Alumni News

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Juan Torres ’97, ’01

Born to Build

By Evan Koblentz

Bruce Springsteen may be The Boss, but Juan Torres ’97, ’01 was the engineering chief at the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music in Long Branch, N.J.

Torres is senior project engineer at Torcon, a building firm in Red Bank that handled the center’s construction. Torres interned at Torcon as an undergraduate, worked there after graduating, left for other opportunities and then returned for a leadership role. He studied construction engineering at NJIT and later added an M.S. in civil engineering, following the career of his civil engineer father.

He’s helped erect an airport terminal, a hospital, a pharmaceutical office and a major college basketball facility, yet nothing was more singular for him than the Springsteen project.

“This one is very unique,” Torres said, “not just because of Bruce, but from an architectural engineering perspective. I’ve been close to 30 years in the business and I’ve never seen a building like this.”

The 30,000-sq. ft. building, located on the campus of Monmouth University, has the shape of a shipping container and is LEED Gold certified. It boasts a long list of unique features. The frame is timber — “Lincoln Logs at a large scale,” Torres said. Much of the timber is exposed, and visitors are greeted through a boardwalk entrance evoking Springsteen’s shore roots. The building’s exterior is a metal shell, designed with an aesthetic rust that reminds visitors of blue-collar songs like Factory, My Hometown and The River — the last of which has a construction worker as protagonist.

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Inside the building, no two interior rooms are the same size. Almost all infrastructure, such as HVAC pipes, that is often exposed in large buildings is instead hidden away from view. Radiant piping will provide heating and cooling in the winter, and there’s museum-grade humidity control to protect artifacts. There’s also a scholarly research area and a 241-seat theater. Wall tiles in the restrooms show parts of the cover image from Springsteen’s first album, Greetings from Asbury Park.

Torres was aware of Springsteen as a celebrity and rock star from New Jersey, but said he was impressed to find a down-to-earth, regular person behind the mythological status. He said Springsteen was happy to chat with constructionworkers, pose for photos and sign their memorabilia. “Even if you’re not a fan, it just makes you stop and think he’s amazing. He’s been in the business for 50-plus years,” Torres noted.  

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Pia Piazzi ’26

From Materials Engineering to SpaceX

By Mindy Weisberger

All engineers are familiar with the chemical, mechanical and physical properties of the materials that they work with. But for materials engineers, their expertise goes much deeper, demonstrating highly detailed knowledge — down to the molecular and atomic level — of materials such as ceramics, concrete, metals, plastics, textiles and compounds that are compatible with living tissues. 

With a B.S. in materials engineering, Pia Piazzi ’26, is bringing that proficiency in materials science to the aerospace industry. 

During her time at the Newark College of Engineering, Piazzi followed a thread that led from an early interest in textile engineering to NJIT’s materials engineering program, then to a staff position at SpaceX. She joined the company as a build reliability engineer for Starship, the system that includes SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket. 

Materials science is broad, but it was the breadth of her major that appealed to Piazzi, allowing her to explore engineering applications for a wide range of materials before finding the discipline that was the best fit.

“Over time, I’ve been able to work on a bunch of different materials, whether it be polymers or ceramics or composites. 
I was ready to let materials take me anywhere,” she says. “That was exciting for me — the surprise and unknown of what it could be.”

Piazzi’s student team placed second in the 2023 First-Year Engineering Design Showcase, for a carbon-capturing prototype. That same year she received a $3,000 Robert Sydney Needham Fellowship for a research proposal on rheology — the study of how materials flow and deform. Piazzi spent 10 weeks researching emulsion rheology under David Venerus, professor of chemical and materials engineering, earning an induction into NJIT’s chapter of the National Academy of Innovators. 

In 2024, Piazzi presented a poster at the Materials Science and Technology (MS&T24) conference, for an investigation into the mechanical properties of silicone-based composite materials. At the conference, she learned about a program in Arizona called the MateriAlZ Winter School.

“It’s a fully funded program that brings undergraduates to the University of Arizona Biosphere to learn about material science and engineering,” she says. “I applied, was accepted, and then that winter of my junior year, I was able to go to Arizona and be fully immersed in the world of material science and engineering for four days.”

Summer internships in materials engineering followed, at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center in 2024, and at Tesla in 2025.

In her new job at SpaceX, Piazzi joins an interdisciplinary team contributing to fabrication, prototype design, inspection procedures, data collection and visualization.  

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Laszlo Moharita ’01

Defining What Luxury Looks Like

If you’ve ever picked up a Tom Ford fragrance or reached for an Aveda haircare product, you’ve already encountered Laszlo Moharita’s ’01 work — whether you realized it or not.

As vice president of Package Development for Fragrance and Haircare at The Estée Lauder Companies, Moharita leads global teams of engineers, designers and material scientists responsible for bringing some of the world’s most iconic beauty brands to life. Every detail — from the weight of a bottle to the feel of a cap — is deliberate. It’s where precision meets perception, and where Moharita has built his career.

That career traces back, unexpectedly, to Newark.

Moharita arrived in the United States from Venezuela in 1997 without fluency in English. Within a year, he was sitting in his first class at NJIT. Three years later, he graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, a perfect 4.0 GPA, and valedictorian honors. The speed of that ascent is striking, but more revealing is how it happened: he met pressure head-on and got to work.

“NJIT gave me the mindset that no problem is ever too challenging,” Moharita said. “It just takes the right group of people coming together and bringing their expertise to solve it.”

He put that mindset into motion immediately. A final internship turned into a full-time role at Estée Lauder’s fragrance manufacturing facility — and within a year, he was selected for the company’s prestigious Presidential Management Development Program, a fast track for high-potential leaders.

After several years rotating across Estée Lauder’s brands, Moharita moved to Johnson & Johnson, where he spent 16 years expanding his leadership across packaging, engineering, and R&D in beauty, healthcare and e-commerce. He ultimately led OTC package development before returning to Estée Lauder, where he now oversees global package development for fragrance and haircare.

Ask him about his proudest accomplishment, and he doesn’t point to a product, an award or a title.

“The biggest accomplishment in my career has been the teams of people I have been able to assemble and lead,” he said. “I love working with and developing people and seeing them achieve their greatest potential.”

That focus on growth extends to himself. Since graduating, Moharita has earned an MBA in marketing along with multiple advanced certificates in product design, innovation, entrepreneurship, and R&D management — a reflection of his belief that learning is never finished.