Dear NJIT Community Members
It is with great pleasure that I write to you today, as we move toward the end of our Spring semester, with some very exciting updates.
- This week, Newark College of Engineering celebrated faculty, staff, student, alumni and partner achievements at the 21st Annual Salute to Engineering Excellence ceremonies. Please join me in congratulating all the award winners, who are listed here (student, faculty and staff) and here (alumni and partners). In particular I would like to note two longtime and extraordinary contributors to NJIT—Steve DePalma ’72, chair of NJIT’s Board of Trustees, and Tony Howell, who led our outstanding EOP efforts for many years.
- New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII), an NJIT corporation, has signed an Industry Participation Agreement with Pall Corporation (Pall) to provide $3.5 million to support the development of its BioPharmaceutical Innovation iLab. The partnership will fund two key centers at NJII that will advance the manufacturing of new cell and gene therapies: the Cell and Gene Therapy Development Center and the Center of Advanced Biologic Manufacturing.
- On May 21 and 23, we will celebrate our 103rd Commencement exercises at the Prudential Center and the NJIT Wellness and Events Center, respectively. I am very happy to announce that our keynote speaker on May 21 will be New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In addition to Governor Murphy, we will award two other honorary degrees. Clifford M. Samuel ’88 will receive an honorary Doctor of Science. Samuel is Senior Vice President of Access Operations and Emerging Markets at Gilead Sciences, with responsibility for more than 130 countries around the world. Sandy Carter, Vice President of Windows and Enterprise Workloads at Amazon Web Services, will receive an honorary Doctor of Science. For more information about the impressive accomplishments of our honorary degree recipients, click here.
- Beginning April 15, NJIT will join a growing citywide initiative introduced to encourage employees to “live local.” NJIT is a part of the vibrant and growing Newark community and we intend to be fully engaged with its growth, particularly this outstanding initiative that is a collaboration with the city and the Newark Alliance. We are proud to support the “Newark Live Local” initiative — a community-based program designed to attract full-time employees to live in Newark. NJIT’s “Newark Live Local” program now will provide eligible full-time employees working and living within the program’s designated “Program Incentive Areas” with a one-time incentive of up to $3,000 toward the cost of their housing during the program’s initial one-year pilot period. The program’s incentives will support both existing renters and new renters who live within those defined areas. For more information about this program and NJIT’s partnership with the City of Newark and Newark Alliance, visit: http://hr.njit.edu/newark-
2020-hire-buy-live-local/.
NJIT is enjoying remarkable success this year. I thank you all for your contributions toward that success, knowing that we will continue the momentum of R1, #1 student economic mobility, and a $2.8 billion annual economic impact on the State of New Jersey.
Sincerely,
Joel S. Bloom
President