A Gathering of Go-getters: NJIT Celebrates 2017-2018 Scholarship Recipients

The competition for scholarships and fellowships grows fiercer every year. Still, there’s good news: At NJIT, students are increasingly receiving notable awards that provide opportunities to do research, study abroad (both, in certain cases) and more.

Just as the spring 2018 semester was coming to a close, a small reception was held in Eberhardt Hall to congratulate the university’s scholarship and fellowship recipients over the past year. While some have completed their assignments, others are either in the midst of or preparing for them.

Here, we meet a few of the winners.

Axel Turnquist

Graduate Student, Mathematics, College of Science and Liberal Arts

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)

Turnquist is in the second year of a five-year program researching numerical methods of solving fully nonlinear second-order elliptic partial differential equations (PDE). Such PDEs are used frequently in engineering and scientific models. The NSF GRFP, which he received in fall 2017, is providing him with three years of support for his graduate study that will lead to a doctoral STEM degree.

The Seattle native earned his undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Washington and then taught English in China for a bit before returning to the U.S., where he moved to New York and did English-to-Chinese translation for a social services organization. Research beckoned and he applied to NJIT, he says, “because I know there’s a lot of applied math going on here.

“It’s just good to be allowed to do interesting research like this,” remarked Turnquist, who is working with Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences Brittany Hamfeldt. “It’s fun to see it slowly piecing itself together.”

Anastasia Bohon

Senior, Architecture, College of Architecture and Design, Albert Dorman Honors College

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship

Bohon leaves June 25 for Denmark and the Netherlands. She’ll spend the summer there as a Gilman scholar studying European green spaces at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad. “We’ll be focusing on how parks interact with the city fabric and how important that is to a free and better urban environment.

“I want to be an architect, but I want to focus on…taking a historical building and making it more modern,” noted Bohon, who was born and raised in Boonton, N.J., and is the daughter of two NJIT alumni. “I want to take that building and make it into something new without destroying [its] cultural, contextual fabric.”

The Gilman program, established in 2001 and named for the late congressman who chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee, provides grants for American undergraduates “to pursue academic studies or internships abroad.” Bohon has already started networking with classmates to plan trips to surrounding countries and is excited to experience different cultures.

Ghiday Lamptey

Senior, Chemical Engineering, Newark College of Engineering, Educational Opportunity Program

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship

Lamptey is gearing up for a busy summer. First up for her is an internship in research and development at Promotion in Motion, a manufacturer of fruit snacks and other brand-name confections, located in her hometown of Somerset, N.J. Then in August, as a Gilman scholar, she’ll head to Denmark to study at the University of Copenhagen.  

Her travel to Europe will mark her first time abroad. “The thing I’m most excited about is being in a different culture and learning how things work within a different environment,” she said. “I’ve never really gone [to] or lived in other places, so I want to explore and see what else is out there.”

As for her career aspiration, Lamptey wants to work at a renewable energy company focused on improving the efficiency of using environmentally friendly resources for energy. “In other countries the usage of renewable energies is much more advanced. While I am in Copenhagen, I plan to explore the opportunities that are there and observe their processes to see what improvements we can make in the United States."

Additional Accolades

Other recipients recognized for their scholarship and fellowship accomplishments were:

• Brendan Dente ’18, chemical engineering, Albert Dorman Honors College, who won a Fulbright grant to spend the next two years earning a master’s degree at the Technological University of Delft in the Netherlands.

• Zakaria Elwalily ’18, electrical engineering, who was awarded a SMART (Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation) Scholarship for Service in fall 2017. SMART is given to students to pursue an undergraduate or graduate STEM degree, with employment in the Department of Defense upon degree completion.

• Mohamed Mohamed ’19, management, who earned a Gilman scholarship and spent the fall 2017 semester in France, where he studied entrepreneurship and marketing at SKEMA Business School.

• Dylan Renaud ’18, applied physics and mathematics, Albert Dorman Honors College, who in addition to winning a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Rise fellowship in 2016 and a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in 2017, received an NSF GRFP honorable mention this past fall.

For more information on fellowships and scholarships, click here.