New Jersey Institute of Technology Research

NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

LINKING LABORATORIES TO LIVES

100yearsy NEWARK COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Photo: Oscar Masciandaro

Front Cover Photos (left to right): Courtesy of istock/cerber82 Courtesy of istock/Suebsiri Courtesy of istock/dvoevnore Courtesy of istock/enot-poloskun Table of Contents

From the Senior Vice Provost for Research 2

Frontiers in Sustainability 4

Engineering Sustainability: Water 6

Engineering Sustainability: Data 8

Engineering Sustainability: Infrastructure 10

Engineering Sustainability: Health and Medicine 12

Voice Technology / Engineering and Art 14

Intelligent Infrastructure 16

NJIT Research Magazine 2019 A Century of Newark College of Engineering 18

Senior Vice Provost for Research Atam P. Dhawan NCE 100: A Timeline 20

Undergraduate Research 26 Office of Strategic Communications Reflections 28 Associate Vice President Denise Anderson Accessibility and Technology 30 Editor Tracey Regan Deep Reinforcement Learning 32 Managing Editor Julie Jacobs Innovative Materials 34 Contributing Writer Jesse Jenkins Data for Decision-Making 36 Art Director/Designer Diane Cuddy NCE 100: Did You Know? 38 Production Manager Babette Hoyle New Faculty 42 Staff Photographer Oscar Masciandaro Faculty Accomplishments 44 From the Senior Vice Provost for Research

s we celebrate the 100th anniversary life, to optimize power distribution and create resilient building materials; of Newark College of Engineering this new materials to save teeth, restore heart tissue and develop biosensors that A year, it’s exciting to see how engineers fine-tune selectivity and sensitivity in diagnostic devices; new means to make are now engines of advancement in so many telecommunications networks more energy efficient, to optimize collaboration important endeavors in modern life. With between machines and people and to bring diverse talent into STEM fields. research that is both fundamental and applied, Elsewhere in this issue, we include snapshots of our current research in they are developing efficient diagnostic devices, many other areas: in transportation infrastructure, in computer accessibility for next-generation battery technologies, smart the disabled, in brain-inspired computing, and in enhancements to data and transportation infrastructure and ingenious information security that inspire the trust of users’ personal, corporate ways to send information around the globe. and defense communications. But it is in the arena of sustainability that Just as we did 100 years ago at the founding of our engineering college, engineers, working on multidisciplinary teams we take our mission seriously to train students to be the highly skilled with computer scientists, data analytics experts workers society needs. But more than that, we also want them to be dreamers, and life scientists, among others, are making visionaries and inventers — to not just make things well, but to make them new. some of their most critical contributions. And what exactly does sustainability That’s why 350 undergraduate students a year spend significant time working mean in 2019? It has certainly evolved since the 1980s, when it referred largely to closely with our researchers in the campus’s more than 93 research institutes, economic growth and development that did not tax resources or harm the planet. centers and laboratories. Soon enough, we may be asking them to once again I would suggest a much broader definition, one that encompasses multiple sectors. redefine sustainability — to not just moderate the damages of industrial In health care, for example, technologists working together are not just devising society, but to reverse them. devices to treat patients, but to help them maintain their health. These measures By forming larger research clusters focused on complex problems, such also represent huge cost savings to society that will allow us to invest in crucial as our new Institute for Space Weather Sciences, we are able to harness the needs in other arenas. By developing predictive and proactive data analytics talents of researchers and their students from across the campus. Linking our technologies, we can help businesses — and indeed, entire sectors — better solar scientists with powerful computing and mathematical capabilities, we manage risks in the long and short term to avoid potentially massive economic will deepen our knowledge of the bursts of solar electromagnetic radiation, dislocations that throw us off course. There are truly urgent matters on the energetic charged particles and magnetized plasma known as space weather, horizon, such as climate change, that require our full attention. while protecting our increasingly complex engineered systems, both on land And do these devices meet the 1980s definition of sustainability? Elegantly and in space, from harm. and inexpensively designed in ways that consume the fewest resources, I would say they do! In this issue of the New Jersey Institute of Technology Research Magazine, we focus first on the important work that our researchers across disciplines are doing to improve the sustainability of our water, infrastructure, health and Atam P. Dhawan medicine, and data analytics and information systems. They include methods to Senior Vice Provost for Research capture emerging contaminants in our water supply, pollutants at their point-of- Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering use and oil that has been spilled in our waterways; technology to extend battery Photo: Oscar Masciandaro

2 2019 NJIT Research Magazine Photo: Courtesy of NJIT Archives

njit.edu/research 3 Frontiers in Sustainability

elieving Planetary Stress With Sustainable Technologies

TheThe 21st 21st century century is rapidlyis rapidly resetting resetting the the goalposts goalposts for for sustainable sustainable life life on on Earth. Earth.

WithinWithin five five years, years, the the world world population population is isprojected projected to toreach reach 9 billion;9 billion; by by2050, 2050,

nearlynearly 70 70 percent percent of ofpeople people will will live live in inurban urban areas. areas. All All the the while, while, climate climate change change

is addingis adding stress stress on on both both natural natural ecosystems ecosystems and and built built environments. environments. WATER Increasingly,Increasingly, technologists technologists see see their their mission mission as astwofold: twofold: to tocontinue continue advancing advancing Researchers in this cluster use sensors, nanotechnology- enhanced filters and chemical, biological and physical processes to protect and remediate water at several points livingliving standards, standards, while while ensuring ensuring their their innovations innovations do do not not harm harm the the planet. planet. Designing Designing of contact: from oceans and inland waterways, to industrial R and municipal water systems, to pipelines. A primary goal devicesdevices that that are are inexpensive, inexpensive, simple simple to touse use and and widely widely applicable applicable is ais guidinga guiding is to better understand the behavior of water pollutants, including interactions among chemicals and natural materials. principle.principle. Sustainability Sustainability from from creation, creation, to touse, use, to toend-of-life end-of-life is theis the gold gold standard. standard. Modelers track the path of pollution as it disperses. Among a variety of remediation methods is the use of reactive WithWith these these criteria criteria firmly firmly in inmind, mind, work work on onsustainable sustainable systems systems at atNJIT NJIT focuses focuses membrane filtration devices to degrade contaminants of emerging concern, pathogens and viruses at the onon four four main main facets facets of ofmodern modern life: life: water, water, health health and care, medicine, infrastructure infrastructure and data. and data. point of use.

4 2019 NJIT Research Magazine WHILE TECHNOLOGISTS increasingly focus on preserving the planet and its people, they also bring their talents for planning, designing, SUKLA CHANDRA ROBERT COHEN SOHAIL MOHAMMED ELLEN M. measuring and organizing to diverse M.S. ’96 ’83, ’84, ’87 ’88 PAWLIKOWSKI ’78 As managing director ROBERT COHEN, an NJIT When he was appointed In 2016, ELLEN M. of GE Ventures India, trustee, is the vice president to the bench of the PAWLIKOWSKI was fields. NJIT alumni reflect this range: SUKLA CHANDRA and general manager of Superior Court of Passaic promoted to the rank is responsible for the global research and County in 2011, SOHAIL of four-star general in a chemist who brought electricity to technology transfer and development business unit MOHAMMED, a former the U.S. Air Force. She licensing collaborations in the Joint Replacement electrical engineer, was just the third for GE Technologies Division at Stryker became the first Indian- woman in the history remote parts of the world; a biomedical in India. In a prior Orthopaedics. He leads all American judge in the of the Air Force to position, she developed joint replacement division state of New Jersey. Prior receive a fourth star. and executed product implant and robotics to his appointment, She went on to direct engineer and entrepreneur who and commercialization product development, Mohammed was an the 80,000-person Air strategies for GE’s Rural research and development immigration lawyer Force Materiel Command developed new methods for joint Electrification Platform, operations, regulatory who won the respect for the U.S. Air Force, and in that role led affairs, clinical outcomes of fellow lawyers, law which included managing measurable progress research and advanced enforcement officials and city-sized military bases implants that maximize mobility; an toward providing technology groups. human rights advocates and leading the Air electricity in remote parts Earlier, as a health care well beyond the state’s Force’s investment in of the world. Chandra industry entrepreneur, borders for defending weaponry technologies electrical engineer who became a judge; currently serves on the he envisioned the immigrant Muslim clients — from hypersonics, board of the Alliance convergence of advanced detained by the FBI to lasers and high- and a chemical engineer — and four- for Rural Electrification, materials, new fabrication after Sept. 11. powered microwaves, to based in Belgium. methods and robotic- automated devices. assisted surgery to maximize motion Photos (left to right): star general — who led the Air Force Courtesy of Michele Hickey ‘14 restoration. Courtesy of Stryker Orthopaedics Courtesy of Sohail Mohammed Materiel Command. Courtesy of U.S. Air Force

HEALTH AND MEDICINE INFRASTRUCTURE DATA This research cluster focuses on neuroscience, neural In this wide-ranging cluster, research areas include In this broadly interdisciplinary cluster, researchers focus engineering, regenerative and rehabilitative medicine urban ecology and sustainability, advanced materials and on bioinformatics, medical informatics, image processing, and point-of-care technologies that detect disease at early nanotechnologies and smart manufacturing systems. The data mining, solar-terrestrial physics, transportation, financial stages. Imaging experts, computer scientists and biomedical urban ecology and sustainability area emphasizes sustainable management, life sciences and health care. The cybersecurity engineers are working together to devise therapies and infrastructure, ecological communities, urban modeling group designs secure cyber systems and improves cyber devices that will sustain lives by improving motor, cognitive and simulation. Energy sustainability is also a key focus, information and communications technology to improve and organ functions. Tissue engineers seek to replace with the goal of gleaning efficiencies at every level of use, the safety of traditional systems while enabling the rise of dysfunctional cells with regenerating cells and tissues, from battery storage, to communication networks, to energy new decentralized enterprises. But our researchers also focus prompting the body to heal itself. At the systems level, our purchasing models. The scope of nanotechnology research on the human end of the equation by ensuring that there is a researchers improve health care information systems and includes scientific and engineering phenomena at the diverse technology workforce that works comfortably and management involving primary care, hospitals and minutest and most fundamental levels in order to develop efficiently with the machines that power our increasingly emergency care resources and protocols. technologies to remediate and protect the environment. automated society.

njit.edu/research 5 Engineering Sustainability: Water

egacy pollutants from the

industrial age and emerging Photo: Oscar Masciandaro contaminants from the new Containing New Contaminants Before They’re Unmanageable LISA AXE, Director of the Environmental Systems Laboratory Lmillennium jeopardize the safety of our drinking water. Relentless problem: how it works: While not yet regulated Axe’s lab recently applied microbial films to two processes by the U.S. Environmental typically used in municipal water treatment plants development and climate-driven Protection Agency, — granular activated carbon (GAC) and anthracite/ contaminants of emerging sand media filtration. The team measured their drought threaten supply. Engineers concern (CECs) include a filters’ performance using 16 “indicator compounds” host of potentially hazardous that represent the vast array of CECs being detected are tackling these macro challenges compounds that are throughout the water cycle. The lab observed greater than increasingly entering the 80 percent removal of CECs using their GAC biologically water cycle, and are derived activated filter. Axe’s group is collaborating with the lab to oceans, ecosystems and urban from using everyday products of her NJIT colleague, chemist Mengyan Li, to isolate — from pharmaceuticals to bacteria responsible for degrading these compounds. water networks with increasingly personal care items. Future research includes launching pilot demonstrations of their filters over the next year. diverse approaches: biologically solution: “Wastewater treatment plants are not generally Lisa Axe, a professor of designed to treat CECs,” says Axe. “We have taken chemical and materials granular activated carbon normally used for polishing active filters, reactive membranes engineering, is developing water or removing organic matter in the treatment an advanced treatment plant, and we’ve designed a cost-effective, natural and and precise pollution modeling. process for CECs that sustainable biologically active filter that effectively involves converting existing removes CECs derived from antibiotics, steroids, beta traditional filters and blockers and even pesticides like DEET.” adsorbents at water treatment facilities into biologically active filters, rich in contaminant- degrading microbes.

6 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro at NJIT Photo: Courtesy of Center for Natural Resources

Degrading Pollutants With Reactive Membranes Predicting the Path of Oil Spills Before They Occur WEN ZHANG, Co-director of the Sustainable Environmental MICHEL BOUFADEL, Director of the Center for Natural Resources Nanotechnology and Nanointerfaces Laboratory Development and Protection problem: how it works: problem: how it works: An increase in CECs, Zhang’s laboratory explores POU devices that employ There are thousands of Boufadel’s lab investigates the complex hydrodynamics of on- chemical co-contamination filters with functionalized membrane surfaces — membrane marine oil spills in the and off-shore oil spills using large-scale wave tanks located at and aging pipelines, as well surfaces coated with contaminant-degrading nanoparticles United States every year, each the U.S. Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth County, as waterborne viruses and or nanomaterials as catalysts that are activated through with a distinct set of physical N.J., which simulate environmental conditions that impact the pathogens that are evolving chemical processes. Once activated, the membranes serve and environmental variables transport of oil droplets in water. His team is now analyzing to survive widespread use as a highly reactive barrier to destruct water pollutants on that must be accounted for ways to better understand the uncontrolled pipeline flow that of antibiotics and vaccines, contact, providing a self-cleaning filtration system that also in order to properly track took place during the Deepwater Horizon well discharge. Last all present new safety and mitigates membrane fouling issues. and mitigate their spread — year, they discovered a process that occurred during the well reliability challenges and Zhang’s laboratory researches three types of reactive from smaller fuel transfer discharge called churn flow — whereby oil and gas tumble added costs for centralized membrane system technologies: reactive electro-chemical accidents, to massive off- violently within the pipe, creating a sputtering discharge that water treatment facilities. membrane systems that are activated by DC power sent to shore events such as the 2010 influences the fate of petroleum compounds in the marine the membrane surface; photocatalytic reactive membranes Deepwater Horizon spill. water column. solution: activated by external UV or visible light irradiation; and “Locally above the pipe’s orifice, we found that the churn Wen Zhang, an associate microwave-activated membrane filtration systems, a solution: flow process changes the flow dynamics and makes the professor of civil and novel technology Zhang’s team is developing that involves Michel Boufadel, a professor droplets smaller,” says Boufadel. “This has an effect on their environmental engineering, sending microwaves to the filter’s membrane surface to of chemical and materials buoyancy, how they transport through the water and how is designing novel reactive enhance contaminant degradation on contact. engineering, develops and we might prepare dispersants for mitigation.” membrane systems for In laboratory tests, Zhang’s team observed removal applies computational point-of-use (POU) water of 99.9 percent of harmful bacteria and other organic models — also used by treatment devices that matters using each of their three approaches. the National Oceanic and degrade CECs, pathogens “Water pollution is increasingly complex, thus pushing Atmospheric Administration and viruses not captured us to think about the next generation of water treatment and the U.S. Coast Guard — by standard filtration at solutions,” says Zhang. “With our new technologies, we aim for predicting how different centralized water to reduce the burden downstream at water plants, while sizes and types of oil droplets treatment facilities. providing individual users access to safe drinking water.” migrate through various water systems.

njit.edu/research 7 Engineering Sustainability: Data

s the data revolution

gathers speed, Photo: Courtesy of Darleen Gearhart/ Renew School Sussex Avenue Diversifying the Technology Workforce transforming sectors MICHAEL LEE, Director of the Gender Inclusive Design, Game and Educational Technology (“GIDGET”) Laboratory Aranging from business, to health care, to environmental problem: and high school students in Newark, N.J., in computing The country’s burgeoning and programming projects that will sustain their interest computer and information throughout school. policy, ensuring the movement technology industry is projected to add nearly how it works: is inclusive, efficient and 560,000 jobs by 2026. Filling Working with the Urban League of Essex County and those positions with tech- Newark Public Schools, Lee, an assistant professor of environmentally sustainable is savvy workers able to meet informatics, is helping to set up a learning center called the future needs of diverse the Coding House, open from 4:30 p.m. until midnight populations in areas such daily, where students from NJIT’s Ying Wu College of paramount. Diversifying the pool as health care, energy and Computing and Albert Dorman Honors College will education poses a challenge: teach everything from programming to mobile app of technologists and optimizing the young people, particularly development. The Coding House is a response to the from under-resourced collaborators’ recent, successful Newark Kids Code (NKC) relationship between humans and communities, often lack program, which drew Newark middle schoolers over 11 opportunities to pursue their Saturday sessions to create their own webpages and music interest in these fields. video animations. The students reported both increased machines are critical first steps. confidence and an eagerness to continue coding. Under solution: the new program, graduates of NKC will become peer Cutting energy consumption will Michael Lee, who invented participants and mentors to other students at the a computer game called Coding House. “GIDGET” (helpgidget.org) “We can’t take a one-off approach in providing learning ensure its longevity. that has taught thousands resources — a camp session here, a fun demo there of people worldwide to and then nothing else until they graduate — if we want code by solving debugging these students to succeed,” Lee says. “And without their puzzles, has developed a participation, the technologies we create will not fully program to engage middle reflect the needs of the diverse people who use them.”

8 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro Photo: Oscar Masciandaro

Optimizing Human-Computer Collaboration Designing Smart and Green Data Networks SENJUTI BASU ROY, Director of the Big Data Analytics Laboratory NIRWAN ANSARI, Director of the Advanced Networking Laboratory problem: ranging from cleaning and labeling data — a key quality- problem: how it works: For speed and accuracy, control step in predictive modeling — to deriving new The surge in power-draining To ensure round-the-clock reliability, communications large-scale analytics requires features that aid modeling and ad-hoc data exploration, to electronic communications components are often left on continuously. Base stations, input from both humans and designing new data exploration techniques. She deviates over the past decade has which are signal relay hubs, are particular energy computers. Machines operate from traditional assumptions that consider humans as put new stress on the guzzlers, even when there is little signal traffic. Ansari quickly and comprehensively, “rational agents’’ by acknowledging and adapting for bias country’s energy supply has developed an intelligent system for automatically but fail on some knowledge- and error. and the environment. To putting communications components, such as optical intensive tasks. People work compound these strains, a network units, sectors of a base station and even an entire slowly, but discriminate how it works: significant amount of energy base station, to sleep. Passive optical networks such as Among other applications, Basu Roy is looking at in ways machines can’t. is lost on the way to the Verizon’s Fios system primarily consist of two major types independent species observations from naturalists, citizen They are best at detecting user as it moves across the of components: optical line terminals (OLTs) located in a scientists and biologists to develop a model that will help malicious emails, for transmission and distribution central office and optical network units (ONUs) located them predict the distribution of animals and plants under example, and sifting through lines of the grid. close to the end-users. These components are active varying environmental features. When the data, such as a “noise,” such as slight name regardless of the traffic load. Ansari’s team has developed wildlife photo, is uploaded to a crowdsourcing platform, variations that refer to the an intelligent protocol to place an ONU in the sleep her framework determines whether a machine can solution: same person. But they can With his Greening At The mode when no traffic is destined to it, and to wake the identify the species or if a human is needed; if the latter, it also introduce biases. Edges project, Nirwan component up automatically when traffic starts arriving. would indicate what level of expertise would be required. Ansari ’82 is developing “Service providers and network operators focus on “We have a responsibility to ensure that data is used solution: mechanisms to make the delivering reliable services to customers in order to grow effectively, but also fairly — free from intentional bias or Senjuti Basu Roy is so-called “last mile” of the their subscriber base; this seems benign when energy unwitting ignorance,” says Basu Roy, an assistant professor developing frameworks telecommunications system is plentiful and cheap,” notes Ansari, a professor of of computer science who works in multiple domains, to optimize collaboration — the section of both optical electrical and computer engineering. “However, as the from biodiversity, to biology, to disaster management. among humans and and mobile networks that infrastructure expands to provision communications “When humans and machines work hand-in-hand, the computers by determining connects to consumers — among rapidly growing users and things, the energy cost framework should enable both parties to review and which tasks are best more energy-efficient. is eroding the profit margin of these operators.” assigned to each and how to correct each other’s bias and error.” coordinate them in processes

njit.edu/research 9 Engineering Sustainability: Infrastructure

he United Nations Intergovernmental Panel Ushering in a Carbon-Neutral Economy With on Climate Change sounds Next-Generation Batteries SIVA NADIMPALLI, Director of the Micro and Nano Mechanics Laboratory Ta shrill alarm: The window for making systemic changes to avert problem: in-situ experimental techniques to reveal how battery The stakes for next- electrodes break down in real time, rather than after they generation batteries that are degrade. His experiments will advance the development irreversible damage is closing fast. high-capacity, long-lived of multiphysics mathematical models, which capture a and affordable could not battery’s mechanical behavior and the electrochemical The agency calls new technologies be higher; the promise of activity of its electrodes, to predict how mechanical forces a carbon-neutral economy impact chemical reactions in battery materials, and to “perhaps the most robust and depends on their success. assess their corresponding electrical performance on, say, While newer batteries can the current supplied by batteries at any voltage. store 10 times as much effective” tool. Engineers are energy as their graphite how it works: predecessors, they fade too Nadimpalli, an assistant professor of mechanical and making a full-court press by quickly. The breakdown industrial engineering, uses a custom-made cell that occurs at the interfaces enables electrochemical and stress measurements rethinking batteries, proactively between the polymers and simultaneously. By using thin-film electrodes that are the active materials that 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, he captures sustain electrochemical real-time, uniform readings when a cell is running. The determining energy needs, and reactions; when these electrodes expand or contract upon reacting with lithium, particles become electrically which bends the substrate on which the film is deposited; designing resilient and long-lasting isolated, a battery’s charging the curvature change is measured by a multibeam optical capacity and overall sensor. By integrating his apparatus with an additional longevity are both curtailed. optical setup, he will also observe the failure phenomenon infrastructure. in real time. He is currently testing a lithium-ion battery solution: with next-generation anode materials. Siva Nadimpalli, who “By solving these problems, new generations of battery- specializes in fracture powered machines such as electric cars can become mechanics, uses novel commercially viable,” says Nadimpalli.

10 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Photos: Oscar Masciandaro

Optimizing Power Distribution With Purchasing Transparency Designing Infrastructure for a Dynamic and Unpredictable World HAIM GREBEL AND ROBERTO ROJAS-CESSA, Researchers with the MATTHEW ADAMS AND MATTHEW BANDELT, Co-directors of the Center for Energy Efficiency, Resilience and Innovation Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructure Materials and Structures Laboratory problem: Energy still flows in one direction — from generator problem: for choosing construction materials suitable for severe The ability to proactively to user. Haim Grebel and Roberto Rojas-Cessa, both The material building blocks environments and urgent repair situations. determine energy needs in professors of electrical and computer engineering, are of civilization — the asphalt, order to distribute them designing a proactive approach to determine users’ needs concrete and steel that how it works: optimally is a growing ahead of time and to optimize power distribution by compose highways, bridges Collaborators on a new U.S. Department of Transportation challenge. When demand enabling information about energy demands and the and tunnels — face a daunting grant, Adams, an expert on infrastructure material spikes or disaster strikes, the energy itself to flow digitally in two directions. challenge: to hold up past the chemistry, and Bandelt, a mechanics and resilience energy grid is vulnerable standard 50 to 75 years of modeler, are assessing the durability and performance to breakdowns, including how it works: service life amid rapid urban of rapid-repair, damage-resistant ductile cementitious blackouts; distribution Much like ordering digital packages for mobile growth, and into a future materials. These new materials are designed to improve dilemmas principally arise phones, consumers would issue a request to the energy in which extreme weather constructability, reduce failure-related delays and extend not when the power goes off, provider for precise energy quanta, a process carried caused by climate change periods between required maintenance. Bandelt develops but when it comes back on, out automatically by a local micro-controller. In the has made their performance computer simulation tools that predict their performance because the surge can create team’s proposed digital grid, energy would be sent in dynamic and unpredictable. under scenarios that vary in temperature, weather further problems, including packets that carry the requested power for, say, a washing volatility, chemical applications such as de-icing salts, and potentially dangerous machine. Through a handshake protocol, the two sides solution: loading conditions. Adams uses advanced experimental equipment failures. would negotiate the amount and price of energy before Matthew Adams and characterization techniques to understand the material delivery and it would be routed and rerouted through Matthew Bandelt, assistant behavior under various environmental conditioning solution: digital power switches directly to the home. professors of civil and methods. Their colleague, civil engineer Bruno Goncalves Little has changed over “Knowing energy demands ahead of time, even for a environmental engineering, da Silva, works on a related project to determine how the past century and a half fraction of a second, will make the grid more reliable and are developing analytical fire spreads in tunnels, as well as methods to maintain — the country’s electrical energy efficient because there will be fewer surprises and tools, using computer structural integrity when they occur. grid cannot assess demand therefore more order,” Grebel notes. Rojas-Cessa adds, modeling and experimental “The characterization techniques I use assess how the in real time, but rather as “In a grid with limited amounts of energy, power could characterization techniques, materials respond and describe how their structure is it develops. When a light be allocated during disasters or demand surges to critical to simulate the deterioration developed,” notes Adams. “Dr. Bandelt then takes this switch is flipped, there is loads rather than diluted among them all.” of various concrete mixes information to build a more realistic computer model that no advance “grid alert.” and to establish protocols simulates many more scenarios than in the lab.”

njit.edu/research 11 Engineering Sustainability: Health and Medicine

echnologists on the front lines of health care share Photo: Oscar Masciandaro Sparing Teeth From the Root Canal’s Death Sentence a common ideal: the VIVEK KUMAR, Director of the Biomaterial Drug Development, Discovery, and Delivery Laboratory Tsimple fix. Rather than transplant an organ, they would restore the problem: how it works: Each year, dentists in the Kumar, an assistant professor of biomedical and chemical United States perform about engineering, has created a novel delivery system, a Lego- original, and avert emergency 15 million root canals, a like peptide composed of common amino acids with a procedure that involves biological agent attached at one end. The mechanism is rooms with accurate point-of- removing infected tooth sufficiently sturdy and resilient that it can be injected pulp and replacing it with through commonly used syringes in the dentist’s clinic; care diagnostics. These methods inert polymeric materials. the molecules then reassemble after injection into the What remains is a brittle dental pulp cavity. The biological agent spurs growth of mineral scaffold instead of dental pulp stem cells. are more broadly sustainable by a living tooth capable of Using a similar approach, Kumar’s lab has developed regenerating tissue. a peptide-based therapy armed with antiangiogenic reducing the cost of hospital stays, capabilities that target diabetic retinopathy, an ocular solution: disease affecting more than 90 million people worldwide. the risks of complex operations, Vivek Kumar and his lab People with the disease form immature blood vessels in members have created an the retina, obstructing their vision. The hydrogel can be injectable hydrogel designed injected directly into the vitreous gel of the eye, where and the waste of time, materials to recruit autologous (a the peptide interacts with the endothelial cells in the person’s own) dental pulp aberrant blood vessels, causing them to die.“What makes and money spent on unnecessary stem cells directly to the the peptide hydrogel platform distinctive as a tissue disinfected cavity after root regeneration device is the universality of its application, procedures. canal therapy. The tooth the ease of injection and the biocompatibility of the would be regenerated in part material,” Kumar notes. by prompting growth of the necessary blood vessels to support the new tissue.

12 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Photo: Courtesy of Viviena Meraviglia Photo: Oscar Masciandaro Tracking the Heart’s Microscopic Repair Crew in Real Time Fine-tuning Selectivity and Sensitivity in Point-of-Care Diagnostics ALICE LEE, Director of the Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering SAGNIK BASURAY, Director of the Opto and Microfluidics Laboratory From and Stem Cell Laboratory Diagnostics to Therapeutics problem: for studying the multiphase biological mechanisms of problem: false positives and negatives. His devices are “like a Unlike most biological transplanted cells in a diseased myocardial environment. The ability to quickly, radio with two knobs that we can tune accordingly.” They can distinguish among diseases with very similar tissues, heart cells do not accurately and affordably how it works: proteins and detect slight mutations in DNA in what are regenerate or proliferate. In petri dishes in her laboratory, Lee is developing diagnose infectious diseases called microRNAs, messenger molecules dispatched Following a heart attack, colonies of cardiac cells, formed into chambers, that such as HIV, and detect by DNA to regulate gene expression. The latter are damaged tissue is not so pump and contract like a human heart. Derived from cancers before they progress predictors of cancer. much restored as slightly stem cells, these primitive organs will help her achieve a — anywhere, anytime — is reconfigured; it becomes research milestone: to observe in microscopic, real-time essential to saving lives and how it works: stiffer and less functional. detail how the heart repairs itself after injury. She must mitigating global pandemics. Basuray, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, Researchers pursuing first induce an “attack” by damaging the tiny proto-hearts Many of the biosensors used is developing a new electrochemical sensing method cell-based therapies to with a frozen rod, thus mobilizing sequential, cell-based in point-of-care devices such that uses a nanoporous electrode technology. By packing repair cardiac tissue face repair crews that clear the injury site of debris, and then as dipsticks, for example, nanostructures between electrodes, he is able to generate a substantial hurdle: They in a second phase, recruit materials and tools from the suffer from either limited high-shear forces capable of dislodging one object or do not understand on the neighboring tissue to mend the damage. specificity — the ability to material from another. Finely tuned, these forces would cellular level how these “We see how different cell types in the heart interact identify a particular disease ensure that the so-called capture molecules deployed in regenerative therapies work. during the repair process in the immediate aftermath of — or sensitivity — the ability the test bind with the targeted disease molecules, and Existing models largely a heart attack — the period that offers the best chance to detect it at low levels of that others, which represent test noise, are washed away. mimic a healthy cardiac for successful cell-therapy interventions,” says Lee, who expression. Similarly, the device would capture mutated RNA, while environment with the goal is currently working in the Netherlands with stem cell knocking off healthy genetic material. of providing a living surgical expert Christine Mummery at the Leiden University solution: “The idea is that anyone can use these devices. In Sagnik Basuray is replacement. Medical Center on techniques that will inform new remote settings with little health care infrastructure, developing a blood test bioassays for drug and target discovery. people often wait days for a diagnosis,” says Basuray. that balances selectivity solution: “And by saving trips to the hospital to monitor chronic Alice Lee, an associate and sensitivity — if one diseases, we hope to cut treatment costs.” professor of biomedical is emphasized, the other engineering, has devised is often compromised — a novel in-vitro model improving both to reduce

njit.edu/research 13 Voice Technology

Photo: Courtesy of Deric Raymond

Conversation’s the Thing David Isbitski ’98 & Chief Evangelist for Alexa and Echo at Amazon

Q: HOW DID YOU BECOME A Q: HOW IS VOICE TECHNOLOGY A DISRUPTOR, culture — it’s not just about programming written code, TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST? BOTH PRACTICALLY AND SOCIETALLY? but building models based upon real conversations. In A: Since grade school, when I used my first computer, the AA: I don’t think it is. But I never look at things as disruptors Japan, for example, you don’t interrupt people. We’ve held QCommodore VIC-20, I’ve been very interested in whatever — I see time as the disruptor. As it goes by, things change, forums to see what Alexa gets wrong and crowdsourced new technology came my way. I would describe my while I see voice technology as timeless. I think it actually answers. Alexa’s understanding is phonetic, but she also personality as open-minded, extroverted and assertive. So returns things to us we’ve lost. For example, I use Alexa’s learns voices and individuals’ language choices over time. I was always very excited about new things and needed Drop In feature to talk to my mother. She doesn’t have to When I ask for Top 10 hits, it’s very different from when to tell people what they had to have! But I was a business get up to answer the phone — my face just appears on the my teenage daughter asks. Alexa gets smarter every day, consultant for many years before I applied in 2007 for a job speaker, creating an ad hoc family connection that’s missed and learning context is part of that. as a developer evangelist for Microsoft. I was then able to when people are far away. We put Alexa in retirement use my “developer personality” to educate people on how homes and a 93-year-old man once told me that just Q: HOW IS VOICE TECHNOLOGY CHANGING to think about and use web- and mobile-based technology. hearing another person’s voice — in his case, that of his son THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT MACHINES? In 2015, I was the first employee of the Alexa skills kit and daughter-in-law — got him through the day. And for A: Rather than teach people to talk to machines, we’ve group. I remember sitting around a table talking about our me personally, once a day I say, ‘Alexa, thinking time,’ and taught machines to understand people. The most exciting first 10 skills. We recently reached 70,000. she dims the lights by 20 percent, turns them sky blue and thing for me is that people have conversations with their turns on classical music. This helps me with creative work, technology. That Alexa can now understand intention is Q: IS THERE AN “AHA!” MOMENT WHEN and especially my writing. huge. That’s the sea change. But I think it’s also changing PEOPLE EMBRACE A NEW TECHNOLOGY? our connection to ourselves and other people, as well as A: There is always an adoption curve which has early adopters Q: WHAT ARE SOME OF ALEXA’S GROWING PAINS? the way we use conversation. I imagine the future as very followed by mass adopters. The meaningful change occurs A: What’s really changed in text-to-speech technology is much like the holodeck in “Star Trek,” where the crew was when I see people use a new technology throughout an understanding not just of intention, but of context. able to bring back digital personalities like Einstein. I want daily life — they don’t just want it at home, they want it It’s called NLU — natural language understanding. And my children to not just be able to say, ‘I know Dad felt very everywhere. I have an [Echo] Dot that I take with me when here’s one of the challenges for that technology: learning strongly about this issue,’ but to see me before an audience I travel — I call for Alexa in my hotel room. that human conversation takes place within a specific defending my beliefs.

14 2019 NJIT Research Magazine Engineering and Art

Photo: Courtesy of NYU

Engineering Is the Spark A. Michael Noll ’61 Former Bell Labs Engineer, Professor Emeritus, Author, Archivist and Biographer

Q: WHAT DREW YOU TO ENGINEERING? digital art at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City. I actually stood up. ‘Periodically, we send our people to A: I spent a lot of time during high school listening to classical Inspired by Balanchine’s ballet “Apollo,” I choreographed a Washington,’ he said. ‘How would you respond to that music. That led to an interest in hi-fi audio equipment, computer-generated stereoscopic ballet — again, randomly opportunity?’ It quickly became clear that he wanted and I picked electrical engineering at Newark College of — using stick figures that represented the male and an answer before he hung up. I told him it would be Engineering to work on electronics. Back then, everyone female dancers. The idea was to use technology to create my patriotic duty, having no idea what I’d be doing. As wanted a job at Bell Labs, and I got one the summer after something new. Randomness is a source of surprise. it turned out, I was to work on computer security, and my junior year designing and building an amplifier. After on evaluating technology exports to the Soviet Union. I graduation, I was hired by Bell Labs to work in a human Q: WHAT INSPIRED YOUR PEOPLE-MACHINE went to a lot of meetings. The Department of Commerce factors department, where I shared an office with two TACTILE DEVICE, DESCRIBED AS A wanted to sell computers to the Soviets, but the Defense Ph.D. psychologists, on sidetone: how people hear their FORERUNNER OF VIRTUAL REALITY? Department didn’t. Later in the Nixon administration, U.S. own speech on the phone. Later, I was transferred to A: I was interested in exploring the potential of new sensory technology scholars began meeting with Soviet scholars as research to work on methods for compressing speech to modalities as new communication channels between part of new policy aimed at opening up the Soviet Union. save bandwidth, some of the same techniques used in voice people and machines in applications where graphical encryption. Today, I find internet radio one of the most communication would not be sufficient or appropriate. Q: HOW DID YOU COME TO BECOME impressive things, allowing me to listen to classical radio The idea was to use force-feedback to depict surfaces and AN ARCHIVIST AND A HISTORIAN? stations from all over the planet! objects which would be difficult to display visually. Today, A: When I was teaching at the Annenberg School in L.A., I this force-feedback is called haptic communication, and it returned to New Jersey in summers and would chat with Q: HOW DID A COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEER can give a better feel for computer graphics. At Bell Labs, I Bill Baker. Around 2003, he asked me to take a look at his BECOME A PIONEER IN DIGITAL COMPUTER ART? was working on 3D graphics and getting into interaction, archival materials and instructed me to tell the story of A: I stumbled into digital art. A colleague’s computer program using a joystick, for example, to specify a point in 3D space. Bell Labs. In going over his papers, I was also amazed to at Bell Labs went haywire one day, and the random mess discover that his mother was the premier turkey breeder in of the misplotted data looked like abstract art. We jokingly Q: HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING ON the U.S. Those archives are now in the library of Princeton called it computer art. I decided to do it deliberately, and SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY IN University. Baker directed research during what some went on to write a formal memorandum in 1962 on the use THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION? people consider the golden years of Bell Labs in the ’50s and of computer graphics to create random drawings. In 1965, A: I was in my office at Bell Labs one day and the phone rang. ’60s. People forget it was the forerunner of what is today a colleague and I took part in a very early public exhibit of It was Bill Baker, vice president for research, calling me! Silicon Valley and that New Jersey was the center of all this.

njit.edu/research 15

Intelligent Infrastructure

(Left to right) Ron Taglieri, chief engineer for the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., Paola Amato, the director of operations, and Govi Rao, CEO of energy Managing Energy Consumption services company Noveda Technologies, showcase an array of With Building ‘Fitbits’ solar panels installed as part of the center's comprehensive energy infrastructure upgrade.

ike a watchful parent, Ron Taglieri, chief engineer for in signing the “Chicago Climate Charter,” a pledge to meet L the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., wants to the standards set by the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon know what the complex has been up to overnight when it was emissions in their cities. supposed to be sleeping soundly. Every morning, he consults Before they adopt policies that specify where and how to a colorful monitor filled with energy charts to find out. improve their operations, they will first face a daunting hurdle: “When the building wakes up, I check to see that it’s been identifying consumption patterns throughout their facilities at running on 300 kilowatts an hour through the night. If it’s a granular level — from system to system, building to building above that, I know something was left on that shouldn’t and even, in some cases, room to room. have been,” Taglieri notes. Throughout the day, he and his A multidisciplinary team of engineers and data scientists crew eye the monitor, which displays the center’s real-time from academia and industry now is working with facility energy usage down to the minute, while also comparing it managers in businesses, nonprofits and school systems to the previous year's performance. “Without it, there is no throughout cities in the New York metro region to meet both way we’d have a handle on our consumption,” he says. goals. By providing systemwide data analytics and information Their vigilance has paid off. Over the past 10 years, feedback loops, they are identifying areas of high consumption Taglieri and Paola Amato, the director of operations, have and suggesting ways to reduce it. shaved more than $100,000 off the center’s monthly electricity Housed within New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Liberty Science Center employs bill by spotting areas of high energy use and modifying it Center for Energy Efficiency, Resilience and Innovation an energy dashboard that with timers, efficient equipment and renewable systems — (CEERI) offers, among other services, a system that provides real-time consumption data akin to an EKG or fitbit for shrinking the complex’s carbon footprint by more than 40 provides real-time consumption data akin to an EKG or buildings. The system shows percent in the process. fitbit for buildings. Developed by one of CEERI’s members, consumers not only where they Spooked by signs of global warming, from frequent Noveda Technologies of Bridgewater, N.J., the system shows are using energy at any given time and from what sources, flooding to extreme-heat days, cities across the country are consumers not only where they are using energy at any given but how that consumption now also looking to curtail their impact on the planet, while time and from what sources, but how that consumption compares to prior periods at their own facilities, as well as reaping savings for residents. In late 2017, Newark, N.J., compares to prior periods at their own facilities, as well as to national averages. Mayor Ras J. Baraka joined dozens of mayors nationwide to national averages.

16 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Haim Grebel (top), a professor of electrical and computer engineering, is a director of the Center for Energy Efficiency, Resilience and Innovation, a collaboration between NJIT and industry that focuses on identifying and implementing measures to reduce operating costs and environmental impacts in the deployment of technologies and applications related to energy and water. Roberto Rojas-Cessa (bottom), a professor of electrical and computer engineering, is collaborating on the research. Photos: Oscar Masciandaro

Operators, including automated systems, then use the data next major iteration of the dashboard will be an artificial- a collaborative platform to leverage best-in-class practices to improve the system’s performance in terms of consumption, intelligence model that can forecast energy use and among companies and other organizations. generation, distribution and storage, integrating traditional as offer recommendations. In general, methods for tinkering with consumption are still well as renewable sources. A team of electrical engineers, computer scientists and data fairly crude. “Some facility managers are using this information analytics experts at NJIT is working on new methods to make “In developing countries, there are periods where power to set very aggressive targets, including net zero energy the systems smarter and more responsive through sensing is shut off in homes so that industry can use it. In developed consumption. The system is designed to engage all networks, deep-learning models and other internet of things countries, demand-dampening devices such as surcharges stakeholders and drive behavior modification. Without this devices. New devices for storing energy will also play a have been applied on an ad hoc basis, but with no scientific information, managing a building’s energy usage is like critical role. modeling,” notes Atam Dhawan, NJIT’s senior vice provost driving an automobile without a dashboard,” says Govi Rao, Another group of NJIT engineers is developing proactive for research and one of the architects of CEERI. CEO of Noveda Technologies, the company that supplied the approaches to help consumers determine their energy needs A renewed sense of urgency, driven by the negative monitoring system at the Liberty Science Center in 2008, just ahead of time so they can optimize consumption. They impact of climate change, is altering energy planning on the as the complex reopened after a lengthy renovation. would accomplish this in part by enabling information about ground. New Jersey, for example, has recently adopted a new Taglieri agrees, noting that the first hurdle he and Amato energy demands and the energy itself to flow digitally in two renewable portfolio standard that requires the state to meet 50 faced was that “no one understood the lighting system, and directions. Haim Grebel, one of CEERI’s directors, likens the percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources some lights were on 24 hours a day.” They now have the approach to ordering digital packages for mobile phones. by 2030. capability to monitor floor occupancy and start winding down “Consumers would issue a request to the energy provider “This is no longer a federal initiative, but one that is the building’s systems accordingly, particularly at the end of for precise energy quanta, a process carried out automatically being taken up at the mayoral and city level,” notes Dhawan. the day. by information networks,” Grebel says. “Energy would be sent “While we realize the diverse needs of energy utilization “While the idea of the smart grid has been around for in packets that carry the requested power for, say, a particular in different industry, business and social sectors across the quite some time, its implementation has been slow. There building or device. Through a handshake protocol, the two globe, the vision behind CEERI is to develop technologies is an urgent need for transformational changes that should sides would negotiate the amount and price of energy before to help specific users to understand the underlying patterns be conducted as coherent and integrated efforts across delivery and it would be routed and rerouted through digital of their energy needs and to help them manage both energy communities, specifically involving businesses, academic power switches directly to the user address.” production and utilization.” campuses and governments,” Rao adds, noting that the As more cities and companies join, CEERI plans to establish

njit.edu/research 17

A Century of Newark College of Engineering

From Governor McClellan’s Mandate 100years NEWARK COLLEGE to the NJIT Makerspace — Engineering at OF ENGINEERING NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NJIT Shows No Sign of Slowing Down

Moshe Kam Dean, Newark College of Engineering

n Jan. 11, 1881, the New Jersey Senate heard the annual He concluded that “the establishment of schools for technical units, such as the Engineering Technology Department Omessage of the 24th governor of the state. The message and artistic instructions — for both sexes — seems the only and the new 10,000-square-foot NJIT Makerspace, whose was delivered just four days before the term of the governor, practical solution for a pressing problem.” Assembly Bill primary domain of interest is industrial education. Needless George B. McClellan, was to expire. McClellan, well known No. 272, approved later that year, addressed the governor’s to say, the applications have changed. We are not doing for his role as a military commander in the Union Army call for action. It provided “for the establishment of schools much with silk and pottery at NCE today — our current during the Civil War, spent a central portion of his speech on for industrial education” in the state, using joint funding by interests are in medical devices, avionics, communications, motivating the legislature to support industrial education in the state and private industry. aerospace, robotics and transportation. New Jersey. The Newark Technical School (today’s Newark College Using data from the New Jersey Bureau of Labor and of Engineering) was the first to be established under this n As in 1881, government-industry partnerships continue Industries, McClellan argued that 12 emerging branches legislation, though it was not until 1916, 25 years after the to be the cornerstone of industrial education. of industry, amounting to $75 million in annual value and school had opened, that its trustees used the word “engineer” providing $18 million in wages to approximately 47,000 in their deliberations for the first time. In 1920, a year after the n While production and manufacturing continue to be an employees in the state, require “technical or artistic skill, school started offering programs toward baccalaureate degrees important part of NCE’s portfolio, we are also addressing and frequently both.” These emerging branches included in engineering, it became Newark College of Technology and the needs of service industries. NCE is involved in steam engines and machinery, silk manufacturing, textiles, 10 years later it changed its name again, to our current name, algorithm and methodology development and in support of potteries and jewelry products. “Skilled labor and a Newark College of Engineering (NCE). many service industries, including those engaged in finance, considerable amount of technical and artistic knowledge It is instructive to inquire as to the differences between the media, pharmaceuticals, environmental remediation, are indispensable for the preservation and development of road map presented to the New Jersey legislature on industrial fashion, transportation, communication and information. these industries, which do so much to ensure the general education 136 years ago by Gov. McClellan, and the motivation The transition of many societies from manufacturing- prosperity of the state.” and practice that leaders of NJIT and NCE exhibit today. centric economies to service economies had a fundamental Sounding like many leaders in New Jersey today, McClellan impact on NCE’s interests, teaching and research. lamented the scarcity of industry-relevant skills in the n As we did in the 1880s, NCE continues to have a working-age population, due to the “practical abolition of the major focus on industrial education, production and n We are more science-based and science-focused since NCE’s system of apprenticeship, and the lack of technical schools.” manufacturing. NJIT developed and expanded several inception. Many of our classes and research groups are

18 2019 NJIT Research Magazine Photo: Anuoluwapo Akeredolu

are immersed in theoretical work, often closer to applied engineering education now include (or at least should intellectually deep and critical to the fostering of human mathematics than to traditional industrial product include) the fundamentals of computation, at a level that welfare and human development. Engineering and development. We recognized that a deeper theoretical is not less central than calculus-based physics. technology possess the potential to improve human health, background — in mathematics, physics, chemistry and, well-being, comfort, safety and work efficiency (but also have increasingly, the life sciences — is essential for modern n We experience and practice increased blending the potential to unleash destructive forces by badly motivated engineers and for continued progress of the profession. and “amalgamation” of the engineering disciplines. actors). Engineering and technology can also assist humanity Individuals from different branches of engineering in resource management, sustainable development and n When NCE launched its first baccalaureate degree (and other professions) develop devices, systems and environmental protection. These are noble causes. Public programs in 1919, automated computation and procedures together. This trend runs contrary to the Review of what the profession has accomplished during the computation machinery, especially computation enabled increased specialization that characterized engineering last century, and what NCE and our graduates have achieved by electricity and electronics, did not exist. The ubiquity education from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when during the same period, provides a strong sense that our of computation and communication networks today narrower tracks and compartmentalization were discipline is still in its infancy. Some of what Gov. McClellan has transformed all branches of engineering. Engineers heavily favored. told us in 1881 still rings true, but the technology and of all disciplines and application areas require an industry that he addressed then are not nearly the ones we understanding of algorithms, programming, computation Regardless of the fundamental shifts that engineering know today. Likewise, ours are likely to be nowhere near the Newark College of Engineering techniques, computer and communication networking, has experienced since NCE was established a century technology, engineering and industry that will be celebrated data processing and data security, and even computation ago, engineering and technology were then, as they are at NCE’s bicentennial in 2119. The main adventures in Established as Newark Technical School in 1881 and communication hardware. The bedrocks of now, exciting, appealing and ever expanding. They are engineering and technology are still ahead of us. Photos: Courtesy of NJIT Archives Through

njit.edu/research 19 20 2019 NJIT Research Magazine Photo: Anuoluwapo Akeredolu

njit.edu/research 19 20 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Undergraduate Research

Day 1 Peddling for Power in a Remote Haitian Village

he technology that engineering students Matt Reda was then involved throughout installation and testing. Tand Rudolph Brazdovic installed last April in the The contraption produces electricity through a generator remote, hilly community of Milot, Haiti, was simple mounted on the bike frame. The pedals are connected to a enough: a modified bicycle with a back wheel that turns a sprocket and chain, which turns the sprocket on the back generator, producing 20 watts of electricity. What was less wheel. With the back tire removed, they attached a second straightforward, they quickly learned, was how to manage it. sprocket and chain to the generator on the frame. The gearing Unlike devices for individual dwellings, such as water from sprocket to sprocket to generator is calculated to give Day 2 filters, the NJIT Light Cycle is a public service: a cellphone the proper gear ratios to spin the generator at the appropriate A Century charging station for the approximately 50 people living speed. The generator is mounted in a way that it can be within a mile of a regional gathering place. removed at night and remounted in the morning. “Once we left, the residents had to take responsibility for “Our innovation is the combination and the application of it — to operate the machine properly so it didn’t break down, the technique. People have been making electric generators for to maintain it, to allocate the service fairly and to guard a long time; ours is designed for safe positioning and for the against theft,” explains Reda, president of NJIT’s chapter of ability to produce power out of a wall outlet,” Reda says. Engineers Without Borders and the cycle’s lead designer. “We Once in Milot, they worked with residents to secure the needed to set it up like a business, and this was something bike onto the concrete slab of the tap-tap station and to figure we hadn’t thought about while we were designing it back on out how to optimize it for local needs. They then held training campus in New Jersey.” sessions for the five main participants and for another 15 to 20 The pedal-powered generator helps to bridge a major people assisting in more minor roles. infrastructure gap in the farming region a few miles from The settled part of the region, composed largely of one- Haiti’s northern coast. There is no electrical power in Milot, story concrete buildings, is surrounded by fields spotted here and yet nearly everyone has a cellphone. For years, residents and there with bananas, mangoes, citrus fruits, cocoa and have been traveling by “tap-tap” — a motorbike with a coffee. The community is perfumed by the scent of lime trees Service trailer for passengers — 10 miles, or approximately a half and harvested cocoa beans drying on the town’s black streets. hour, to the much larger Cap-Haitien in order to charge There are national landmarks nearby such as the 19th-century their phones. Many of them own 15-year-old flip phones Sans Souci Palace built by Henri I, now a graceful ruin, that with tiny batteries. are viewed as potential tourist destinations. Reda’s and Brazdovic’s first task was to identify a safe and “There is a lot of construction in Milot — our host wants central place to install it; they chose the tap-tap station, an to build guest houses, for example — and people need to afterwork rendezvous for finding friends and catching up on communicate,” he notes. local news. The team then needed to find and train someone NJIT students have been making engineering trips to to run it during the day at a steady “casual stroll,” as Reda puts Milot for more than a decade, bringing sustainable systems it, so that it wouldn’t burn out, and to take the generator home for human waste, energy and water purification, including a Engineering at night for safeguarding. Local leaders chose a manager who portable clay pot filter that runs water through sand and gravel. njit.edu/research 21 26 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

s 1973 1991 1962 1886 1940 1956 Director Lillian 1977 WWII years NCE student Charles A. Moller and fresh

1885 Colton (top) Gilbreth graduate 1962 laid the 1919 Photo: Courtesy of R&D — NCE’s Yuriy Council of New Jersey cornerstone As New first female Tarnawsky ’56, Photos: NASA for Newark Jersey became Photo: Courtesy of professor, John J. Mooney ’60, 1982 1968

electrical 1962 Technical a center Walter Marty Ying Wu a pioneer engineering, who earned a School’s first of leading Mechanical “Wally” Schirra Jr., NCE in motion published his master’s in chemical Ying Wu ’88, dedicated producers engineering an NCE student in established 1975 1993 study and first volume engineering, ’16 HON, building, in the graduate the early ’40s, flew 1964 EOP (the Effective Photo: Courtesy of Richard an efficiency 1966 co-invented the an electrical Photo: Courtesy of of poetry, iStock/Best_Shop later named manufacture Thomas the six-orbit, nine- NCE Engineering Jan. 1, 1975, Sweeney ’82, expert — was NJIT Archives “Life in the three-way catalytic engineering Weston Hall of chemicals Joseph hour Mercury-Atlas awarded Opportunity NCE changed an industrial 1930 known as converter, which has master’s graduate, 1920-1947 City” (in Michael J. Pappas in honor after World Throughout O’Malley ’36 8 mission, becoming its first Program, its name administration 1897 the “First played a dramatic founded Starcom Edythe Ukrainian). Photo: Courtesy of ’59, ’64, professor of Edward War I, Newark World War II, was a the fifth American, doctoral renamed the role in reducing once again graduate and Photo: Courtesy of Margaret R. Rabbe Lady of In time, NJIT Archives of mechanical Networks, NJIT Archives Weston Technical NCE helped chief test and ninth human, degree in Educational pollution from and became retired vice Bryce, became the Engineering” Tarnawsky engineering which merged (bottom), School began educate students Beatrice Hicks conductor to travel into 1964, in Opportunity motor vehicles known as president of a high and became established at NJIT, and with Unitech in Newark an early offering first woman for the war effort. for the space. Later, in Program in engineering the first ’39, founder chemical since the mid- New Jersey Dr. Frederick NCE alumnus 1995 to create Technical school to receive Degree programs himself as a benefactor undergraduate of the Society Convair October 1968, engineering, 1975). The 1970s. The Society Institute of Heinz P. Bloch and operations teacher, female major writer F. Buechel, UTStarcom, a School and a degree a degree were accelerated Division he commanded Photo: Courtesy of program at Keurig, member of of Women to Edwin A. Michael Noll of Automotive Technology ’62 B.S., ’64 M.S., global telecom welcomed was the from NCE. and linguist, clinical professor prominent programs to fill the Engineers in of General Apollo 7, the first Otto identifies, (NJIT), to became 1881 the National writing Engineers considers of orthopedic mechanical infrastructure the first She studied military’s need for Dynamics, inventor who in chemical, Academy of 1950 and a manned launch Eisen. His NCE electrical recruits this one of the 10 reflect both engineering, provider co-founder of Newark inaugural woman chemical fiction, surgery at was a rival mechanical more engineers. member of and was for the Apollo dissertation engineering and provides the breadth the “K-Cup” Photo: Courtesy of Engineering. poetry, plays, most important New Jersey published headquartered Technical class of to enroll NJIT Archives engineering. Some students of Thomas and electrical the National responsible program. He was was titled, alumnus A. financial innovations in of its “Improving pod for the School is at Newark Her many translations Medical School, in Hong Kong. 88 Newark Edison. The engineering switched to night for pushing the first astronaut Michael Noll ’61, assistance Keurig Single- Allan R. other Academy of “Salt Effects the history of the scientific and Machinery Also chair of established. residents Technical and introduced a three-story under the school and went Engineering, the button to go into space in Liquid- then employed and academic automobile. In technological Reliability,” Cup Brewing School, Cullimore honors criticism new Low China Capital to a rented structure name Newark to work in defense on Feb. 20, three times, and at Bell Labs, support to System. led the included produced Liquid 2002, President developments, the first of Group, he was building where she in both Contact Stress stood at College of plants and a seminal 1962, that the only astronaut Equilibria.” published underserved George H. Bush as well as the 20 books by studied institution, being Ukrainian Knee System. named by China on West High Street Technology, military research launched to have flown “Computers students overseeing featured on innovation in the Eisen also presented Mooney, founding Bloch on Central TV as Park Street. chemistry. and English. Known and Summit which changed programs. NCE field of gas sensor the Mercury- in the Mercury, earned and the Visual who are of the the transfor- a U.S. postage His works together with as “The New practical one of the “Top 10 Although Place. to the College also served as Atlas 6 Gemini and Apollo Arts” in Design residents of mation of stamp devices, outlined bachelor’s co-inventor Carl architecture machinery. His Most Influential these have been Jersey Knee,” of Engineering a technology in U.S. Patent space flight programs. In total, and master’s Quarterly. New Jersey, school. the school and being D. Keith, with the this model books have Persons” in young men Photo: Courtesy of translated of the Newark training site for No. 3046369, carrying he logged 295 hours degrees in This was one of so that they Alumnus into Newark NJIT Archives inducted into National Medal became the appeared in China’s economy had to pay Technical soldiers. Although astronaut and 15 minutes the first public may be able College of into the which was used chemical of Technology and Joseph 45 editions in 2003. He led for books Azerbaijani, basis for knee School in class sizes waned in NASA’s Apollo John Glenn, in space. engineering explorations of to attend Anderson ’25 Engineering National Czech, Innovation “for replacement — in English, his company, and other 1920. A civil in the latter the first digital computer institutions (NCE) in 1930. Women’s Hall Moon Landing from NCE. the invention, came up with Spanish and UTStarcom supplies, French, systems and engineering years of the war, missions. She American art. of higher application to the new Portuguese. Photo: Courtesy of Cullimore of Fame. German, devices (China) Ltd., NJIT Alumni Relations tuition was degree returning veterans was inducted in orbit. education. name. was later Hebrew, automobiles, and implanted in in developing free for program swelled the into the National named Italian, commercialization hundreds of the “Little- those who followed in enrollment again, Inventors Hall of president. Polish, of the three-way thousands of Smart” wireless lived in 1927. with veterans Fame in 2017. catalytic converter.” patients over communication the city. making up 75 Portuguese, the years. system, which percent of the Romanian made mobile Photos: Courtesy of freshman class and Russian. NJIT Archives Photo: Courtesy of phone services NJIT Archives in 1946. Photo: Courtesy of iStock/mipan widely accessible.

s 1973 1991 1962 1886 1940 1956 Director Lillian 1977 WWII years NCE student Charles A. Moller and fresh

announced of Biomedical 2015 Technology NCE electrical Photo: Courtesy of who serves appeared at Deric Raymond An NJIT team the first class Engineering. Photo: Courtesy of the Virginia Sulzberger Atam Dhawan, (SAET) was alumnus and engineering Mengchu as senior 2016 the New York of engineers, 2016 Photo: Courtesy of 1998 of academic Tissue Engineering and William distinguished NJIT opened game designers, established to Gerard J. Foschini Distinguished Applied Biomaterials alumnus Judea Zhou, vice International scholars Hunter Laboratory Electrical professor of NCE Dean its Makerspace, meet growing Engineering Professor of Pearl ’61, distinguished president Auto Show, artists and within the (1946-2019), engineer Virginia electrical Moshe Kam a training- demand in Employed alumnus Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech Physics at the credited with professor of of Gilead billed as a clinicians, led Ronald E. a specialist in Treena Arinzeh, Sulzberger ’66, and computer received the focused, rapid the job market by AT&T Bell Eshan Bayat ’86 University inventing electrical Sciences, was showcase for by Professor McNair Post- cardiovascular As chief professor of was the first engineering, Haraden for applied 2010 prototyping Laboratories, established of Florida, Bayesian and computer inducted the latest in of Biomedical baccalaureate mechanics engineer at biomedical woman in the was the first Pratt facility that is engineering Gerard J. Afghan Pierre Ramond networks, a engineering, into the “cutting-edge Engineering Achievement who joined Honeybee engineering at The Institute United States NJIT engineer Award for central to both technologists Foschini ’61, Wireless, ’65, electrical mathematical received the College of design and Tara Alvarez, Program. The NJIT from Robotics, NJIT, received of Electrical Photo: Courtesy of elected by inducted as a outstanding the university’s in industries electrical Afghanistan’s engineering, formalism U.S. Air Force 2015 Norbert Fellows of extraordinary won two major program Johns Hopkins Thomas M. the Presidential and Electronics the National Fellow into volunteer hands-on reliant upon engineering, first wireless received the international Photo: Courtesy of Early Career Engineers (IEEE) for defining Wiener Photo: the American innovation.” Brittani Brundage prepares University, was Myrick ’84, U.S. Air Force Academy of the National Oscar Masciandaro service to learning production, published a communications Oskar Klein complex Award for Institute for The single- awards for its eligible mechanical Award for established the Engineering the Institute paper company. By instrumental General Ellen Academy of mission and vision therapy manufacturing, Medal for Scientists and IEEE Council on probability “fundamental Medical and seat, off-road Mechanical participants in designing engineering, M. Pawlikowski into its Electric Inventors. He Distinguished of Electrical its growing process introducing 2017, Afghan his work on models, contributions Biological vehicle, platform “VERVE” engineering for doctoral developed Engineers. She Superconductivity Power and Professor and and his Bell Wireless was the ’78, chemical was followed relationship (Virtual Eye control and superstring focuses on stem Carl H. Rosner earned the to the area Engineering. “handcrafted” alumnus Albert studies undergraduate Rock Abrasion engineering, Energy Systems in 2016 by electrical Electronics with New instrumentation. Laboratories the largest theory. Ramond Association of Petri net The citation by a team of Rotation Vision Dorman ’45, through Tools (RATS) — cell tissue Entrepreneurship Engineering engineering Engineers Layered private curriculum, was elected to Kamalesh Jersey’s Exercises), When fully delivered the engineering Award in honor of for Computing theory and is “for ambitious the founding involvement established instruments the National section. At the Sirkar, alumnus (IEEE), “for manufacturing implemented, Space-Time employer in 2004 Oskar Machinery’s applications pioneering mechanical including “most CEO of the in research used to study and applied NCE alumnus and North American Nirwan Ansari ’82 original and (BLAST) Afghanistan, a joint Academy of distinguished community. The innovative SAET will serve Klein Memorial biomaterials, superconductivity 2011 A.M. to discrete new engineering multinational and scholarly biomedical rocks from Engineering “for Electric professor received the IEEE high-impact 10,000-square- close to 2,000 concept, one having around Lecture, Turing Award, event approaches students, breakthrough,” engineering activities. Mars — specializing pioneer Carl H. Reliability Communications contributions of the most 5 million clients engineering leadership in of chemical foot space at the 2018 students and sponsored by in the Rosner ’55. the highest systems” at to providing went on and design Participants program with that were the development Council, and materials Society Technical to IEEE’s operates will have widely and providing Stockholm distinction the 2015 IEEE medicines in to compete Augmented firm AECOM, are from mounted on development Sulzberger was Recognition Educational examined coverage in Rutgers New of technologies engineering, equipment World Expo roughly 30 University of functional in computer International developing around the established an disadvantaged Jersey Medical two NASA for national instrumental and in 2017 Award “for Activities, ranging from full-time techniques in all of and the Nobel science, “for Conference countries, country and, Europe, the endowment for backgrounds rovers, biomaterials to in developing advancing expanding wireless Afghanistan’s School leading security programs by Yun Q. Shi, small 3D leading industry instructors Committee accelerate the fundamental on Systems, thereby in California, the NJIT Honors and have to a Ph.D. “Spirit” and including the first professor of the field of IEEE’s global printers to and faculty communications provinces. of the Royal contributions Man, and redefining made NJIT conference College, enabling demonstrated “Opportunity,” repair of bone, comprehensive ad hoc and research. In degree, and spacecraft electrical reach and large industrial for augmented members, as Swedish cartilage and to artificial Cybernetics access history by the renamed strong as chairman, that landed operations and planning and computer sensor networks.” effectiveness.” machining well as 2009, Foschini Academy of intelligence held in Hong standards winning the reality Albert Dorman academic on Mars in other related standards for was elected to led the new the Airborne engineering. centers, such technology. approximately Sciences. musculoskeletal through the Kong. and averting challenging Honors College potential. program to the winter Laser.” the high-voltage as precision 100 auxiliary the National development millions of four-hour Alvarez also to expand from accreditation of 2004. tissues, as well electric power measurement faculty and Academy of of a calculus Endurance won the “Woman 230 students in in 2006. as nerve tissue, transmission HIV/AIDS and laser- adjunct Engineering. for Race to propel Laureate” 1995 to over specifically the systems in deaths.” cutting professors from probabilistic the university award, which 700 today. spinal cord. North America. machines. industry. and causal into the top recognizes reasoning.” rank of Baja project design teams. leadership skills. 2 011 2017 2018 2015 1995 2016 2004 2018 2017 2001 1998 NCE The NCE mechanical NCE Photo: Courtesy of the School of 2004 Photo: Courtesy of engineering established Judea Pearl Baja SAE Team Applied Photo: Courtesy of 1999 alumnus the the Vision and Neural Engineering Master of Clifford M. The Baja NJIT Department 2004 Engineering Laboratory and 2015 2014 Race Car Science in Samuel ’88, Photo: Courtesy of

Undergraduate Research

Day 1 Peddling for Power in a Remote Haitian Village

Over the Day 3 past several months, civil engineering students in the campus chapter of the American Day 4 Water Works Association (AWWA) have traded in their calipers and

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro Photo: Oscar hardhats for safety gloves and paint brushes as part of a citizen’s campaign against flooding in Newark. Beginning last spring, the group joined the city’s Prepared Together Program by “adopting” three catch basins in the University Heights neighborhood that they regularly clean of debris, plucking plastic bottles and pieces of broken glass caught in the grill and from sidewalks and streets in their immediate vicinity. “By making sure that water can flow freely into the sewers, we’re reducing street flooding and pollution. It’s a major problem, which also degrades our infrastructure,” says CASSANDRA FERRARA ’20, the campus AWWA’s volunteering and community outreach coordinator. Day 5 This fall, the group painted water-related murals on the Photos: Courtesy of the NJIT chapter of Engineers Without Borders Photos: Courtesy of the NJIT chapter Engineers Without cisterns to raise awareness of pollution control measures — and volunteering. They received an award for their efforts “With our filters, the key was to develop an efficient DAY 1: Shortly after arriving in Milot, the NJIT Engineers Without from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and the city’s Office of Borders team begins assembling the student-designed cellphone production method that yields consistently performing charging device, known as the Light Cycle, at the taxi station Sustainability, which has recruited volunteers to shore up filters with the use of locally available material and simple, designated by the villagers to house it. green infrastructure and ramp up disaster preparedness education and outreach to be ready for increasingly frequent inexpensive tools,” notes Jay Meegoda, a professor of civil and DAY 2: A small crowd assembles as team members mull one of the environmental engineering, and adviser to the student chapter. first substantial decisions: the optimal number of chargers to build extreme weather events. into the device. They opted for a high amperage charging block that “We want to solve the problems we complain about,” Mayor “With the Light Cycle, the aim was to provide an inexpensive powers up one phone at a time, but very quickly. Baraka noted at the ceremony, calling the city’s collaborators energy source to be used day or night and rain or shine to DAY 3: The team tinkers with the Light Cycle’s generator, adding “the secret sauce.” charge their cellphones.” lubricant and attaching gears. The team plans to refine the service over the coming DAY 4: The NJIT students take a day off while Milot residents months.“One of the best ways to ensure buy-in and compliance practice operating the cellphone charging station. They conduct an audit of about 20 bio-sand water filters built and distributed is to provide incentives for the people who run it and use it. throughout the village by a previous Engineers Without Borders We are still debating a number of elements, including fees, team from NJIT. the merits of expansion and whether it’s best to have a few DAY 5: After final testing, NJIT engineers (Matthew Reda, left, and larger units that would be managed or multiple smaller units,” Rudolph Brazdovic, fourth from left) officially hand off the Light Cycle to the Milot team. Several weeks later, they were pleased Reda says. “We plan to continue our involvement with the to hear it was running well and are now working on an improved community as these issues are decided and implemented.” model “for the next trip down,” Reda says. Regan Photo: Courtesy of Tracey

njit.edu/research 27

Reflections

Reimagining Computing, dvances in computing have enabled systems with A astonishing capabilities that augment and even Inspired by the Brain surpass human capacity in many facets of life. Two- legged humanoid robots currently walk adeptly enough Bipin Rajendran to carry out search-and-rescue operations in hazardous Associate Professor, Electrical environments; big data-analytics engines work alongside doctors to diagnose diseases and suggest treatment and Computer Engineering plans; and artificial intelligence-based machines have debated human competitors with their own persuasive arguments. But there is a crucial gap in all of these awe-inspiring artificial systems: the enormous amount of energy they consume to perform their tasks. Did you know, for example, that the Watson supercomputer from IBM required 85,000 watts to challenge and ultimately vanquish two “Jeopardy!” champions? But Watson’s conqueror, former U.S. Congressman Rush Holt, relied on a far more efficient machine — the human brain — which functions on a mere 20 watts. I am developing computing systems that aspire to match the efficiency seen in nature by closely studying the workings of the brain. But just as the Wright brothers took inspiration from the shape of bird wings to design their Flyers, which stayed aloft without flapping, my collaborators and I are trying

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro to decipher the important computational and architectural

28 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

principles of the brain and not blindly mimic its features. these machines, the data storage unit (memory) and the data naturally capture timing-based correlations in data streams. At the heart of these systems are artificial neural networks, processing unit (processor) are physically separated, and Memristive devices, whose conductivity depends on prior which are mathematical models of the networks of neurons data continually shuttle back and forth during computations signaling activity, are ideally suited for building such and synapses in the brain. In order to endow human- based on well-defined algorithms or programs. This is vastly “in-memory computing” architectures. These novel devices like intelligence in these artificial networks, vast troves of different from the architecture in the brain, where logic eliminate, at least partially, the need to shuttle data back information are fed to them, and their internal parameters — units (neurons) and memory units (synapses) are seamlessly and forth, as several key computational steps can be the strengths of the synaptic connections between the neurons integrated in a dense 3D network. implemented while the data resides in the memory. — are adjusted so that they learn the hidden relationships that Furthermore, our brain encodes and processes information We are also developing new algorithms and network underlie different parts of the data. A network trained in this in the time domain by issuing tiny electrical pulses known architectures that naturally use the time domain for encoding fashion can generalize and create meaningful actions when it as action potentials, or spikes. For example, neurons in the and processing data. Working with my NJIT colleague, is presented with similar, but hitherto unseen data. retina spike at different times and frequencies depending Professor Osvaldo Simeone, we have shown that new learning This approach could potentially help us bridge the efficiency on changes in visual inputs, and these spikes, in turn, models can be constructed for artificial spiking neural networks gap, enabling our intelligent and agile electronic assistants to trigger other neurons deeper within the brain to integrate that use the precise time of neuronal signaling to perform be widely deployed in our homes, roads, cities and natural this information and issue their own spikes. It is this event- learning, with the potential for considerable savings in energy. environments. While machine-learning algorithms are capable triggered neuronal activity, as opposed to previously stored Our work, however, just scratches the surface of one of the of executing complex tasks such as controlling self-driving programs, that underlie the computations in the brain. In grand challenges of our time — re-engineering the brain to cars and interpreting a growing number of languages, use of contrast, today’s popular machine-learning algorithms use understand how it computes so efficiently at low energies. these algorithms in mobile devices and sensors embedded memory-less models of neurons for computing. It is true that What we do know is that there are fundamental differences in the real world requires new technologies that consume we still don’t know how exactly these time-based processes between how nature has organized its thinking machines over substantially less energy. work in the brain, but there is sufficient evidence from millions of years of evolution and the way engineers have built However, the implementation of these brain-inspired neuroscience research that suggests spiking neural networks computers over the past century. But I am optimistic that a algorithms on conventional computers is highly inefficient, are fundamental to biological computation. holistic reimagining of the computational devices, algorithms consuming huge amounts of power and time. Today’s We believe that we can substantially improve computational and system architectures that are inspired by the fundamental computers are built on an architectural scheme that was efficiency by designing systems that seamlessly integrate organizing principles of the brain will help us begin to unravel developed by John von Neumann in the early 1940s. In storage and data-processing functions using devices that this mystery in the coming decades.

njit.edu/research 29

Accessibility and Technology

Bridging the Accessibility Gap: A Shared Story of Technology and Disability Rights

n 1974, NJIT researchers Murray Turoff and Starr conferencing” — might offer both groups a way to form IRoxanne Hiltz embarked on a pioneering field study to human relationships beyond the walls of their institutional explore how a new computer communication technology environment, despite significant disabilities of speech, poor they had just developed might change the lives of people with health and limited mobility. disabilities. Their insights would prove relevant for millions of A year later, the researchers presented their work at the other technology users as well. 141st annual meeting of the American Association for the Turoff, an early developer of electronic communications Advancement of Science in New York City, noting, “This systems, and Hiltz, a sociologist, brought typewriter-like type of communication offers tremendous potential for terminals, capable of text messaging with one another these individuals to lead more rewarding lives and to greatly through a centralized computer, to women at Daughters of decrease limitations imposed upon their mental capacity Israel Pleasant Valley nursing home in West Orange, N.J., by the presence of inhibiting physical disabilities ... the and children at the Cerebral Palsy Center of Belleville, N.J. opportunities that may be opened by computer conferencing They hypothesized the technology — then termed “computer for the handicapped are obvious.” Computer conferencing is regarded as an early precursor to today’s popular chat rooms and conferencing technologies. Elizabeth Petrick, an assistant professor and historian at NJIT, has documented the work of Turoff and Hiltz as part of a larger investigation into an understudied but influential chapter in the modern history of technology and engineering — the rise of accessible technology for people with disabilities. “It is very much a story of technology changing along with cultural views toward disability,” says Petrick. “In the 1970s,

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro there were increasing civil rights protections for people with disabilities, and very gradually in the 1990s, there was an Elizabeth Petrick (above) has documented the historic work of Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff (both right awareness by engineers and corporations that people with center), whose collaboration led to new insights into how disabilities weren’t just a charity case, but were actually a “computer conferencing” could benefit the lives of people with disabilities. The study would be described in consumer market.”

the team’s 1978 published work, “The Network Nation.” Photo: Courtesy of NJIT Archives Petrick has documented more than 50 years of case studies,

30 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Leveling Up Ethical Research Through Smartphone Gaming

Britt Holbrook, assistant As lead engineer of a self-driving car project, you are professor of philosophy at tasked with teaching the Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive. NJIT, with “Apperception,” a smartphone-based game for You realize that the AI may have to make a decision between engaging young researchers putting the car’s occupants at risk or prioritizing the safety in ethical decision-making. of those outside the car. What do you do?

The above scenario, adapted from a real-life case, is part of a game called “Apperception,” a smartphone- disability rights legislation and technological breakthroughs that we all use today, such as power buttons positioned based educational in her book, “Making Computers Accessible: Disability at the front of devices, built-in zoom controls for game developed Rights and Digital Technology,” which was awarded the 2017 screens and the development of universal plug-and-play by a team of ethics Computer History Museum Prize by the Society for the technology.” researchers led by

Photo: Oscar Masciandaro BRITT HOLBROOK, History of Technology Special Interest Group for Computers, Accessibility became enshrined in law with the an assistant professor of philosophy at NJIT. With funding from Information and Society. landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) — the National Science Foundation, Holbrook has introduced “Along with the Disability Rights Movement in the 1970s the first comprehensive civil rights law in the United States pedagogical gaming approaches such as “Apperception” to and major computer technology taking hold between the prohibiting discrimination against “a qualified individual with STEM students, aiming to instill a campuswide culture of 1960s and 1980s, there is also this growing dream of ‘universal a disability” in areas of employment, access to places of public responsible research conduct through collective gaming, rather design’ in the 1990s applied by engineers in fields such as accommodation, services and programs, public transportation than solely through traditional coursework in ethical theory. architecture and personal technology,” says Petrick. “The and telecommunications. “We think this gaming experience, which is accessible in terms of being played through smartphones, helps bridge the idea is that technology should be designed to suit everyone’s While the ADA now mandates the “accessible design” of gap between the classroom and the larger campus culture,” needs and that it should allow people to do anything they can public spaces — from wheelchair ramps to audible crosswalk says Holbrook. “Once students see themselves in a live imagine, regardless of their body.” signals at street intersections — Petrick says that the biggest decision-making situation with others, we hope it takes hold Of Turoff and Hiltz, she notes, “They did some of the civil rights challenge is now determining how ADA law and is more enjoyable in a way that having to take tests and earliest work with people with disabilities as intended users of applies to digital spaces and new digital technology. According merely having to comply with rules is not.” ‘Computer Conferencing’ technology, a predecessor to today’s to figures cited by The New York Times, more than 750 In “Apperception,” up to six users are confronted with ethical dilemmas and must rank a set of three decision options from online forums and chat rooms. It was an accurate vision of lawsuits in the United States have been filed specifically over least ethical to most on their own, later reconsidering their where the future would go with internet technology.” the issue of web accessibility from January 2015 to October rankings with their group. Points are awarded to each user’s Their study, she adds, serves as a key case for “examining 2017. Until now, web accessibility has been resolved through ranking choices as they confront scenarios, spanning areas of the computer as a universalizing technology of augmentation,” individual lawsuits only. ethical technology design and responsible conduct of research. illustrating that when researchers and engineers considered “Still, there are growing opportunities for accessibility with Holbrook is seeking collaboration with assessment research the needs of people with disabilities, they benefited the technologies like 3D printing, which is capable of creating teams to study the impact ethics gaming has on young broader society. mouth-controlled input devices for operating touch-screen researchers in real research settings, both near- and long-term. “Many students take ethics because it’s a required class, “People with disabilities are paradigmatic technology devices and other individualized technology that is adapted unaware that ethical questions are intimately interwoven with users, as they span so many different types of needs,” Petrick to the user’s needs. Ultimately, I think we are finding ways to research they will pursue,” says Holbrook. “We are trying to adds. “Companies such as Apple worked with disability solve the fundamental challenge that has been there all along, break this ‘compliance attitude’ and understand how these rights activist groups to make the early Macintosh accessible. which is growing awareness that technology users include gaming scenarios might be more impactful to students As a result, we see fundamental changes in technology design much more than one type of person.” throughout their careers.”

njit.edu/research 31

Deep Reinforcement Learning

raffic jams are as old as cities themselves. Rush hour in TPompeii? Gridlock, archaeologists tell us. Two centuries later, with urban populations booming and the impact of congestion spiraling, computer scientists have joined Artificial Intelligence Takes to the Streets engineers, physicists and industrial designers in a technology- enhanced campaign against idling engines, fender benders and wasted time. Add climate change to that list. Their principal tools are connected vehicles, intelligent sensor networks and smart mobile devices, and controllers that are capable of learning on the job to improve their performance. Prompting transportation signals to adjust dynamically to improve traffic flow is an early application.

Guiling “Grace” Wang is “Now that we can collect lots of traffic data with tools developing intelligent systems such as vehicular networks and smartphones to feed to to reduce congestion and artificial intelligence [AI], these systems are evolving from improve safety throughout the transportation grid – infant to adult. We expect to see the impact of intelligent at intersections, in GPS devices throughout our transportation networks in reduced blackouts, in ridesharing and taxi networks, and on roads congestion and enhanced safety,” says Guiling “Grace” Wang, that will soon be shared a professor of computer science who specializes in both by human-operated and driverless cars. distributed systems and deep-learning algorithms. In the near future, she adds, these technologies have the potential to warn drivers about patches of black ice on the road, guide traffic flows through even larger grids in real time, and better distribute app-based ride services. Wang is proposing intelligent systems throughout the transportation grid. Here are a few of her proposals:

Intersections Wang and her collaborators are researching deep reinforcement learning algorithms that would improve traffic control at intersections by moving it more efficiently through lights, shortening delays and saving energy. “AI would be the brain in the intersection. Essentially, the AI controller would emulate a veteran traffic cop who learns over time and responds to conditions based on current inputs and experience,” she notes. Cameras and vehicular networks would capture real-time traffic information and feed it into a deep reinforcement Photos: Oscar Masciandaro learning system. The system would then calculate how to

32 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Defending the Defenders: Deflecting Attacks on Cryptographic Tools

A new form of cyberattack has injected urgency into solving a long-ignored challenge to digital security: The tools used to protect data can themselves be a target of adjust the duration of the traffic light in the next cycle, and predicting rider demand and thus struggle to optimize subversion. By deploying a subtly would receive feedback on its action.” their resources — vehicles and drivers — to meet it. altered version of a cryptographic “We know this kind of learning is effective to deal with The result can be lengthy wait times and added tool that appears to function problems with real-time interactions. We’ve seen it in games congestion and pollution as drivers circulate without normally, attackers — from software providers to hardware device manufacturers — can compromise such as ‘AlphaGo,’ which was able to beat the best Go players,” fares. But the problem is complex, as it is simultaneously security in covert ways. she says, noting that the team has evaluated its model influenced by many factors such as weather, time and “Classical cryptographic research mainly focuses through an urban mobility simulation program. Ultimately, conditions on the road, among others. Information on external on algorithm and protocol design while ignoring their they’d like to extend their deep networks to include conditions can be flawed, either inaccurate or imprecise, if implementation, in which backdoors can be invisibly multiple intersections, in which AI traffic policemen would sensor deployment is too sparse to gather sufficient data. embedded,” says QIANG TANG, an assistant professor of communicate with each other about conditions in order to By fusing all related factors to model the complex computer science at NJIT. “We discovered, for example, a globally optimize flow throughout a region. interactions among them through a learning device invented subverted hash implementation — the main component in mining machines used to add transactions to secure public by the team known as a “deep spatio-temporal fuzzy neural ledgers — that can allow the mining machine provider to take Sharing the Road With Driverless Cars network,” Wang and her collaborators aim to make accurate over an entire blockchain.” Wang is part of an NJIT team, including engineers Cong rider-demand predictions. The major technical innovation behind Bitcoin, blockchain Wang and Jo Young Lee, that is developing a novel technology allows multiple partners engaged in enterprises assessment platform to evaluate the impacts of connected GPS Blackouts over the internet to jointly maintain time-stamped, tamper- and automated vehicles (CAVs) on drivers, passengers Wang has proposed a grid-based localization system in which resistant digital ledgers. and pedestrians. cars with and without accurate GPS would self-organize into With funding from the National Science Foundation, Tang is devising methods to identify and defend against malicious While the goal of CAV technology is to make driving safer vehicle networks that would allow them to exchange location implementations throughout the field of cryptography, while and more efficient, there is still little information on human and distance information, enabling all vehicles within a grid also re-engineering existing infrastructure tools to harden responses to these cars. Without understanding their sense to calculate their location on a map. them against these attacks. of safety and comfort, as well as their physical reactions, “GPS navigators have been widely adopted, but they are In more directed blockchain research, he is collaborating such as steering and braking, it will be difficult to deploy sensitive to terrain and can be blocked in tunnels and in city with JD.com, China’s largest retailer, and the Institute of them on the road. neighborhoods with high-rises. Emerging from a tunnel, a Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve consensus protocols, privacy protections and security for Existing evaluations depend heavily on computer driver can easily miss a turn if it’s immediate, and get lost. these applications. The technology is not yet mature enough simulations, which can’t fully capture reactions. With backing We believe this has implications for safety, time and energy to support large-scale applications, and its speedy evolution from a National Science Foundation grant, the NJIT team is use,” she explains. in that direction is the focus of their joint lab. proposing a platform between a simulation and a street test The cars would be equipped with a wireless interface and “JD’s enormous ecosystem will provide us many real-world that would use a crowdsourced cyber-physical reality that self-organize within a defined area into a wireless mobile problems that motivate better questions regarding blockchain relies on visual and force feedback from human subjects to network. Cars without location information could request research as we look to test and deploy our designs in large improve upon it. It would connect the human testers with the help of cars with it through wireless communication. and complex industrial applications,” Tang notes. Closer to home, he is working with an NJIT colleague, GRACE miniature environments through virtual reality and measure By measuring the distance to those cars, cars lacking GPS WANG, on building private and anonymous decentralized their responses. would be able to calculate their own location based on crowdsourcing platforms that could serve as the base for a geometric relationships among the cars. The determined future decentralized sharing economy, and with Protocol Labs Pinpointing Rider Demand location could be used just as one obtained from a GPS and Stevens Institute of Technology on better cryptographic Transportation companies have a difficult time accurately receiver and provide those drivers with seamless service. tools to support the distributed storage network, Filecoin.

njit.edu/research 33 Innovative Materials Photos: Oscar Masciandaro

Guiding Autonomous Vehicles With Invisible Cues

hen an auto-piloted Tesla Model X collided with a search for ways to embed reliable traffic cues and alerts onto would recognize the particular signals and be able to identify, Wtruck in California last summer, the crash alerted roads, vehicles and possibly even pedestrians. for example, the type and location of the car that sent it. the public to an unsettling reality: the near-total absence An interdisciplinary team of physics, information-security, “The tags can be used as coded information, like a QR of dynamic “smart signaling” in the nation’s transportation robotics and built-environment researchers is proposing an code, but invisible, and provide more information because infrastructure. The car’s onboard computer, safety inspectors intriguing solution: a method for deploying novel optical they can have multiple layers within them,” explains Mathew determined, failed to distinguish between the white paint of coatings, or tags, which would be invisible to the human eye, Schwartz, an assistant professor of industrial design, who is the truck and the brightly lit sky behind it. but convey instantaneous messaging about a car’s environment working with Jan Lagerwall and his team at the University Navigator apps currently rely on GPS or triangulation, as and objects within it in the form of reflected light. of Luxembourg to identify a broad range of potential well as maps loaded into a car’s memory, but driverless cars While still scanning for visible information, an autonomous applications for their technology. otherwise have only the physical landscape to guide them. car would emit infrared light, comparable to flashes on a The tags are composed of tiny spherical shells of cholesteric With the expected proliferation of these cars, as well as robots camera, that would be reflected back in a specific wavelength by liquid crystal (CLC). Liquid crystals are currently used in the and drones in the public domain, there is new urgency in the the optical tags embedded in the environment. The car’s sensor flat screens of televisions, computers and other flat electronic

34 2019 NJIT Research Magazine Testing the Real World Virtually

Mathew Schwartz is As a new virtual reality exploring applications for a new information (VR) and augmented technology: novel reality (AR) quickly optical coatings, or mature, the need to tags, which would connect the real and be invisible to the human eye, but virtual worlds grows convey information exponentially. In to machines. particular, it has become common practice to propose infrastructure plans in extended reality (XR), which combines real and virtual environments, and then after receiving meaningful feedback from future users, to translate them into construction projects. MARGARITA VINNIKOV, an assistant professor of devices; by using CLCs in a spherical shape, new properties when they are exposed to certain external impacts such as informatics at NJIT, is working with the North Jersey arise, such as the ability to receive and reflect light in every pressure, heat or specific chemicals. “By integrating these Transportation Planning Authority to bring the transportation planners’ vision to the public through VR. She and her team direction. The shells can be manufactured to reflect only properties with fabrics or products, you could have a hallway are modeling and simulating an upcoming roundabout project, certain wavelengths of light, such as infrared, and they cancel or path turn red based on the heat location,” Schwartz notes. which allows people to experience the new traffic circle during out the ambient light so sensors only see the invisible tags. Working with computers to interpret these changes, they different traffic and weather conditions through a projection Each flash would have a specific wavelength and polarization could also be used as pressure sensors in the fingertips of screen and on their mobile devices. matching a certain type of CLC shell. robots. Crucially, the tags require neither Wi-Fi, satellite While working on infrastructure projects, Vinnikov is also “By controlling the polarization and selecting only a certain communication nor electricity to operate. collaborating with MATHEW SCHWARTZ, a colleague from wavelength range, the emitting and sensing devices would see In all of these cases, the tags function as precise forms of the College of Architecture and Design, and a pair of students on an undergraduate research project intended to create an only the encoded information,” Schwartz adds. “So if you send identification for new technology, without adding visual noise interactive 3D model of the NJIT campus for XR applications. out a series of strobes of light from wavelengths of 700nm- to the environment. While there are many transportation cues “If you’re a prospective student who lives 200 miles away, 1000nm inclusive, a particular shell will reflect only a narrow in the environment, including speed limit postings, stop signs you can take a virtual tour and get a firsthand look at the predefined wavelength, such as 750nm. And if you know that and crosses on ambulances, they are designed for people, not campus without leaving your house,” she explains. “With emergency vehicles have a 750nm wavelength coating, then machines, Schwartz notes. “We are now going in the opposite augmented reality, you can also walk through the real campus you know that the reflection is coming from one of them. A direction, needing information for machines, and not people. and see things that are no longer there. For instance, there are a lot of historical buildings on campus, and in theory, if you different part of the sensor may see a wavelength of 800nm Using these new methods, information can be interpreted have virtual models or characters, you can see how the campus reflected, and that might identify a person or a bike.” and redisplayed to a user in a customized way, albeit for the looked 100 years ago.” Their material is not just for autonomous vehicles on hearing or visually impaired, or through translation. Before joining NJIT in 2018, Vinnikov worked for the the roads, but can be applied indoors as well. This leads to “And even if image recognition technology became perfect National Research Council of Canada as a human factor new modes of mobility, where smaller personal vehicles and instant, the issue would be adding more cues or detailed research officer specializing in cross reality and immersive can navigate between indoor and outdoor space seamlessly. information to the environment. If you are not driving, for displays, including flight and driving simulations. She assisted The same tags and methods can be used for augmented example, you don’t need to see a sign on a bridge detailing pilots and aircrew using XR and VR technology to improve the safe operation of helicopters and other aircraft under reality. Walking through a space with their phone or a future how tall a vehicle can be to pass under it, but the vehicle does low-visibility conditions. head-mounted display, people would be able to see layered need to see it,” he adds. “The technology’s aim is not to replace She notes, “Soon virtual and augmented capabilities are information that is specific to their location; the system could all other methods, but rather to add an additional layer for going to bridge the gap between real-world and digital content identify products, while also showing people how to use them. improved safety and security, without the impact of a visually and allow us to see things through a completely different – The shells can be manufactured to change their structure distracting built environment.” and much deeper – perspective.”

njit.edu/research 35

Data For Decision-Making

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Treatment Choices by Physicians and Patients

lectronic health records (EHRs) have become the chief corrupted or distorted, since Etool for documenting a patient’s medical care in today’s the fields in the medical changing health care landscape. Still, many physicians records are either wrong or not are reluctant to use this technology and when they do, filled in, including diagnosis they often leave behind an incomplete and incorrect file, codes in particular. Rather primarily because the task of filling in the information is than complete a structured time-consuming and diverts attention from direct patient medical record, many care. According to one study, “Allocation of Physician Time physicians choose to document in Ambulatory Practice: A Time and Motion Study in 4 patient information just in Specialties,” “during the office day, physicians spent … clinical notes, which is simpler 49.2 percent of their time on EHR and desk work.” and how they’ve traditionally practiced. Of the codes, Chen two deep-learning models: Convolutional Neural Network Yi Chen, a professor and the Henry J. Leir Chair in says, “That’s the most precise and accurate description about (CNN) and Long Short-term Memory (LSTM). CNN can learn Healthcare, is using advanced machine-learning techniques the patient’s condition. Insurance companies need to automatically recognize and rank in importance individual to make the documentation process easier and more precise the code to determine if the treatment is appropriate for features of input data but ignores the sequential-order for these resisters — which in turn will free up time to spend the disease.” relationships among this data, while LSTM considers these with their patients and develop more targeted treatment Industry makes a large expenditure every year hiring people relationships but disregards whether certain features are more plans. This work is in collaboration with the University of trained to review medical records and confirm or input the important than others. Such deep learning enables machines Maryland and Inovalon, a technology company empowering right disease codes based on the physicians’ clinical notes. to read clinical notes and assign codes. data-driven health care analytics with access to patient data Chen has developed an algorithm for machines to do this job, While AI-powered NLP will never entirely replace humans, from hospitals and insurance companies, which has made by leveraging advanced artificial-intelligence (AI) models for it can save a lot of labor, says Chen of the human-machine thousands of diverse patient medical records available to natural-language processing (NLP). The algorithm, which balance. “We can use machines to screen the data and ask Chen for her research. identifies specific diseases that a patient has through NLP on human experts to check only the challenging cases. At the She describes the data as very “noisy,” meaning it is clinical notes, builds upon and combines the advantages of same time, after human experts provide feedback on those

36 2019 NJIT Research Magazine

Predicting Successful Yi Chen is applying machine Entrepreneurial Innovations learning to patient medical records to ensure they are complete and diagnosis codes are correct, and to also “The way we make inputting information typically think about easier and more efficient for physicians. entrepreneurship is to write a business plan and then take it to a crowdfunding website or to venture capitalists to try to get funding,” says RAJA ROY, an assistant professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at NJIT. “But how do you identify the opportunity that will capture value?” The formula for success relies on several factors, Roy explains. To start, entrepreneurs need to consider value creation (the worthwhileness of their idea), as well as value capture (the ability of their idea to make money). “Just because you have value creation doesn’t mean you’ll capture value,” he says. challenging cases, the machine can learn from the feedback past evidence. We can develop AI technologies to identify Capturing value, he adds, depends to a large extent on to continuously improve the model.” similar patients and see if their diagnosis and treatment are whether large corporations will want to copy innovations and Chen and her team are measuring results according to two applicable to the target patient.” take a chunk of the market share. “If you can predict when a matrices: precision (the fraction of machine-labeled correct Chen is also studying the use of advanced machine- large company will not imitate your idea, that is opportunity codes over all codes labeled by a machine) and recall (the learning technologies to improve patient decision-making. identification for capturing value,” he notes. Roy studies the machine tool, industrial robotics and fraction of correct codes labeled by a machine over the total She has employed AI to review user-generated content on image sensor industries to determine what products were amount of correct codes). They have applied the algorithm online health forums and, through NLP, differentiate between introduced by firms in these fields and when, as well as how to 2,000 clinical charts to date, with a precision of .78 and a experience and perception when it comes to treatment. The they fared in the marketplace. For machine tools, he used recall of .60. These figures, notes Chen, represent significant “very ambitious, long-term project” is especially challenging, product-introduction data from a variety of sources, such as

Photos: Oscar Masciandaro improvement over support vector machines, a state-of-the-art because there are more variables in consumer-health dialogue the marketing flyers for all the machine tools manufactured learning algorithm, which realized a precision of .62 and a than in medical dialogue. between 1975 and 1995. recall of .55. Support vector machines rely on predefined data The goal is to turn the experiential content into He is applying his findings, gleaned from both quantitative and qualitative methodologies including panel data and features and were therefore unable to fully understand and recommendations for care for patients with similar health expert-corroborated business-history analysis, to explore classify disease mentions for coding. concerns, and work with health-forum owners to present this how firms adapt to technological disruptions — to try to spot By ensuring codes are entered and precise, Chen’s machine advice to forum users. In this way, patients can become more opportunities, from an entrepreneur’s perspective, that large algorithm also has the potential for making AI-based informed in their decision-making. incumbents will likely find “unattractive.” recommendations for care to the doctor, functioning as a “It’s all for better health outcomes,” Chen remarks of her “My goal is to create industry models for predicting what type of physician assistant. research. “The first project is to really help physicians make types of companies and innovations would likely succeed and be profitable, and under what circumstances.” “All this depends on if we have enough facts in our the best treatment choice in the long run. Roy is using the findings from his research in a new course knowledge base, based on complete and accurate medical “But patients have to be engaged,” she adds, referencing the created with CESAR BANDERA, an associate professor records,” offers Chen. “We don’t think computers can replace forum investigation. “We want to better understand them — of entrepreneurship, and others in NJIT’s Innovation and doctors, but we do think computers can help doctors to make what their concerns are, what they care about, and why they Entrepreneurship cluster. This new course will be a precursor diagnoses and find the right treatment plan by learning from do or don’t comply with treatment.” to business-plan writing.

njit.edu/research 37 The term “engineer” appeared for the first The board of trustees time in the minutes of the of the Newark Technical School first board of trustees of the met July 1, 1884. Newark Technical School in 1916.

oThe New oNewark did Jersey Gamma Technical School chapter of Tau opened in 1885 Beta Pi, the with 88 students. national honor years NEWAR COEE Tuition was O ENINEERIN engineering NEW JERE INTITTE O TECNOO free for Newark fraternity, was residents, and established at

courses NCE in 1941. were available in science, you mathematics During WWII, and drawing. academic programs accelerated to allow know students to complete their degrees before Robert Dow ’69, entering the U.S. a fencer, competed Armed Forces, and in the 1972 special engineering Summer Olympics. courses were introduced for defense workers. 38 2019 NJIT Research Magazine ?o NCE established Newark College NCE Professor a Computer With the arrival of Technology Beatrice Hicks o Mengchu Zhou Science Department of the NCE Class oThomas Joseph inaugurated programs ’39 served as in 1969. of 1953, the female received the IEEE O'Malley ’36, toward baccalaureate a founding Norbert Wiener Award population of the school degrees in chemical, chief test “for fundamental increased 100 percent, mechanical and member of contributions to the oEdythe R. Rabbe from three women conductor for electrical engineering the Society to six. in academic year area of Petri net became the the Convair of Women theory and 1919-1920. first woman Division Engineers and applications to to graduate of General discrete event Judea Pearl ’61 was elected NCE alumnus systems.” from NCE, o Dynamics, pushed o received the as its first Heinz Ludwig with a degree the button Association president. Chaim in chemical on launching for Computing In 1919, Ettlinger ’50 o engineering, the Mercury- Machinery’s the New Jersey was awarded the The Research in 1930. Atlas 6 space A.M. Turing Foundation was State Board flight carrying Congressional started in 1957 and Award “for of Education Paul Charles astronaut John Gold Medal for incorporated at fundamental recommended Michaelis ’64, ’67 Glenn, the first his service to NCE in 1959. contributions that Newark received the 1975 IEEE American in the nation in Morris N. Liebmann to artificial Technical orbit. recovering and Memorial Award Robert Wallace Van intelligence School be given “for the concept and repatriating Houten ’30 B.S., ’70 through the the authority development of single- innumerable Ph.D., was chosen development of Spring semester to grant degrees walled magnetic works of art as Allan Reginald 1948 saw the formation domains (magnetic a calculus for Cullimore’s successor under the name looted by the bubbles), and for of the NCE Student as president and probabilistic Newark College recognition Branch of the Institute Nazis before and became the first and causal of Technology. of their importance of Radio Engineers during WWII. alumnus to lead to memory reasoning.” (later IEEE). the college. technology.” Continued on page 40

njit.edu/research 39 Did You Know? Charles Adam Continued from page 39 Colton, a professor oEllen M. The Society of of chemistry and Manufacturing The Baja Race Milton Holmes, mineralogy at the Pawlikowski ’78, Engineers awarded Car appeared at “Who’s Who a chemical Rose Polytechnic a U.S. Air Force NJIT a student the 2017 New York Among Students in engineering student, Institute, was Newark chapter in 1978. International Auto American Universities was the president general, was Technical School’s Show and went on and Colleges” extended of NCE’s first director. elected to to win the four-hour its recognition to first graduating Endurance Race NCE for the first class. the National With the in California. time in 1959. o Newark Academy of Twenty-six students o introduction of Technical Engineering were selected to the 1945 G.I. Bill, appear in the book. School’s first “for leadership In the 1940s, enrollment in o John J. dedicated o in the Lillian Moller NCE soared to Mooney ’60 building was development of Gilbreth became 6,000 students. oRichard co-developed a three-story technologies the first female More than half Sweeney ’82 the first- structure at for national professor at were veterans. co-founded production High Street and security NCE. Her family’s the “K-Cup” pod three-way Summit Place programs story inspired for the Keurig catalytic Gerard J. Foschini ’61 that was named including the movie published Single-Cup converter. Weston Hall spacecraft “On Limits of “Cheaper by the Brewing Wireless in honor of an operations and Dozen.” System. Communications early benefactor. the Airborne in a Fading Laser.” Environment When In 1920, Newark Another NCE Using Multiple Margaret Bryce Allan Reginald College of Technology graduate, William Antennas,” a paper was the first woman Cullimore took over changed its name to Hazell ’30, electrical For many years, that played a key to enroll at Newark the directorship the College of engineering, succeeded “The Technician” was role in advancing Technical School, of the school in Engineering of the Robert Wallace the official newspaper multiple-input in 1897, January 1920 Newark Technical Van Houten of NCE. multiple-output and studied and was later School. as president. wireless systems. chemistry. named president.

40 2019 NJIT Research Magazine In 1930, NJIT opened a From 1919-2018, In 1953, Newark Technical the college again 10,000-square-foot NCE granted the Gamma Kappa Raymond Edward School began as received a new name: Makerspace on 47,530 degrees. Chapter of the Blum ’50 was a a three-year Newark College of campus Eta Kappa Nu speed skater who evening school. Engineering (NCE). in 2017. NCE awarded Association national competed in the 1948 its first doctoral electrical engineering Winter Olympics in degree in 1964, society was founded Switzerland. Michael J. Pappas o in chemical oWalter Marty at NCE. o1975 brought a ’59, ’64, professor engineering, to “Wally” new, and lasting, Edwin Otto Eisen. of mechanical His dissertation Schirra Jr., name — New Paul Sarlo Daniel Russel engineering, was titled, o o an NCE student Jersey Institute ’92, ’95 was co-developed “Salt Effects in Hodgdon in the early of Technology. Liquid-Liquid elected to “The New succeeded Equilibria.” ’40s, flew the the New Jersey Knee,” Charles Adam six-orbit, nine- Daytime classes Jersey Senate were initiated at an artificial- Colton and hour Mercury- in 2003. Newark Technical knee system The School instituted o Atlas 8 mission, School in 1897. that became the of Applied programs becoming the NCE awarded its basis for knee Engineering to help fifth American first Bachelor of In 1921, replacement and Technology Science degree in returning WWI o and ninth civil engineering Shirley Dodman systems and was established veterans receive human to travel in 1927. became the implantable in 2018. technical into space. training. first woman knee devices In July 2018, the The college awarded admitted worldwide. Howard Michel ’75 inaugural VOICE its first bachelor’s was elected president technology summit to NCE. degrees in 1923: and CEO of the took place at NJIT, NCE awarded In 1979, three in chemical Institute of Electrical drawing more than its first Master of Saul K. Fenster engineering, three in and Electronics 2,400 attendees Science degree NCE has became the institute’s electrical engineering, Engineers (IEEE), and hosting some in 1949. more than eighth president. four in mechanical effective 2015. 100 speakers. 40,000 living engineering. alumni.

njit.edu/research 41 New Faculty

COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND LIBERAL ARTS ENKELEIDA LUSHI, assistant professor of ASHISH BORGAONKAR, assistant professor mathematical sciences, focuses on problems of engineering education, develops and TRAVIS ASKHAM, assistant professor of arising in soft matter and biological physics. researches the impact of targeted academic mathematical sciences, focuses on problems She builds mathematical models and fast programs and innovative teaching methods in scientific computing. He develops computer simulations to elucidate phenomena on students of various backgrounds, including algorithms used for data-driven model such as the self-assembly and guided transport of microscale underprepared and still-deciding students. His approaches discovery in dynamical systems such as colloids, and the collective behavior of microbes. include hands-on learning, peer instruction, boot camps, and the climate, computer-aided small protein design and the student design showcases and competitions, among others. simulation of fluid flow in complex regions. JAMES MACLAURIN, assistant professor of mathematical biology, studies how BRANISLAV DIMITRIJEVIC, assistant PIER ALEXANDRE CHAMPAGNE, biological order and synchrony arise out of professor of civil and environmental assistant professor of chemistry, employs seeming randomness, such as biochemical engineering, specializes in transportation experimental and computational methods fluctuations and variability at the microscopic systems analysis and planning, network to study reactive intermediates — transient level. Topics include neural networks, oscillations and optimization, and intelligent transportation chemical species that decompose readily. synchrony in gene networks, and the mechanics of growing systems. His current research focuses on integrated These compounds are then harnessed for use in new processes cancer tumors. transportation and land-use modeling, integrated corridor for synthesizing complex molecules, such as anti-cancer management, smart mobility and connected vehicle agents, in an efficient, modular fashion that also reduces waste. GARETH PERRY, assistant professor of applications in traffic operations management. physics, researches the interconnections HAO CHEN, professor of chemistry, between the ionosphere and the terrestrial CARLOTTA MUMMOLO, assistant conducts research on mass spectrometry, magnetic field, whose coupling generates the professor of biomedical engineering, a biotechnology used to determine aurora. His primary focus is to understand specializes in the fields of dynamics, molecule mass. Key applications of this the nature of disturbances in the two systems and how they optimization, mechanisms and robotics, tool in the pharmaceutical, life sciences affect radio wave propagation and communications on Earth. and biomechanics, with applications in and environmental services industries include chemical locomotion and balance in robotics and biological systems. measurement and imaging, protein sequencing and 3D- She has performed gait analysis, for example, with healthy, structure determination, and drug and pollution detection. NEWARK COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING amputee and exoskeleton-assisted human subjects.

HYOMIN KIM, assistant professor MOHSEN AZIZI, assistant professor of PRATEEK SHEKHAR, assistant professor of physics, studies the impact of solar radiation electrical and computer engineering, develops of engineering technology, studies the and charged particles on Earth’s geomagnetic advanced controllers and fault detection and translation of engineering education environment and human technologies. identification systems for microgrids, robotics, research into practice by examining His analysis of magnetic field waves, caused mechatronics, aerospace and other large-scale barriers to instructional change in by the interaction of solar wind with space plasma particles, systems. His algorithms are designed to ensure the resilience undergraduate programs. He also assesses student learning in shows how solar energy is transferred to Earth’s upper of these systems amid environmental uncertainties and entrepreneurship programs and investigates ways to increase atmosphere. system failures. the diversity of the students participating in these courses.

42 2019 NJIT Research Magazine HONGTAO SUN, assistant professor of YING WU COLLEGE OF COMPUTING Department of Computer Science mechanical and industrial engineering, Department of informatics explores the intersection of energy science, BARUCH SCHIEBER, professor of computer advanced materials and nanomanufacturing. FRANK BIOCCA, professor of informatics, science, designs efficient algorithms for He assembles low-dimensional nanoscale specializes in human-computer interaction, constrained-resource allocation problems and materials into 3D macroscopic architectures or multi- including the development of virtual reality mathematical-programming techniques to component systems, and studies the physical and chemical and augmented reality interfaces that allow obtain high-quality interpretable models. His phenomena that affect how these materials transport, store, for 3D full-body interaction in virtual models are used in vehicle routing and scheduling, production convert and dissipate energy. environments. He explores ways in which virtual and planning, supply chain management, budget allocation, and augmented reality environments can support human decision- power outage recovery. ANGELO TAFUNI, assistant professor of making, learning and persuasion. engineering technology and mechanical and industrial engineering, develops new features ARITRA DASGUPTA, assistant professor of MARTIN TUCHMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT for particle methods used to study fluid- informatics, develops and studies interactive related problems in engineering environments. visualization techniques that help people XINYUAN TAO, assistant professor of finance, Applications include examining flow around mechanical understand and communicate with data. The researches empirical asset pricing with a current systems such as ship hulls, propellers and spacecraft, liquid goal of his research is to foster greater human- focus on the effects of frictions — sloshing and free-surface hydrodynamics, and atmospheric machine trust by using visualization as a transparent medium the difficulty with which an asset is traded— circulation. between computational methods and human decision-making. and behavioral factors related to investors’ cognitive biases in finance. Her models enable better earnings DAVID VENERUS, professor of chemical MARGARITA VINNIKOV, assistant forecasts in the presence of incomplete information. and materials engineering, examines transport professor of informatics, specializes in cross phenomena in soft matter, polymer science reality and gaze-contingent displays. Her and the rheology of complex fluids, such as augmented and virtual reality platforms COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN polymeric liquids and biological fluids. He have been used to train helicopter pilots and investigates, for example, the interaction of fluid flow and heat aircrew to fly safely in low-visibility conditions, and to help HANNAH KUM-BIOCCA, assistant transfer in the processing of plastic materials. researchers understand the driving behavior of people with professor of digital design, is a computer visual impairments. interface designer and an interactive media XIANLIAN ALEX ZHOU, associate artist who specializes in video mapping, professor of biomedical engineering, focuses XINYUE YE, associate professor of virtual and augmented reality, and interactive on computational biomechanics, robotics informatics, combines social science and user-experience installations. Her commercial works include and human modeling and simulation, injury computational science to map relationships user interfaces for 3D printers and web information systems prevention, and personalized medicine. He among individuals in networks, which he for government and media companies. analyzes in vivo biomechanical forces on tissues under injury integrates with spatial and environmental and disease conditions to develop protective measures such factors. He models the geographical perspective of as helmets and wearable assistive devices. socioeconomic inequality and human dynamics for applications in domains such as economic development and urban crime.

njit.edu/research 43 Faculty Accomplishments

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION developed methods for raising the absorption rates of poorly INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY FOR MEDICAL CAREER GRANT RECIPIENTS soluble drugs and increasing patient compliance through AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING, FELLOW medication taste-masking. ISMET ESRA BUYUKTAHTAKIN-TOY, ATAM DHAWAN, distinguished professor associate professor of mechanical and of electrical and computer engineering, and industrial engineering, conducts theoretical AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL AND senior vice provost for research, develops and applied research on large-scale BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING, FELLOW point-of-care technologies in health care. He mathematical optimization. With her grant, focuses on optimal imaging devices to identify she will design optimal intervention and resource-allocation TARA ALVAREZ, professor of biomedical skin cancers, treat spider vein diseases and make in-situ strategies to protect ecological systems from the detrimental engineering, studies the links between visual measurements of hemoglobin, glucose and melanin impacts of invasive species. disorders and the brain, and develops novel through skin-imaging. devices to identify and treat them. Her team’s SHAWN CHESTER, assistant professor vision therapy platform, which includes of mechanical engineering, specializes in virtual reality games, won “most innovative breakthrough” soft solid materials, from smart gels used as at the 2018 Augmented World Expo Europe. sealants and valve controls, to plastics that Books degrade in the body and in compost piles. He is developing methods to precisely predict their load- IEEE, FELLOW Society for the History of carrying capacity as they degrade over time. Technology Special Interest ALI ABDI, professor of electrical and Group for Computers, BRITTANY FROESE HAMFELDT, assistant computer engineering, researches wireless Information and Society, professor of mathematical sciences, develops communication and propagation modeling Computer History Museum numerical methods for solving nonlinear in underwater, radio and oil well drill string Prize (2017) partial differential equations. She’s focusing channels, and cell signaling, among other Making Computers Accessible: on methods to design lenses and mirrors to topics. He recently developed a new computational method Disability Rights & Digital precisely control the intensity pattern and phase of light to quantify decision-making “errors” in cells caused by noise Technology by Elizabeth R. beams in applications such as optical data storage, medical and signaling failures. Petrick, assistant professor treatment and astronomy. of history

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF INVENTORS, FELLOW American Astronautical Society, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERS; Eugene M. Emme Astronautical AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PHARMACEUTICAL CRAIG GOTSMAN, distinguished Literature Award (2018) SCIENTISTS, FELLOW professor and dean of Ying Wu College Apollo in the Age of Aquarius of Computing, develops groundbreaking by Neil M. Maher, professor and RAJESH DAVÉ, distinguished professor of software technologies for the creation and chair of the Federated History chemical engineering, focuses on research in manipulation of 3D data, as well as data Department particle engineering and materials science to generated by depth cameras. His work, commercialized advance knowledge of drug particle formation through startup companies, has been acquired by industry and cost-efficient manufacturing. He has leaders such as NVIDIA.

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