crises in national and international politics, contending with transition is a reality. This all-day conference seeks to identify the challenges and highlight the drivers affecting the intersection where business, public policy and globalization merge.

Corporate Clubs

Regional Clubs

NJIT’s Corporate Clubs provide valuable networking opportunities for alumni in the workplace while also assisting NJIT students and faculty. Current Corporate Clubs include: Eng-Wong, Taub & Associates, Hatch Mott MacDonald, PSE&G, ScheringPlough, Turner Construction and United Parcel Service. For more information:

NJIT Regional Clubs are planning events across the country. For more information:

www.njit.edu/alumni/clubs

Young Alumni Club The Young Alumni Club organizes social, networking, and educational events for alumni and their families. For more information: www.njit.edu/alumni/clubs

Sponsored by the NJIT School of Management For more information and to register, contact D. Elaine Frazier at frazier.njit.edu or 973-596-6378.

Celebration 2012 Friday, November 2 Pleasantdale Chateau West Orange, New Jersey NJIT’s annual festive evening in support of endowed scholarships for students. Information: Jacquie Rhodes 973-596-3407 or rhodes@njit.edu Also visit www.njit.edu/celebration

Alumni Weekend 2013 Friday, May 17 – Sunday, May 19 Alumni Weekend has something for every NJIT grad! Return to campus for Five-Year Anniversary reunions as well as non-anniversary class, college, department and fraternity/sorority events. Reconnect with NJIT and fellow alumni over a weekend of activities featuring receptions, dinners, college and department presentations, exhibits, and the annual Alumni Achievement Award presentations by the Alumni Association. For more information about Alumni Weekend or to make reservations online: www.njit.edu/alumni/class or contact the Alumni Relations Office at 973-596-3441.

NJIT MAGAZINE

FALL 2012

A Golden Gathering Wearing the special medals presented as part of Commencement 2012, the contingent of Golden Highlanders attending took time for a photo with NJIT President Joel S. Bloom, and Executive Director of Alumni Relations Robert A. Boynton and Alumni Association President Joseph Stanley ’78, ’85 (standing, 1st and 2nd from right). Senior among this year’s Golden Highlanders celebrating 50 and more years since their graduation is Herman Blackman ’38 (seated, 2nd from left). Standing on the far left is Walter H. Kraft ’62, MS ’65, PhD ’75, who returned to campus for the Class of 1962’s reunion and the graduation of his grandson with the Class of 2012.

For the most current information about Alumni Association activities, visit www.njit.edu/alumni. Join us on Facebook and LinkedIn too. Go to www.njit.edu/alumni/community.

at the edge

Healing Designs Challenged by the theme “Aids in South Africa,” NJIT interior design students won two of the three East Region awards in the annual design competition sponsored by the Interior Design Educators Council, the second consecutive year NJIT entries achieved this distinction. Students were asked to identify problems besetting the “Lost Generation” – children who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS and are now on their own – and propose a local design response that would help the community.

The winning projects created by students from the third-year class included Africa’s Playtime (right) by Mary O’Haire and Nicole Zampolin, which uses recycled local materials to create playground equipment and spaces in which children may play. The other winning NJIT entry, Zulu Cultural Center (above), was a site-specific proposal by Tatiana Duarte, Peter Fritzky and Nora Hamadé that provides an environment where children can explore their culture through activities such as reading, art, traditional song, dance and storytelling. http://art.njit.edu

Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Lancaster, PA Permit No. 299

New Jersey Institute of Technology University Heights Newark, NJ 07102-1982 www.njit.edu

the edge in knowledge

Join the Celebration! Entertainment by music legend Neil Sedaka highlights Celebration 2012 – NJIT’s annual evening gala in support of endowed scholarships. Since 1995, Celebration has raised more than $4 million to help exceptional young women and men like architecture major Karen Cilento ’12 and computer science major David Daudelin ’12 achieve their educational goals. Both Albert Dorman honors scholars, Karen was the student speaker at Celebration 2010 and David was the student speaker in 2011.

Celebration 2012 on November 2 also launches the public phase of NJIT NEXT, the comprehensive campaign that’s on track to raise $150 million for NJIT’s future. Karen Cilento

Visit www.njit.edu/giving for more about sharing the excitement of Celebration, contributing to NJIT NEXT and the many other ways there are to support NJIT.

David Daudelin