Welcome to the Department of Biological Sciences Web Site!

The Department of Biological Sciences (DBS), located in Colton Hall, is housed within the College of Science and Liberal Arts (CSLA) here at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).

However, the Department of Biological Sciences here at NJIT is federated with Rutgers University-Newark. That opens many wonderful opportunities for students on both sides of federation, NJIT and Rutgers! It means that NJIT students are free to take biology classes at Rutgers, and Rutgers students can come to NJIT, too. When students graduate or finish a degree program, they receive diplomas issued jointly from NJIT and Rutgers. Biology students thus obtain the best of both Universities: NJIT, a technical school that emphasizes the quantitative and technical aspects of biology; and Rutgers, a liberal arts school whose biology classes focus on the cellular and molecular aspects of biology, as well as ecology and evolution.

At NJIT, biology was upgraded from a program to a department in 2007. In the past several years the number of biology students has increased 10-fold! Our faculty at NJIT (currently 9 members, but at a total of 32 overall) carries out state-of-the-art research and instruction at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. All of our PhD students, and some of our MS students perform original research in our laboratories, while undergraduate students have many opportunities to do research as well. The research programs in our department are supported by federal, state and private funds, including grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Binational Science Foundation, the National Park Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Minority Academic Careers Program, etc.

Biology Professors perform research in such areas as regulation of neural network function, neuro-immunology, waves and diffusion of ions in the brain, respiratory physiology, population dynamics, global climate and ecosystem’s change, etc.

Students who want to fuse biology with other subjects will be happy to know that biology professors collaborate with professors from other departments, such as Mathematics and Chemistry, Neuroscience at Rutgers, etc. In addition, we currently offer three double majors with Math, Chemistry and STS. Students are encouraged to cross-fertilize their interests by conducting inter-disciplinary research.

Please contact us for more information about the Department of Biological Sciences!