Fall 2023 BU ENGineer magazine by Boston University College of Engineering

FALL 2023

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

C E H

: E R U

INSIDE LEADERSHIP TRANSITIONS BU ENGINEERS WIN NASA COMPETITION

AN LEV D A ER I FO AGI R B NG ETT ROB ER OTI HEA CS LTH

EMBRACING THE POWER OF CONVERGENCE AND COLLABORATION.

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contents

ENGINEER MAGAZINE FALL 2023

16 MACHINES AND HEALTH COVER STORY

AI AND ROBOTICS CAN BE USED TO BOOST OUR HEALTH ON MANY LEVELS

DEPARTMENTS 3 Upfront 26 Research

THINKING BIGGER

AN ALUM EARNS AWARD FOR STEM OUTREACH EFFORTS

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BY DEAN AD INTERIM ELISE MORGAN

Evolution isn’t just about change. It’s about moving forward from a place of stability and taking on new challenges. As I assume leadership of the College of Engineering (see opposite page), the evolution of our work, our community and our impact is very much on my mind. In 2021, the college launched an ambitious strategic plan to leverage the power of convergence to accelerate new discoveries, bring those discoveries into the real world and enhance how we educate our students. As a longtime faculty member and an associate dean, I was part of the team that developed the strategic plan and launched its implementation. While reflecting on the plan’s successes so far, I am mindful of how we must keep pushing forward, keep evolving. As the world continues to change at breakneck speed, the need for engineering solutions to meet society’s most pressing challenges grows. Fortunately, our college is up to the

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I know our ability to impact society will be limited unless we continue to build a foundation of inclusion and belonging.

Technology & Entrepreneurship Center and the soon-to-open Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching & Innovation Center. Industry partners are telling us what skills are needed in their rapidly changing domains, helping us ensure our graduates are in demand in the workforce. Our industry partners also have a front-row seat to the research advances we are making, thus accelerating innovation overall. Finally, I know our ability to impact society will be limited unless we continue to build a foundation of inclusion and belonging. We can—and must—do more to be a community in which all are welcome. I am proud of our outreach programs that engage middle- and high-school students, many from our home city of Boston, in hands-on engineering activities aimed at sparking their interest in making engineering a career choice. I look forward to growing these programs as well as ensuring that we identify and address biases and other barriers to including diverse, authentic perspectives and experiences among our faculty, staff and students. We will leverage all these strengths to achieve our ambitious goals, and I have every reason to believe we will succeed in increasing our impact on an ever-changing society.

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Meeting the Future

task because we begin from a position of strength. One indicator is our rising status as a destination for top students. Our applicant pools are more accomplished year after year, and more of these top students are choosing us over other engineering schools. The number of Pell Grant recipients—who are often the first in their families to attend college—is also rising, ensuring that we are opening our doors to broader participation in engineering. Our research portfolio has also never been stronger. Our strategic plan identifies six areas where the college is especially well positioned to make substantive impacts. Each of these areas is convergent, meaning that faculty and students work across disciplinary boundaries to solve important societal challenges. This approach is nurturing a culture of innovation and creativity made possible by BU’s unique mix of collaborative spirit and appetite for change. I’m confident that by continuing to nurture this culture, we will enable new convergent areas of excellence to bubble up, motivated by both technological advances and changes in the needs of the world around us. This emphasis does not apply just to research. Our undergraduates’ education is not limited to the traditional definitions of their respective majors. We have made curricular changes to expose every student to data science, and any student can select from more than a half dozen cross-cutting concentrations, like machine learning. Study abroad and undergraduate research experiences are thriving. An array of opportunities in and out of the classroom available across majors puts our students in the driver’s seat so they can follow their interests and find their passions. At the graduate level, programs like Robotics and Autonomous Systems expose students to multiple disciplines and how they are integrated. Engagement with industry is another pillar of our strategic plan and is paying dividends, particularly in our hands-on makerspaces—the Engineering Product Innovation Center, the Bioengineering

upfront

THREE ENG FACULTY WIN NSF CAREER AWARDS

A FUTURE FLYING FREE OF FOSSIL FUELS

Elise Morgan is now Dean ad interim, replacing former Dean Kenneth Lutchen, who is now BU’s Provost ad interim.

Morgan Takes ENG Helm LUTCHEN NAMED INTERIM PROVOST

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG LEVY

ollege of Engineering Dean Kenneth Lutchen took over as Boston University’s interim provost and chief academic officer on July 1. Maysarah K. Sukkar Professor of Engineering Design and Innovation Elise Morgan was appointed interim College of Engineering dean. “Ken Lutchen is well suited by experience and stature to lead the University’s academic enterprise through the transition,” then-President Robert A. Brown wrote in a letter to the BU community. “Under his leadership the College of Engineering has thrived, attracting ever-more talented students, staff and faculty. Ken has the knowledge and well-tested judgment to make the difficult decisions about personnel and resources that are essential to maintaining the momentum of the University.” The appointments are part of a transition in leadership that began when Brown announced in the fall of 2022 that he would retire on July 31, 2023, after leading BU since 2005. In the spring, Provost Jean Morrison said she would step down at the end of June after 12 years in the post. Before departing office, Brown appointed Lutchen interim provost and Morrison named Morgan interim dean. Brown said in his letter that Lutchen has worked to build a welcoming community for students, staff and faculty at ENG, noting it was the first college to create a dean-level position for diver-

sity and outreach and Lutchen installed a diverse new generation of leadership. Lutchen, who is also a professor of biomedical engineering, says he is “deeply honored” by the new assignment. He has been dean at ENG since 2006. “I have spent my entire academic career at Boston University,” he said. “I have had the wonderful experience of watching our consistent commitment and success in all sectors of our mission, from the education of citizens from all disciplines prepared to improve society to the superb range of research impacts across all fields.” Questrom School of Business Dean Emeritus Kenneth Freeman is serving as interim president while the search for Brown’s permanent successor continues.

“BU has strong momentum as a result of Bob’s and Jean’s leadership. I look forward to partnering with Ken Lutchen to sustain and build upon their legacy,” Freeman said. Brown believes that his permanent successor should have the chance to choose who will succeed Morrison as BU’s permanent provost. “It is my hope that Ken Lutchen will serve as interim provost at least until a permanent president is named,” he wrote. “Ken Lutchen will bring a plethora of experience and excellent energy and enthusiasm to the interim provost role,” said Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the School of Law and Ryan Roth Gallo & Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law. “He’s a creative thinker with real commitments to E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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upfront ensuring a rich student experience; supporting faculty research and recruitment; and advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and access. “Critically,” she added, “Ken is committed to advancing the pillars of the strategic plan that Provost Morrison led in its development and to keeping BU on its current upward trajectory.” Morgan, who Lutchen called “an extraordinary leader,” has served as ENG’s associate dean for research and faculty development, and director of the Center for Multiscale and Translational Mechanobiology. As associate dean, Morgan has been “a critical component of the college’s new strategic plan to leverage the power of collaboration for research excellence and impact,” Lutchen said. “She has stood up new junior faculty mentoring programs, designed and overseen a new form of

Morgan has been “a critical component of the college’s new strategic plan to leverage the power of collaboration for research excellence and impact,” Lutchen said. faculty searches that focus on convergent research themes, helped recruit superb cross-disciplinary graduate students, and designed and oversaw the college’s holistic

grants administration and finance system.” “She has also worked seamlessly with BU’s Office of Research and leaders in other schools and colleges to advance research excellence for all of BU,” Lutchen said. As a faculty member, she “has a deep record of being dedicated to the student experience and success.” In her letter to the BU community, Morrison praised Morgan for her “experience and effectiveness as a leader,” and her extensive teaching and research. “I want to thank Elise Morgan for the service and leadership she will provide in the academic year ahead,” Morrison wrote. “The college is a wonderful community of students, staff and faculty who believe deeply in commitment to impact,” Morgan said. “I look forward to doing all that I can to ensure that the college and BU move forward to even greater successes.” — JOEL BROWN

Committed to Diversifying the Engineering Workforce

amed the College of Engineering’s assistant dean of outreach and diversity in 2023, Pamela Audeh plans and runs initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in engineering and rank among the college’s primary strategic goals. Audeh has a master’s degree in mind, brain and education from Harvard University’s School of Education, with a focus on the cumulative effects of stress and trauma on learning and behavior, and a bachelor’s degree from UMass Amherst. She brings 25 years of experience and a passion for engaging research and clinical faculty with K–12 students. “I have focused my career on providing social, emotional and educational support and opportunities to youth and families from historically underrepresented groups in the STEM fields to support them in achieving their goals and dreams,” Audeh says. 4 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Prior to joining BU, she worked at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Community Health and Health Equity, where she ran youth education and workbased mentoring programs for primarily first-generation and students of color, spanning pre-school to grad school and beyond. “Diversifying the engineering workforce is crucial for promoting innovation, creativity and equity in society,” Audeh says. “By removing barriers and promoting diversity, we can ensure the engineering profession, and all the opportunity it affords, represents all communities and better serves the needs of all individuals. A lack of diversity in the engineering workforce perpetuates systemic bias in the design of technology, which can result in products that do not adequately serve the needs of underrepresented populations.” These products include facial recognition technology and medical devices.

Pamela Audeh is ENG’s new head of DEI.

“The importance of having diverse perspectives in the design and development of technology to ensure that it is equitable and accessible for all cannot be overstated. It has a direct impact on people’s health, well-being and future prospects.” — JOHN BAKUM

Michael Economo (BME).

Three ENG Faculty Win NSF CAREER Awards

hree ENG faculty have received highly competitive Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance scientific research in their fields.

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The more we understand motor activity at the neuron level, the closer we get to more effective therapies for ALS and Parkinson’s. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR MICHAEL ECONOMO (BME) Economo studies the structure and function of neural circuits in the brain that control movement using optical, electrophysiological and genetic tools that illuminate the structure of the circuits in mouse models. “A major output of the brain is movement,” Economo says. There are high-level systems responsible for movements that require more planning and execution—tasks that require the brain to combine a ton of information to do the movements that get you where you want to go. And there are low-level systems that translate to automatic reflexes and simpler movements, like when a doctor taps your knee to make your leg swing. With his CAREER award, Economo is investigating how high- and low-level circuits work together to control motor movements. The more scientists understand motor activity at the neuron level, Economo says, the closer we can get to creating more effective therapies for neurological disorders that impact motor movements, like ALS and Parkinson’s. “There are foundational problems that need to be solved before therapies for these brain diseases can be more effective.”

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR HADI NIA (BME) “The lung is one of the most mechanically active and dynamic organs in the body,” says Nia, who works at the intersection of physics, biology and immunology to explore the dynamics of the lungs. With his NSF CAREER award, Nia will be studying lung function in real time, at the cellular level, using technology developed in his lab. “While the traditional function of the lung is assumed to be gas exchange, the major role of lung immunity, and how it is affected by the mechanics of breathing and blood circulation, have recently become more evident,” Nia says. Nia hopes to answer outstanding questions in the field: How are the blood flow and oxygen transport at the capillary level affected by the breath’s expansion? How do immune cells interact with the capillaries? “By utilizing this transformative technology and the fundamental insight that it provides,” says Nia, “we might have a broad impact, immediate applications and a deeper understanding of the role of mechanics in lung development, aging, exercise and pathologies.” ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ALYSSA PIERSON (ME) “When robots encounter unknown situations, they might freeze or lock up,” says Pierson. “How do we design the new algorithms and control policies to make these robots more capable?” Currently, most delivery robots have a human on the other end supervising them. But with more and more delivery robots out in the world from different companies, with different guidance systems, autonomous robots need to be able to encounter one another and navigate unfamiliar situations without freezing. With her CAREER award, Pierson is studying new types of robot interactions to create more complex behavior among multirobot systems. Pierson envisions robot teams that adapt and cooperate with others, ultimately making for safer and more complex teams of mobile service bots. “We need the robots to respond naturally to humans as well as be a little more flexible and a little bit more capable when they come across unknown situations.”—JESSICA COLAROSSI

Hadi Nia (BME).

Alyssa Pierson (ME).

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First Design-AThon Generates Tech Solutions

hree student teams won cash prizes for crafting technological solutions to healthcare disparities in the Merck-sponsored first annual BTEC x BMES Design-A-Thon, a joint effort by ENG’s Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC) and the BU student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). Melissa Ferranti, Yash Patel and Kara Walp (all ENG’25) won the Molecular & Tissue Engineering and Drug Delivery category with their project, “GHB Detection for Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault Prevention.” Prescribed to treat narcolepsy, GHB is one of the drugs misused in sexual assaults (also known as “date-rape drugs”). Nearly one in five Black women in the US experiences rape. Combining their concentrations in computer engineering and mathematical statistics, machine learning and nanotechnology, this team developed the prototype for a small, paper-based assay that uses silver nanoparticles to detect the presence of GHB, allowing users to discreetly check whether their drink has been spiked. Naimah Gill, Krish Kapadka, Sarah Sheng and Ksenija Tasich (all ENG’23) took first prize in Biosensors, Medical Devices & Diagnostics with “Panoramic Camera Design for the Detection of Colorectal Cancer.” Patients at risk for colorectal cancer disproportionately come from underrepresented and low-income populations. This team developed a near-infrared imaging device that will allow gastroenterologists to clearly distinguish between normal and diseased tissue, making rectal examinations more efficient while improving safety, cost and comfort. Antonio Alonso (ENG’23), Jacob Chin (ENG’25), Ronald Huang (ENG’23) and Nicholas Rabines (ENG’23) won in Data Science, Precision & Predictive Medicine 6 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

with “Multiclass Classification UI for Chest X-Rays via Convolutional NNs.” Combining their growing expertise in biomedical and computer engineering, this team developed a user-friendly website that employs AI to analyze chest X-ray images to identify and predict diseases. It’s potentially a cost-effective solution for users who might otherwise face financial barriers in seeking medical consultation.

Made of Paper Towel Tubes, This Robotic Arm Teaches STEM While Playing Chess

oah Jones and Tiaan Spies, both firstyear master’s students in robotics & autonomous systems, won the 2023 Imagineering Competition with their project, Creative Arm for Robotic Learning (CARL), a fun, tactile way to teach kids about computer science and mathematics. In the year-long Imagineering Competition, teams of students use machinery and tools in the Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Laboratory, along with a small stipend for additional materials, to design and build original technological solutions to societal problems. Both chess enthusiasts, Jones and Spies wanted to apply what they were learning in class to a real-life robotic chess opponent, which they soon realized could also bolster lessons in computer programming, linear algebra and other STEM topics, perhaps helping to prepare today’s students for the growing market for jobs in computer science. “It’s so much more fun to learn to code when you can type something in a computer and then watch it change the physical world around you, than to just see something change on a screen,” Jones said

The Creative Arm for Robotic Learning (CARL).

during the duo’s presentation to the contest judges, Professor of the Practice Diane Joseph-McCarthy (BME), Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration Richard Lally and Professor Thomas Little (ECE, SE). Jones and Spies built CARL for under $150, using recycled paper towel tubes, a Servo motor, a Raspberry Pi camera and parts they created on a 3D printer. The arm is lightweight and safe, yet capable of picking up and moving chess pieces. And the system integrates imaging with machine learning to detect the position of chess pieces and strategize moves. For their creativity, the quality of their prototype, the functionality of the project and its potential to impact society, the judges awarded Jones and Spies first prize: $3,000, plus assistance with patent submission and marketing analysis. — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

Tiaan Spies (left) and Noah Jones.

Christopher Chen Elected NAI Fellow

Christopher Chen (BME, MSE).

magine a future where we can build replacement organs as easily as tech companies churn out new phones. Or where a heart attack can be cured with a simple patch. Or where liver failure can be reversed with a supercharged tissue implant. This future is closer than you think— thanks to Christopher Chen (BME, MSE). A BU William F. Warren Distinguished Professor, Chen was recently named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) fellow in recognition of a career filled with patents and inventions—many building toward those potentially lifesaving breakthroughs. In just the past year, Chen has cofounded a regenerative medicine company—securing $110 million in funding to boost its organ-healing technology—and helped build a miniature beating heart that could speed efforts to repair damage from a heart attack. To be nominated for an NAI fellowship, inventors must have a track record of “outstanding contributions to innovation” and be a named inventor on patents. Chen checks those boxes. His nearly 300 papers have been cited by other researchers more than 65,000 times, and he’s filed 31 patents. A medical doctor, Chen also has a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics— dual influences that have been interwoven through his research career. The NAI draws members from universities and research institutes around the world—BU is one of nine founding charter members. The latest class of fellows, which includes Nobel laureates and together holds more than 5,000 patents, was inducted in June. Chen is the founding director of BU’s Biological Design Center, which aims to improve our understanding of how cells and biological systems work and then find ways to control them to develop new types of cells and organisms. The center’s goal is to design technologies that can improve human

health and the environment: engineered blood vessels that help fight cardiovascular disease, artificial microbial communities that could herald more sustainable energy. “Over the years, we have developed a series of ways to engineer devices, materials and approaches used to organize, characterize and manipulate how cells interact with each other and with materials,” says Chen of the inventions that have come out of his work, “and then use these platforms to help build engineered human tissues for either research or therapeutic applications.” As codirector of CELL-MET, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center in Cellular Metamaterials at BU, Chen is part of an interdisciplinary team trying to build heart repair patches. They hope their work will eventually lead to a cure for heart attacks. But one of the challenges of lab-made organs and tissues is keeping them fed and flourishing—which is where Chen’s team comes in. “We have recently been investigating how to build progressively larger tissues, such as heart muscle, focusing in particular on how to build the blood vessel networks needed to penetrate through and nourish larger tissues,” says Chen, who also heads his own tissue microfabrication lab and is a coprincipal investigator for the NSF-funded Center for Engineering MechanoBiology.

Chen is part of an interdisciplinary team building heart repair patches. Their work might lead to a cure for heart attacks.

“We would love to establish a biomanufacturing infrastructure that would allow us to build designer organs and tissues in a scalable, cost-effective manner, in the way that we currently can do for electronic devices.” For all the future inventors inspired by his example and also hoping to change the world, Chen has one piece of advice: stick with it. “Keep working on important problems,” he says, “and know that every one of them, big or small, needs a solution.” — ANDREW THURSTON E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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A Future Flying Free of Fossil Fuels TERRIER ENGINEERS WIN NASA COMPETITION ON CLEAN AVIATION ENERGY

”We wanted to mimic today’s jet engines, but using aluminum powder, which reacts with oxygen to create the same combustion without harmful CO2 emissions.”

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ays after their BU graduation, a team of newly minted engineers won a NASA competition with a proposal to make tomorrow’s aviation industry run on aluminum powder instead of jet fuel. Odin Francis, Patrick Olah, Michael Osuji and Max Pounanov—all ENG’23—labored over their innovative design all senior year, then last June they took first place in Gateways to Blue Skies: Clean Aviation Energy, held at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. For winning, the four young alums have been offered internships in NASA aeronautics centers. Today’s aircraft have an outsized impact on the environment because they emit carbon dioxide high up in the atmosphere, where it causes significant planet-warming reactions. To help find a solution, NASA invited university students to suggest bold alternatives to fossil fuels. The Blue Skies competition asked students to choose and

investigate the viability of an under-studied energy source with the potential to bring airplane emissions down toward zero. The scholars needed to analyze the life cycle of their proposed energy source, from extraction and refinement to flight. Advised by ME Lecturer Jim Geiger, the team of Francis, Olah, Osuji and Pounanov began scouring existing studies of combustion last fall as part of a project for credit. All were seniors in mechanical engineering (Francis double-majored in physics), with concentrations in aerospace. Intrigued by one paper they found describing aluminum powder powering a simple four-cylinder engine, they extrapolated this process to future use in commercial flight. They submitted a preliminary proposal to the NASA competition, earned a spot in the finals, then kicked their research into high gear, preparing to make their case to agency officials and industry experts in Cleveland. The team designed a jet engine that, if built, would look similar to today’s gas turbine engines but with the addition of a segment called a particle separator, which would allow aluminum powder to mix efficiently with air and generate the thrust needed for flight. “The way it works is that in an engine, you want to heat up the air and move it fast out the back, essentially,” says Olah. “Today that’s done with jet fuel. We wanted to mimic this using aluminum powder,

PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

Left to right, Max Pounanov, Michael Osuji, Odin Francis and Patrick Olah—all ENG’23—with their faculty advisor, Jim Geiger, shortly after winning NASA’s Gateways to Blue Skies: Clean Aviation Energy student competition in Cleveland on June 2.

which reacts with oxygen to create the same combustion, but without releasing harmful carbon dioxide emissions.” Moreover, the team made an exhaustive study of the aluminum mining and refining infrastructure. The smelting process that turns bauxite rock into aluminum powder comes with its own environmental challenges. In the new system the team devised, the first step would be to modify the smelting process to cut emissions. A further solution is contained within the team’s jet engine design: a byproduct of the aluminum powder combustion is aluminum oxide—an essential ingredient in aluminum powder. The process would become cyclical, and mining would be phased out after 2050. The team calculated that their

process, soup to nuts, would cut down on the aviation industry’s carbon dioxide emissions by 96 percent. At the two-day event in Cleveland, each team had 25 minutes to present their research, followed by 20 minutes of questioning from the NASA judges. “The judges were super nice,” says Olah. “It didn’t feel like a high-pressure setting. It felt like a collaborative environment. One of the coolest aspects was meeting all the other kids,” who ranged from freshmen to PhD students, “and hearing all their innovative ideas and ways of thinking about this problem.” Other proposed alternatives included hydrogen, solar, and energy beam bursts. Remarkably, another team from BU

made the finals—Hadassah Flagg, Kaylea Gaughan, Emily Osurman and Michelle Ramoska (all ENG’23)—and they, too, focused on metal powder as a potential fuel source, in their case iron powder. “It was just a big coincidence,” marvels Olah. “But we were rooting for them, 100 percent.” The other six teams in the finals were from Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, Manhattan College, University of California– San Diego, and University of Texas–Austin. “All the teams were very professional and polished,” says Geiger, who has advised BU teams in NASA student competitions for a decade. But Francis, Olah, Osuji and Pounanov “are a very special group,” he says. “The sky’s the limit with these guys.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

A Journey to Space

PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

ASA astronaut Robert Hines (ENG’97) returned to BU to recount his six-month voyage aboard the International Space Station last year, and the long journey before blastoff. A hundred students listened as Hines shared stories of his aerospace career, from flying parabolas in a test plane nicknamed the Vomit Comet to growing tomatoes in space—a first for mankind. “I think I have something in common with a lot of astronauts,” Hines said. “Ordinary people who got lucky and worked hard, got to do extraordinary things and work with extraordinary people.” Hines earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at BU, where he particularly enjoyed aerodynamics courses with Associate Professor Sheryl Grace (ME). He joined the US Air Force after graduation, became a pilot and flew 76 combat missions in the Middle East. He earned a master’s degree in engineering from University of Alabama and became a research pilot, flying test planes such as a C-9 jet modified to fly a parabola, which induces 40 seconds of weightlessness and is

NASA astronaut Bob Hines (ENG’97) chats with Shubham Iaiwala (ENG’24) on the 17th floor of the BU Center for Computing & Data Sciences.

used to train astronauts. In 2017, NASA accepted Hines into the astronaut program. After five years of rigorous training, he piloted NASA’s SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, with three crewmates aboard, 250 miles up to the ISS. There, over 170 days, the team monitored 250 science experiments in microgravity, robotics, hydroponics and other fields.

The best part of orbit was the view of Earth, said Hines. He didn’t see borders dividing countries; he saw lightning, aurora borealis, sandstorms. “It was transformational,” said Hines. “It affirmed my faith in God and belief that we’re all part of a human race and we need to get along and respect one another.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

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FDA Clears Bionic Pancreas Developed in BU Lab for People with Type 1 Diabetes

Ed Damiano is founder and executive chair of Beta Bionics. The iLet Bionic Pancreas, which automates insulin delivery to manage the chronic disease, was invented in Damiano’s biomedical engineering lab—and inspired by his son.

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converting and storing sugars. The chronic condition carries a host of complications, from heart disease to eye damage. There’s no cure. In 2015, Damiano founded Beta Bionics, a public benefit corporation, to advance the technology. Four years later, the company raised $126 million to push the device through the final stages of its development. Given the iLet’s origins—and Damiano’s very personal motivation for ensuring its success—the FDA’s approval came on a fitting date: David’s 24th birthday. David Damiano (CAS’21, Pardee’21) graduated summa cum laude from BU in 2021, double-majoring in history and international relations. He’s now a researcher at a documentary and feature film production company. “The bionic pancreas project has its origins with David, but the experimental research got started in my lab at Boston University almost 20 years ago,” says Damiano, who continues to serve as executive chair of Beta Bionics. “My appreciation and affection for Boston University runs deep. I will always be grateful to the multitudes of people from across the institution who came together to support my research team’s efforts over the years.” Damiano’s coinventor was Firas El-Khatib, formerly a senior research

“The bionic pancreas project has its origins with David, but the experimental research got started in my lab at Boston University almost 20 years ago.” scientist at BU and now Beta Bionics’ vice president of research and innovation. In fall 2022, they were coauthors on a study that found the iLet helped adults and children maintain healthier blood glucose levels, outperforming existing standard-of-care methods—a significant step on its path to FDA clearance. According to Beta Bionics, users of the iLet just need to enter their weight to get started—the system will then use continuous learning to do the rest, regulating blood glucose levels with minimal input. “This is such a fantastic example of what a BU societal engineer does,” says BU Provost Ad Interim Kenneth Lutchen, “advancing new ideas into real inventions driven for the betterment of others.” — ANDREW THURSTON

PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

bionic pancreas—a wearable, pocketsized, automated insulin delivery device—that was first developed in a BU lab has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The iLet Bionic Pancreas is now commercially available, bringing fresh hope to the almost two million Americans with type 1 diabetes. The approval is a massive milestone in a long and personal journey. Invented 20 years ago in the lab of Professor Ed Damiano (BME), the bionic pancreas combines an insulin infusion pump with algorithm-controlled dosing decision software. Damiano was inspired to develop the system by his son, David, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was just 11 months old. When paired with a Bluetooth-enabled glucose monitor, the iLet can deliver tailored insulin doses every five minutes, based on calculations of current and past glucose levels and the body’s reaction to past insulin deliveries. Small enough to be clipped on a bra strap or thrown in a pocket, the iLet means patients will no longer have to repeatedly measure their glucose levels and calculate, with help from their doctor, their correct insulin dose—a 24/7 endeavor. The iLet was cleared for people aged six years and older with type 1 diabetes. For most of his son’s early life, Damiano and his partner would wake every few hours in the night, checking their son’s blood sugar levels, giving him insulin or juice to control the numbers. In people with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin—an essential hormone for

Xin Zhang Wins STAT Madness 2023 All-Star Award

PHOTO BY SARAH GONZALEZ FOR STAT PHOTO BY CYDNEY SCOTT

rofessor Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE) won the STAT Madness 2023 All-Star award for her work developing a metamaterial that makes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) faster, safer and more accessible to patients around the world. Zhang was given the honor at the STAT Breakthrough Summit, a two-day conference that brings together some of the biomedical field’s finest minds. “If I told you the MRI revolution was coming, you probably wouldn’t expect it would come dressed like this,” Zhang said during the event, where she showed the metamaterial helmet her team developed for use during MRI scans. A combination of plastic and copper wire that Zhang compares to something found in Doc Brown’s lab in Back to the Future, it can fit over a person’s head to boost the quality of scan images. The Breakthrough Summit was the culmination of health and science–focused media company STAT’s annual March Madness–style tournament to find the best innovation in science and medicine for the year—complete with a public online bracket competition and separate All-Star vote at the conference. The online competition pits 64 entries—selected by STAT—from US schools and institutions against each other in weekly rounds of voting, with the highest-voted innovations advancing to the next round. Zhang reached the quarterfinals of the online bracket and was chosen as an AllStar finalist to present at the summit, where she went up against entries from New York University and MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her metamaterial—a structure that can bend, absorb or manipulate electromagnetic waves, sound waves or radio waves—can be designed in different sizes and shapes, and

placed at different orientations. The research teams presented their work to a panel of judges that included STAT leadership and past winners and an audience of executives, industry leaders, investors and experts in the field. Attendees then voted for their winner. According to STAT, Zhang’s triumph made her “the tournament’s equivalent of a fan favorite.” “I was tremendously pleased and honored to present our research on boosting MRI at the STAT Breakthrough Summit,” Zhang said later. “It was humbling to see that the impact of our work is significant and meaningful to a wide range of people.” Zhang was selected to participate in STAT’s bracket-style competition alongside Professor Alice White (ME), who codeveloped a miniature living heart replica—nicknamed miniPUMP—to help researchers better study heart disease and test new treatments. “Xin has been carrying out incredibly creative and pioneering work in the area of metamaterials,” said Gloria Waters, VP and

Xin Zhang (right) collects the STAT Madness 2023 AllStar award from Nicholas St. Fleur, STAT’s associate editorial director of events.

associate provost for research. “Her work using novel metamaterials to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in MRI systems has the potential to create truly transformational diagnostic procedures and to potentially help millions of patients globally.” — THE BRINK STAFF

Zhang’s MRI-boosting helmet modeled by ME PhD student Ke Wu.

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ivek Goyal (ECE), a College of Engineering professor and associate chair of doctoral programs for electrical and computer engineering, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Every year, AAAS honors scientists across the country for their pioneering or outstanding contributions to their disciplines. Goyal’s work in computational imaging combines elements of signal processing, statistics, computation, physics and more to help us see and observe the world with greater clarity. His research has included projects examining how few photons are needed to capture accurate images with a camera and how to take photos of something hidden from view. In 2019, Goyal and his team demonstrated that non-line-of-sight imaging (NLOS)—a process that reconstructs hidden objects through diffuse light reflections off surfaces in an environment—was possible using simpler equipment than previously thought. “Our work shows that NLOS imaging is possible using only an ordinary digital camera and relatively simple computational algorithms. Based on this, it is even conceivable for humans to be able to learn to see around corners with their own eyes; it does not require anything superhuman,” Goyal wrote in a Nature Communities blog post after publishing a paper on the project in Nature. Goyal has won multiple awards from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, including for best paper and for his service as an editorial board member. “While individual recognition is exhilarating,” he says of the AAAS fellowship, “this honor is due to the luxury of working with a collection of brilliant students. To be able to go on creative adventures with them is its 12 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Vivek Goyal (ECE).

“AAAS is proud to elevate these standout individuals and recognize the many ways in which they’ve advanced scientific excellence, tackled complex societal challenges and pushed boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come.” research, while concurrently doing high levels of service to professional societies and organizations.” “AAAS is proud to elevate these standout individuals and recognize the many ways in which they’ve advanced scientific excellence, tackled complex societal challenges and pushed boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come,” said Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. — ALENE BOURANOVA

Malika Jeffries-EL (MSE).

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYDNEY SCOTT

Goyal, Jeffries-EL Named AAAS Fellows

own reward.” Other 2023 AAAS fellows from BU include Associate Professor Malika Jeffries-EL (Chemistry, MSE), a CAS professor of chemistry, associate professor of materials science and engineering and associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Jeffries-EL’s research focuses on the development of organic semiconductors (OSCs), a unique class of materials that combine the processing properties of polymers with the electronic properties of semiconductors. OSCs are used in items such as smartphone displays and artificial organs like pacemakers and are often more convenient to work with than their inorganic counterparts, as they’re cheaper to produce and have more flexible mechanical properties. Jeffries-EL and her team explore their use in applications like light-emitting diodes and solar energy conversion. Jeffries-EL is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She also is active in CAS diversity and inclusion initiatives and nationally recognized for advancing diversity in the STEM fields. “I am excited to receive this honor because it is a major acknowledgement of my contributions for the advancement of science,” she said. “In particular, I am glad that AAAS recognized someone like myself—a scientist who excels in their

to novel computational approaches applied to drug design and the translation of early-stage assets to preclinical/clinical development,” according to her AIMBE letter. “My group is focused on the development and use of novel computational approaches for understanding protein-ligand interactions at a detailed molecular level, with an emphasis on the design and discovery of new agents for infectious disease pathogens,” Joseph-McCarthy says. Chen Yang (ECE, MSE) with Guillermo Ameer and BU ENG colleague Joyce Wong (BME), AIMBE president. Yang was one of three ENG professors to join the AIMBE College of Fellows this year.

Three More AIMBE Fellows from ENG YANG, JOSEPH-MCCARTHY, DUNLOP ELECTED TO PRESTIGIOUS BIOMEDICAL SOCIETY

A TOP PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF AIMBE

ssociate Professor Mary Dunlop (BME), Professor of the Practice Diane Joseph-McCarthy (BME), and Associate Professor Chen Yang (ECE, Chemistry, MSE) have been inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to researchers in the field. The AIMBE College of Fellows represents the top two percent of biomedical engineers in academia, industry, clinical practice and government across the US and nearly 30 other countries. Dunlop, who is also BME graduate chair, uses approaches from synthetic biology and systems biology to quantitatively understand and engineer cellular processes. She was nominated, reviewed and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows for “outstanding research contributions on cell-to-cell heterogeneity in gene expression alongside leadership

in service and education initiatives for synthetic biology,” according to her AIMBE nomination letter. In a recent study, Dunlop’s team used a deep learning-based feedback algorithm to control gene expression in real time in thousands of single E. coli cells in parallel. “We are particularly excited about this technology because it can be used to precisely control expression dynamics of other genes,” says Dunlop, who in recent years has won a National Science Foundation (NSF) Transitions Award as well as the BU College

Mary Dunlop (BME).

Diane Joseph-McCarthy (BME).

of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award and was BU’s Biomedical Engineering Professor of the Year in 2019. Joseph-McCarthy is a former senior life sciences executive who holds dozens of patents and is a former member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Polio Antiviral Advisory Committee. At BU, she is also executive director of the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center. She was elected by her peers for “outstanding contributions

“We’re developing unique tools that will help us understand fascinating fundamental questions.” That research has implications for the prevention and mitigation of future pandemics, says Joseph-McCarthy, who is part of a BU team that has received an NSF Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention grant. Yang, who is also associate chair of ECE, was elected to the AIMBE College of Fellows for “pioneering contributions in nongenetic neuromodulation, designing material and devices for high precision modulation for fundamental studies and clinical applications,” according to her letter from AIMBE. “We’re developing unique tools that will help us understand fascinating fundamental questions,” explains Yang. “How and why does the brain respond to mechanical stimuli?” Moreover, her novel technology might lead to treatment for Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and even vision loss. Indeed, a device she invented has been licensed to a French company working on retina processing for blind patients whose photoreceptors are damaged but whose optical nerves are still healthy. “I feel very honored to join this elite group,” says Yang, who is also a member of the Materials Research Society and the International Society for Optics and Photonics and won an NSF CAREER Award in 2009. “They’re recognizing that the research we’re doing is exciting and can make a contribution to the biomedical engineering community.” E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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ollowing a national search and recommendation by the search committee, Professor Sean Andersson (ME, SE) has been appointed chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Since joining BU in 2006, Andersson has published 44 peer-reviewed journal articles and 95 refereed proceedings in his research fields—advanced systems and

Royal Society of Chemistry Honors Mark Grinstaff

oston University chemist and biomedical engineer Mark Grinstaff has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Centenary Prize in “recognition of brilliance in research and innovation.” A world-renowned researcher and inventor, Grinstaff is the University’s inaugural Distinguished Professor of Translational Research. Founded in 1841, the United Kingdom– based Royal Society of Chemistry was first granted a charter by Queen Victoria and now has 54,000 global members and a nonprofit publishing arm—it says past award winners have gone on to win 60 Nobel Prizes. The Centenary Prize is given to “outstanding chemists, who are also exceptional communicators, from overseas,”

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according to its website. As part of the award, Grinstaff and two other winners will travel to the British Isles to give a series of lectures. “The Centenary Prize is a unique recognition of the importance of global collaborations in resolving scientific challenges and institutional support of such collaborations,” says Grinstaff, who heads the BU Nanotechnology Innovation Center (BUnano) and the Grinstaff Group. “The prize and the opportunity to give lectures in Britain will help establish new collaborations and allow critical feedback and interactions with colleagues.” According to the society, Grinstaff was chosen for “pioneering advances and translational research using innovative polymer platforms for new drug delivery systems and medical applications.” Just last year, Grinstaff was named one of BU’s William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professors and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow. A former BU Innovator of the Year, he’s also a College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of chemistry, and a Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Sean Andersson (ME), right.

Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Andersson has served as associate editor for several journals, including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization. He has advised 15 PhD students and earned the College of Engineering Service Award in 2019. Andersson earned his bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, his master’s at Stanford University and his PhD at University of Maryland, College Park, and he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. professor of medicine. Many of Grinstaff’s more than 200 patents— he’s the founder of several companies— have been centered on advancing healthcare, with Mark Grinstaff (BME, inventions spurring Chemistry, MSE, CAMED). improvements in breast cancer treatment, cranial surgery, eye care, and cartilage repair. One of his latest projects—which included founding a start-up since acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics—is a COVID detection device inspired by a glucometer. And he recently shifted his attention to a group of conditions that impact around 1.71 billion people globally. “My research is currently focusing on musculoskeletal diseases, including fibrosis, as these diseases are woefully understudied and underfunded, yet affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” says Grinstaff. “The goal is to improve treatment outcomes for patients by developing new pharmacological treatments and imaging methods of assessment.”— ANDREW THURSTON

TOP PHOTO BY DAVE GREEN

Sean Andersson Appointed Mechanical Engineering Chair

control theory with applications in scanning probe microscopy, dynamics in molecular systems, and robotics operating in realworld environments. He has secured more than $5 million as principal investigator in extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Since 2019, Andersson has served as director of the Master of Science program in Robotics & Autonomous Systems and is helping to create the new Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center. “I am extremely excited to build upon the strengths of our department, including, of course, our amazing faculty and their passion for their research and for teaching, our culture of collegiality and collaboration that makes mechanical engineering at BU such an amazing place to be, and our dedicated staff that help make the department run,” Andersson says. A senior member of the Institute of

Biomedical Optics Pioneer David Boas Delivers the 2023 DeLisi Lecture

rthur G. B. Metcalf Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor David Boas (BME, ECE) delivered the 2023 Charles DeLisi Award and Lecture on April 11 before a standing-room-only crowd in the BU Photonics Center’s Colloquium Room. In “Illuminating the Functioning Brain to Reveal the Role of Blood Flow,” Boas shared his story of a career developing novel technologies for monitoring neuronal activity and helping to translate those technologies into rehabilitation and other applications. Studying under the famous physicist Heinrich Medicus as an undergrad at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Boas was particularly fascinated with the Doppler effect, which describes changes in motion of a wave—including light waves. “So much of my professional and academic career has been based on the Doppler effect,” he said. Boas pondered becoming a “ski bum” until realizing that “I was as passionate about physics as I was about skiing.” He opted for grad school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with the noted biophysicist Britton Chance, who was in the early stages of developing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a means of detecting breast cancer. “It was a really great time to walk into his lab,” Boas recalled. With Chance, Boas conducted experiments using photon propagation to study how light scatters and is absorbed by tissue. After earning his PhD, Boas was invited to start his own lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. Ultimately, he would be instrumental in refining fNIRS theories and

applications and in proving its utility in neuroscience. Essentially, Boas explained, blood flow acts as a stand-in for neuronal activity. Light can be scattered into the brain and back to noninvasively gain data on the amounts of hemoglobin present in the various regions of the brain. At BU, where he directs the Neurophotonics Center, the first of its kind in the nation, Boas is pioneering wearable fNIRS technology. “We want to measure [brain activity during] perception, interaction and walking, which are human behaviors that are rather challenging to measure with fMRI,” he explained.

Boas is working with colleagues across the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, and Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences to apply the technology to a variety of studies. (Functional magnetic resonance imaging tests require subjects to lie stationary inside a metal tube in a clinic.) With a $5.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Boas and his interdisciplinary team are developing a portable, wearable brain imaging cap, studded with light-emitting sources and detectors. The gear includes a box for the electronics that fits within a baby carrier. “So, for the next few months, I’m going to carry my new baby around,” he said. Boas is working with colleagues across the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, and Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences to apply the technology to a variety of studies. Eventually, readings from fNIRS wearables might be used in

Left to right: David Boas, Charles DeLisi and Kenneth Lutchen.

the detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Maysarah K. Sukkar Professor of Engineering Design and Innovation Elise Morgan (ME, MSE, BME), then-associate dean for research and faculty development, presented Assistant Professor Hadi Nia (BME, MSE) with the Early Career Research Excellence Award, which celebrates the significant, recent, high-impact research achievements of exemplary tenure-track faculty who are within 10 years of receiving their PhD. Endowed by Charles DeLisi, who served as dean of the college from 1990 to 2000, the DeLisi Lecture recognizes researchers with extraordinary records of well-cited scholarship, senior leaders in industry and inventors of transformative technologies. DeLisi recruited leading researchers in biomedical, manufacturing, aerospace and mechanical engineering, photonics and other engineering fields, establishing a research infrastructure that propelled the college into the top ranks of engineering graduate programs. In 1999 he founded, and chaired for more than a decade, BU’s Bioinformatics Program, the first such program in the nation. E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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MACHINES

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AND HEALTH ROBOTICS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING MIGHT SOUND LIKE COLD, IMPERSONAL, OR EVEN ABSTRACT TOOLS, BUT IN THE HANDS OF A SOCIETAL ENGINEER, THESE TOOLS CAN BE WIELDED EFFECTIVELY TO MAKE REAL IMPROVEMENTS IN HUMAN HEALTH. BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY AND MAUREEN STANTON

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the Boston University College of Engineering,

researchers across biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering are crossing disciplinary lines and combining their areas of expertise to develop robotic and AI technologies, allowing them to better see, study and solve health problems of all kinds. These projects range from the cellular level to the level of a human organ and all the way up to the systems level—encompassing the medical data of thousands of patients—and even beyond that, to the “systems of systems” level, examining and improving how the infrastructure in the places we live affects the health of the community.

SPOTTING CELLS OVER TIME

DUNLOP’S LAB INCLUDES POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS TRAINED IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, BIOCHEMISTRY AND CELL BIOLOGY, COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY, THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE, AND QUANTUM PHYSICS, AMONG OTHER DISCIPLINES. 18 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Associate Professor Mary Dunlop (BME) has spent the past few years working with machine learning methods to learn how to get more data out of bacterial studies than could ever be done by human researchers alone. Let’s take one example—antibiotic resistance—where Dunlop is gaining traction. For reasons unclear, genetically identical bacteria in the same environment can develop minute differences in behavior. These tiny divergences carry big implications for their response to antibiotic treatment—one bacterium might be killed off, while another will survive by evading the antibiotic. To find out why, researchers need to be able to image thousands of single cells over time. “The way we do this,” says Dunlop, “is by using time-lapse microscopy, where we grow bacteria under the microscope and image them over the course of hours to days while they are growing in a microfluidic chip.” In the example pictured at right, two genetically identical lineages of E. coli (top and bottom panels; horizontal axis shows time) react differently to an application of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin (shown by the vertical red line). The cells in the lineage shown in the top panel survive, while the others die. “This one happens to have more proteins related to drug resistance than the others,” says Dunlop. “The ones that survived were much more likely to be in the midst of expressing a particular gene we were interested in. The ones that died were not.” But, those are just two lineages out of the microfluidic chip’s full array of over

Mary Dunlop (BME), right.

10,000 cell lineages. “This is where we’ve started using machine learning,” says Dunlop. Her lab has developed an algorithm they call DeLTA, for deep learning for time-lapse analysis. The program can recognize the same cells from frame to frame of a video captured by microscopy. “What we’ve done in our lab is figure out how to apply advanced computer vision techniques to images of growing cells,” Dunlop says. “This has massively increased our throughput and our ability to analyze this type of movie, so that now we can examine not just tens of cells but hundreds to thousands to even millions.” That’s critical, Dunlop says, because the protein or gene expression variations that researchers are looking for are quite rare. By unlocking the mysteries of how and why some bacterial cells evade antibiotics, these studies will help researchers improve the treatments, making them more effective for more patients. Dunlop’s lab includes postdoctoral researchers trained in chemical engineering, biochemistry and cell biology, computational biology, theoretical computer science and quantum physics, among

5 μm

Survived

Fluorescence (gadX)

Phase

Fluorescence (gadX)

Phase

Ciprofloxacin

-4

-2

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Time (hours)

Frame-by-frame images of two genetically identical cell lineages over time. The cells in the below images were killed off by the application of an antibiotic (highlighted by the red vertical line), while the cells in the above images evaded the treatment and survived.

other disciplines. Her PhD students are in biomedical engineering as well as molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry. The first publication of DeLTA started as a collaboration with a graduate student from the lab of Professor Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE). “The people in my group who are working on this have had to master skills in machine learning and AI in addition to working on microscopy studies and cloning, plus they need to know about antibiotic resistance,” says Dunlop. “Bringing all of these skills to bear on these problems has required just an incredible breadth of different tool sets and backgrounds to make the solutions possible.”

STEERING FROM AFAR

Imagine standing outside a hedge maze and shoving a garden hose into it. Now, holding one end of the hose in your hands, you’re trying to maneuver the other end of the hose in order to hook an unseen ribbon that’s stuck on a little branch deep within the shrubbery. Oh, and even though you know roughly where the ribbon is, a strong gust of wind periodically blows through the bushes, moving all the branches out of place. If you can see how the physics are against you here, then you understand the task facing pulmonologists as they seek a biopsy of a lung cancer nodule using a conventional bronchoscope, says Assistant Professor Sheila Russo (ME, MSE). “Meanwhile, people continue to die,” Russo says. “This is what keeps me and my colleagues motivated to come into the lab in the morning. We’re engineering soft robotic solutions to this societal problem in healthcare.” Lung cancer is the deadliest form of cancer worldwide, partly due to the difficulty in catching the disease at its earliest stage, when it is most curable, says Russo. The lungs are a complex pair of organs, with the trachea branching out into a maze of smaller and smaller airways and ducts. Most cancerous lesions develop in those tiny ducts, way out in the periphery of the lung. The location of a possible tumor nodule might be identified by a CT scan, but in order to extract a biopsy, a clinician needs to thread a bronchoscope into the lung’s periphery, find the tumor and puncture it, as in the Sisyphean scenario with the hose conjured above. Meanwhile, the patient’s breathing motion makes the nodule a moving target. As a result, lung tissue might be punctured in the E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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ULTIMATELY, RUSSO HOPES TO SIMPLIFY THE CONTROL OF THE DEVICE WITH SEMIAUTOMATIC NAVIGATION, MAKING IT AS EASY AS POSSIBLE TO TRAIN SURGEONS IN ITS USE.

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wrong place, and patients will go home unclear that they even have a tumor. Russo has a solution. With an interdisciplinary team combining expertise in mechanical engineering, materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering, and clinical medicine, she has developed a soft-robotic-assisted bronchoscope. With remote control, a pulmonologist can steer the business end of the scope and deploy the needle with accuracy from outside the patient. Whereas a traditional bronchoscope is six millimeters in diameter and has only 120 degrees of rotation, the Russo team’s robotic scope has a diameter of 2.4 millimeters and can rotate more than 180 degrees. Embedded with a camera as well as a needle, the device moves by means of three independent fluid pressure-driven actuators and uses a kind of airbag to stabilize itself in the moving airways, a bit like a subway rider grabbing a handrail. The device is made of soft materials that allow the tip to curl back onto itself. “This allows you to navigate into very complex configurations within the lungs in very deep locations,” says Russo. “It’s a more precise, more accurate approach.” Russo and her collaborators were able to miniaturize the scope by using new materials and even new fabrication processes to produce the robot. “We had to start from scratch and develop novel manufacturing technologies that enable us to scale these devices down as much as possible,” she explains. Key to the development of the device has been the input of pulmonology experts such as Assistant Professor Ehab Billatos of the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. “For us as robotics-assistant engineers,” says Russo, “we definitely want to have clinicians on the team who can tell us, ‘On a daily basis, this is my struggle. Can you engineer a robotic solution that can make my job easier, and at the end of the day, improve the health of my patients?’ So, we’re working at the interface between pulmonology, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, controls, and software engineering. There’s really a variety of different skills that have to come together to be able to successfully work on this research.” Ultimately, Russo hopes to simplify the control of the device with semiautomatic navigation, making it as easy as possible to train surgeons in its use.

DANA J. QUIGLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Sheila Russo (ME, MSE).

Made of soft materials, Russo’s bronchoscope can rotate more than 180 degrees and curl back onto itself, allowing for more nimble navigation in the lung’s periphery.

“THIS IS A NEW MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHM LEVERAGING INFORMATION IN ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS AND SHOWCASING THE POWER OF AI IN HEALTHCARE.” “And that means you can bring good quality healthcare to remote areas,” says Russo. “We’re lucky here in Boston—we have the best hospitals. But I come from a very small rural town, and probably the best hospital my family and friends have is about two hours away. Imagine putting technology like this into the hands of clinicians there and in other areas in the country and the world, so everyone can have access to that level of high-quality healthcare that we all need.”

and the benefits and risks associated with specific medicines. Still, selecting the right drug can be a bit of a coin toss. By contrast, the BU-developed model generates a custom hypertension prescription, giving physicians a list of suggested medications with an associated probability of success. Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE).

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AI TO TAILOR MEDS

For the nearly half of Americans with hypertension, it’s a potential death sentence—close to 700,000 deaths in 2021 were caused by high blood pressure, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also increases the risk of stroke and chronic heart failure. And if it’s not caught early, it can be tough to treat. Although physicians have a bevy of potential hypertension medications to choose from, each is littered with pros and cons, making prescribing the most effective one a challenge: beta-blockers slow the heart, but can cause asthma; ACE inhibitors relax blood vessels, but can lead to a hacking cough. Now, a new artificial intelligence program might help doctors better match the right medicines to the right patients. The data-driven model, developed by Distinguished Professor of Engineering Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE) in collaboration with BU data scientists and physicians, as well as biomedical and electrical and computer engineers, aims to give clinicians real-time hypertension treatment recommendations based on patient-specific characteristics, including demographics, vital signs, past medical history and clinical test records. The model has the potential to help reduce systolic blood pressure—measured when the heart is beating rather than resting—more effectively than the current standard of care. “This is a new machine learning algorithm leveraging information in electronic health records and showcasing the power of AI in healthcare,” says Paschalidis. “Our data-driven model is not just predicting an outcome, it is suggesting the most appropriate medication to use for each patient.” Currently, when choosing which medication to prescribe a patient, a doctor considers the patient’s history, treatment goals, E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

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“Our goal is to facilitate a personalization approach for hypertension treatment based on machine learning algorithms,” says Paschalidis, “seeking to maximize the effectiveness of hypertensive medications at the individual level.” The model was developed using de-identified data from 42,752 hypertensive patients of Boston Medical Center (BMC), BU’s primary teaching hospital, collected between 2012 and 2020. Patients were sorted into affinity groups, such as demographics and medical history. During the study, the model’s effectiveness was compared to the current standard of care, as well as three other algorithms designed to predict appropriate treatment plans. The researchers found it achieved a 70.3 percent larger reduction in systolic blood pressure than standard of care. The algorithm was clinically validated, with the researchers manually reviewing a random sample of 350 cases. The model also showed the benefits of reducing or stopping prescriptions for some patients taking multiple medications. According to the research team, because the algorithm provides physicians with several suggested optimal therapies, it could give valuable insights when the medical community is divided on the effectiveness of one drug versus another. “These advanced predictive analytics have the ability to augment a clinician’s decision making and to have a positive impact on the quality of care we deliver, and therefore the outcomes for our patients,” says Rebecca Mishuris, who was previously an assistant professor at BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and is now Mass General Brigham’s chief medical information officer. “This is an important first step that shows that these models actually perform better than standard of care and could help us be better doctors.” “Using data from the diverse patient population of Boston Medical Center, this model provides the opportunity to tailor care for underrepresented populations, with individualized recommendations to improve outcomes for these patients,” says Nicholas J. Cordella, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine assistant professor and BMC medical director for quality and patient safety. “Personalized medicine and models like this are an opportunity to better serve populations that aren’t necessarily well represented in the national studies or weren’t taken into account when the guidelines were being made.”

TRAFFIC LIGHTS SMARTEN UP

The south side of the BU Bridge features “one of the worst intersections in the entire universe,” charges Distinguished Professor of Engineering Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE), who navigates that crossroads with Commonwealth Avenue twice daily. Driving in general comes with myriad irritations—and, to Cassandras, opportunities for systems engineering to improve matters. “One of my frustrations,” he says, “especially toward the evening when traffic gets less heavy, is when you get stuck at a red light and you realize there isn’t even any traffic on the perpendicular street.” It’s especially maddening, Cassandras adds, when the technology exists to make commuting saner. This is one reason Cassandras studies traffic problems and 22 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

potential solutions. “My work focuses on large systems—sometimes referred to as ‘systems of systems’—with many dynamic agents,” says Cassandras. “I look at how to coordinate these agents so that they cooperate in order to meet specific system-wide objectives.” In many such systems, these agents are competing for a common resource—a prime example being cars competing for space on the road. This thorny problem is more than an annoyance; traffic causes real harm. Across Boston, 32 people were killed in car accidents in 2021. And, all the congestion—at the BU Bridge and elsewhere—takes a toll on the wider world. Bumper-to-bumper back-ups are responsible for 20 percent of fuel consumption, along with the resulting carbon emissions. To Cassandras, the answer lies in cooperation. His guiding principle here is that it is simply more efficient for agents to cooperate than to compete. “The secret to making any of these technological solutions work is to convince all of us that it’s better to behave in particular ways which achieve a social optimum, as opposed to a selfish optimum,” he says. After years of studying traffic and devising smart parking and other solutions in Boston and other large US cities, Cassandras is now collaborating with BU computer scientists and industry and municipal partners on a project that, at first, seems more modest in scale: they’re focusing on a single intersection in a tiny Swedish village. If the team succeeds, that intersection will become ground zero for smarter traffic management practices that will sweep the globe. The project is an initiative of the Red Hat Collaboratory at Boston University, a partnership between BU and Red Hat, an IBM subsidiary that is one of the world’s leading providers of opensource software. The village is Veberöd, Sweden. Its population of 5,000 is forward-looking and sustainability-minded, says Cassandras, and they’ve installed dozens of sensors around town to monitor air and water quality, among other data. Veberöd native and smartcity advocate Jan Malmgren has combined that data with 50,000 aerial photos of the village to create a digital twin of Veberöd. In this virtual village, the BU–Red Hat researchers can run simulation studies, testing tech solutions to real problems. To start, the team is tackling the village’s central crossroads, where radar cameras monitor auto and foot traffic. Using the real-life data, Cassandras’ students “have done an incredible job simulating traffic,” wrote consultant Chris Tate in a Red Hat blog post. Quickly realizing that the town’s existing light-change pattern was inefficient, Cassandras and team “put their advanced scientific and technical backgrounds to work to develop a new traffic pattern that optimized the traffic flow in all directions for both vehicles and people traffic,” Tate wrote. Going forward, the village will implement the researchers’ virtually tested traffic-lights pattern in the actual intersection. “And then expand that to the entire village,” says Cassandras. “If you can do it for one traffic light, you can do it for many.” Moreover, the platform that the team has developed is publicly available open-source software. That means if the project succeeds,

Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE).

then other researchers and municipalities the world over can easily duplicate that success, adapting the same principles to their own local contexts. “The goal of the project is to develop open-source, smart city infrastructure, not just in Veberöd,” Cassandras explains. “The concept of open source is becoming more widespread because it promotes sharing and building off of each other’s ideas. We’re developing the platform so that once a solution is proven in Veberöd, it can be transferred to New York, Boston, or any other city in the world.” In a way, the concept of a smart community based on coopera-

“THE SECRET TO MAKING ANY OF THESE TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS WORK IS TO CONVINCE ALL OF US THAT IT’S BETTER TO BEHAVE IN PARTICULAR WAYS WHICH ACHIEVE A SOCIAL OPTIMUM, AS OPPOSED TO A SELFISH OPTIMUM.” tion “is nicely consistent with the convergence theme of the College of Engineering,” says Cassandras. The professor and his students bring systems and electrical and computer engineering expertise to problems that also require the input of computer scientists, traffic experts, urban planners, and even psychologists. “We learn from each other,” Cassandras says. Whether it’s a busy road or an entire city—or a higher-ed institution moving beyond traditional department boundaries, “We all need to learn that cooperation always benefits us,” Cassandras says. “That realization is not always instantaneous, but in the long term, everyone wins.” — REPORTING CONTRIBUTED BY MARGO STANTON

DANA J. QUIGLEY PHOTOGRAPHY IMAGE COURTESY OF JAN MALMGREN

A digital twin of Veberöd, Sweden, was created using 50,000 aerial photos and sensor data from all over town.

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

ALUMNI PROFILE

From bathing in rainwater and making his own toys in rural Jamaica, Huntley Myrie (ENG’95) went on to design jet engine turbines, manage billion-dollar businesses, and earn one of this year’s Black Engineer of the Year awards. BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY

24 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

THINKING

PHOTOGRAPH BY KENNY W. HELTON, JR. (SPIRIT AEROSYSTEMS)

untley Myrie (ENG’95) has no baby pictures because his family didn’t own a camera. Raised in remote, rural Jamaica, Myrie and his older brother made their own toys from scrap wood. With no indoor plumbing, the Myries collected rainwater in barrels for cooking and bathing. If there was no rain, they walked a quarter-mile to a pond and carried water back on their heads. The family’s only other transportation was a donkey. From age six up, when he wasn’t helping his family pick coffee beans or other crops, Myrie got to school and back by walking two miles each way, up and down weedy, pebbled country roads. “There were no cars,” he says. “I’d see more airplanes than cars, flying over the Caribbean to North America or South America, and I’d marvel at them flying. ‘How do they do it? Their wings aren’t like birds’ wings.’ This was my six-year-old brain thinking. ‘What is that white smoke it’s trailing behind it?’” Myrie resolved then to someday, somehow, work on aircraft. Although he earned As in his agricultural school, that transcript did not translate well when, at age 17, he moved to Brooklyn, and he was placed in the ninth grade. With no desire to wait around, Myrie got a GED, joined the US Army, and put himself through City Tech and Stony Brook University. In 1990, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and landed a spot in General Electric’s prestigious training program. “Then I moved to Boston and started my career,” Myrie says. While working full time for GE in Lynn, Massachusetts, designing jet engine turbines, Myrie attended the Boston University College of Engineering part time and earned his master’s in mechanical engineering. At GE, he met another BU student, Carolyn

BIGGER

Renea Collins-Myrie (ENG’94,’00), whom he would marry. Myrie cites a BU engineering and economics course as a “pivotal point” in his career: “It was bridging the gap between what an engineer does and the business side of it. That reinforced to me that I could think more systematically rather than as a component designer. It kind of gave me the bug to think bigger and more globally, linking the technology to the business to the customer and then to the overall global economy. That’s served me mightily in my pursuit of a career and took me to where I am today.”

“That was a labor of love for me, and I take pride in that. I just believe it’s so critical for us as a global community to embrace and encourage others to get into STEM.” He began a climb up the career ladder at GE and, later, Eaton Aerospace, dealing with different aircraft systems and larger clients, including airlines, the US Navy and Air Force, and major aircraft manufacturers. Today, Myrie is vice president of strategy and commercial business development for Spirit AeroSystems. He and his wife live in Dallas, and their three daughters have all earned or are earning degrees in STEM fields. Moving and traveling so often for work, Myrie is a frequent flyer who often offers fellow passengers a professional’s reassurance during air turbulence. “I say, ‘At 35,000 feet, you cannot call a tow truck. Therefore, what we do every day [in designing and building airplanes] is very

important, and we take it very seriously. We do so much testing—we do bird strike, ice ingestion. We put in a lot of redundancies, we break it, we shake it, we spend millions of dollars to make sure that when you’re on an airplane, you don’t have to think twice about it.’” Besides BU, family, and various mentors along the way, Myrie credits much of his success to his hardscrabble upbringing: “I didn’t have excess; I come from a background of scarcity and limited opportunities, where you don’t waste things. So, the way I think and problem-solve is with that mindset. I treat a company’s money like it’s my own pocketbook.” That’s one reason Myrie advocates for diversity in engineering—diversity of experiences and thought processes as well as cultures, he says. That passion has led him to volunteer for STEM outreach efforts across the country. For example, when he worked for GE Aviation in Ohio, he led a STEM program for public middle and high school kids in Cincinnati. More than a decade later, Myrie still hears from former students who now work in engineering. “That was a labor of love for me, and I take pride in that,” Myrie says. “I just believe it’s so critical for us as a global community to embrace and encourage others to get into STEM.” U.S. Black Engineer magazine cited Myrie’s volunteering and mentoring as well as his business success in honoring him with the Rodney Adkins Legacy Award as part of the 2023 Black Engineer of the Year awards. “The best gift I received [upon graduating high school] was the commitment from Huntley to be a mentor, coach, and advocate,” wrote Lucien Kidd of Cincinnati in nominating Myrie for the award. “Huntley has been there to hold me accountable and push me through every pitfall and defining moment. The work and impact Huntley has made in every space he enters deserves to be recognized.” E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research This Tiny Capsule Can Warn You When Inflammation Is Imminent

smart pill no bigger than a blueberry can withstand the stomach’s acidic fluids, detect signs of gastrointestinal trouble and send warning signals to an ordinary smartphone, Assistant Professor Rabia Yazicigil (ECE) and colleagues reported in Nature. The fruit of a multiinstitution, crossdisciplinary effort, this novel technology might make a world of difference for the seven million people who suffer from the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. “This could change the way we diagnose and monitor these conditions,” says Yazicigil, a senior author on the paper. Her team Rabia Yazicigil (ECE) and doctoral student Mandy Liu.

26 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

BU-BRED SENSOR SCALES UP

BRINGING HOPE TO BEN

at BU led the design of the miniaturized ultra-lowpower chip inside the pill, while collaborators at MIT engineered the bacterial biosensors and designed the pill casing. Yazicigil’s doctoral student Mandy Liu helped to test and validate the integrated system in live large animal models. Diarrhea and fatigue are A safe-to-swallow sensor might be a just some of the symptoms game-changer for IBD patients. that follow an IBD flare-up. Long-term effects include malnutrition and even the risk of colon cancer. In the Nature study, the BU-MIT team’s smart capsule succeeded in detecting nitric oxide, thiosulfate, tetrathionate and reactive oxygen species in the digestive system of Yorkshire pigs weighing up to 180 pounds. “These molecules are key biomarkers for inflammation,” says Yazicigil, suggesting an IBD flare-up may be imminent. “The pill has engineered living bacteria that light up in response to these molecules.” That instantaneous reaction is key to more efficient IBD management, because the biomarkers only crop up for a short time and they don’t show up in a colonoscopy. Instead of undergoing that invasive annual procedure and all its attendant discomforts, future IBD patients can give their own gut a regular check by simply (and safely) swallowing the smart pill, Yazicigil hopes. As the capsule passes through the digestive tract, it runs on a tiny battery, thanks to the energy-efficient sensor readout circuit that was custom designed in her BU lab. “It processes and sends the bioluminescent signals wirelessly to your smart phone or a computer, monitoring your condition in real time in a very accurate way.” The Nature study represents the successful convergence of several areas of expertise, Yazicigil says, from the bacteria engineering to the capsule’s acid-resistant casing to the miniaturization of the capsule through fully integrated photodetector and sensor readout circuits. “It’s a hard thing to do, detecting these weak signals while consuming low power,” she says. “We played to the strengths of the biology and the electronics,” says Yazicigil’s colleague Miguel Jimenez, an MIT research scientist who is joining BU’s biomedical engineering faculty this fall. “Our tiny pill shows what is possible when we can bridge bacterial sensing with wireless communication.” In addition to the study published in Nature, Liu published a paper on the electronics aspect of the project in the Journal of SolidState Circuits, the IEEE’s flagship journal for chip design. Other collaborators on the Nature study hailed from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the University of Chicago and Analog Devices. — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

Attacking Fatty Buildup at the Source GRINSTAFF TEAM’S NANODRUG MIGHT BE FIRST TO SOLVE VEXING PROBLEM IN LIVER

novel nanotechnology promises to be the first therapeutic to directly target the liver in the battle against a disease that afflicts roughly a quarter of the global population. The new treatment was reported in Nature Communications by Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED), Xue Han (BME) and an international team of scientists and engineers. When the liver is firing on all cylinders, it cleans out degraded materials from the blood, such as fat and proteins that are no longer needed. Called autophagy, this process—one of the liver’s many useful functions—is carried out by lysosomes, tiny organelles within the liver cells. But in 20 to 30 percent of people around the world, the lysosomes stop doing their job, for reasons not fully understood. Fat droplets start to clog and swell the liver, causing pain in the abdomen as well as fatigue. The condition is known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) because it’s a liver ailment that is not related to alcohol abuse. Unchecked, it can cause cirrhosis and even liver failure. “Today, there are not enough transplant livers to meet the demand,” says Grinstaff, who is a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the most prestigious title BU bestows on faculty. Because NAFLD is so prevalent, a variety of solutions have been proposed and some have made it to market, but none of them directly solve the problem by removing the fat. “We wondered whether there were ways we could control or alter the

An image from Grinstaff’s Nature Communications paper.

biology of the liver so that it could process the fat,” says Grinstaff. Grinstaff’s team sought to understand how fat is metabolized in and removed from the liver cell under ordinary circumstances, then set about replicating that process with synthetic nanoparticles. “We delivered a nanoparticle that basically rejuvenated that process—kickstarted it and got it back up and running, so that it removes the fat,” says Grinstaff. These acidifying nanoparticles reactivate the lazy lysosomes, increasing the liver’s acidity to healthy levels and reversing the fatty buildup, as the researchers reported in Nature Communications. “That was the cool part, being able to actually see it work in the cell culture, and then in the animal model,” Grinstaff says. In addition to Han, Grinstaff’s team included Jialiu Zeng (ENG’20), who was a BME PhD student and is now the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; and Orian Shirihai, a former associate professor at the Chobanian & Avedisian

School of Medicine who is now the chair of endocrinology, diabetes and hypertension at UCLA. “It’s a highly convergent project,” says Grinstaff. “Lots of different ways of thinking came together to address this problem,” including Shirihai’s expertise in metabolic diseases. “Speaking with clinicians gives you insights that you just don’t have as an engineer.” Grinstaff and Shirihai started working on the project with seed funding from a pilot grant project of the Boston University Nanotechnology Innovation Center (BUnano). BUnano’s mission is to support collaborative research in nanotechnology and facilitate the translation of BU faculty’s scientific discoveries to the market. A fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, Grinstaff holds more than 200 patents or pending patent applications. “If things continue on a positive path, I think it would be wonderful to get to the firstin-human clinical trials within five years,” Grinstaff says. “This is a disease that is extremely common; it needs solutions, and there are not a lot of solutions out there.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

“We wondered whether there were ways we could control or alter the biology of the liver so that it could process the fat.” Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, CAMED). E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research

New BubblePopping Theory Could Help Track Ocean Pollution and Viruses

“If you’re able to get larger particles and transport them much further than previously thought, that is a key takeaway.” 28 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

From left, Oliver McRae, Lena Dubitsky and Associate Professor James Bird (ME) of the BU Fluid Lab.

the outer layer to collapse, packing its molecules together in a denser space. All that movement and change in density—and the air inside flying up and out—propels drops skyward. The retreat of that outer layer and the ejection of those drops—particularly the first, or top, drop to exit—is central to the lab’s new theory. “We focus on jet drops in this study, which are created when the bubble cavity collapses and shoots up into a liquid jet, which pinches off into drops,” says doctoral student Lena Dubitsky (ENG’23), a joint lead author on the paper. “In particular, we study the first jet drop since it tends to be the smallest and fastest, making it more likely to stay suspended in the atmosphere, to be transported the furthest, or be inhaled deeply into the respiratory tracts.” Any particles trapped in that first explosive drop are also more likely to become highly concentrated. For the past four decades, researchers studying bubbles thought the all-important top drop was drawn from a uniform fluid layer surrounding the entire bubble—only particles small enough to sit in that layer would get pulled into it, meaning bigger particles would get left behind. “We decided to use really big particles to stress-test this old theory and found it didn’t apply at all,” says Dubitsky.

Instead, they discovered that the fluid forming the top drop doesn’t always surround the whole bubble, and that a bubble’s size and where a particle sits on it also determine what gets ejected and when. If that all seems a bit esoteric and technical, just think about SARS-CoV-2. For the past couple of years, our health has been inextricably tied to droplets—how they spread, what they carry with them, how long they linger in the air. “In order to predict the infectivity of a particular pathogen, one needs to know the infectious dose, so when these droplets become ultraconcentrated, it really matters what size is becoming ultraconcentrated,” says Oliver McRae (CAS’12, ENG’20,’20), a joint lead author on the paper and ENG postdoctoral associate. “If you have a 50-micron droplet, we don’t really care about that much. If you’re able to get larger particles and transport them much further than previously thought, that is a key takeaway.” The research “opens up the possibility that there’s so much more going on than we had appreciated,” says Bird, and it could lead to strategies to make toilets and pools less pathogenic, or even to combat the next novel virus. “This work is a stepping stone.”— ANDREW THURSTON

PHOTO BY JAKE BELCHER

oapy bubbles popping in the backyard are fun. But what about the bubbles burst by a flushing toilet or a frothing hot tub? Those bubbles can fling bacteria and diseases into the air. Now, a study by Associate Professor James Bird (ME) and colleagues in the BU Fluid Lab, published in Physical Review Letters, illustrates why bubbles fire some contaminants into the air while allowing others to sink harmlessly. Using a highspeed camera and computer simulations to see what happens when bubbles pop, the researchers found a new way to predict which particles are flung high and which ones fall. The lab’s results overhaul a 40-year-old theory of fluid dynamics— and could help scientists track marine pollution or more accurately predict a virus’ transmissibility. At their simplest, bubbles are a thin layer of liquid surrounding a gas. If you poke the bubble, it creates a hole, which quickly widens—the whole bubble pops in less than one-tenth of a second—forcing

BU-Bred Sensor Scales Up BIOTECH FIRM BUYS VIRUS DETECTION AND CHARACTERIZATION TOOL SPUN OUT OF PHOTONICS CENTER

new technique of virus detection and characterization invented by a multidisciplinary team at BU drew a step closer to making a substantial impact in healthcare, as alum George Daaboul’s start-up NanoView was acquired by biotech firm Unchained Labs. Daaboul (ENG’09,’13) codeveloped the point-ofcare multipathogen test technology with his mentor, Distinguished Professor Selim Ünlü (ECE, MSE, BME). In its original incarnation, the BU-built sensor might someday be used to stop the spread of Ebola and other hemorrhagic diseases in underresourced countries and perhaps even quash global pandemics. Moreover, its ability to detect tiny particles might make the device a powerful weapon against cancer, heart and neurological conditions, as well as a tool to develop gene therapies. Now, the technology is poised

PHOTOGRAPH PHOTO BY CYDNEY BY SCOTT

Selim Ünlü (ECE, MSE, BME).

to make an impact on characterization of viral vectors—an essential component of emerging gene therapies. Called the Single Particle Interferometric Reflectance Imaging Sensor (SP-IRIS), the microfluidic device shines light waves from multicolor LED sources on artificial or biological nanoparticles (which could come from saliva, urine or blood) bound to the sensor surface. The way the light waves bounce back to the sensor provides a picture of the nanoscale viral particles present—while tuning out bacteria, proteins, and other flotsam and jetsam in the sample. That will give clinicians and researchers more accurate data faster—and at a lower cost than conventional methods. The technology has its origins in Selim Ünlü’s lab in the BU Photonics Center. Holder of 21 patents, with more pending, Ünlü—who was the 2021 BU Innovator of the Year—has been working on nanoparticle imaging for nearly two decades. His faculty collaborators include microbiologist John Connor, an associate professor in the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. With Ünlü as advisor, Daaboul and Rahul Vedula (ENG’09) won the BME Best Senior Design Award with a project imaging 100-nanometer particles on a surface. Con-

tinuing at ENG as a PhD student, Daaboul won the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technologies (CIMIT) Student Prize for Primary Healthcare, finishing in first place in a competitive, nationwide contest. The $150,000 award allowed Daaboul and team to iterate and improve upon the SP-IRIS technology. Ünlü also recruited David Freedman (ENG’10) and Steven Scherr (ENG’17) to the SP-IRIS project. Both earned PhDs at ENG—Freedman in ECE, Scherr in ME. With biomedical engineer Daaboul, the trio represented all three ENG departments. “They all brought in different skill sets,” says Ünlü.

Ünlü is proud to see his protégés succeed at commercializing their research. “As an engineer, you want to solve actual problems.” The young researchers helped to found a start-up, based in the Photonics Center, that eventually became NanoView before being purchased by Unchained. They were aided by NSF grants for virus detection, prototyping and entrepreneurship, and guided by Ünlü. Two exciting aspects of the SP-IRIS technology lie in its ability to detect exosomes and lentiviruses. Exosomes are tiny vesicles that carry messages between cells. They can be found in blood, saliva and urine samples, and scientists believe they might carry biomarkers or other indicators of tumors, heart trouble or neurodegenerative diseases. (An even more ambitious theory holds that exosomes could be commandeered to deliver drugs to specific types of cells.) Lentiviruses are viral vectors that can be harnessed for use in gene therapies. Ünlü is proud to see his protégés succeed at commercializing their research. “As an engineer, you want to solve actual problems,” he says. “You built something in the lab, did some fantastic measurements, published a paper—wonderful. But that shouldn’t be the end of it.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research

Aiming to Bring OA to Its Knees NIH GRANT ENABLES BU TEAM TO ADVANCE FIRST-IN-KIND SCOPE FOR EARLY OSTEOARTHRITIS DETECTION

Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) testing the novel Raman arthroscope.

think of older individuals, but the reality is that 24 percent of adults are afflicted with osteoarthritis,” says Albro. “The burden can at times fall even heavier on younger patients.” Every year, hundreds of thousands of adolescents and young adults

“We keep getting contacted by orthopedic surgeons in the area who want to use this in the clinic as soon as possible.” Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME). 30 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

suffer sports injuries that can lead to posttraumatic osteoarthritis, says Albro. “And they’re not yet eligible for a joint replacement procedure.” Soft tissue doesn’t show up very well in radiography scans, and an MRI scan— the gold standard for fractures and other diagnoses—doesn’t have quite the granular resolution that’s ideal for imaging cartilage. That means no method currently in use can detect OA early, when there might still be time to intervene. The alternative that Albro and colleagues have crafted uses the principle of Raman scattering. Long in use to date fossils and bust art forgers, a Raman spectroscope shines light on a specimen, counts the tiny number

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS MCINTOSH

t’s a disease that causes pain, can’t be cured right now and can’t be diagnosed until it’s too late. But with a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a team of BU engineers collaborating with clinicians and other experts around the world is developing a groundbreaking weapon in the fight against osteoarthritis (OA). “We keep getting contacted by orthopedic surgeons in the area who want to use this in the clinic as soon as possible,” says Assistant Professor Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME), who is the lead PI in an ongoing project to build a noninvasive, light-based arthroscope to gauge the health of cartilage in the knees and other joints. Totaling nearly $3 million, “this NIH grant will essentially enable us to prove that Raman diagnostic measurements can outperform MRI.” A degenerative joint disease that afflicts 32.5 million Americans, OA occurs when articular cartilage—the tissue that cushions the ends of bones at the joint—wears away. It leads to pains and aches and even disability. The tissue loss is irreversible, so eventually an artificial joint is required. That’s a problem when the OA sufferer is a young adult or even a teenager, because artificial joints only last for a couple of decades. “When you think of osteoarthritis, you

“Ultimately, one of the key benefits of the technology is going to be, for the first time ever, to examine the efficacy of some of these exciting emerging therapies.”

IMAGE COURTESY OF MICHAEL ALBRO

The arthroscope probes articular cartilage.

of light particles that undergo a shift in wavelength, and uses that data to assess the specimen’s chemical composition. Applying this process to articular cartilage, Albro’s team figured out that Raman scattering would pick up on key biomarkers, measuring the tissue’s composition as well as its mechanical function. With a grant from the Arthritis Foundation, they successfully tested their device—the first-ever Raman arthroscope—in explants in 2021. Now, with the NIH R01 grant, they are testing it in live large animal models, bringing the technology another step closer to the clinic. Why build a better arthroscope if cartilage loss can’t be reversed? Two good

reasons. First, many scientists are in fact working on methods that might stop OA in its tracks—and some even hope to reverse it—so if the disease could be detected early enough, that would prevent a lot of damage from ever occurring. Secondly, many researchers are working on engineering or regenerating tissue to replace the cartilage. Indeed, Albro and many of his colleagues on the Raman arthroscope project are also involved in just such efforts as part of their two-pronged approach: Their “optical biopsy” device can be used to assess the quality of the replacement tissue that they and others engineer, just as well as it can assess natural tissue. “Ultimately, one of the key benefits of the [Raman] technology is going to be, for the first time ever, to examine the efficacy of some of these exciting emerging therapies,” says Albro.

The team includes Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED); Research Professor Brian Snyder (BME), who is also an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital; and biophotonics expert Mads Bergholt from King’s College in London, among others— as well as “just terrific, talented students” from all three ENG departments, says Albro. “These are challenging problems that any one of us sitting alone would really not be able to tackle,” says Albro. “These international, interdisciplinary collaborations are wonderful—but they can also be precarious, given the distance and everyone’s busy schedules. So, the magic formula is, you have to really like working together. And we seem to have found this nice team that’s just really enthusiastic to work together on these projects.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research

ON A LIFELONG MISSION TO HELP A CHILDHOOD FRIEND, TIM O’SHEA IS WORKING ON A NEW WAY TO REPAIR SPINAL CORDS

en Harvey was an active fifteenyear-old. He was a rower, a swimmer—one of the fastest in the state of Queensland, Australia—and especially, he played rugby. In his hometown of Brisbane, rugby is a passion, a social and cultural keystone. Twenty years ago and just two weeks shy of his 16th birthday, Harvey was playing in a rugby match when a freak accident damaged his spinal cord. The injury Ben Harvey.

cells served a strictly structural function in the healthy central nervous system. Because these cells don’t conduct action potentials, the way key neurons do; they appear electrically silent. But scientists now know that glia are highly active cells that help maintain healthy brains and spinal cords. When an injury to the spinal cord occurs, surviving glial cells are involved in the natural wound healing process, serving to isolate the damaged tissue and protect viable neurons. But while isolating the damaged tissue is important in the short term, it can get in the way of spinal cord regeneration. What O’Shea and collaborators have created is a new, sugar-based polymer biomaterial with glial cell signaling properties. The material can be used to redirect glial cells, giving them a new mission in the event of a spinal cord injury. “These new injectable biomaterials enable us to modulate glial cell functions to effectively alter the nature of the wound repair in the first days after injury,” O’Shea says. “By generating this new glia-based repair in spinal cord injury lesions with the help of our injectable biomaterials, we are providing the necessary cellular support for regrowing neural circuits in a manner similar to what takes place in neural development.” With $150,000 from the PVA, O’Shea will test this strategy and refine aspects of it over the next two years. He is assisted by

“Most researchers haven’t been exposed to the uncomfortable realities of spinal cord injuries and don’t have a comprehension of the whole picture of how it affects the individual.” 32 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROLL MODELS

Bringing Hope to Ben

paralyzed him, altering the course of his life. In a different way, the accident traumatized Harvey’s peers, such as his best friend, Tim O’Shea. It also gave O’Shea a new purpose. “I’d always liked math and science,” says O’Shea. Growing up in a region rich in mineral resources, a kid with those aptitudes had a clear career path. “Becoming a mining engineer or a mechanical engineer was the name of the game. But after that event, I knew I wanted to go into biomedical engineering and do something that would help Ben.” The Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Research Foundation believes O’Shea is onto something now, and they’ve given him a grant to develop it. O’Shea is today an assistant professor in BME, and he has proposed a novel solution that enlists glial cells to repair the spinal cord. For a long time, it was thought that glial

DANA J. QUIGLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Tim O’Shea (BME).

biomedical engineering PhD graduate and undergraduate students who come from a range of interdisciplinary backgrounds— including engineering, biology, and materials science—and the project benefits from O’Shea’s own diverse training, encompassing materials science, polymer chemistry and glial neurobiology. “The project combines expertise on multiple fronts to extend the significance of the impact our lab can make on this important problem,” he says. The project also includes a nonacademic partner: Ben Harvey. A unique aspect of the PVA grant is that it requires someone with a spinal cord injury to serve on the team as a patient advocate. Being the very reason O’Shea went into this line of work in the first place, Harvey was the obvious choice. Harvey’s role is to provide the team with detailed insights based on his firsthand experience living with a spinal cord injury and provide feedback on the priorities and goals of the research. A permanent wheelchair user, with

limited use of his arms, Harvey grapples with a host of physical and logistical limitations. “As a direct result of his spinal cord injury, performing those everyday tasks that we all do without thinking takes just that little bit longer and that much

These new injectable biomaterials might alter the nature of wound repair. more effort for Ben than for the average person,” says O’Shea. “Ben has overcome numerous challenges to live a happy and meaningful life and has a unique perspective on overcoming adversity and dealing with challenging problems.” That perspective will be valuable for the

research team to hear, says O’Shea. “We do research on a very molecular and preclinical level, where we’re working with animal models and making new biomaterials. But most researchers haven’t been exposed to the uncomfortable realities of spinal cord injuries and don’t have a comprehension of the whole picture of how it affects the individual.” For now, meetings with Harvey have occurred on Zoom, but O’Shea hopes to fly his friend to Boston at some point, and by the end of the grant, the entire team will present results at a PVA-sponsored symposium. “This is the only grant I know of where a consumer advocate is involved in the research,” says O’Shea. “It’s valuable not only as motivation but also to help guide the decision-making. Because you can read as much literature on spinal cord injuries as you care to, but it’s very different hearing about it from someone with that lived experience.”— PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research

The Sky’s the Limit RAMACHANDRAN TEAM’S LIGHT TRANSMISSION DISCOVERY PUBLISHED IN SCIENCE

34 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, Physics, MSE).

Ramachandran’s team has successfully demonstrated this new method by packing as many as 50 data channels into a single kilometerlong optical fiber; 25 times the capacity of conventional fibers. had previously played a pivotal role in the development of this concept, akin to expanding the number of lanes in a highway to allow for increased traffic. Unfortunately, this tends to lead to “crashes”—information leaking between channels. This leakage corrupts every channel, thereby rendering information transmitted in all channels irretrievable and making this method a stopgap at best, not an effective solution. Instead of thinking in terms of cars and roads, Ramachandran suggests a more celestial framework. “High-topological charge light beams” behave differently from the standard beams used in optical communications today; rather than moving in a straight line, they twist as they travel, generating a “centrifugal barrier” like

those created by the rotation of binary stars. Just as centrifugal barriers keep such stars from crashing into one another, they can also operate to keep these unusual light beams contained within an optical fiber over significant distances. That is, these twisted beams do not need total internal reflection, previously thought to be necessary for transmitting light, to remain confined to the optical fiber. Unlike total internal reflection, this effect is also significantly more robust, allowing for many more data channels—without that pesky leakage problem. Ramachandran’s team has successfully demonstrated this new method by packing as many as 50 data channels into a single kilometer-long optical fiber; 25 times the capacity of conventional fibers. They theorize that this improvement is only the beginning—and if their approach is as scalable as they suspect, it could have a truly global impact. — A.J. KLEBER

Artist’s rendering of high-topological charge light beams.

DANA J. QUIGLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

he amount of data people are generating in digital spaces is constantly, exponentially growing. We tend to think of information as ephemeral, hovering insubstantially in “the cloud,” but in reality, there are physical limits to how our data is stored and transmitted, and this continual increase in content is beginning to pose a challenge to the optical fibers that form the infrastructure through which it travels. The information is sent in the form of beams of light, which can be maintained and relayed over globespanning distances using a phenomenon called “total internal reflection,” in which light bounces off the walls of an optical fiber “light pipe” with minimal loss. However, the capacity of a given optical fiber is limited—a limit our expanding data generation threatens to exceed. Fresh solutions are needed, which is where Distinguished Professor of Engineering Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, Physics, MSE) and ECE PhD candidate Zelin Ma come in. In a study published in Science, Ma and Ramachandran, along with industry collaborator Poul Kristensen of OFS Optics, demonstrate their groundbreaking solution—one which not only cracks the problem of the upcoming capacity crunch, but may also yield a more energy-efficient means of signal transmission than traditional methods. One existing approach to alleviating capacity crunch involves configuring an optical fiber to support several separate data channels. Light travels down these channels in spatially distinct patterns, each of which carries as much data as a single standard fiber. Ramachandran and his team

To Tone Down the Drone of Delivery Drones BU RESEARCHERS LEAD A NASA PROJECT TO HELP DEVELOP QUIETER VERTICAL-LIFT AIR VEHICLES

orget to order dinner or a birthday gift? Have a drone land an order on your doorstep. Need to hop a short distance from one city to another, but don’t want to wait in traffic or baggage lines? Jump on a lightweight, multirotor rideshare aircraft. This future promised by vertical-lift air vehicles might seem super convenient, but with all those buzzing rotors filling the sky, it could also be very noisy. For NASA, it throws up an intriguing problem: how do you advance a cool flight technology without making such a racket? The agency has funded a BU–led team to help develop safe, affordable and quiet vertical-lift air vehicles, which are electric aircraft—classed as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) vehicles—that have four or more rotors and can take off and land vertically. The University Leadership Initiative grant—one of four awarded with a combined

total of up to $25.1 million over four years— will support research into the technical and environmental challenges of flying in urban environments. According to Associate Professor Sheryl Grace (ME), who will head the project, her team brings experience studying topics as diverse as rotor performance, how winds swirl through cities, and autonomous vehicle control. “All of the expertise needed to address this challenge has been developed over many years,” says Grace, who will be joined on the project by Assistant Professor Roberto Tron (ME) and Dan Li, a CAS asso-

“A goal is to develop methods to enable us to optimize the way the multirotors will operate in an urban environment.” ciate professor of Earth and environment. “And now we just need to go after these new questions.” Grace is an aeroacoustician, which means she studies flow noise. The goal of her project is to figure out how to minimize noise from AAM vehicles in dense urban areas with shifting wind conditions. “We know what helicopters do—there’s

NASA GRAPHIC BY LILLIAN GIPSON AND KYLE JENKINS. COURTESY OF TERESA WHITING/NASA ARMSTRONG FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER

A NASA concept image showing different types of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft flying over urban, suburban and rural areas.

Sheryl Grace (ME).

been a lot of research on helicopters,” says Grace. “When you move to the distributed electric propulsion systems, you have multiple rotors and that means more interactions between the flows on the rotors. And the rotors are different—they’re smaller, there are more blades than on a helicopter rotor, they’re actuated differently. So new dynamics come into play.” Now imagine such vehicles inundating city streets, with skyscrapers already creating wind tunnel effects. “There’s flow coming around buildings, there’s flow over the tops of buildings,” says Grace. “How do these multirotor vehicles respond to those unsteady disturbances? How can the vehicle stay in a nice forward flight from a performance point of view? And what noise will be created by the interaction with the disturbances and by the actuation required to fly through the disturbances? This performance and noise response of multirotor vehicles to disturbances is what we’re going to be quantifying.” Eventually, this research will help plan flight paths for AAM vehicles, Grace explains: “Once we understand, ‘Okay, don’t come up against this kind of flow because you’re going to make more noise,’ we can pick a path of quieter operation. A goal is to develop methods to enable us to optimize the way the multirotors will operate in an urban environment.” The team will also include experts from Virginia Tech, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Tuskegee University, and industry partner Joby Aviation, which is developing electric aerial ride-sharing vehicles. Joby will offer internships for graduate students involved in the program, while more than 20 undergraduates will have the opportunity to work in participating labs. The team also plans to create a leadership program for students from underrepresented backgrounds. — ANDREW THURSTON E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 3

BU.EDU/ENG

research

PAPER-BASED TEST WILL BRING TUMOR MONITORING TO UNDERRESOURCED AREAS

ssistant Professor Liangliang Hao (BME) won a 2023 Faculty Starter Grant in Translational Medicine from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Foundation for her proposal to develop a rapid point-of-care test that will predict the efficacy of some cancer treatments. One of the most promising immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer are a class of drugs called bispecific T cell engager (BiTE) antibodies, which make use of a patient’s T cells to help destroy cancer cells. However, this method is limited by difficulties in determining early on whether the treatment is working. Hao has proposed a novel BiTE diagnostic that harnesses the activity of proteases—enzymes that digest proteins— to identify biomarkers that will predict the tumor’s response to treatment. The test can be conducted noninvasively, with a urine sample, and conveniently, on a paper-based system similar to pregnancy or COVID-19 tests. Hao sees this as a way to bring sophisticated cancer monitoring to underresourced areas at low cost. A member of the BU ENG faculty since January 2023, Hao works at the intersection of engineering, biology, chemistry and materials to improve healthcare. “My long-standing research interest is to understand the fundamental rules of biological processes and leverage such knowledge to advance precision medicine,” Hao writes. The award of $100,000 will enable Hao to expand her lab’s staff and equipment devoted to the BiTE diagnostic project. 36 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

“Through our grants and fellowships, the PhRMA Foundation supports promising researchers as they work toward tomorrow’s breakthroughs,” writes Amy Miller, the foundation’s president. “I cannot wait to see the progress they make.”

Park’s Project Aimed at Nimbler, FuelFrugal Fighter Jets

rofessor Harold Park (ME, MSE) is part of a team that has won a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the US Department of Defense to revolutionize the passive control of aerodynamic flows. With $7.5 million over five years, Park and colleagues will use novel metamaterials to modify the flow of air over the wings of a jet. “If all goes well, we will develop an understanding of how to reduce turbulent drag,” says Park. The researchers will use metamaterials—artificial materials engineered to have properties not found in nature—to suppress the rocky transition from smooth flow to turbulent flow. Potential benefits to this would be reducing airplane weight, which is typically

“The scientific question to answer in this project,” says Park, “is how to take metamaterials that can propagate energy in specific directions and understand how that impacts air flows.” needed to combat turbulence, and thus increasing fuel efficiency, while improving maneuverability,” Park says. “This could be important for military applications, since you typically need to slow down to reduce turbulence.” Park has expertise computationally designing metamaterials that can propagate energy from one point to another without loss, and that can couple loads and dynamics from different directions. “The scientific question to answer in this project,” says Park, “is how to take metamaterials that can propagate energy in specific directions and understand how that impacts air flows.” Park’s team includes colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Theirs was one of just 31 projects to be awarded MURI grants this year, out of 259 submissions. The aim of the program is to assemble multidisciplinary teams whose collective insights can advance cutting-edge technologies geared to defense problems.

PHOTO BY VISHU JOO FOR UNSPLASH

Novel Cancer Diagnostic Earns Hao a PhRMA Grant

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

dean’s leadership advisory board John Abele Founder & Director, Boston Scientific Jill Albertelli ’91 President, Military Engines Pratt & Whitney Omar Ali ’96 Director of Operations, Petra Engineering Industries Co. Tye Brady ’90 Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics Deborah Caplan ’90 Executive VP, Human Resources & Corporate Services, NextEra Energy Vanessa Feliberti ’93 Corporate VP, M365 Services Platform Engineering, Microsoft Mikhail Gurevich ’07, Questrom ‘12 Managing Partner, Dominion Capital Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Dean Kamen President & Founder, DEKA Research & Development Anand Krishnamurthy ’92,’96 President and CEO, Affirmed Networks Ezra Kucharz ’90 Chief Business Officer, DraftKings Inc. Abhijit Kulkarni ’93,’97 COO, Cellino Biotech Inc. Antoinette Leatherberry ’85 Principal (Retired), Deloitte Consulting Trustee, Boston University Daniel Maneval ’82 Chief Science Officer, January Therapeutics Kathleen McLaughlin ’87 Chief Sustainability Officer, Walmart Inc. President, Walmart Foundation Manuel Mendez ’91 CEO, Quotient Limited Rao Mulpuri ’92,’96 CEO, View Inc.

Emeritus members include Roger Dorf (‘70), Richard Reidy (Questrom ‘82) and Venkatesh Narayanamurti

Girish Navani ’91 Co-Founder and CEO, eClinicalWorks Anton Papp ’90 Vice President & Head of Corporate Development, Ping Identity Nirva Kapasi Patel ‘00 Exec. Dir., Animal Law & Policy, Harvard Law School Sharad Rastogi ’91 Chief Product Officer, JLL George M. Savage, MD ’81 Former Chief Medical Officer & Co-Founder, Proteus Digital Health Inc. Binoy K. Singh, MD ’89 Chair of Cardiology, Northwell Health John Tegan ’88 President, CEO, Communication Technology Services Francis Troise ’87 Principal, FJT Resources William Weiss ’83,’97 Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics, General Dynamics Mission Systems

Boston University College of Engineering

Elise Morgan

interim dean Solomon R. Eisenberg

Coralie Eggeling

assistant dean for development & alumni relations

senior associate dean for academic programs

John White

Boston University College of Engineering Ayse Coskun

W. Clem Karl

interim associate dean for research and faculty development Ajay Joshi

interim associate dean for educational initiatives Richard Lally

College of Engineering

senior associate dean for finance and administration

biomedical engineering chair electrical & computer engineering chair Sean Andersson

mechanical engineering chair David Bishop

materials science & engineering head Christos Cassandras

systems engineering head

assistant dean for outreach & diversity

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PHOTO BY CYDNEY SCOTT

Yang Yang Zhang (ENG’24) (left) and Kai Imery (ENG’24) work on an object-detecting autonomous vehicle they designed in the class Smart and Connected Systems, taught by Professor Thomas Little (ECE).