NJIT Magazine Winter 2014

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protecting who we are The Challenge of Traumatic Brain Injury

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On Common Ground

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New Engagement with Newark

Excellence Recognized Overseers Honor Two Trailblazing Researchers

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Executive Summary

A Message from NJIT President Joel S. Bloom E x pa n ding t h e U ni v e r s it y ’s Eng ag e m e nt w it h t h e Econom y a n d Soc i e t y NJIT has the potential to significantly improve daily life for millions of people through its excellent programs in education, service, and research. Fulfilling the promise of engineering, science, and technology has always been fundamental to our university’s mission. But, in the 21st century, NJIT has become engaged in initiatives that can have a far greater impact on society.

Two features in this issue of the magazine highlight NJIT’s strategic commitment to building connections between the life sciences and a wide range of complementary disciplines.

“Protecting Who We Are” focuses on understanding and developing better treatment for a health problem that is making headlines across the nation – traumatic brain injury, or TBI. TBI is a leading cause of disability and death in the United States, including brain impairment stemming from concussions in sports such as football. TBI also is the tragic signature wound of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, affecting many of the military personnel injured in combat.

The effort to help those afflicted by TBI from all causes is engaging NJIT’s faculty and students who are collaborating with colleagues doing related research at other institutions, among them colleagues affiliated with the Veterans Affairs New Jersey Health Care System.

In profiling the recipients of the most recent NJIT Overseers awards for outstanding research, “Excellence Recognized” is a succinct account of achievement and future promise on additional biomedical frontiers. The pioneering work of Professor Treena Livingston Arinzeh and Research Professor Michael Jaffe clearly indicates the positive outcomes possible with convergence across diverse scientific and technological fields.

A third feature in this issue, “On Common Ground,” covers the opening of the Warren Street Village complex, the new home of NJIT’s residential Albert Dorman Honors College and our fraternities and sororities. The completion of Warren Street Village has both local significance and major importance far beyond the NJIT campus. As a catalytic part of the Gateway Project, Warren Street Village reaffirms our engagement in the ongoing redevelopment of Newark. It will help to expand the borders of renewal toward a future where the city offers a growing number of career opportunities attractive to NJIT graduates as well as other capable young men and women.

The opening of Warren Street Village is a prime example of NJIT’s continuing commitment to providing an educational experience that fosters social awareness and exceptional academic talent. The students of NJIT’s Greek organizations and Albert Dorman Honors College have a tradition of service to the Greater Newark community, state, and nation. The scientific and technical knowledge that our students acquire provides an extraordinary foundation for their personal success and the communities they serve. The desire and ability to use that knowledge after graduation will make life better and benefit people everywhere.

N J I T M a g a z in e Winter 2014 Matthew Golden Associate Vice President Communications, Marketing and Branding 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, Kirstie Gentleman, Kathryn Kelly, Carol Pilla, Jacquelynn G. Rhodes, Henry Ross, Anita Rubino ’83, Steven Saperstein ’84, Michele Scott ’93, Donald H. Sebastian, Nancy Steffen-Fluhr.

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

Protecting Who We Are NJIT researchers are working toward greater understanding of traumatic brain injury, an effort that could help millions of people through more effective treatment and prevention.

d ep a r t m e n t s 2 Abstracts

NJIT news in brief 6 p oint by point

Athletics update 8 g iving

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On Common Ground The completion of NJIT’s Warren Street Village is a key part of engagement with redevelopment in Newark. page 20

Excellence Recognized

NJIT development news 23 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

The NJIT Board Overseers honors two faculty members for achievements that include biomedical breakthroughs.

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Photo: Jed Medina

abstracts

Professor Somenath Mitra (right) with doctoral student Zhiqian Wang, who helped to develop the flexible battery powering red LEDs in the photo.

Power for a Flexible Future Electronics manufacturers are now making flexible organic light-emitting diode (LED) displays, a pioneering technology that allows devices such as cell phones, tablet computers and TVs to literally fold up.

And a new battery developed at NJIT has the potential to power these devices with matching flexibility.

The bendable battery, for which a patent application has been filed, is made from carbon nanotubes and micro-particles that serve as active components — similar to those found in conventional batteries.

“This battery can be made as small as a pinhead or as large as a carpet in your living room,” says Somenath Mitra, a professor of chemistry and environmental science whose research group invented the battery. “So its applications are endless. You can place a rolled-up battery in the trunk of your electric car

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and have it power the vehicle.

We have been experimenting with carbon nanotubes and other leading technologies for many years at NJIT, and it’s exciting to apply leading-edge technologies to create a flexible battery that has myriad consumer applications.” n

http://chemistry.njit.edu

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Taming Floods in New Jersey The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has awarded NJIT a $289,000 grant to investigate flood mitigation in the Hackensack/Moonachie/ Little Ferry area. NJIT’s new Flood Mitigation Engineering Resource Center will handle the work. The initiative will complement efforts by the US Army Corps of Engineers and other organizations.

There’s more online — visit NJIT Magazine at http://magazine.njit.edu

“This is an important preventative project for New Jersey,” says co-principal investigator Taha Marhaba, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Our objective as an NJIT team of interdisciplinary experts is to help the State of New Jersey to develop the best solutions to protect its citizens from future floods through innovative engineering measures that are doable, beneficial, resilient and sustainable.”

Co-principal investigator Fadi Karaa, associate professor of civil engineering, notes that the area, which includes New Jersey’s Meadowlands, has always been on an environmental watch list in part due to its inherent vulnerability to flooding. Additionally, not unlike much of the nation’s infrastructure, its flood protection structures and flood mitigation assets need significant improvement, rehabilitation and reconstruction as part of a comprehensive strategy to make communities in the affected area safer and more resilient. n http://civil.njit.edu

“ During my five weeks at CERN... I had the chance to conduct my own research on what is known as jet charge of quark decays and inverse problems — an experience that can’t be had in the classroom.” — Scott Lieberman ’14

Three NJIT representatives addressed the United Nations in October at an international conference focusing on how cities can use resilient design to prepare for natural disasters.

Speaking were NJIT President Joel S. Bloom; Urs Gauchat, dean of the College of Architecture and Design; and Thomas Dallessio, director of the university’s Center for Resilient Design, which was a co-sponsor of the conference.

The United Nations is establishing policies on resilient design — design that emphasizes stronger building methods — and the addresses by Bloom, Gauchat and Dallessio will have an influence on formulating those policies.

Their remarks will be part of the

College of Architecture and Design Dean Gauchat speaking at the United Nations.

Photo courtesy of CERN

Resilience at the United Nations

Part of the Large Hadron Collider

United Nations’ proceedings and help it establish international guidelines relating to resilient design, housing and infrastructure.

The conference, titled “Resilient Design for Sustainable Urbanization,” was held as part of World Habitat Day, when cities around the world organized conferences addressing how they can improve transportation during disasters. It was convened in the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council and some 400 people attended.

The conference was divided into two panels, the first of which, “To Build or Not to Build,” was moderated by Gauchat. President Bloom later talked about the resilient design efforts at NJIT, and Dallessio introduced the afternoon’s panel discussion on how resilient design can build sustainable communities and enhance urban mobility. n http://centerforresilientdesign.org

Pursuing Particles at CERN Scott Lieberman ’14, a Dorman honors student majoring in applied physics and applied math, had a world-class learning opportunity when he spent part of last summer as an intern at the European Organization for Nuclear Research — familiarly known as CERN. He was one of four students participating in a summer research program supported by the National Science Foundation who were selected to work alongside the scientists at CERN for five weeks.

CERN operates the Large Hadron Collider on the French-Swiss border, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, dedicated to investigating the structure of matter at its most basic level and ultimately the structure of the entire universe. In 2012, two scientists at CERN confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson particle, theorized to give other fundamental particles mass.

Those two scientists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics.

“During my five weeks at CERN, I learned a lot about the pioneering research being done in the field of particle physics, such as neutrino oscillations and super-symmetry,” Lieberman says. “I also had the chance to conduct my own research on what is known as jet charge of quark decays and inverse problems — an experience that can’t be had in the classroom. It was an amazing experience.” n NJIT MAGAZINE

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“ The numbers clearly demonstrate that NJIT is preparing its graduates for tremendous professional success and that the university is doing so at a reasonable cost.”

— NJIT President Joel S. Bloom

New Heads for Big Bear, College of Computing Sciences Alexander Kosovichev, a professor in NJIT’s department of physics, has been named director of Big Bear Solar Observatory.

He succeeds Distinguished Professor of Physics Philip Goode, who retired after serving in the position since NJIT took over the facility from California Institute of Technology in 1997.

Prior to NJIT, Kosovichev was a senior research scientist with the W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford

University, as well as a co-investigator for two instruments on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. He has more than 30 years of experience leading space and ground-based observational programs in heliophysics, theoretical modeling, data analysis and numerical simulations.

Computer scientist, educator and former research executive Marek Rusinkiewicz was appointed dean of the College of Computing Sciences in September. During his tenure as senior group vice president and general manager of applied research laboratories at Telcordia Technologies, Rusinkiewicz led research efforts in wireless communications, network management and protocols, mathematical sciences, software engineering, information processing and information security.

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NJIT Tops in Educational Value NJIT has been ranked the number one value among colleges and universities nationally by BuzzFeed.com, seven spots ahead of Princeton University and ten above MIT, as well as ahead of many other highly regarded institutions. The ranking calculates college and university value by comparing annual tuition cost

and the average starting salary of graduates.

NJIT earned the top spot among all US colleges and universities because the average starting salary of its graduates is nearly double the annual tuition fee charged to out-of-state students.

Using NJIT’s tuition rate for New Jersey residents increases the university’s value proposition, making alumni average starting salaries nearly four times greater than NJIT’s annual tuition cost.

NJIT President Joel S. Bloom noted, “This rating is based upon quantifiable data, not perceptions, reputations or opinions, so it is particularly important. The numbers clearly demonstrate that NJIT is preparing its graduates for tremendous professional success and that the university is doing so at a reasonable cost.

While there is a great deal of concern publicly about the cost of higher education, it is important to keep in mind that NJIT and some other institutions offer a tremendous value proposition.” n

Photo: Ricky Kharawala

Photo: Alla Shumko

Before joining Telcordia, Rusinkiewicz was vice president for information technology at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in Austin, a leading industrial research and development consortium. He has held academic positions at the University of Glasgow, Warsaw University of Technology, the University of Michigan and the University of Houston, where he was a professor of computer science. n

Fishing for Behavioral Insight For almost two decades, NJIT associate professor of biology and animal behavior expert Eric Fortune has studied glass knifefish, a species of threeinch-long electric fish that lives in the Amazon Basin. A paper co-authored by Fortune that was published in the November 4-8, 2013 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals

intriguing new findings about animal locomotion.

Fortune’s studies include careful measurements of natural animal behavior which, when coupled with sophisticated quantitative analysis, can be applied in experiments to discover the cellular mechanisms used by the brain to control behavior. He believes that engineers can, in turn, translate these insights gained from the animal world into improved control systems for robots and prosthetic devices. n http://biology.njit.edu

Better Health Calling People living in rural areas of the Dominican Republic may soon be able to receive vital health information via cellphone — thanks to a team of Albert Dorman Honors College students and wireless communications technology developed by a company based at NJIT’s Enterprise Development Center (EDC). In 2012, several Dorman students and Paul Dine, assistant dean for student programs, joined a group of students and faculty from Rutgers on their annual humanitarian-service trip to the village of Lavapie in the Dominican Republic, to help with housing construction and other projects under the direction of the non-profit organization Cambiandas Vidas.

The Honors College team also evaluated the possibility that people living in communities like Lavapie, where access to medical professionals is limited but cellphones are available, could benefit from a mobile, or mHealth, application developed by the EDCbased company Cell Podium. The company is headed by Cesar Bandera, who is also an assistant professor in NJIT’s School of Management. The value of the concept has been affirmed by the staff at Grupo Medico Maguana, a clinic about ten miles away from Lavapie in the town of San Juan de Maguana. The Cell Podium software can enable people in such areas to receive information, including video, about basic disease-preventing hygiene and interact with healthcare providers regarding how they are progressing with respect to prescribed medication and therapy.

“ Learning how the control systems of animals are built — literally their neural circuits in the context of the whole organism — has and will continue to inspire design features that can improve the flexibility and robustness of engineered systems.”

A generous grant from the International Foundation will allow the Honors College team to return to the Dominican Republic in 2014 to implement the Cell Podium mHealth application for testing that would involve some 5000 households in a 25-squaremile area around San Juan de Maguana. Ultimately, receiving information for better health via cellphones could benefit not only people in the Dominican Republic, but in other regions where access to healthcare is restricted by terrain and economics. n

— Eric Fortune, associate professor of biology

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point by point

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

First Lacrosse Coach Joins NJIT

END NO T ES Jose Alcala, university lecturer

and coordinator of the Industrial Design Program in the School of Art + Design, was named one of the 30 Most Admired Educators for 2014 by DesignIntelligence magazine. Along with being a teacher, Alcala is the co-founder of MADLAB, which offers architecture, interior design, product design, fabrication and design-build services; and RELAB, a company specializing in the design, engineering, fabrication and installation of sustainable energy products.

Nancy Coppola, founding

director of the Master of Science in Professional and Technical Communication program, has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for significant long-term contributions to instruction in technical communication and for service to the profession and the organization.

Casey Diekman, assistant

professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, recently had his paper “Causes and Consequences of Hyperexcitation in Central Clock Neurons” published in PLOS Computational Biology, a journal of the International Society for Computational Biology. The article reports that the electrical activity of “clock neurons” may be more important than previously thought. Such

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neurons influence daily rhythms in the physiology and behavior of mammals.

Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, associate

professor in the Department of Humanities and director of the Murray Center for Women in Technology, addressed the third annual International Gender Summit, held in Washington, DC, in November. SteffenFluhr, principal investigator for an NJIT National Science Foundation Advance Grant, demonstrated how coauthorship network mapping can be used to track faculty career development and interdepartmental research collaboration.

William V. Rapp, Henry J. Leir

Chair in International Trade and research professor in the School of Management, has projected that US economic growth will rise to 3.1 percent in 2014, while unemployment will fall to 6.9 percent by December of 2014.

Recognized internationally for his expertise, Rapp presented this forecast in his invited address at the 27th Annual Economic Outlook Symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

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Travis Johnson has been named the first head coach of men’s lacrosse at NJIT. Johnson, who officially started his new post in early January, has been hired to coach a start-up program that is slated to begin play in 2015 as an NCAA Division I team. He is a former player who has been coaching at the college level since the 1999-2000 academic year and most recently served as the first assistant, defensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Prior to Mount St. Mary’s, where he has worked since 20102011, Johnson was an assistant coach in two stints at Penn State (2004-2006 and 2008-2010) and also at Stony Brook (2006-2008).

He began his coaching career as an undergraduate at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and continued at Stevens Institute of Technology (2001-2004). He is a 2000 graduate of RIT, where he played lacrosse and was selected by the professional Rochester Knighthawks in the 2000 National Lacrosse League draft.

Johnson will be in charge of the Highlanders’ 11th varsity men’s team and the 19th varsity team overall for NJIT. According to reports in the lacrosse news media, NJIT is the 69th institution nationwide that either fields a team or is in the process of starting a Division I men’s lacrosse team. In New Jersey, the Highlanders will be the fourth Division I lacrosse team, joining Princeton, Rutgers and Monmouth (which begins

play this spring).

The new head coach of the Highlanders did his first coaching with the Division III programs at his alma mater and then at Stevens. From there, he entered the Division I ranks with Penn State, which made the NCAA Tournament in his first season on the staff. After another year with the Nittany Lions, Johnson headed to Stony Brook, working as the top assistant to Rick Sowell, now the head coach at the United States Naval Academy. As recruiting coordinator, Johnson helped Sowell assemble the core of a Stony Brook squad that, in 2010, reached the NCAA Tournament and was ranked as high as sixth in the nation during the season. n

Women’s soccer The NJIT women’s soccer team finished 2013 with an 8-10-1 record, including six shutouts.

The eight wins and six shutouts were new highs in the program’s NCAA Division I era, which began in the 2006 season. The previous Division I high for wins came in 2009, when the Highlanders were 7-9-2.

This year’s team also matched the overall program record for wins. Started as a Division III program in 1996, NJIT played in Division II from 1997 to 2005, posting an 8-6-3 mark the final season in Division II. First-year head coach Mandi Risden, who served the program as an assistant coach from 2008 to 2012 before taking over the top job in April, was pleased by the progress that saw the school Division I records fall, propelled

Junior Marko Drljic collected postseason honors, including All-North Atlantic Region second team from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

Samantha Bersett

defensively (6 goals allowed over the last 8 games after the aforementioned 11-goal spell).”

The team’s accomplishments were recognized by the website CollegeSportsMadness.com, which named five players to its 2013 Independent All-Conference squad and tabbed Risden as Coach of the Year. Players Rebecca Tustin, Kaelyn Gamel and Jenny Cislo* were firstteam honorees, while Madeline Griep and Danielle Pierce* were second-team picks.

Tustin, who missed the entire 2011 season due to knee surgery, returned to the form that had made her one of the program’s most promising players when she arrived on campus in 2010.

Tustin, an architecture major who will play as a 5th-year senior in 2014, had a team-leading 9 points (3 goals, 3 assists) this year.

Gamel started in all 19 matches and finished fourth on the team with five points, two goals and one assist. Cislo started every match (19), while scoring her first collegiate goal on October 4 at Delaware State and notching one assist vs. South Carolina State on October 13.

Griep started all 19 matches and finished with a goal and two assists, while Pierce started 13 matches. n

men’s soccer NJIT capped its secondbest won-lost record in its 10-year Division I era (7-9-2) with a 6-0 rout of Howard in Washington, DC. The six goals at Howard were the most for NJIT since it began playing Division I men’s soccer and the most for the Highlanders since 2001, when they were a Division II program.

The clean sheet at Howard was a program Division I-record sixth for NJIT, which also allowed a DI-era low 24 goals.

Although the 2013 record was a shade off the program’s best Division I mark of 10-9 in 2012, the Highlanders continued to prove they could compete with the best. Two of the 2013 losses were one-goal decisions on the road against teams ranked in the national Top 25 – 2-1 at #19 St. John’s, which later entered the national Top 10, and 1-0 at Fairleigh Dickinson, ranked #22.

Junior Marko Drljic collected postseason honors, including All-North Atlantic Region second team from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America. The top scorer for the 2013 Highlanders, the native of Slovenia became the first player honored as an all-region player by the NSCAA in NJIT’s 10 years as a Division I program.

Drljic, who is listed as a defender but played positions all over the field in various games, led the 2013 Highlanders in goals (6), assists (4) and points (16). All of his totals were twice that of the next person in each category. He played in 16 of the

Photos: Larry Levanti

by a 4-2-1 record in October and November.

“They achieved it,” said the coach, emphasizing the “they” and pointing to the players as they walked off the field for the final time in 2013. “We don’t have a conference tournament, so the staff and players knew this was going to be the end of our season and we wanted to go out and achieve our season goal of winning the most Division I games.

“We started slowly, but we still finished strong and every single girl on the team was part of our reaching one of our biggest goals. Sam (Samantha Bersett*) was great and she really had a good year, working hard and getting better as the season went along. We all hit a bump in the road (three road losses by a combined 11-0 in late September), but she stayed with it and was a big part of us turning it around

Marko Drljic

team’s 18 games. Drljic began his NJIT career in 2012 and set a new program Division I record with seven assists, while adding two goals for 11 points. With one season of eligibility remaining, he is the program’s Division I career leader in assists (11), while ranking fifth in goals (8) and fourth in points (27).

Earlier, Drljic headed a group of five Highlanders who earned 2013 Independent All-Conference honors from CollegeSportsMadness.com, which picked him as Defensive Player of the Year. Drljic was joined on the all-conference first team by Cristian Marcel* and Jimmy Myers, while Sven Beverst and Philipp Hannemann earned second-team honors.

Marcel, a junior from East Setauket, New York, appeared in 16 matches (15 starts), scoring one goal against VMI on September 6. Myers, a sophomore from Hicksville, New York, played in 17 matches, notching two goals.

Beverst, from Germany, started in 17 matches and Hannemann, also from Germany, appeared in 17 matches (16 starts). n *Dorman honors scholars

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giving

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

An Evening to Celebrate

“What makes Celebration so special are the students, the recipients of the evening’s largesse.

The caliber and commitment of those individuals – and what they’ve been able to accomplish in such a short period of time – are so impressive,” says Michael Wall, executive vice chair of the university’s Board of Overseers and master of ceremonies for the 2013 event.

For those in attendance, he adds, the event is an occasion to make a difference in the lives of students while also acknowledging “that we’ve all been recipients of largesse ourselves, whether it’s from organizations or families, and this is a great opportunity to pay it forward.”

Since the inaugural gala in 1995, Celebration has raised more than $4.6 million for the university’s endowed scholarship funds. Donors can specify a college to support, while undesignated gifts are distributed evenly

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Photos: Larry Levanti

Celebration 2013 was a resounding success, drawing a sell-out crowd to the Pleasantdale Chateau in West Orange and raising a record amount for the endowed scholarships the annual fundraising gala supports. There was indeed a lot to celebrate as the NJIT community marked the occasion by honoring generous donors, accomplished alumni, and some of the region’s outstanding citizens as the rhythm and blues icon Roberta Flack sang from her storied repertoire.

Honored for 2013 (from left): Anthony J. Sartor received the President’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement and Anita M. Rubino was awarded the Edward F. Weston Medal for Professional Achievement. Paula McCarter, an Albert Dorman Honors College scholar, was the student speaker. Nicholas J. Masucci, president and CEO of Louis Berger Group Holdings, accepted the Outstanding Corporate Partner Award on behalf of the company.

Master of ceremonies Michael Wall

among the university’s colleges.

Paula McCarter, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering and the recipient of five NJIT scholarships, recounted to the crowd of more than 300 how financial support had freed her to flourish.

“One of the important things that has allowed for my success is the freedom that I have had. Since I do not have to

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worry about how to pay for my education, I have been able to do exactly what I thought was the best for me. I have chosen the jobs, internships and opportunities that would benefit me the most,” McCarter said, pointing to her recent summer internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she worked on methods for determining the thermal conductivity of materials. “NJIT has taken me higher than I ever would have expected.”

The university community paid tribute at Celebration to the enduring impact of philanthropy by announcing the renaming of two academic departments and a building to honor alumni who gave generously to support students. The Electrical

and Computer Engineering Department is now known as the Helen and John Hartmann Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in honor of John Hartmann ’51 and his wife Helen. The two established the John C. Hartmann Endowed Scholarship.

The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department has been named the John A. Reif Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in honor of John Reif ’52, who established the Reif Family Endowed Scholarship, a need-based scholarship that will support NCE students who graduate from a Newark high school or a New Jersey inner-city high school, in memory of Mr. and Mrs. John A.

“ What makes Celebration so special are the students, the recipients of the evening’s largesse.

The caliber and commitment of those individuals — and what they’ve been able to accomplish in such a short period of time — are so impressive.”

— Michael Wall, executive vice chair of the NJIT Board of Overseers Reif, Charles W. Reif, and John A. Reif, Jr. The Mechanical Engineering Building will now be called the J. Ray and Manuelita Michaud Mechanical Engineering Building in honor of Ray Michaud ’40 and his wife Manuelita. Both were long-time friends and supporters of NJIT whose gift established the J. Ray and Manuelita Michaud Scholarship and the J. Ray and Manuelita Honors College Endowed Scholarship, endowments that will provide merit scholarships for students enrolled in Albert Dorman Honors College and support for undergraduates who demonstrate financial need.

In awarding the President’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement, the Special Friend of the University and Outstanding Corporate Partner Awards this year, NJIT sought to honor exceptional professionals who have worked tirelessly and ingeniously to rebuild the World Trade Center site following the devastation of September 11, 2001.

Anthony J. Sartor, PhD, recipient of the President’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement, is the chairman and CEO of the consulting engineering firm Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor, a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and chair of the World Trade Center Redevelopment Subcommittee.

Steven Plate, the deputy chief of capital planning and director of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority, was honored with a Special Friend of the University Award.

Louis Berger Group Holdings, the university’s Outstanding Corporate Partner for 2013, has provided its considerable expertise in developing critical infrastructure, preserving and enhancing the environment, and spurring sustainable economic development in the rebuilding effort. The company has supported NJIT for many years through the Louis Berger International Scholar Award, which provides financial support for students pursuing graduate education, and through assistance to NJIT’s Science and Technology

more broadly, to the New Jersey/ New York metropolitan region illustrates our can-do American spirit and the engineering backbone this nation was built upon,” says Wall, who is the executive director of the Greater Newark Enterprises Corporation. “It’s a new day and a new era.”

Anita M. Rubino ’83 received the Edward F. Weston Medal for Professional Achievement in recognition of alumni who demonstrate outstanding professional and civic accomplishments and singular commitment to the development of NJIT. Rubino, who held executive leadership positions with the Nielsen Company while also achieving success as an independent business consultant and restaurateur, has aided her alma mater in numerous ways. She works with the Alumni Association of NJIT, the Board of Visitors for the College of Science and Liberal Arts, and the NJIT NEXT Campaign Committee and the Planned Giving Committee. n Author: Tracey Regan is an NJIT Magazine contributing writer.

Steven Plate, recipient of the Special Friend of the University Award, with NJIT President Joel S. Bloom.

Enrichment Program, which encourages high school students’ appreciation of science and technology, with particular emphasis on participation by women and minority students.

“Their contribution to the economic revitalization of the World Trade Center site and,

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NJIT is broadly engaged in efforts to understand, treat and prevent

traumatic brain injury

protecting who we are Illustration (opposite): Stuart Bradford

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a threat to our well-being that’s now widely publicized due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the emerging link with sports, notably football.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that there are at least 1.7 million TBIs recorded annually in the United States, which contribute to about a third of all injury-related deaths in the country.

Automobile crashes, falls and other accidents cause many of these TBIs. But the sobering domestic numbers do not include the incidence among American troops injured in combat. About a fifth of those wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq have returned home with TBIs, particularly as a result of blasts from IEDs — improvised explosive devices. TBI has become the signature wound of these conflicts. [continued]

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Photo: Ricky Kharawala

While the National Football League has taken steps to prevent TBIs on the field, a substantial number of retired players are contending with early-onset dementia and comparable diseases most likely related to impacts endured during their playing careers. Suicides by former NFL stars have made headlines because of a probable TBI connection. Spouses of players witnessing heart-wrenching deterioration have also spoken out. “A slow, deteriorating, ugly, caregiver-killing, degenerative, brain-destroying tragic horror,” is how Sylvia Mackey describes what has happened to her husband, former Baltimore Colt John Mackey.

The NFL Players Association is partnering with the Cleveland Clinic, the University of North Carolina and Tulane University in a program to help retired players afflicted by TBI. They can get physical and neurological evaluations, and a plan to deal with health issues that have resulted from head trauma.

And the soccer world is beginning to recognize the danger of TBI for unprotected amateur and professional players. The most popular sport in the world, soccer is played by an estimated 120-150 million people. Research indicates that the risk of TBI is the same for soccer players as it is for those playing American football.

Researchers at NJIT are responding to this health challenge with a comprehensive program to gain knowledge about TBI and to translate that knowledge into better therapies and protective measures. Professor Namas Chandra, who joined NJIT’s Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2013 from the University of Nebraska, is director of the new Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine (CIBM3). “We can save lives by replacing the heart, lungs, kidneys and other organs from donors, but not the brain,” Chandra says. “Protecting the brain from injury is protecting the essence of who we are as individuals.”

Starting at the cellular level TBI occurs when the brain collides with the inside of the skull with significant force after a direct impact or when subjected to the shock wave from a blast. The injury can be severe, moderate or mild. The term concussion is often used synonymously with mild TBI. Severe TBI frequently results in death or serious incapacitation, while moderate to mild TBI

top: Bryan Pfister, associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, studies traumatic brain injury at the cellular level, where injury begins with damaging distortion of neuronal cells. above: An image of neurons undergoing an injury response known as chromatolysis.

can cause a multitude of ill effects in daily life.

These include impairing sight, hearing and speech, as well as the ability to walk and to control emotions.

The CDC estimates that 75 percent of the TBIs that occur each year in the US are the mild type. Diagnosing and treating mild TBI can be especially problematic, as much needs to be learned about the relatively subtle changes in the brain related to specific symptoms. Someone who has sustained mild TBI may appear to be well at first, but then manifest physical or psychological changes. For example, there is growing evidence of a strong connection between mild TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Severe TBI has received extensive scrutiny for several decades, largely because it occurred in so many automobile accidents. Despite its relative frequency, this has not been the case with mild TBI. But that’s changing, as evidenced by the focus on mild TBI at NJIT. All TBIs start with mechanical changes in the brain, explains Bryan Pfister, associate professor of biomedical engineering. The sudden trauma of an impact or blast can stretch neurons to nearly twice their normal size. It is this stretching that Pfister believes to be the ultimate cause of most symptoms seen at the systems level – such as dysfunction in vision, speech and motor control.

In his laboratory, Pfister studies the effects of stretching on cultured neuronal cells, work funded by the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research. “If you want to see the evolution of a TBI, you have to begin at the cellular level, where the trauma creates a mechanical shape change,” Pfister says. The deformation he investigates can occur in milliseconds upon direct impact, and be so fast in the vicinity of a blast as to be impossible to time.

Pfister is collaborating with Assistant Professor Viji Santhakumar, Department of Neurology and Neurosciences at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and Professor Kevin Pang, who is affiliated with the same department at Rutgers as well the Veterans Affairs New Jersey Health Care System. Their goal is to develop

Photo: Jed Medina

“ We can save lives by replacing the heart, lungs, kidneys and other organs from donors, but not the brain.

Protecting the brain from injury is protecting the essence of who we are as individuals.” — Professor Namas Chandra

a more comprehensive understanding of how TBI evolves from the cellular to the systems level, understanding that Pfister anticipates will be enhanced by data from Namas Chandra’s new NJIT research center.

Accelerating research According to Pfister, the relationship between mechanical input and biological change has yet to be clearly defined when it comes to mild TBI. Being able to see how impacts of varying intensity and orientation affect neuronal tissue with greater precision would be significant for gaining basic neurological knowledge, developing targeted therapies, and improving protective technologies.

The laboratory that Chandra is building at NJIT will be a major national research facility that promises progress in all of these areas. For more than 25 years, he worked with the US Army to improve protective systems, including body armor and helmets. In recent years, he began to study the relationship between blast injuries and TBI, research that has expanded to include impact TBI. At NJIT, Chandra will be taking a broader look at key aspects of mild TBI. He sees defining the relationship between an injury-causing event and the medical outcomes as a major challenge. “We will recreate TBIs under various conditions to learn which part of the brain is injured, and what the consequences are,” Chandra says. “We need this information to make better TBI diagnoses. Unfortunately, many cases

Professor Namas Chandra (right) and PhD student Matthew Kuriakose at the campus site of the new Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine, which will be under Chandra’s direction. When operational, the center will have three shock tubes, such as the one in their diagram, that will subject biological samples and dummy heads to shock waves traveling at speeds as great as 900 miles per hour.

of mild TBI go undiagnosed and untreated.”

The equipment in Chandra’s laboratory, which he expects will be fully operational by spring, is designed to subject biological samples and dummy heads to the trauma of impact and blast TBI in various ways. There will be a system to drop samples to replicate one type of impact TBI. Three shock tubes will make it possible to recreate far more forceful TBI scenarios.

Two of the shock tubes are 28 inches by 28 inches in cross section and approximately 20 feet in length. A third tube is 9 inches by 9 inches and some 30 feet long. Shock waves generated with helium and nitrogen gas at one end of the tubes will travel at speeds as great as 900 miles per hour and hit experimental targets in the test section in the middle of the tubes.

In addition to biomedical engineering, Chandra plans to draw on the expertise of colleagues in many disciplines, such as biochemistry, physics and materials engineering.

He will also be assisted by NJIT students like Matthew Kuriakose, for whom hands-on involvement with research is a key part of the NJIT experience at all levels.

A biomedical engineering major and Albert Dorman scholar, Kuriakose ’13 initially considered entering the workplace after graduation and studying for a master’s part-time. But he started to change course during his senior capstone project, a team effort to research how a system to detect concussions might be built into a football helmet. And with additional

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Stimulated with a visual-attention task, the normal parietal cortex functional activity seen was captured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Such activity impaired by traumatic brain injury can be improved with therapy. NJIT researchers are developing instruments and techniques for studying the effectiveness of various therapeutic interventions.

above:

Photo: Ricky Kharawala

left: Professor Bharat Biswal, chair of NJIT’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, is at the forefront of imaging brain function.

inspiration from Chandra, he has decided to pursue a PhD at NJIT, focusing on TBI. Citing the growing awareness of TBI from combat, sports injuries and other causes, Kuriakose says, “There is such potential for having a real, positive effect in the lives of people who have been injured. Once you learn about the possibilities, it’s hard to turn away from the challenges.”

Imaging function and injury Professors Bharat Biswal and Tara Alvarez are looking at TBI, particularly mild TBI, from yet another perspective. Biswal is chair of NJIT’s Biomedical Engineering Department and has

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a joint appointment in the Radiology Department at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

He is expert in fMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging. This technique allows mapping the responses of a normal living brain to various stimuli, and how brain function is affected by injury and different forms of therapy. Biswal is a pioneer in understanding not only what regions of the brain are functionally active, but also in learning how different regions interact to form networks.

Speaking of TBI, Biswal says “We need to learn more about the relationship between the specific parts of the brain affected by a traumatic event and resulting changes in the

ability to function.” Working with Professor Charles Prestigiacomo, chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery and director of the Neurological Surgery Residency Program at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Biswal has conducted major imaging studies of the brain after severe TBI funded through the National Institutes of Health.

Biswal also has collaborated with Alvarez, director of NJIT’s Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory, on her research into the connection between vision and mild TBI. Alvarez’s research is funded through a previous CAREER grant and a current major instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation. In addition, Alvarez and Biswal are working with colleagues at Salus University and the University of California–Berkeley to advance development of more effective methodologies to improve vision dysfunction, especially for those afflicted by TBI. Since joining the NJIT faculty in 2001, Alvarez has applied her expertise as a

biomedical engineer to building innovative instrumentation for helping to understand and treat vision problems. These include visual field neglect in stroke patients, which manifests itself with symptoms like seeing only one half of a clock, and convergence insufficiency, a dysfunction that impairs the ability to read because of blurred vision and related fatigue.

More recently, the link between vision and mild TBI has become Alvarez’s primary area of research. Her work, carried out with Biswal and Prestigiacomo, confirms that about 25 percent of TBI patients will have vision dysfunction such as blurry vision, and that eye-movement patterns can be related to impairment.

Going forward, Alvarez intends to investigate mild TBI more deeply, also teaming with Nancy Chiaravalloti and Mayur Bhavsar ’03.

Chiaravalloti is director of the Neuropsychology and Neuroscience Laboratory and the Traumatic Brain Injury Laboratory at the Kessler Foundation Research Center. Bhavsar is a doctor of optometry with the Veterans Affairs New Jersey Health Care System. fMRI will be a key tool in this effort, which will engage patients in studies of vision dysfunction and the relationship between vision and impaired memory.

The memory problems of former star quarterback Brett Favre, most likely related to TBI, made news in late 2013. Favre, who is in his mid-40s, spoke about experiencing serious memory loss he fears may be related to numerous concussions on the field. He expressed dismay over episodes such as not being able to remember that his daughter had participated in a youth soccer program.

“We know more about moderate TBI because people are more obviously affected,” Alvarez says. “Mild TBI is a greater mystery.

We need better instrumentation to quantify dysfunction because the damage to the brain tends to be more subtle and diffuse. Instead of telling patients affected by mild TBI that you’ll get better if you just rest, and hoping for the best, we have to become better at mapping and understanding how TBI physically

Photo: Jed Medina

“ Instead of telling patients affected by mild TBI that you’ll get better if you just rest, and hoping for the best, we have to become better at mapping and understanding how TBI physically changes the brain…” — Professor Tara Alvarez

changes the brain, and better at mapping the brain’s response to therapy.”

Bhavsar, who assisted Alvarez with convergence research as an undergraduate biology major, is now collaborating with her team to study brain injury as part of his clinical work with veterans who have mild TBI. The brain can respond in a positive way after an injury by building new neural pathways to compensate for damage, a capacity often referred to as neural plasticity. And therapeutic intervention can facilitate this neural remapping to help alleviate double and blurry vision with visual fatigue caused by TBI. “Vision-training therapy does work for TBI patients,” Bhavsar says. “But we have yet to understand the underlying mechanisms by which therapy achieves a sustained reduction in vision symptoms. Such knowledge can lead to better therapies for improving the quality of a patient’s daily life.”

Growing connections The NJIT faculty members at the forefront of TBI research are marshaling talent and resources that not only span diverse departments

Vision and brain-injury researcher Professor Tara Alvarez with biomedical engineering students Stephen Lestrange (left) and Nic Thibodeaux.*

and disciplines at the university. They are integrating the expertise of colleagues at other major institutions in the state – the Kessler Foundation, Rutgers, and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System. Indicative of the growing awareness of TBI as a health issue, the outreach also is international. Alvarez is connecting with researchers in France and Germany through an open-access initiative intended to promote collaborative TBI investigation and discussion of results.

While comprehensive in scope and varied in the research involved, the TBI program that NJIT is advancing does have one defining objective in Pfister’s estimation. “We want New Jersey to be known as the preeminent center for traumatic brain injury research and treatment. That’s what we are all working towards.” n Author: Dean L. Maskevich is editor of NJIT Magazine. http://biomedical.njit.edu

*Dorman honors scholar

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On Common

Members of NJIT’s Greek organizations at September’s Warren Street Village opening, with a souvenir of the day.

above:

The Albert Dorman Honors College building viewed from Warren Street. The addition to NJIT’s campus has new dining and other services for the university community as well as residential space for Honors College students.

opposite page:

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Photo: Gradimages™

Ground Photo: Ricky Kharawala

Warren Street Village brings together Greeks and honors students in ongoing engagement with NJIT’s home city

P

ast, present and future coalesced on September 18, 2013 as hundreds of members of the NJIT community celebrated the opening of Warren Street Village, a three-acre mixed-use complex

that includes the newest additions to university housing for residential students. The newly developed section of the campus is bounded by Colden Street on the east, Warren Street to the north, and Raymond Boulevard to the southwest. Prominent are the Honors College Residence Hall and separate houses for NJIT’s fraternities and sororities.

Looking toward the future, the ceremonial ribbon-cutting marked the culmination of years of planning that involved participation by all university constituent groups and the City of Newark. Among the speakers at the event, along with NJIT President Joel S. Bloom, were Albert A. Dorman ’45, New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education Rochelle Hendricks, NJIT President Emeritus Saul Fenster, Interim Honors College Dean Katia Passerini and Helena Halasz ’15, an Honors College student majoring in biomedical engineering.

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A new chapter in urban engagement The ribbon-cutting represents a very significant component of NJIT’s ongoing engagement with the City of Newark through what is known as the Gateway Project. Accelerating the positive momentum imparted by Warren Street Village, planning for the $100 million

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Photo: Ricky Kharawala Photo: Doug Plummer

Fostering achievement Albert Dorman Honors College students in the main building share Warren Street Village with members of fraternities and sororities in five townhouse-style homes. The new residence for honors students includes 360 beds, computer labs, project studios, a library, recreational areas, student-government offices and more. The project also features dining services, a convenience store and a fitness center serving the NJIT community. The Greek houses provide living, dining and chapter space on the first floor and sleeping quarters on the upper two floors.

“Giving Albert Dorman Honors College a residential home on campus shows how firm we are in our commitment to fostering achievement by our nation’s most academically talented young men and women,” Bloom said. “The housing for our Greek organizations emphasizes the value we place on the contributions these groups make to life at NJIT and the support they provide for their brothers and sisters, and for so many socialservice efforts.”

Photo: Gradimages™

Alumni and the NJIT Greek community were represented by Stephen P. DePalma ’72, a member of the NJIT Board of Trustees who successfully encouraged support for completion of the new townhouse home for his fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi. DePalma was joined by Steve Cordes ’72, managing director and member of the Executive Board of ING Clarion Partners, chair of the Albert Dorman Honors College Board of Visitors and an NJIT NEXT co-chair. Also present was James A. Krucher ’73, a Pi Kappa Phi alumnus and president of the Greek Housing Council.

top: On the left at Warren Street Village are townhouse-style homes for NJIT’s fraternities and sororities.

Across the street is residential, studio, recreational and other space for students in Albert Dorman Honors College.

The opening cut for Warren Street Village (from left): NJIT President Emeritus Saul K. Fenster, New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education Rochelle Hendricks, Albert A. Dorman ’45, NJIT Board of Trustees Emerita Kathleen Wielkopolski, NJIT Trustee Stephen P. DePalma ’72, NJIT President Joel S. Bloom, Dean of Students Jack Gentul, and Greek Housing Council President James A. Krucher ’73.

center:

Engaged in Newark: NJIT alumni are helping to repurpose and revitalize the long-empty Hahne’s department store building in downtown Newark, the long, low building seen on the left.

above:

“ Giving Albert Dorman Honors College a residential home on campus shows how firm we are in our commitment to fostering achievement by our nation’s most academically talented young men and women. The housing for our Greek organizations emphasizes the value we place on the contributions these groups make to life at NJIT...” — NJIT President Joel S. Bloom

Photo: Gradimages™

NJIT President Joel S. Bloom, Albert A. Dorman and Joan Dorman at the dedicatory plaque for the new Albert Dorman Honors College building. The plaque recalls how in 1995 Dorman, a 1945 alumnus, initiated the program that has evolved into NJIT’s residential honors college, a nationally preeminent institution serving a growing number of exceptionally talented young men and women.

Photo: Jed Medina

Like Warren Street Village, these projects have vital economic and social implications.

In the near term, they create well-paying jobs in construction and support local businesses. However, they also are integral to the revitalization of an urban hub that will become more attractive to the graduates of NJIT and other schools in the area as a place to work and live.

Helena Halasz ’15 spoke on behalf of the Honors College students who will have the opportunity to live in Warren Street Village.

second phase of this initiative is well under way, with the goal of continuing the transformation of Newark’s University Heights neighborhood.

The second phase of the Gateway Project involves renovating and repurposing the original site of NJIT’s Enterprise Development Center at 240 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Additionally, a new parking deck will be constructed that NJIT will share with Saint Michael’s Medical Center. A special aspect of the project will be the creation of studios and performance space for artists, as well as space that will be available for community events. The renovation and additional construction will also create 240 housing units, with more new housing and retail space to be built across the street.

A larger mosaic The Gateway Project is part of a still-larger, evolving urban mosaic in Newark. The city is now the home of Panasonic’s North American Headquarters and Prudential Financial’s new $444 million corporate tower.

Biotrial, a leading French pharmaceutical research company, recently established its North American headquarters in University Heights Science Park.

NJIT alumni also are applying their talents to Newark’s revitalization. They include architect and planner Samer Hanini ’99, ’04, a principal in the Hanini Group whose architects are working to restore landmark buildings in the city and to revitalize its downtown.

Hanini’s firm is currently helping to convert the 417,600-square-foot former Hahne’s department store building, which has stood vacant since 1987, into a mixed-use structure that will have retail space on the first floor and residential units on the upper floors.

Whole Foods Market, the national natural

foods retailer, has announced plans to open a 29,000-square-foot store on the building’s first floor. It is anticipated that the renovation will be completed in 2016.

Another NJIT graduate with a role in the Hahne’s project is Chanda Dawadi, who received her master’s in infrastructure planning in 2010. As a senior associate in real estate for the Brick City Development Corporation, she helped Whole Foods find the Hahne’s building as a suitable store location.

A group of NJIT architects and engineers at Inglese Architecture and Engineering are involved in the construction of a new fivestory, mixed-use building at the vacant corner lot on Halsey and New Streets. This structure, which will be connected to the Hahne’s building by way of a shared lobby and atrium, will have ground floor commercial space and 55 residential units above, according to Jak Inglese, the founder of the firm who holds an architecture degree and two civil engineering degrees from NJIT. Two other principals in the firm, Joaquin Bouzas and Jennifer Palermo, also studied architecture at NJIT. Bouzas graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and Palermo graduated in 2000 with master’s degrees in architecture and management.

“Going to school in Newark left a warm spot in my heart for the city,” says Palermo.

“If not for NJIT, I would not have my great job doing this great work.” n Author: Christina Crovetto is assistant editor of NJIT Magazine.

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excellence recognized

NJIT Overseers honor two researchers for biomedical and materials breakthroughs In 2008, the NJIT Board of Overseers initiated recognition of exceptional achievement by researchers who have been members of the university community for at least five years. Since then, they have honored individuals for work that has significantly advanced knowledge in their field of expertise as well as the reputation of the university.

For 2013, the Board of Overseers presented two Excellence in Research awards to pioneers in the fields of materials science and tissue engineering whose careers have overlapped consequentially in the university’s Medical Device Concept Laboratory. Michael Jaffe, a research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the founder of the lab, was honored with the university’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award for his many game-changing innovations in materials science over the course of successive careers in industry and academia.

Treena Livingston Arinzeh, also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the director of the department’s graduate program, won the sixth annual Excellence in Research Prize and Medal for her contributions to regenerative medicine.

Both innovative and original thinkers, deft at applying concepts from diverse engineering fields to advance biomedicine, they have worked together on breakthrough biomaterials such as the scaffolds that form the backbone for new tissue.

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Photo (opposite): James Marko

Engineering tissue regeneration Indeed, Arinzeh has creatively borrowed techniques from other engineering sectors to advance tissue regeneration. The polymer fibers that compose the framework of her scaffolds, for example, are formed by electrospinning,

Professor Treena Livingston Arinzeh is taking research with adult stem cells and biomaterials in new and very promising therapeutic directions.

a technique developed by the textile industry.

She is harnessing piezoelectricity, an electrical charge created by mechanical force that is used in sonar and sound technologies, among others, for use in cartilage scaffolds.

Arinzeh, who recently received funding from the National Science Foundation to identify markets for the latter technology, is focusing in the near-term on strategies to maintain tissue that is under assault from daily wear and tear.

“Cartilage experiences a lot of loading throughout the day, and the idea is to stimulate cells to replace the tissue as it wears down.

As of now, there is no way to repair cartilage, and its degradation can lead to severe osteoarthritis, so the thinking here is prevention.”

She works closely with clinicians, orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons, always asking the question, “What is the clinical problem we’re trying to tackle?” To date, repairing spinal cord injuries poses the greatest research challenge, while the stakes are high.

“With bone and cartilage, we’re relying on the body’s own processes to regrow tissue, but the biological factors driving the formation of neural tissue in the spinal cord appear to be different,” she notes. “At this stage, we’re looking at multiple approaches, including a combination therapy that uses growth factor with electrically charged scaffolds. We’re trying to prompt neural stem cells to form neurons that will extend across the defect zone and reform connections between the brain and the rest of the body.”

As a researcher, she keeps an open mind and is willing to question current thinking.

While much of her early research focused on using stem cells to regrow tissue, for example, she is also now mulling new materials.

Photo: Jed Medina

From satellites to stem cells Originally intent on building satellites, Treena Livingston Arinzeh switched gears early on in her career to become what she calls an “engineer of the body,” focusing on longstanding, intractable medical challenges such as bone, cartilage and nerve repair. Now, just over a decade after beginning her signature work on calcium phosphate scaffolds – composite structures that stimulate, guide and support the growth of new bone tissue from adult stem cells – she stands on the verge of a professional milestone.

“We’ve just completed tests of these scaffolds in large animals, obtaining good results, and so the next step is clinical trials in humans. We’re now in the process of fine-tuning the technology and showing it to companies who would license it and carry it forward,” she says, adding, “The area of greatest immediate need for bone regeneration is spinal fusion surgery, because we now have to find the bone from somewhere else in the body or use donor bone and those grafts often don’t repair well.”

Arinzeh was honored this fall with the Overseers Excellence in Research award for her tenacious pursuit of transformative medical applications and for the scientific breakthroughs she has made along the way, including the discovery that adult stem cells taken from one person could be implanted in another without being rejected.

“She has been at the forefront of breakthroughs, integrating innovative biomaterials and non-embryonic stem cells to promote the regeneration of bone, cartilage and nerve tissue,” Don Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development, said at the October awards ceremony, while lauding her ability to turn scientific discovery into “engineering innovation.”

“We will continue to improve this technology, exploring materials other than cell-based ones, as we try to stimulate patients’ own cells to grow, rather than having to get cells from somewhere else. Essentially we will keep working to simplify the technology.”

Pioneering new biomaterials Serendipity played a role in the late 1990s in steering the enterprising industrial researcher Michael Jaffe to his present post in NJIT’s Biomedical Engineering Department. Just as the materials expert was leaving Hoechst Celanese Corp. after a long and prolific career there developing synthetic polymers, the federal government was mounting a push to produce new biomaterials for medicine, defense and other arenas. The effort would require a high degree of cooperation among the best minds from both academia and industry.

“The idea was to integrate the biological and physical sciences. One of the important insights at that time was that biological materials are a lot more sophisticated than synthetic ones, and I was in the middle of this emerging area of research with my work on synthetic polymers and biomimetic materials,” Jaffe recounts.

Initially recruited by the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials based at Rutgers, he joined NJIT in 1999, founded the Medical Device Concept Laboratory, and recruited prominent industrial scientists to join him. They got to work immediately on projects ranging from collagen fibers for tissue-engineering devices to NASA-funded research on nanocomposites for use in space stations. Nearly empty when he arrived in 1999, the CHEN building is now humming with projects ranging from stem cell and neural tissue engineering to studies of catastrophic brain injury.

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“ I nteracting with students is the highlight. It’s so exciting to see them develop, and help them make the transition from students to colleagues.”

Research Professor Michael Jaffe

Bridging industry and academia In receiving the first-ever Overseers Excellence in Research Lifetime Achievement Award, Jaffe was lauded not only for his distinguished careers in industry and academia, but for his success in bridging the two.

At the awards ceremony, Vice President Sebastian cited Jaffe’s foundational work in the “golden age of synthetic polymers” leading to such critical advances as new technologies to reinforce tires, super high-strength fibers and nearly twenty patents, while also praising his undimmed creativity in recent years in the pursuit of renewable, environmentally safe materials for wide application.

“He has developed a whole new field based on the synthetic pathways for taking naturally occurring sugars into viable feedstocks for replacing petroleum-derived chemicals,” Sebastian said of Jaffe’s work on sugar-based epoxy resins, which could replace bisphenol-A (BPA), an industrial product used to line food cans that has raised public health concerns by functioning as a hormone mimetic.

Jaffe has collaborated with fellow award winner Arinzeh since she joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2001, working together on key projects such as scaffolding technologies used to repair damaged tissue.

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Jaffe, speaking at the ceremony, thanked NJIT for “providing me a home to do what I love to do.”

But he was no stranger to academia before coming to NJIT. Hoechst Celanese had named him a research fellow, giving him free rein to pursue new ideas. This pursuit took him to university campuses from Boston to Tokyo to Moscow to advance research on materials ranging from spider silk to toughened ceramics.

“I find that you need credibility as a scientist to work with academics and as a technologist to get business people to listen,” he notes.

He describes life on campus as an “an absolute joy” in ways that he could not have predicted fifteen years ago.

“There are more large research projects going on here than students know what to do with,” he says, adding that what inspires him most, however, is working with young scientists. “Interacting with students is the highlight. It’s so exciting to see them develop, and help them make the transition from students to colleagues.” n Author: Tracey Regan is an NJIT Magazine contributing writer. http://www.njit.edu/about/boards/overseers/awards/ prize-medal/index.php

Leading the Search for New Knowledge Professors Treena Livingston Arinzeh and Michael Jaffe have joined the distinguished members of the NJIT community recognized by the Board of Overseers for their continuing efforts to seek new knowledge on the frontiers of science and technology.

2012 Reginald Farrow Research Professor of Physics 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 Solar-Terrestrial Research

Photo: James Marko

Photo: Jed Medina

Founder of the Medical Device Concept Laboratory at NJIT, Research Professor Michael Jaffe has had a long and productive career as a materials scientist.

Research Professor Michael Jaffe and Professor Treena Livingston Arinzeh with NJIT President Joel S. Bloom at the October awards ceremony where the two members of the Biomedical Engineering Department were honored by the university’s Overseers for their significant accomplishments as researchers.

alumni circuit Editor’s note: Joe Stanley ’78, ’85, president of the Alumni Association of NJIT, shared the following about his fall visit to NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory.

Seeing the Light at Big Bear

Meeting at the Fair In October, NJIT’s Career Development Services (CDS) held its 21st Annual Fall Career Fair in the Fleisher Athletic Center and the Naimoli Family Athletic Facility. It was the largest held at NJIT to date.

Considered one of the best managed career fairs on the East Coast, the event attracted over 2,100 students and alumni as well as 173 employers from New Jersey and 22 other states. Career fair attendance for 2013 is an indication of an improving job market and the effectiveness of the NJIT event.

May 2013 graduates who reported that they had obtained full-time employment were asked how they found their job.

Fifteen percent responded that their employment was the result of a contact made at a CDSsponsored career fair.

A new feature this year was the Reverse Career Fair, where representatives of 20 student

professional organizations staffed tables during brunch.

The goal was to provide opportunities to initiate strategic partnerships between employers and student leaders and their organizations.

As in past years, NJIT alumni were present on both sides of the table, as potential hires and as recruiters. CDS welcomes returning alums who are looking for that next career opportunity or who have positions to fill on behalf of their organizations.

Alumni can join the Campus Champion Network as an advocate within their organizations for recruiting the next generation of Highlander employees to the workplace. Campus Champions can also play a role in college networking forums, provide service to advisory boards, participate in career panels/programs and mentoring, and share information about scholarship programs.

For more information about the Campus Champion Network, contact Greg Mass at mass@njit.edu. www.njit.edu/cds

According to the Bruce Springsteen lyrics, “Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun. Oh, but Mama, that’s where the fun is.” That is exactly what forty some alumni and their guests discovered late in September in California at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). Among those joining me from New Jersey were NJIT President Joel Bloom and his wife, Dr. Diane Bloom; Chuck Dees, vice president for university advancement; and Alumni Association board members Anita Rubino and Steve Saperstein.

The BBSO, which is operated

by NJIT, conducts cutting-edge solar research (see the fall 2013 NJIT Magazine). Due to its unique white structures along the glacial lake shoreline and the high security of the facility, it is a source of significant mystery to local residents. The veil of mystery was briefly pulled aside for the alumni attending the presentation by Distinguished Professor of Physics Phil Goode and his staff, followed by a tour of the telescope.

Walking through the observatory and viewing the actual telescope and the unique instrumentation, which the BBSO staff use to study portions of the sun in

amazing detail, was fascinating to all who took the tour. The dedication of Professor Goode and the staff was evident throughout the tour. These people truly love what they do, and they were thrilled to explain how they study the sun and its implications for our everyday lives.

Professor Goode recently retired from being the director of the BBSO, but continues to be involved in his studies of the sun and development of new instrumentation. In appreciation for his hosting three alumni events at the facility over the years, the Alumni Association of NJIT presented Professor Goode with a small token of esteem. [continued]

NJIT Alumni Association President Joe Stanley (right) presenting Distinguished Professor of Physics Phil Goode, recently retired as director of Big Bear Solar Observatory, with the gift of a Tiffany silver pen.

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The tour of the BBSO and other locations throughout Southern California represent efforts of the Alumni Association to engage alumni in the region.

If you would like to be notified of future events, or wish to be involved in a Southern California Regional Club, please contact the Alumni Relations Office.

At Big Bear: (from left) Fabio Galati, Anita Rubino ’83, Alison Saperstein, Steve Saperstein ’84, Joe Stanley ’78, ’85 and Helen Stanley

Alumni profiles Michael Chrobak ’80 Choosing New Jersey Geographically, Michael Chrobak’s career has come full circle. After completing his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering in 1980, he moved from New Jersey to Texas, where his professional experience spanned engineering and statewide economic development. Today, he is back in New Jersey as chief economic development officer for Choose New Jersey, Inc., a public-private partnership based in Princeton that’s dedicated to growing the state’s economy and the creation of quality, sustainable jobs.

Chrobak, who grew up in Linden, says that his inclination

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toward engineering was fostered by learning about the technical acumen his father needed as the city’s building inspector, and the satisfaction to be had from “taking things apart to find out how they work.” At Newark College of Engineering – New Jersey Institute of Technology by the time he graduated – Chrobak’s interest in how things work broadened with appreciation of the planning

Promoting New Jersey at a meeting in Israel

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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

basic to creating products and processes that work in the right way. And the university’s cooperative work-study program gave him further real-world insight into the organizational elements underpinning success in business.

For part of his junior and senior years, Chrobak worked at a Staten Island company that produced printing inks and pigments. “I had the opportunity to see the operation first-hand, to see how people bring different knowledge and skills to making an organization successful,” he says. “It gave me an overview that would be really valuable in the future.”

The future that Chrobak embarked on with his NJIT degree took him to Texas as a project engineer at Texas Instruments.

Chrobak’s employer, he had learned, was long aware of the talent nurtured by NJIT. The company ultimately known as Texas Instruments was incubated during the 1930s in Newark. It provided pioneering geophysical technology for oil and gas exploration, technology increasingly valuable in states like Texas.

When Chrobak came aboard, Texas Instruments was at the forefront of innovation in electronics, with digital calculators that would become ubiquitous

in education, business and the home being a major product line.

Managing product development was the next significant step for Chrobak, and responsibility for a $45 million calculator line.

While he was with Texas Instruments, Chrobak earned an MBA at Texas Tech University and a master’s in economics from Southern Methodist University, focusing on international trade.

Adding these academic credentials to his resume was part of Chrobak’s transition to increasing responsibility for business development in the international marketplace at Texas Instruments, and subsequently at Compaq Computer and Dell. At Dell, shortly before his career turned in a very different direction, Chrobak was the senior director of Dell Ventures, overseeing how the resources of companies Dell had invested in were strategically integrated into the corporation’s overall operations.

Through an interest in economic development activities for the State of Texas, Chrobak was presented with an attractive opportunity in the public sector.

He was hired by Tracye McDaniel in 2003 to become the inaugural chief financial officer and director of the Texas Economic Development Division within the governor’s office. McDaniel

“ I’m very optimistic. I think we will make progress over the next few decades. I’m very excited for the future of the environmental field.”

— Kiran Gill

had managed the transition of the division to the governor’s office from its beginning as a state agency. And when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that the board of directors had hired McDaniel to head a new organization – Choose New Jersey – Chrobak’s range of expertise and native roots gave him the opportunity to join McDaniel again, this time as chief economic development officer for the new organization.

Choose New Jersey is one initiative of the state’s Partnership for Action. Under the direction of Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, the partnership also includes the New Jersey Business Action Center, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the office of the New Jersey Secretary of Higher Education.

In his post with privatelyfunded, non-profit Choose New Jersey, Chrobak leads a program that makes the case for establishing a presence in the state to companies across the nation as well as from countries around the world. “To be honest, New Jersey is not the least expensive place to do business,” Chrobak says. “There are challenges, including tax and regulatory issues, when it comes to sustaining an environment that will attract businesses and their investments to our state. We need to carefully address existing policies with respect to the expectations of business leaders on an ongoing basis, to highlight that New Jersey is more competitive.”

“Business leaders need to know New Jersey is a complete package

– containing all of the resources that make the state a uniquely cost-effective location, a great place for business to be more productive, where greater employee creativity can produce marketleading innovations.” Listing some of what New Jersey offers as an outstanding base for business, Chrobak cites excellent education at every level, a highly skilled workforce, an extensive and mature supply chain for industries of all types, and an exceptional transportation network.

“We have more scientists and engineers per square mile than any location in the world, and it’s possible to access a third of the country’s population within twenty-four hours,” Chrobak says. “I think the Choose New Jersey tagline sums it up. ‘Highly educated, perfectly located.’

That’s New Jersey.”

Kiran Gill ’07 Environmental Standout The environmental challenges we face are widespread and many.

But Kiran Gill and her colleagues at PARS Environmental, Inc., are working hard to meet these challenges on diverse fronts across the country. Gill – PARS owner, president and CEO – heads a growing consulting practice that offers expertise spanning remedial investigation, risk assessment, industrial health and safety, and treatment-system design, construction and maintenance.

Gill has steered PARS to success, garnering accolades for the firm that include a 2010 American Military Engineers Small Business Excellence in Environmental Services Award for

Kiran Gill, PARS Environmental president and CEO

remediation in Pennsylvania. In recognition of her managerial achievements, Gill was named the New Jersey Minority Small Business Person of the Year for 2010 by the US Small Business Administration, and she is on the 2013 NJBIZ list of top entrepreneurial “Forty Under 40” residents of the state.

As an undergraduate at New York University, Gill developed a keen interest in environmental science during a college project for which she traveled to Costa Rica.

The project focused on preserving ecosystems, and Gill was able to observe the different ways that people live in and yet conserve the environment. She realized that several of the concepts she observed were applicable to industrialized New Jersey and that she could make a difference at home.

While in college, Gill also landed an internship with a company then named PARS Environmental Services, and after the internship ended came on board as a full-time employee.

PARS, which was founded in 1984, specialized in helping clients comply with environmental health and safety regulations. A premier offering was proprietary

software the Robbinsville-based company had created to facilitate environmental compliance.

Several years after Gill joined PARS, the husband and wife founders of the company decided to sell the company due to personal reasons. Gill and a number of co-workers wanted to keep PARS going, at first primarily to provide continuing support for clients of PARS’ environmentalcompliance software. It was a major professional turning point for Gill. She had the opportunity to purchase the company, a decision that put her on the path of company management.

The step from environmental scientist into top management was daunting, Gill admits. But encouraged by her parents and with an expansive vision for the company’s future, Gill assumed the responsibilities of leadership.

And while still providing assistance essential for their existing client base, the PARS team ventured into new markets.

“It took us a few years, but we did succeed in winning large contracts with the State of New Jersey and the federal government, including the Army Corps of Engineers,” Gill says. It’s also work that has taken PARS experts beyond New Jersey, as far as New Mexico, California and Alaska.

Gill’s new role as manager brought her to NJIT as well, to the School of Management’s Executive MBA program. “I knew that being a manager would be very different from my former technical position, and that I would need in-depth knowledge of business,” she says. “More specifically, I wanted a degree that

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would help me as the head of a technical company.” That’s what Gill found at NJIT. “As we expanded from environmental-compliance software to developing proprietary remediation technology, NJIT’s focus on management of technology really helped with bringing our innovations to market, and differentiating ourselves from other technical companies.

The instructors taught using real-world scenarios, and I met other business owners who were dealing with the same challenges that we had at PARS.” Gill’s 2007 MBA provided an important tool for building the success of her company, success that she says is based on encouraging every member of the PARS team to be creative and entrepreneurial. “I want everyone who works with me to always feel free to suggest new and better ways of doing things. That was the culture at PARS when I started, and it is a culture that I want to encourage and perpetuate.”

Speaking of recent contracts, Gill expresses special satisfaction with her company’s ongoing participation in New Jersey’s recovery from Hurricane Sandy.

PARS is working with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Parks Service on a range of storm-related projects. “Sandy hit home for all of us. When you go out into the field and talk to the people who are still affected, you get a real sense of how terrible the storm was. We’re very glad that we have the expertise needed to help.”

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As for guiding PARS into the future, Gill says that she and her colleagues must always be looking forward. “Where do we want to be two years from now, five years from now, and how can we get there? That is our focus. We have to make the right decisions, identify the right growth areas, and invest in the right equipment.”

And fostering the talents of her staff, Gill adds, is fundamental to charting the right course.

“How can I help everyone to grow with the company and develop the skills and confidence that makes it possible to start in an entry-level position and grow into a project manager? We succeed together. It’s something I think about every day.”

Gill clearly communicates her enthusiasm for the work she does at PARS, for being a part of positive change. “There’s so much that needs to be done, in being a more sustainable society, contending with climate change, and providing clean water. These are just a few critical areas.

“I’m very optimistic. I think we will make progress over the next few decades. I’m very excited for the future of the environmental field.”

Howard E. Michel ’75 Launching Satellites and Careers It’s hard to imagine a more vivid advertisement for the versatility of an engineering degree than Howard E. Michel. Since graduating nearly 40 years ago, the electrical engineering major has flown B-52 bombers, launched satellites, devised systems software for the US Air Force, and is now training

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Visiting the pre-Columbian city of Teotihuacan in Mexico

future engineers as an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Recently elected president of IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional association, Michel says it is now his mandate to ensure that the organization’s 400,000 members in more than 180 countries navigate just as dexterously through the dynamic and sometimes fitful waters of work life.

“We can’t promise job security, but we provide the tools that can guarantee career security,” asserts Michel, who took the organization’s measure early on as student chapter chair for Newark College of Engineering.

Slated to head the association in 2015, he will spend the next year

as president-elect mulling vehicles for professional development, as well as strategies for raising the IEEE’s visibility and clout around the globe. Among other approaches, he plans to expand offerings such as “Smart Tech” workshops, forums on topics ranging from software engineering to Smart Grid systems that encourage members from a variety of disciplines to learn about technologies outside of their expertise, to stay abreast of developments in their fields, and to network with other professionals.

“These workshops showcase the best of IEEE though a partnership of our local volunteers, our technical experts from around the globe, and staff from the Piscataway headquarters,” he says.

A firm believer in professional development who went on to earn two master’s degrees – in systems management and electrical and computer engineering – and a PhD in computer science and engineering, Michel says he puts a lot of stock, however, in the power of “a good solid engineering degree to prepare you for pretty much anything.” In his case, this entailed flying supersonic jets just two years after graduation.

“There is nothing like the thrill of flying a plane with a 200-foot wingspan 400 feet above the ground at 350 knots,” he says of the experience, while adding on the skills required to manage complicated instruments and understand complex systems like the weather: “Who better than an engineer?”

Calling the military “a great career” for an engineer, he notes, “You really do have access to the best toys.” After his stint as a jet pilot, he moved on to rockets. He devised, among other devices, a distributive instrumentation system of sensors (later patented) to study the impact of the acoustic and seismic waves released by Shuttle launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base on buildings in the vicinity of a launch pad and the equipment stored in them, including satellites.

Much of his work had Cold War security applications, including developing systems to identify low-flying stealth aircraft and instruments to detect whether military trucks were carrying real or fake missiles.

“The thinking was to create missile motorcades to prevent our

“ If you’re sending ballistic missiles 8,000 miles around the earth, or cruise missiles hundreds of miles along the earth, you need to chart their path with absolute precision. If the earth moves even a little, the precise direction of gravity changes, and this can put them off course.”

— Howard E. Michel

enemies from figuring out which trucks had the actual missiles and so we worked on ways of disguising them,” he notes.

He also worked on sensors to measure continental movements known as “earth tides.”

“If you’re sending ballistic missiles 8,000 miles around the earth, or cruise missiles hundreds of miles along the earth, you need to chart their path with absolute precision. If the earth moves even a little, the precise direction of gravity changes, and this can put them off course,” he says.

Later, as satellite launch director and chief of the payloads branch at Vandenberg, he oversaw seven launches, including civilian satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that up until recently were used in tracking storms such as Sandy. And in 1990, he supervised the first US commercial satellite launches in China under a novel cost-cutting initiative urged by Reagan administration officials who decided that US launches were too expensive. The State Department quickly embraced the idea, but the Pentagon was initially aghast, he recalls.

“As a military officer, my task was to ensure a safe and suc-

cessful launch, while at the same time not compromising either country’s technologies,” he recounts. “There were large meetings with Chinese and American engineers assembled around a table, and one of my jobs was to listen in. Periodically, I’d have to call a time-out.”

After his promotion to a policy job developing open-system standards for the mission-critical computer systems embedded in planes, ships, and tanks in order to promote competition and drive down costs, he found the work somewhat less gripping.

“The higher you rise, the further away you are from the interesting toys. I realized I hadn’t done much engineering for more than a decade,” recounts Michel, whose boyish enthusiasm for all things gadgetry includes fond memories of the indoor ski machine at NCE where he learned to make turns by sinking his edges into a carpet-covered roller.

“You could still fall. I tore a hole in the knee of my pants hitting the carpet,” he laughs, recalling the fragility of the era’s synthetic fabrics. “Everything back then was polyester – so 70s.”

So he earned his PhD and headed back to academia, where

he teaches, among other budding engineers, senior design teams comprised of electrical, computer and mechanical engineers working on “real projects from clients that involve system engineering.”

One of these teams took first prize at an IEEE student-design competition at Rochester Institute of Technology for creating back lighting for televisions known as “mood lighting.”

“They learn to ask the right questions – not about how they’re going to start building right off the bat, but what it is exactly that they are building. I get a kick out of watching students make the transition from thinking they know engineering to actually knowing it,” he says.

Michel says he encourages his students to join IEEE. “As an undergraduate at NCE, the branch advisor took me to local meetings, and that allowed me to start networking with professional engineers,” he recalls, adding, “As my career varied, I saw different values in my membership. When I was a pilot I stayed connected to engineering through publications like SPECTRUM magazine, and as a research engineer at the Geophysics Lab, IEEE Transactions had state-of-the-art research.

Now teaching engineering design, IEEE standards are key.”

Of his ascent over the years from student chapter chair to president, he notes with a chuckle, “Not bad!” n Meet Howard on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v= BUYyvSf8yKg

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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 – The student-athletes, coaches and director are generally the most visible members of a university’s athletics department, and it’s no different at NJIT. However, a quality “behind the scenes” staff is needed to make sure the whole program runs smoothly. Len Kaplan, NJIT athletics director, has told me that he is fortunate to have such a staff, particularly his long-time assistant Joseph N. Caiola, who happens to be an NJIT alumnus.

Joseph N. Caiola ’80, ’84 with sons Anthony ’12 (left) and Joseph A. ’10, ’11

After earning an associate’s degree at Brookdale Community College, Joe transferred to NJIT, where he graduated with a bachelor’s in engineering technology, cum laude, in 1980. He earned a master’s in engineering management in 1984.

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points. Joe also served as a resident assistant at Redwood Hall, NJIT’s first dormitory.

Following graduation, Joe worked as a piping engineer for C F Braun & Company in Murray Hill. When the company moved to the West Coast, Joe worked as a consulting engineer for LJ Gonzer Associates in Newark beginning in 1982.

He joined the NJIT Athletics Department in 1987 as a part-time assistant basketball coach and was subsequently appointed to the fulltime staff as recruiting coordinator.

Joe is currently assistant athletics director for business, facilities and events management. For the past fifteen years, he has coordinated the NJIT Athletics Golf Outing, the department’s most successful fund-raiser, which has brought in more than $750,000.

Joe met his wife, Carol, in his first year at NJIT. They have been married for 29 years and have two sons, Joseph A. and Anthony, both NJIT graduates. Joe A. earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering in 2010 and a master’s in management in 2011. He works for Turtle & Hughes, an electrical and industrial distribution company whose corporate offices are in Linden, New Jersey. He met his employer while working

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as a volunteer at the 2011 NJIT golf outing. Anthony, who played four years of varsity baseball at NJIT, graduated with a bachelor’s in management and finance in 2012. He works as a stockbroker with Laidlaw & Co. in New York City. Joe and Carol live in Edison, New Jersey, in the house they have owned since they were married.

They recently bought a home in Cape Coral, Florida.

the Athletics Department. His responsibilities include events and ticket-office management, scheduling of facilities and student workers, and sales of athletic merchandise. Shannon lives in Newark with his wife, Shelly, and son, Andrew.

Shannon Abraham ’04, who majored in management with a minor in global studies, is another member of the NJIT Athletics Department.

Shannon was Shannon Abraham ’04 born in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and lived there with his parents and brother before coming to the United States and entering NJIT at the age of 18.

He played soccer at Belmont High School in Trinidad and Tobago and was recommended to NJIT by a Belmont High School alumnus who was a friend of Rick Hill, the NJIT soccer coach.

in Springfield, New Jersey. Joe and Andre Ameer ’78, EIC coowners, have pledged $50,000 for soccer scholarships in the name of EIC. In 2012, they were honored for their engineering and entrepreneurial achievements at the Salute to Engineering Excellence sponsored by Newark College of Engineering. (See the fall 2012 issue of NJIT Magazine.)

Unfortunately, after only two touches with the ball in his first game at NJIT in 2000, Shannon broke his leg – which is why coaches preach the importance of one-touch passing. He missed that season but returned to action in 2001. After graduation, Shannon was employed by the Newark Bears Professional Baseball Club and received successive promotions as group sales manager, production manager and corporate sales manager until 2006, when he left to work full-time at NJIT. He is currently operations manager for

Leo has more than 35 years of experience in heavy, civil, power, pharmaceutical and pollutioncontrol construction across the US and in two foreign countries.

He has been manager and superintendent for numerous major projects, including 22 contracts totaling $42 million for Merck & Co. Inc., a $30 million addition to a water-treatment plant at the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey, an $11 million combined sewer and microtunnels installation in Astoria, New York, a $5 million sewage treatment plant

Among the many alumni at this year’s Athletics Golf Outing were Joe Branco ’74, ’77 and Leo Pflug ’75, from EIC Associates

Leo, a licensed Professional Engineer, worked for EE Cruz & Co. for nine years as a project manager before joining EIC as chief engineer in 2002. He was responsible for estimating and engineering on various projects before taking on overall management of the $82.9 million Glenbrook 115kV transmission cables project in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2006.

in Wanaque, and a $4 million design-build groundwater treatment plant for the Curtiss-Wright groundwater recovery system in Moonachie, New Jersey.

Zubair Lokhandwala ’10 interned at EIC in his junior and senior years and was a field assistant for Leo on the Glenbrook cables project, which helped him learn about managing the business side of construction. He joined EIC full-time after graduation as a project engineer.

Zubair has worked on the foundation for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and the Eco Park marine preservation project in New York City. Exposure to the architectural side of construction through working with the design team and client taught him how to balance the financial aspects of a project with appropriate goals for completion. He is currently working on a project involving all utility and foundation work for a new performing arts center at Princeton University.

Among the graduates attending the alumni soccer reunion on campus were Saman Mazahreh ’01, ’05 and Brian Nash ’08.

Saman has worked at ScheringPlough and is now at Novartis in Parsippany, New Jersey. He is pursuing a PhD at RutgersNewark in global affairs, focusing on international law and global governance related to pharmaceutical regulations. Brian was active in the Society for Advanced Management in his junior and senior years at NJIT. He is on a contract assignment for Ajilon Finance as an equity analyst at Bloomberg L.P., and working on a master’s in accounting at Seton Hall University.

The story of Joe Caiola and his sons is indicative of a number of NJIT alumni who have had more than one member of their family attend the university. Joining this group are Horace Malcolm Chase and his sister, Shelly, and brother, Hastings. They immigrated to New Jersey from British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1981, and after graduating from East Orange High School entered NJIT in the Engineering Opportunity Program. Horace and Shelly marched together at Commencement in 1988.

Horace was one of two freshmen to start for the NJIT soccer team in my final year as coach, and he continued to play three years for Efrain Borja ’77. After Commencement, he became a sales consultant for Gallo Wines and has remained with the company for more than 25 years. Horace played in New Jersey and New York with teams that won several championships in the Metropolitan and USL Premier Leagues.

Desiring to give back to society because so much was given to him, Horace is serving with several non-profit organizations that provide support for groups helping homeless children and orphanages in the Caribbean, mostly in Guyana. He was also a volunteer soccer coach at Chad High School, a privately funded school in Newark for underprivileged children.

Shelly, who graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, is working for the US Patent Office in Washington, DC. Hastings spent one year at NJIT with Engineering Opportunity and AFROTC scholarships before transferring to the US Air Force Academy. Horace lives in Mil-

lington, New Jersey, with his daughter, Hollace.

Diane and I have a home in Warren, Vermont, and noticed an obituary in the local weekly about John (Jack) Cooper Clayton ’50. After graduating from Millburn High School in 1943, Jack volunteered for the Navy during World War II. He entered NCE after completing his service and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. He also earned an MBA from Rutgers University. Jack founded and managed the Somerville Equipment Company for many years. After skiing in college, Jack started again when he was 50 years old and skied with his family until he was 78 years young at Mad River Glen in Waitsfield, Vermont. He and his wife, Lillian, retired to Placida, Florida.

Hosted by Roy Knutsen ’62, the annual Feet and Hands golf outing was held on October 5, 2013 at the Lake Mohawk Golf Club. Roy won low-gross honors with an 82; Callaway winners were Rich Schroeder ’66, Bob Welgos ’62

and Bill Morris ’82 with scores of 74, 75 and 76 respectively. Closestto-the-pin winners were Paul Dreyer ’64 and Norm Loney ’77.

Bob, who will host next year’s outing at the Newton Country Club, waxed nostalgic about the outing as he toasted his basketball teammates of yore: “Think about it. A group of old men who played basketball together 50 years ago still go out of their way and travel substantial distances to assemble once a year. I received three phone calls prior to the outing from teammates who expressed sadness that they could not attend for health, family or business reasons.

“We gather just to enjoy each other’s company, to reminisce about what we were 50 years ago and to play a little golf. We talk about knee replacements and medications but the smiles and laughter tell the story behind the words.

I know of no other scenario that does this and so I raise my glass of beer and say, ‘Here’s to us. May we all stay healthy enough to do this for many years.’”

I say “Amen” to Bob’s toast and encourage alumni to keep in touch with their classmates and attend NJIT alumni functions, especially the annual alumni reunion.

Keep the news coming to mjs@njit.edu.

O’Brien to Lead Mid-Atlantic Robotics The Board of Directors of MidAtlantic Robotics has selected Gene R. O’Brien ’62 to lead the New Jersey non-profit organization as chairman through June 2014. A graduate of NJIT in electrical engineering, he is a founding member and former secretary of the organization. O’Brien, a licensed Professional Engineer in New Jersey, retired from the former Lucent Technologies after a 36-year career in engineering, operations and marketing.

Mid-Atlantic Robotics is franchised by the US Foundation for the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) to conduct robotics events for high school students in Delaware, New Jersey and the eastern half of Pennsylvania. There are more than 350 volunteer members. Over 100 teams of students, along with their teacher/coaches and mentors

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from the business sector, participated in the 2013 season.

The students design, construct, program and test their robots, which weigh over 100 pounds, within a six-week period after the announcement of an annual game that changes every year.

Each team, ranging from 10 to more than 50 students, receives a standard kit of parts and rules for the game at the kickoff on the first Saturday of January.

Teams in Mid-Atlantic Robotics compete in two local contests (called district events) by which they can qualify for the Region Championship. A limited number of these teams then qualify for the FIRST World Championship conducted in late April. There are more than 2,500 such teams in the United States and many other countries, including Brazil, Canada, Germany, Great Britain and Israel.

In his role as chairman, O’Brien will be responsible for a half-million-dollar budget and numerous committees of volunteers who oversee the events, team support and other operations essential for the success of the program. Most of the budget is raised from donations by businesses, foundations and individuals. Active in FIRST programs for more than 10 years, O’Brien was honored as the New Jersey Volunteer-of-the-Year in 2008.

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1961 Stanley Barauskas (ME) writes that he has returned to work parttime at Boeing Co., to help with a new NASA project, the Space Launch System (SLS). He says, “It is a rocket that is more powerful than the Saturn V that launched astronauts to the moon (lift-off thrust was 7.5 million pounds, the SLS will be 8.6 million pounds). I enjoy being back to work with my fellow Shuttle engineers and it’s great to work on rocket engines again.”

1967 Harvey Bernstein (CE), McGraw Hill Construction’s vice president for industry insights and alliances, and a LEED accredited professional, has been appointed to the Corporate Advisory Board of the World Green Building Council. The council is a network of national green building councils in more than 90 countries, making it the largest international organization influencing the green-building marketplace.

1972 Charles Forman (IE), a founding member of the firm Forman Holt Eliades & Youngman LLC, has been recognized among the best lawyers in America in the 2014 Best Lawyers winter business edition. Forman is a widely respected leader in bankruptcy law with more than 30 years of experience as an attorney for debtors and creditors. In addition to his service as a trustee appointed by the United States Justice Department, he is an attorney for numerous other trustees. Forman is also a member of the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Bankruptcy Law Foundation, New Jersey State Bar Association,

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New York State Bar Association, District of Columbia Bar Association, Essex County Bar Association, Bergen County Bar Association, American Bar Association, American Bankruptcy Institute, Turnaround Management Association, and the Commercial Law League of America.

Andrew Litecky (ME), president

of Shupper-Brickle Equipment Company, volunteered to speak about the physics of hoisting, pulleys and mechanical advantage at the Emily Warren Roebling Engineering Summer Camp in Roebling, New Jersey. The camp, sponsored by PSE&G and the Give Back Foundation, invited students ranging in age from eleven to thirteen to explore the mechanics of bridge building and other engineering principles at the Roebling Museum, the historic site of the former Roebling mill and wire rope factory.

1975 Gary Jaslovsky (ChE) has

joined the national construction company MC Industrial as project director. With some 40 years of industry experience, Jaslovsky will be responsible for overseeing construction projects nationwide.

Anthony E. Stavale PE, (ET), research and development manager for ITT Goulds Pumps in Seneca Falls, New York, has been honored with the 2013 ITT Engineering Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes superior technical achievements and outstanding efforts in the areas of innovation, engineering excellence and productivity. He holds five US patents, three pending patents and has published numerous technical papers both nationally and internationally. Stavale also serves

as a member of the ASME B73 Committee for Chemical Standard Pumps.

1981 Paul Sullivan (CE) is now a

senior supervising engineer in the Newark, New Jersey, office of Parsons Brinckerhoff, where he will work with transit agencies in managing the planning and design of major projects in the Northeast.

Sullivan has 25 years of experience in transit-project management across a wide range of rail and bus modes. Previously, he was with an international consulting firm, responsible for managing large-scale transit projects. He also served as director of passenger facilities planning and engineering for New Jersey Transit.

1983 Ram Murthy MS (ME), MS ’84

(Computer Science) is the chief information officer for the US Railroad Retirement Board (RRB).

As CIO, he heads the RRB’s Bureau of Information Services, which has more than 150 staff members. In that capacity, Murthy is responsible for planning, directing and coordinating the agency’s Information Resources Management Program.

He also serves as a member of the RRB’s Executive Committee, which is responsible for day-to-day operations of the agency and for making recommendations to the threemember board on policy issues.

1987 Wilson Orozco (ME) is putting his engineering skills to work at Primus Green Energy in Hillsborough, New Jersey. His current responsibilities include translating process and

instrumentation diagrams into instructions that facilitate field construction. Primus is focused on the development of alternative “drop-in” fuels produced from readily available domestic resources such as natural gas and biomass that are cost-competitive with petroleum-based products. The company’s proprietary technology produces aromatic chemicals as well as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel that require no engine modifications or changes to the fuel-delivery infrastructure.

1993 Bennet Dunkley (Arch) has

joined New York-based Helpern Architects as vice president. He will be involved with firm-wide management of business operations and client development. For the last two years, Dunkley was responsible for managing a 550,000-squarefoot renovation and conversion of a General Services Administration office building in Washington, DC that is expected to achieve both GSA Design Excellence and USGBC LEED Gold status. Previously, he worked in New York for two decades. Career highlights include working on hotels around the world, 20,000 condominium units, commercial interiors projects, and a 125,000-square-foot high school that focuses on law.

1994 Jason Kliwinski (Arch) has been appointed director of sustainable design at Parette Somjen Architects, working from the firm’s Rockaway, New Jersey, headquarters. Kliwinski, AIA and a LEED Fellow, served as director of sustainable design for Spiezle Architectural Group prior to joining Parette Somjen.

2000 Leroy Jones MS (Mgmt.), a partner at 1868 Public Affairs, a New Jersey government and public affairs consultancy, has been named chair of the Essex County Democratic organization. Jones joined 1868 Public Affairs after a career as a state legislator, county freeholder and municipal-government administrator. His extensive public service includes serving four terms in the New Jersey General Assembly, working on the Appropriations, Regulatory Oversight, Solid Waste and Recycling, Financial Institutions, and Local Government Committees. He also served on the Assembly Task Force on Foreign Banking, the Task Force on Business Retention and Expansion, and the State House Commission.

2001 Mark Boucot MS (Mgmt.) has been named the president and chief executive officer of Garrett County Memorial Hospital in Maryland. He joins Garrett Memorial with more than 25 years of health care experience. His most recent position was as vice president and chief operating officer of Medstar St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, Maryland.

Gwen Ratliff (EE), an engineer

with PSE&G, has been devoting considerable spare time to the public schools in her hometown of New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is giving back to the school system where she was once a student through the New Brunswick Education Foundation (NBEF). Ratliff has chaired the NBEF’s scholarship committee and has been involved with an after-school robotics program. She has also participated in designing a new STEM curriculum for the city

and has helped to raise more than $190,000 for scholarships available to students at New Brunswick High School and New Brunswick Health Sciences Technology High School.

In recognition of her efforts on behalf of students in New Brunswick, Ratcliff has been awarded a $10,000 grant through PSEG’s Recognizing Excellence in Volunteerism program. PSEG is the parent company of PSE&G.

2002 Alexis Goldman (Arch) has been

promoted to associate principal at Solutions Architecture. Goldman’s professional affiliations include the American Institute of Architects, the US Green Building Council, the vision42 initiative and Transportation Alternatives.

Colin Sytsma (actuarial science) has been promoted to vice president–accounting analyst/finance at Lakeland Bank. He joined Lakeland in 2002 and has held positions that include assistant treasurer-accounting.

2006 Mahesh Karwa PhD (Chem) has

received the Luitpold President’s Award from Luitpold Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and PharmaForce, Inc. Karwa, a senior analytical development scientist, was cited for accomplishments that include his role in validation transfer of analytical methodologies, inprocess release stability testing of registration batches, and technology transfer during development of Injectafer, a treatment for iron deficiency anemia.

2007 Amir Elfar (Executive MBA) has been named CIO of Omicron.

In previous positions, he served as senior vice president for IT at MedAvante and vice president for corporate network services at IDT. Omicron provides the electrical power industry with equipment and services for testing, diagnostics and monitoring worldwide.

In Memoriam The NJIT community notes with sadness the deaths of the following alumni: Edward Taylor Francis ’39 Albert R. Tarzy ’41 John J. McGrath ’42 William Klitsch ’48 Edward A. Skettini ’48 John Cooper Clayton ’50 Lester Lieberman ’51 Albert Gloor ’52, ’60 Arthur J. Makris ’52 William Rose ’52 Paul Joseph Real ’53 William F. Hanley ’57 Fred Bachmann ’59 Frederick W. Pflum ’59 John Amann ’66 Dominic Benjamin Carrino ’67, ’79 Anthony Dellanno ’73, ’79 Michael J. Dries ’74, ’78 James T. Gurski ’76 Kenneth William Sullivan Sr. ’79 Diana Lynn Hoenig ’85

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alumni Calendar save the date!

Alumni Weekend 2014 Friday, May 16 – Sunday, May 18

Alumni Weekend has activities that will appeal to every NJIT grad. Come back 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 featuring receptions, dinners, college and department presentations, exhibits, and the annual presentation of Alumni Achievement Awards by the Alumni Association.

For more information about Alumni Weekend or to make reservations online, visit: www.njit.edu/alumni/class or contact the Alumni Relations Office at 973-596-3441.

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: Hatch Mott MacDonald, PSE&G, Schering-Plough, 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

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

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.

Looking at the High Line In October, the NJIT Alumni Club of Metro NY invited graduates and guests to enjoy a guided tour of historic and architectural highlights in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, and to visit High Line Park. The mile-long High Line aerial greenway is atop what was once an elevated section of the New York Central Railroad running along the lower west side of Manhattan.

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at the edge

Taking Education Even Higher

Alumni like Second Lieutenant Mateusz Borek ’13, a mechanical engineering graduate, are taking their education to a higher level with a commission earned through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program offered and hosted at NJIT. Students who qualify for NJIT’s AFROTC Detachment complete their degrees without an activeduty obligation while in college.

The educational experience these men and women have is enhanced with courses in the Aerospace Studies Department of the College of Science and Liberal Arts, and leadership and physical-fitness training.

Courses are also open to NJIT students not formally enrolled in the AFROTC program.

Graduates commissioned as a second lieutenant are wellprepared for a promising future in the Air Force and civilian life.

It’s a future that spans challenging and rewarding opportunities in virtually every technical and managerial field – and which can literally take some AFROTC alumni to new heights.

For more information: 973-596-3626, afrotc490@njit.edu, or on the web at www.njit.edu/rotc

Second Lieutenant Mateusz Borek ’13 on the flight line with a T-6 primary trainer.

®

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the edge in knowledge

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NJIT Graduate Programs in Engineering INCLUDING • Biomedical • Civil & Environmental

• Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical • Electrical & Computer • Engineering Management • Mechanical & Industrial • Power & Energy Systems • Software Engineering • Transportation

On Campus, Online, Full Time or Part Time

ONLINE AND/OR PART TIME MAY NOT APPLY TO ALL PROGRAMS

www.njit.edu/admissions/graduate

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