ADHC Colloquium Series - Spring 2025

2:30pm - 4:00pm | NJIT Campus Center Ballroom

Engineering NASA’s Webb Space Telescope

Speaker: Mike Menzel, Mission Systems Engineer, NASA

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the most complex and powerful space telescope ever made. Launched in 2021, Webb had over 344 single points-of-failure that it successfully completed before releasing its first scientific images on July 12, 2022. Hear from the Webb Mission Systems Engineer and New Jersey native, Mike Menzel, about the engineering behind building, launching, and now operating Webb.

Mike Menzel is the NASA Mission Systems Engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Menzel has held this position since he joined NASA in June of 2004. His involvement with the James Webb Project extends back to 1998 when he became the Chief Systems Engineer for Lockheed Martin's Pre-Phase A studies for the then Next Generation Space Telescope and later for Lockheed's Phase A James Webb Space Telescope contract. In 2001, he joined the Northrop Grumman James Webb systems engineering team.

In his role on James Webb, Menzel oversees all system engineering efforts which include requirements formulation and management, systems design and integration, and systems validation and verification. He has led numerous studies which have contributed to the systems design and verification program. He wrote one of the first articles to layout a verification program for the system, "A Strawman Verification Program for the Next Generation Space Telescope" in 1998 and led the Independent Verification Assessment Team, to evaluate the verification risks in 2003.

Prior to his involvement with James Webb, Menzel was the Deputy Program Manager for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions Group for Lockheed Martin. While in this position, he participated in system engineering activities for the HST Orbital System Test (HOST), which flew on STS 95. Between 1995 and 1997, he was the Director of Systems Engineering at Orbital Science Corporation (OSC) in Germantown, Maryland. Aside from the functional management duties of this position he led several proposal efforts; among them, the successful GALEX Mission proposal for the OSC spacecraft. Between 1990 and 1995, Menzel was a Principal Member of the Technical Staff for Lockheed Martin's Astro-Space Division in East Windsor, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. While in this position, he contributed to numerous system conceptual design studies, was the functional manager of the Sensor Systems Group and developed and taught the Systems Engineering Training course for the Astro-Space Division. He was awarded the Martin Marietta General Manager's Award in 1993 for these efforts. Between 1981 and 1990, Menzel was an antenna engineer for RCA Astro in East Windsor New Jersey.

Menzel received a BS degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technnology in 1981 and earned an MS degree in Physics from Columbia University in 1986 while he was working for RCA.

During his career, Menzel has held various positions as an adjunct college instructor for Astronomy and Physics. He is an avid amateur astronomer and is a member of the American Astronomical Society.

ADHC / JHCSLA / NCE Co-Sponsored Colloquium

11:15am - 12:30pm | Martinson Honors Hall Lobby - 2nd floor

Sounds of the Skies: Music Inspired by Birds

Performers: Clara Abel, Hannah Burnett, Matthew Graybil, Giancarlo Latta,  Alexander Liebermann, David Rothenberg

This lecture-concert will showcase some of the most remarkable classical works inspired by birds. Featuring live performances by world-class musicians, the program spans music from 1723 to 2025! Beyond the music, this event highlights the significance of birdsong in our world today, exploring its cultural, ecological, and artistic importance. Join us for this experience that intertwines nature, science, and music.

Clara Abel:
Praised for her “gorgeous tone and fine solo playing” (Nordskjye), cellist Clara Abel enjoys a colorful international performing career on both modern and baroque instruments. She is a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Tempest String Quartet and has held quartet residencies at Kneisel Hall and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals. As winner of Juilliard’s baroque concerto competition she soloed with Juilliard415 at BEMF and Alice Tully Hall. Other recent highlights include Elgar’s cello concerto with NYO-USA, and her Lincoln Center solo debut with Masaaki Suzuki. She holds three degrees from Juilliard, where she specialized in chamber music and historical performance and was a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship.

Hannah Burnett:
New York-based violist Hannah Burnett enjoys an invigorating career as an active freelancer, holding positions in the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and New York Classical Players, and serving as guest principal viola with the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra for the 2024-2025 season. She is a passionate performer of new music, collaborating in recent years with composers such as Philippe Hersant, Eric Nathan, Hilda Paredes, and Jörg Widmann. Ms. Burnett completed both her B.M. and M.M. at Juilliard under the tutelage of Roger Tapping and Misha Amory, where she was a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship.

Matthew Graybil:
Praised by The New Yorker as an “exceptional young artist” American pianist Matthew Graybil has performed throughout the US, Canada, Europe and Mexico in venues such as Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center and Lincoln Center. Since making his orchestral debut at age 14, he has performed with the Fort Worth Symphony and the National Chamber Players among many others. He has been a prize-winner in the MTNA/Yamaha National Piano Competition, the New York Piano Competition, the Juilliard Gina Bachauer Competition, the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition and the Wideman International Piano Competition. Graybil completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at The Juilliard School, where he worked with Jerome Lowenthal and Matti Raekallio.

Giancarlo Latta:
Fiercely committed to the music of our time, violinist, composer, and writer Giancarlo Latta is interested in the intersection and convergence of music old and new. He has performed with flutist Claire Chase and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and in 2022 was the soloist in Tyshawn Sorey’s violin concerto at Spoleto Festival USA. Since 2019, Latta has been a member of the acclaimed Argus Quartet, with whom he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Morgan Library, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, UC San Diego, the University of Denver, and many other major chamber music venues across the country.

Alexander Liebermann:
Alexander Liebermann is a German-French composer whose work blends diverse influences, including philosophy, biology, and astronomy. Recent commissions include a climate-change-themed monodrama for the Deutsche Oper Berlin and a birdsong-inspired wind quintet for the Brazilian Winds Ensemble. Passionate about nature, his transcriptions of animal vocalizations have been featured in National Geographic and CBS Sunday Morning. Liebermann holds degrees from the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory, the Juilliard School, and Manhattan School of Music, and his thesis on Erwin Schulhoff earned him the Saul Braverman Award in Music Theory. He currently teaches at Juilliard and NJIT.

David Rothenberg:
Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg wrote Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful and many other books, published in at least eleven languages. He has more than forty recordings out, including One Dark Night I Left My Silent House which came out on ECM, and most recently In the Wake of Memories and Faultlines. He has performed or recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Suzanne Vega, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, Umru, Iva Bittová, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. In 2024 he won a Grammy Award as part of For the Birds, in the category of Best Boxed Set. Whale Music and Secret Sounds of Ponds are his latest books. Nightingales In Berlin is his latest film. Rothenberg is Distinguished Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

ADHC / HCAD Co-Sponsored Colloquium

2:30pm - 3:30pm | GITC 1400

AI for Nature: From Science to Impact

Speaker: Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf, Professor of Computer Science Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University

Computation has fundamentally changed the way we study nature. New data collection technologies, such as GPS, high-definition cameras, autonomous vehicles under water, on the ground, and in the air, genotyping, acoustic sensors, and crowdsourcing, are generating data about life on the planet that are orders of magnitude richer than any previously collected. Yet, our ability to extract insight from these data lags substantially behind our ability to collect it. The need for understanding is more urgent ever and the challenges are great. We are in the middle of the 6th extinction, losing the planet's biodiversity at an unprecedented rate and scale. In many cases, we do not even have the basic numbers of what species we are losing, which impacts our ability to understand biodiversity loss drivers, predict the impact on ecosystems, and implement policy. The talk will discuss how Al can turn these data into high resolution information source about living organisms, enabling scientific inquiry, conservation, and policy decisions. It will introduce a new field of science, imageomics, and present a vision and examples of Al as a trustworthy partner both in science and biodiversity conservation, discussing opportunities and challenges.

Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf is a Professor of Computer Science Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University, where she is also the Director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute. She is leading the US National Science Foundation funded Imageomics Institute and the US-Canada funded Al and Biodiversity Change (ABC) Global Center. Berger-Wolf is a member of the US National Academies Board on Life Sciences, US National Committee for the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), and the Advisory Committee for the Global Partnership on Al (GPAl) Al and Biodiversity working group, among many others. She has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring and is in high demand speaker for both technical research as well as general public audiences. She was recently selected as the Al 100 Global Thought Leaders by H20.ai. Berger-Wolf is also a director and co-founder of the Al for conservation non-profit Wild Me (now part of Conservation X Labs), home of the Wildbook project, which has been chosen by UNSECO as one of the 100 Al projects worldwide supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

ADHC / YWCC Co-Sponsored Colloquium

Women With STEAM Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:00pm | Martinson Honors Hall, IDS1

Being Impactful, Part 1

Speaker: Dr. Joel S. Bloom, President Emeritus of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) 

11:45am - 7:00pm | Bus transportation will be provided between campus and Mercer Museum & Fonthill Castle (Doylestown, PA)

Study Tour: Mercer Museum & Fonthill Castle (Doylestown, PA)

Join fellow scholars for a unique study tour of the Mercer Museum and Fonthill Castle (Doylestown, PA).

The Mercer Museum is a six-story reinforced concrete castle designed by Henry Mercer (1856-1930) and completed in 1916.  Today, it is one of Bucks County’s premier cultural attractions and a Smithsonian affiliate. The museum complex features local and national traveling exhibits, as well as a core museum collection of over 17,000 pre-Industrial tools. This permanent collection offers visitors a unique window into pre-Industrial America through sixty different crafts and trades, and is one of the world’s most comprehensive portraits of pre-Industrial American material culture. 

Built between 1908-1912, Fonthill Castle was the home of archaeologist, anthropologist, ceramist, scholar and antiquarian Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930). Mercer built Fonthill Castle as his home and as a showplace for his collection of tiles and prints.  The castle serves as an early example of reinforced concrete and features forty-four rooms, over two hundred windows, and eighteen fireplaces. Fonthill Castle’s interior features Mercer’s renowned, hand-crafted ceramic tiles designed at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement.

ADHC / HCAD Co-Sponsored Colloquium

10:30am - 12:00pm | Martinson Honors Hall, IDS1

The Best Singer at NJIT: Understanding the Song of the Mockingbird

Speaker: David Rothenberg, Distinguished Professor, NJIT

NJIT is a great habitat for the Northern Mockingbird, the finest singer among North American birds. People  often say the mockingbird mocks, or copies the sounds of other birds, as if making fun of them. But in fact, this bird is a composer and improviser, following his own musical rules, first described in print by David Rothenberg, Dave Gammon, and Tina Roeske. In this paper the authors explain what these birds are doing, and compare their music to the likes of Beethoven, Tuvan throat singing, and Kendrick Lamar.

Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg wrote Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful and many other books, published in at least eleven languages. He has more than forty recordings out, including One Dark Night I Left My Silent House which came out on ECM, and most recently In the Wake of Memories and Faultlines. He has performed or recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Suzanne Vega, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, Umru, Iva Bittová, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. In 2024 he won a Grammy Award as part of For the Birds, in the category of Best Boxed Set. Whale Music and Secret Sounds of Ponds are his latest books. Nightingales In Berlin is his latest film. Rothenberg is Distinguished Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

ADHC / JHCSLA Co-Sponsored Colloquium

11:30am - 1:00pm | NJIT Campus Center Ballroom

The Sustainable Campus: ADHC First-Year Seminar Biodiversity Initiatives

Honors first year scholars will present their proposals for increasing and sustaining biodiversity through a campus planting. The NJIT Urban Ecology Lab and Real Estate Development & Capital Operations teams will provide the context for this project and select the winning team. Join us to support the scholars and learn about our sustainability efforts.

City Leadership & Civic Engagement Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:00pm | Martinson Honors Hall, IDS1

A Case for Cultivating STEM Identity among Underrepresented Groups: Exploring the Association between Students' Persistence and Their Access to Support

Speaker: Dr. Emily Tancredi-Brice Agbenyega, University Lecturer in Civic Engagement, Albert Dorman Honors College, NJIT

Dr. Emily Tancredi-Brice Agbenyega joined the Albert Dorman Honors College in August 2024 as a University Lecturer in Civic Engagement. In this new role, Dr. Agbenyega is responsible for developing and implementing Honors service-learning courses as well as expanding co-curricular civic engagement opportunities.

Dr. Agbenyega comes to NJIT after teaching Sociology at CUNY and SUNY. As an educator, Dr. Agbenyega prepares diverse students to develop the knowledge and skills needed to do community-engaged research that positively impacts their communities. In her courses, she employs reflective, experiential learning approaches that help students develop critical thinking and leadership skills.

Dr. Agbenyega’s research has focused on the intersection of identity and educational experiences, with an emphasis on how students’ identity can serve as an asset that fosters their persistence, particularly in fields in which they are underrepresented. Dr. Agbenyega holds a PhD in Urban Education from Temple University where she researched the impact of sociocultural and science identity on the career trajectories of Latina engineers. She has presented her work at various education research conferences and has collaborated on publications on topics including student motivation and engagement in STEM and qualitative research.

City Leadership & Civic Engagement Colloquium

Women With STEAM Colloquium

9:15am - 3:25pm* | NJIT Campus Center Ballroom

2025 Murray Center Women Designing the Future Conference: “Looking Back, Moving Forward”

Take a guided tour of the near future with experts in artificial intelligence, climate change, Hollywood film and more!

Conference Theme:

Murray Center’s 30th anniversary Women Designing the Future Conference arrives at a crucial inflection point in the history of technology—a time of excitement and anxiety in equal measure. To mark the occasion, we’ve invited experts in a variety of fields to help us track what has changed over the last three decades--and then to give us their vision of what the world will look like 30 years from now. Speakers include data scientists and AI pioneers; ecologists and environmental policymakers; high-tech entrepreneurs—and a computer scientist who uses code to make Pixar animations come alive!

Conference Sponsor:

The 2025 WDF Conference is being hosted by NJIT’s Murray Center for Women in Technology, which, for three decades, has worked to connect women from a wide range of backgrounds to each other and to the resources they need to succeed in STEM careers. The WDF conference series highlights innovative, high-impact work by women that integrates the domains of scientific research, technological design, and the humanities and social sciences. 

*Scholars may attend any or all of these 3 session options to count towards the colloquium.

Option 1 - "The Future of AI: Innovation, Inclusion, Impact"

9:15am - 11:30am - Speakers: Jamie Payton, Anne Gates, Chitra Dorai, Olga Russakovsky, Michele Alcazar

Option 2 - Keynote Sessions

11:30am - 1:40pm - Keynote Speakers: Danielle Feinberg, Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Option 3 - “Unequal Earth: Understanding Disparities in a Warming World"

1:45pm - 3:25pm - Speakers: Caroline Devan, Nathaly Agosto Filion, Melissa Miles, Nicole Wiley

Women With STEAM Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:00pm | NJIT Makerspace

Make 203: Introduction to SLA Printing

Building on Make 103, this training covers stereolithographic 3D printing, a printing process that involves curing a photopolymer resin layer-by-layer. Briefly covers design considerations, slicing, starting and removing prints. Prerequisites: Make 101, Make 103

ADHC / NCE Co-Sponsored Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:00pm | Martinson Honors Hall, IDS1

Modulating Human Behavior through Technology and Policy

Speaker: Roni Barak Ventura, Assistant Professor, NJIT

Human behavior is not always conducive to our health, happiness, and success. Technologies and policies are developed to improve those aspects of our lives, yet our interactions with them are influenced by a variety of dynamic factors. My research aims to understand humans’ behavior from data and hypothesis-driven experimentation, towards the design of interface interventions that optimize individual and group performance. In this talk, I will present the results of my previous research along with ongoing projects I lead at the School of Applied Engineering Technology.

Roni Barak Ventura is an Assistant Professor at the School of Applied Engineering and Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology. She received a BSc in biology from the University of Rochester in 2014 and a MSc and PhD in biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering from New York University in 2017 and 2021, respectively. Between 2021 and 2023, she served as a Science Analyst in the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation. Her research interests include rehabilitation, motion analysis, human–computer interactions, causal inference, and time series analysis.

ADHC / NCE Co-Sponsored Colloquium

Women With STEAM Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:00pm | Campus Center Atrium

Advancing Digital Health Research and Product Development: The Importance of Interdisciplinary or Dual-Training

Speaker: Jeremy Block, Adj. Asst Professor, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY

Jeremy Block is a faculty member at the Marxe School of public and international affairs at Baruch College, CUNY where he teaches courses on Ethics, Race & Inequality, and Science & Technology Policy.  Dr. Block serves as the Medical Office & Regulatory Science Strategy Director for the global technology company Dassault Systemes. In addition, he serves on the clinical trials ethics boards (IRB) for MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Northwell Health. He has served on his cooperative buildings board of directors since 2018, and is currently the board president.

From 2017-2022 Jeremy was a co-founder of Medaptive health (acquired in 2022), a clinical trial technology company where he led product and regulatory functions.  From 2016-2021 Jeremy served as executive director of a digital health study performing population screening of genetic founder mutations at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Previously, Dr. Block was an Assistant Professor of Population Health Science & Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he was also an ethics board chairman (IRB) at hospitals within the Mount Sinai Health System. Prior roles include working for The City of New York in Procurement in the Bloomberg Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget within the Executive Office of the President of the United States in the Bush and Obama Administrations. 

Jeremy's main interests are research ethics, digital health research design and oversight, digital health product development and launch, protecting vulnerable populations participating in research. and research during disasters & pandemics.

His public service advising centers on governments at the federal, state, and local level focused on science and technology including; digital health, human subject protections, chemical & biological weapons, green and social procurement, emerging science and technology markets, and research systems at public & private universities. 

He holds a Bachelors in Chemistry & Biology, Masters in Public Policy, and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Duke University.

Medical Humanities Colloquium

7:00pm | Jim Wise Theatre, Kupfrian Hall (NJIT)

Amélie - performance and talkback

Adapted from the hit 2001 French-language film, Amélie (the musical) is about an extraordinary young woman who lives quietly in the world but loudly in her mind. She covertly improvises small but surprising acts of kindness that bring joy and mayhem. But when a chance at love comes her way, Amélie realizes that to find happiness she’ll have to risk everything and say what’s in her heart. Be inspired by this imaginative dreamer who finds her voice, discovers the power of connection, and sees possibility around every corner.

Ticket purchase is required.

10:00am - 12:00pm | Eberhardt Hall Room 112

Bloomberg NJIT STEM Report

Next-Gen STEM - NJIT Researchers Working to Solve Problems and Improve Life

Join us for a live 2-hour Bloomberg Radio broadcast from the NJIT Campus.

ADHC / MTSM Co-Sponsored Colloquium

2:30pm - 4:30pm | NJIT Campus Center Atrium

Passing the Torch: Networking Roundtable

Albert Dorman Honors College scholars and alumni will connect in this interactive networking roundtable event.  

Women With STEAM Colloquium

11:30am - 1:00pm | NJIT Campus Center Ballroom

Honors Interdisciplinary Research Forum

Scholars from ENGL102 Honors, STS 205 Honors, ENTR 210 Honors, and the Honors Summer Research Institute (HSRI) will discuss their research and projects. Engage with scholars as they showcase their digital posters and cast your vote for the top presentations. This forum will be highly interactive and an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas while learning about an array of research taking place across campus. 

2:30pm - 4:00pm | Tour meeting location TBC

Newark Study Tour: The Krueger-Scott Mansion and Newark Community during Great Migration Newark

ADHC / HCAD Co-Sponsored Colloquium

City Leadership & Civic Engagement Colloquium

11:30am - 1:00pm | Weston Lecture Hall 1

Fellowships for International Experiences and Research

Join us as we honor this year’s prestigious fellowship recipients. Hear from current and former students about why and how to apply for prestigious fellowships that help you to travel internationally and gain research experience. They will share tips about the process and how it has helped them to think through and write about their goals.

Global Studies Colloquium