Timeline

1881 - 1940s

1881

Newark Technical School (NTS) is established.

1885

Newark Technical School (NTS) welcomed the inaugural class of 88 Newark residents to a rented building on West Park Street. Although these young men had to pay for books and other supplies, tuition was free for those who lived in the city.

1886

­Director Charles Colton laid the cornerstone for NTS’s first dedicated building, later named Weston Hall in honor of Edward Weston, an early benefactor. The three-story structure stood at High Street and Summit Place.

1897

Margaret Bryce, a high school teacher, was the first woman to enroll at NTS, and studied chemistry.

1919

As New Jersey became a center of leading producers in the manufacture of chemicals after WWI, Newark Technical School began offering undergraduate degree programs in chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering, under the name Newark College of Technology, which changed to the College of Engineering of the Newark Technical School in 1920. A civil engineering degree program followed in 1927.

1920 to 1947

Allan R. Cullimore led the institution, overseeing the transformation of the school into Newark College of Engineering (NCE) in 1930. He was later named the president.

1930

Edythe R. Rabbe became the first woman to receive a degree from NCE. She studied chemical engineering.

1940s

Lillian Moller Gilbreth — NCE’s first female professor, a pioneer in motion study and an efficiency expert — was known as the “First Lady of Engineering” and became the first female member of the National Academy of Engineering. Her many other honors included being featured on a U.S. postage stamp and being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

WWII Years

Throughout World War II, NCE helped educate students for the war effort. Degree programs were accelerated to fill the military's need for more engineers. Some students switched to night school and went to work in defense plants and military research programs. NCE also served as a technology training site for soldiers. Although class sizes waned in the latter years of the war, returning veterans swelled the enrollment again, with veterans comprising 75 percent of the freshman class in 1946.

1950s - 1980s

1956
NCE student and fresh graduate Yuriy Tarnawsky ’56 published his first volume of poetry “Life in the City” (in Ukrainian). In time, Tarnawsky established himself as a major writer and linguist, writing fiction, poetry, plays, translations and criticism in both Ukrainian and English. His works have been translated into Azerbaijani, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian.

1962
Beatrice Hicks ’39, founder of the Society of Women Engineers in 1950 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, produced a seminal innovation in the field of gas sensor devices, outlined in U.S. Patent No. 3046369, and used in NASA’s Apollo Moon Landing missions. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2017.

1962
Mechanical engineering graduate Thomas Joseph O'Malley ’36 was a chief test conductor for the Convair division of General Dynamics, and was responsible for pushing the button on February 20, 1962 that launched the Mercury-Atlas 6 space flight carrying astronaut John Glenn, the first American in orbit.

1962
Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra Jr., an NCE student in the early ’40s, flew the six-orbit, nine-hour, Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, becoming the fifth American, and ninth human, to travel into space. Later, in October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, the first manned launch for the Apollo program. He was the first astronaut to go into space three times, and the only astronaut to have flown in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. In total, he logged 295 hours and 15 minutes in space.

1964
NCE awarded its first doctoral degree in 1964.

1966
NCE electrical engineering alumnus A. Michael Noll ’61, then at Bell Labs, published “Computers and the Visual Arts” in Design Quarterly. This was one of the first public explorations of digital computer art.

1968
NCE established EOP (the Engineering Opportunity Program, renamed Educational Opportunity Program in 1975). The program identifies, recruits and provides financial assistance to needy students who are residents of New Jersey, so that they may be able to attend institutions of higher education.

1973
John J. Mooney ’60, a graduate chemical engineering alumnus, co-invented the three-way catalytic converter, which has played a dramatic role in reducing pollution from motor vehicles since the mid-1970s. The Society of Automotive Engineers considers this one of the ten most important innovations in the history of the automobile. In 2002, President George H. Bush presented Mooney, with co-inventor Carl D. Keith, with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for "for the invention, application to automobiles, and commercialization of the three-way catalytic converter."

1975
Effective Jan.1, 1975, NCE changed its name once again and became known as New Jersey Institute of Technology, to reflect both the breadth of its scientific and technological developments as well as the founding of the architecture school.

1977/late 1970s
Michael J. Pappas, professor of mechanical engineering at NJIT, and Dr. Frederick F. Buechel, clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at New Jersey Medical School, introduced a new Low Contact Stress Complete Knee System. Known as “The New Jersey Knee,” this model became the basis for knee replacement systems and devices implanted in hundreds of thousands over the years.

1982
NCE alumnus Heinz P. Bloch ’62 B.S. ’64 M.S., mechanical engineering, published “Improving Machinery Reliability,” the first of 20 books by Bloch on practical machinery. His books have appeared in 45 editions — in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

1990s - 2015

1991
Ying Wu ’88, ’16 HON, an electrical engineering master’s graduate, founded Starcom Networks, which merged with Unitech in 1995 to create UTStarcom, a global telecom infrastructure provider headquartered in Hong Kong. Also chair of China Capital Group, he was named by China Central TV as one of the Top 10 Most Influential Persons in China’s economy in 2003. He led his company, UTStarcom (China) Ltd., in developing the “Little-Smart” wireless communication system which made mobile phone services widely accessible.

1993
Richard Sweeney ’82, an industrial engineering graduate and Keurig's current vice president of engineering and operations, became co-founder of the "K-Cup" pod for the Keurig Single-Cup Brewing System.

1995
Albert Dorman ’45, mechanical engineering, established an endowment for the NJIT Honors College, enabling the renamed Albert Dorman Honors College to expand from 230 students in 1995 to over 700 today. 

1998
Employed by AT&T Bell Laboratories, Gerard Joseph Foschini ’61, electrical engineering, published a paper introducing his Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (BLAST) concept, one of the most widely examined techniques in wireless communications research today. In 2009, Foschini was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

1998
Engineering alumnus Eshan Bayat ’86 established Afghan Wireless, Afghanistan's first wireless communications company. By 2017, Afghan Wireless was the largest private employer in Afghanistan, having around five million clients and providing coverage in all of Afghanistan's provinces.

1999
NJIT announced the first class of academic scholars within the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program. The program prepares eligible participants for doctoral studies through involvement in research and scholarly activities. Participants are from disadvantaged backgrounds and have demonstrated strong academic potential.

2001
NCE established the Department of Biomedical Engineering. William Hunter (1946-2019), a specialist in cardiovascular mechanics who joined NJIT from Johns Hopkins University, was instrumental in designing the undergraduate curriculum, established a joint biomedical engineering program with Rutgers New Jersey Medical School leading to a Ph.D. degree, and as chairman, led the new program to accreditation in 2006.

2004
Treena Arinzeh, professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She focuses on stem cell tissue engineering and applied biomaterials, specializing in the development of functional biomaterials to accelerate the repair of bone, cartilage and other related musculoskeletal tissues, as well as nerve tissue, specifically the spinal cord.

2004
As chief engineer at Honeybee Robotics, Tom Myrick ’84, mechanical engineering, developed Rock Abrasion Tools (RATS) — instruments used to study rocks from Mars — that were mounted on two NASA rovers, “Spirit” and “Opportunity,” that landed on Mars in the winter of 2004.

2004
NCE alumnus and Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Florida, Pierre Ramond ’65, electrical engineering, received the Oskar Klein medal for his work on superstring theory. Ramond delivered the 2004 Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Stockholm University and the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

2010
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) established the IEEE Council on Superconductivity Carl H. Rosner Entrepreneurship Award in honor of NCE alumnus and superconductivity pioneer Carl H. Rosner ’55.

2011
Master’s in electrical engineering alumnus Judea Pearl ’61, credited with inventing Bayesian networks, a mathematical formalism for defining complex probability models, earned the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2011 A.M. Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning."

2014
U.S. Air Force General Ellen M. Pawlikowski ’78, chemical engineering, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering “for leadership in the development of technologies for national security programs including spacecraft operations and the Airborne Laser.”

2015
Mengchu Zhou, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, received the 2015 Norbert Wiener Award for “fundamental contributions to the area of Petri net theory and applications to discrete event systems” at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics held in Hong Kong.

2015
Electrical engineer Virginia Sulzberger EE ’66, was the first woman in the United States elected by the National Academy of Engineering into its Electric Power and Energy Systems Engineering section. At the North American Electric Reliability Council, Sulzberger was instrumental in developing the first comprehensive planning standards for the high-voltage electric power transmission systems in North America.

2015
Atam Dhawan, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, was the first NJIT engineer inducted as a Fellow into the National Academy of Inventors. He was followed in 2016 by Kamalesh Sirkar, distinguished professor of chemical and materials engineering, and in 2017 by Yu

2016 - 2018

2016
Distinguished Professor and electrical engineering alumnus Nirwan Ansari ’82 received the IEEE Communications Society Technical Recognition Award “for advancing the field of ad hoc and sensor networks.”

2016
NCE mechanical engineering alumnus Clifford M. Samuel ’88, who serves as senior vice president of Gilead Sciences, was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. The citation is “for pioneering new approaches to providing medicines in developing countries, thereby redefining access standards and averting millions of HIV/AIDS deaths.”

2017
The Baja Race Car appeared at the New York International Auto Show, billed as a showcase for the latest in “cutting-edge design and extraordinary innovation.” The single-seat, off-road vehicle, “handcrafted” by a team of ambitious mechanical engineering students, went on to compete around the country and, in California, made NJIT history by winning the challenging four-hour Endurance Race to propel the university into the top rank of Baja design teams.

2017
NJIT opened its own Makerspace, a training-focused, rapid prototyping facility that is central to both the university’s hands-on learning mission and its growing relationship with New Jersey’s manufacturing community. The 10,000-sq.-ft. space operates equipment ranging from small 3D printers to large industrial machining centers, such as precision measurement and laser-cutting machines.

2018
An NJIT team of engineers, game designers, artists and clinicians, led by Professor of Biomedical Engineering Tara Alvarez, won two major international awards for its vision therapy platform VERVE (Virtual Eye Rotation Vision Exercises), including “most innovative breakthrough,” at the 2018 Augmented World Expo Europe, the leading industry conference for augmented reality technology. Alvarez also won the “Woman Laureate” award, which recognizes project leadership skills.

2018
The School of Applied Engineering and Technology (SAET) was established to meet spiraling demand in the job market for applied engineering technologists in industries reliant upon production, manufacturing, process control and instrumentation. When fully implemented, SAET will serve close to 2,000 students and will have roughly 30 full-time instructors and faculty members as well as approximately 100 auxiliary faculty and adjunct professors from industry.