Features

UPDATE: Sulis won the Regional Hult Prize Competition March 10, 2018 in Boston! Next up for the Sulis team is the Hult summer startup accelerator in London where the top 50 Hult Prize startups from around the world will spend eight weeks in a castle together, learning and refining their concepts. At the end of the summer, 6 teams will be chosen to compete for the $1 million global Hult Prize. Sulis is one of two Rutgers–New Brunswick teams among the 50 regional Hult Prize winners. The other is LivingWaters.

As an Honors College Changemaking Mentor, my mentees often ask me about doing research. For this reason, I thought a series highlighting how students find their research opportunities could be helpful.

Many students embody the tenets of the Honors College—Curiosity. Knowledge. Purpose.—through the amazing research they are doing across Rutgers. Through this series, we’ll share student experiences in research and how they found their opportunities. Before we dive in, there are some things you should know:

Since I was young, I have always had a fascination with flight. For a time, I even wanted to be an astronaut (ok, I still do). In high school I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work in the aircraft maintenance shop of a local airport and take flight lessons—I was able to say I flew a plane before I could drive a car! Flying is an experience like no other. From my first time in a small plane seeing the trees drop away as the plane climbed during takeoff, I became hooked. On a clear day, I could often see the ocean, New York, and Philadelphia at the same time.

It’s August 5th, 2022. I turn my car key and crank the AC. At 7:00 am, the New Mexico sun has already warmed my black car. It’s hot, but I find patience. I’ll need it–today, I’m driving home. I lift my eyes, glancing out the windshield at my new friends. They wave and smile, and vignettes of our time together flood my mind. I crest the dirt road that rollercoasters away from the field station and towards I-25. A happy tear grazes my smile.

Going to Honduras was like going home. The hot humid weather, trash littered on the side of the road, and beautiful tropical greenery scattered throughout the country. The cities with modern architecture and paved roads. The “communities” (or village areas) with dirt roads that could take out even the best rough terrain vehicle, houses that shouldn’t be able to withstand rainy season (but do), the kindest people living in some of the worst conditions, a lack of clean water systems, and access to little or no healthcare.

Joshua Landes, Co-founder and Co-manager of New York based hedge fund Wynnefield Partners Small Cap Value L.P., joined Honors College students recently for a Knightly Roundtable to discuss creating your own success and balancing career, personal passions, and family. Mr. Landes is a distinguished Rutgers alum and friend of the Honors College.

Joy Buolamwini visited the Honors College on January 31, 2017 where she met with different groups of students throughout the day and later gave a special lecture about her work to fight bias in machine learning, develop social impact technology, and write inclusive coding–called incoding. Ms. Buolamwini is a graduate researcher with the Civic Media group at the MIT Media Lab. She was the inaugural speaker for the Navesink Wealth Management Endowed Honors College Annual Lecture Series.

Second-year Honors College student Justin Najimian is no stranger to service and giving back. According to Najimian,  who majors in public health and minors in Spanish and health & society, service has played a monumental role in his experiences at the HC and beyond.

"As long as I can remember, service has been a constant in my life,” said Najimian.