Some 87 students — the best of the best — were selected from more than 300 applicants to attend the prestigious, free-to-families New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology at Rutgers University program this summer.

The students, who had gone through a rigorous application and selection process, were divided into small groups to do research during the annual residential four-week session. Emphasis was placed on solving complex issues that exist on a local, state, national and even global level.

They took classes taught by Rutgers faculty and attended life skills workshops. The Piscataway-based Governor’s School is funded by the State of New Jersey, Rutgers, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, South Jersey Industries and PSE&G.

The students, who were not graded and did not receive credit for attending the program, collaborated on topics ranging from autonomic cloud computing to wireless body area sensor networks for biomedical applications and many research areas in between.

PSE&G helped students explore using solar cells with electric cars, and Ericsson mentored those working on an industrial-strength Android phone. Branchburg-based Storming Robots helped with a project integrating GPS into robots.

Students presented their projects at a symposium that took place on July 27, 2012. A complete list of the topics presented can be found here.

On Wednesdays, the students were given an opportunity to visit N.J. and N.Y. firms, tech and non-tech. According to Jean Patrick Antoine, the program’s assistant director, the companies and organizations that participated in the Wednesday visits included Lockheed Martin (N.J.), Morgan Stanley (New York), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York), the Federal Aviation Administration (N.J.), L’Oreal (N.J.), the Rutgers EcoComplex (N.J.), Picatinny Arsenal (N.J.), PSEG Nuclear (N.J.), Johnson & Johnson (N.J.), Juniper Networks (N.J.), SilverLine Windows (N.J.), Merck (N.J.), the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (N.J.) and Colgate-Palmolive (N.J.).

When NJTechWeekly.com visited OpenLab: The Junos Center for Innovation (Bridgewater) this summer for an event related to the Bring Your Own Device movement, Jerry Passione, OpenLab general manager, mentioned his company had become involved with the Governor’s School and found the experience quite rewarding. Some 23 students of the 87 elected to visit OpenLab to learn more about networking.

In an email, Passione said Juniper had presented a range of topics to the students — a corporate overview (why and how the company was founded; its mission, values, etc.), networking 101 (various aspects of network technology and terminology), security (reasons for it, vulnerabilities, solutions), mobility basics (mobility defined; how cellphones and calls work) and a typical day in the life of an engineer. He added that the day was “well received” by both the students and the Juniper Networks participants.