ENGineer | Spring 2020 by Boston University College of Engineering

SPRING 2020

IN SID E NEW ROBOTICS MASTER’S DEGREE

4 R NO DO S Y OG ER L O T HN CEN C TESHIP G N RI EUR E N INEPRE G ENTRE O I B EN &

A CAMPAIGN IS ONLY AS SUCCESSFUL AS ITS IMPACT.

CT U D ROTER P G N IN CE R N EE O IN ATI G V EN NO IN

RESEARCH 469 SUMMER FELLOWSHIPS

$9 SINGH IMAGINEERING LAB

93 8,

$13M+ FACULTY FUNDING

INNOVATION 421 TECHNOLOGY SCHOLARS

CHALLENGES ACCEPTED

9. 3M

IL LI ON

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CAPITAL CAMPAIGN BY THE NUMBERS CONTENTS • SPRING 2020

99.3M 256 8,934 63 41

FEATURES

$100K 100K $$100K

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TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDS RAISED

NUMBER OF $100K+ GIFTS

(including corporations/foundations)

The Healthy Innovator

8,934

TOTAL NUMBER OF UNIQUE DONORS

2,736,419

ENGINEERING PRODUCT INNOVATION CENTER (EPIC) FUND

BIOENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY & ENTREPRENEURSHIP CENTER (BTEC)

SINGH IMAGINEERING LAB (TINKER)

UNDERGRADUATE INNOVATION (MACCARONE)

521,453 COMBINED

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SCHOLARS PROGRAM (TISP)

FACULTY

$385,000

249

SUMMER TERM ALUMNI RESEARCH SCHOLARS (STARS)

421 220

1,032,043

$136,453

NUMBER OF STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS FUNDED:

INDIVIDUAL DONORS

DISTINGUISHED SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (DSRF)

FACULTY FELLOWSHIP FUNDING

13,533,280

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TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDING

STUDENTS

FACILITIES

INDIVIDUAL GIFTS

THANKS TO OUR 8,934 DONORS.

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DEPARTMENTS 3

inENG

Faculty News

Alumni News

HIGHLIGHTS

New Robotics Master’s Degree

Mechanobiology Center Announced

cover image: MirageC/moment/getty images

ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

message from the dean ENG RECOGNIZED IN DIVERSITY ACTION

5 Thank You.

NEW METAMATERIAL BOOSTS MRI POWER

BY DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

The BU Robotics Lab

Master’s in Robotics & Autonomous Systems Launched

R PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF WILSON ARCHITECTS

everal years ago, the College of Engineering laid out a strategic vision that identified bold approaches to educating students, recruiting faculty engaged in high-impact research, and creating cutting-edge facilities. Now, at the conclusion of the Choose to Be Great capital campaign, I am proud and grateful to say that your generosity has played a critical role in making those ideas real. At the outset, we knew that realizing our vision would require more than ideas and commitment from faculty and staff. We needed new resources that would have to extend well beyond the normal budgeting process. We would need philanthropic support to initiate and sustain successful programs. And, when we asked for your help in supporting specific initiatives aligned with that strategic vision, well, you responded. As a result, the college has entered a new era of impact and excellence. When we started, we identified three characteristics that distinguish great universities—quality faculty, quality students and superior facilities. Thanks to your contributions, the college has made great strides in each. Campaign support was essential to our ability to recruit and retain stellar

we asked corporate partners, alumni and others to help make it a reality. The result is the Engineering Product Innovation Center, one of the first and largest such facilities at any engineering school. Creation of the brand-new Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center followed a similar path. The center will expose students to the latest technologies to advance healthcare, including the application of machine learning to synthetic biology, gene editing and real-time monitoring of health indicators. We will look to companies to partner with our students on mutually beneficial projects that integrate technology, biology and medicine. When we embarked on the Choose to Be Great campaign we did not just try to raise as much money as possible; we also saw it as an opportunity to ask our alumni and friends to help us develop and realize a strategic vision. In doing so, we asked for contributions to support targeted initiatives that would enable and accelerate excellence. We stand here now with some of the best faculty and the best students who think across disciplines to solve problems in some of the finest, cutting-edge facilities in the nation. Not only am I thankful; our students are grateful for the perspective they are gaining from these advances, and hightech companies are grateful for the quality of our students they recruit. Our alumni, friends and corporate partners who made this happen recognize the direct role they have in how the college prepares the next generation of engineers. Every time we saw what was needed, we asked and you gave. You have propelled us to the next level of impact and excellence. Thank you.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KALMAN ZABARSKY

We stand here now with some of the best faculty and the best students who think across disciplines to solve problems in some of the finest, cutting-edge facilities in the nation.

faculty. When we started, we had virtually no named professorships; now we have commitments for seven. This has allowed us to honor our best faculty and attract top junior faculty. Philanthropy has expanded the number of named Distinguished Faculty Fellows we award our faculty, helping them pursue high-impact research and educational initiatives. Expanding and enhancing outside-theclassroom opportunities for our undergraduates has made Boston University a destination for the very best engineering students from around the world. We created partnerships with BU’s Questrom School of Business to implement the Technology Innovation concentration so that engineering students learn how companies convert ideas into products. We also created the Technology Innovation Scholars Program to engage our own students in the process of broadening participation among K–12 students in the pursuit of engineering careers. We asked our alumni to support these and other initiatives, and you responded by elevating the Engineering Annual Fund to unprecedented levels. In graduate education, we created new, interdisciplinary master’s degree programs that give students advanced training in some of the most critical workforce needs of the future like Product Design & Manufacture and, starting later this year, Robotics & Autonomous Systems. Like most engineering schools, we did not have the capability to train students in rapidly emerging technologies, so we consulted with industry leaders and members of our advisory board on what skills today’s employers need and envisioned an extraordinary makerspace that could be continually reconfigured and equipped to stay on the leading edge of evolving technologies. Then,

ecognizing increasing demand spurred by the extraordinary growth of robotics, autonomous systems, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, the College of Engineering is expanding its advanced offerings in the field by launching a Master of Science in Robotics & Autonomous Systems degree program. “The field of robotics and autonomous systems is undergoing explosive growth,” Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen says. “Applications in medicine, autonomous vehicles, urban function, additive manufacturing, product storage, distribution and delivery, space exploration, consumer products, energy delivery and many other areas are growing rapidly and are expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Building upon the strength of our faculty with research expertise in robotics, autonomous systems, machine learning and controls, and working with many corporate leaders that innovate and use robotics and autonomous products, this degree will prepare students to be leaders in this exciting growth area.”

The degree is designed to be accessible to students with a Bachelor of Science in myriad disciplines, such as mechanical, electrical, computer, biomedical and systems engineering, and computer science. The program teaches students how to synthesize all these disciplines with machine learning, all in the development and applications of robotics and autonomous systems. A unique component of the 32-credit program is a full-time, paid internship completed during the summer term. Students can complete an internship placement through the program, arrange for an approved internship they find themselves or participate in a research internship in a faculty member’s lab. Several leading local robotics companies— including Amazon Robotics, Boston Scientific, DEKA, GreenSight Agronomics, Dragon, iRobot, MathWorks, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, OptimusRid, Yrobot, PTC, The Gillette Co. and Realtime Robotics— have agreed to consider BU Robotics students for internships. Massachusetts is home to more than 120 robotics companies and thousands of employees working on everything from large-scale manufacturing to in-home consumer devices. Applications range from soft robotics used in biomedical applications to self-driving vehicles, smart cities, environmental and sustainable systems and many others. As robotics continues to expand, these companies are seeking more engineers with advanced robotics training. Applications to the Master of Science in Robotics & Autonomous Systems program are now being accepted for the class enrolling in fall 2020. —michael seele ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

How Can Synthetic Biology Combat Climate Change?

arbon farming, a process that helps reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, has been around for about five years but could be a more successful strategy to combat climate change if it becomes multidisciplinary. Metcalf Professor of Science and Engineering and Dean Emeritus of the College of Engineering Charles DeLisi recognized the potential in carbon farming to combat climate change, and how it could be amplified manifold by exploiting the powerful methods of postgenomic biology, especially the emerging fields of synthetic and systems biology. These fields, DeLisi thought, could be employed to modify plants to convert atmospheric carbon into stable compounds rather than returning it to the atmosphere, or to create self-fertilizing plants that grow under non-ideal conditions, thereby avoiding food shortages as climate conditions change. After giving a lecture at BU about climate change, DeLisi found several BU collaborators who were interested in advancing these topics. Professor Daniel Segrè (Biology, Bioinformatics, BME), the late Tony Janetos, former director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and DeLisi began talking about developing a workshop to bring together experts from a range of disciplines to discuss these topics. On December 3 and 4, 2019, the College of Engineering and the graduate program in Bioinformatics & Systems Biology hosted the workshop, supported in part by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, titled The Role of Synthetic Biology in Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Reduction. DeLisi brought on two other organizers, Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for Climate Change Programs at Climate Institute, and Aristides Patrinos, chief scientist at the Novim Group, to help realize the vision. “The theme of this workshop is driven by the confluence of two opposing challenges that society faces,” said Dean of the College of Engineering Kenneth R. Lutchen, who opened 4

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it. “The first challenge is population growth, which will continue to occur for another 20–30 years, and the second is in making sure we can establish enough energy for the needs of that population.” He noted that this workshop is unique in its goal—instead of trying to figure out carbon-free energy sources, it’s working to mitigate and reduce the carbon footprint of delivering energy across the globe. “The view of the organizers is that there’s no magic bullet to the climate challenge, so we need to lay out and vet all promising approaches,” DeLisi said. “Prior to this meeting, the potential role of biotech received very little attention. We’re hoping some of the ideas generated by engaging various communities—climate scientists, biotechnologists, ethicists, policy experts—will be helpful in formulating a scientific plan to begin addressing this challenge.” The two-day workshop was divided into four sessions: synthetic and systems biology; terrestrial, atmosphere, ocean system; policy panel; and ethical, legal and social issues. Experts and researchers from academia and industry presented their research and participated in discussions about how all of the different fields can work together to find solutions in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Attendee Stan Wullschleger, director of the Environmental Sciences Division and of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, gave a presentation, titled “Harnessing Plant Genomics for CO2 Capture and Storage in Soils,” in which he

discussed past, sometimes decade-long projects that have studied the ecological effects of increased carbon storage. He pointed out an opportunity to engineer specific genetic pathways in plants that could help make them more resistant to environmental stressors like drought, and enhance carbon dioxide capture and storage. Engineering major plant pathways is a difficult task that will require plant physiologists like Wullschleger to work with synthetic and systems biologists and engineers to realize the opportunities in enhancing carbon farming. The workshop attracted an interdisciplinary group of leaders with a stake in the intersection of synthetic biology and greenhouse gas reduction. Among the presenters were George Church of Harvard University, Adam Arkin of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Steve Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund and David Resnik of the National Institutes of Health. Among a diverse group of thought leaders in an array of fields, other participants included Nobel Prize winners Professor Emeritus Sheldon Glashow (Physics, Mathematics) and Richard Roberts of New England Biolabs. “This was the first meeting between two groups—synthetic biologists and climate scientists—who virtually never talk to one another, so it was a real learning experience for all of us, and a potentially important one,” DeLisi said. “Now, the challenge is to make sure we continue to work on these problems together, and a group of us are now planning next steps based on what we learned.” —liz sheeley

Challenges Accepted

oston University has been creating Societal Engineers—those who use the unique skill sets of the engineer to improve society—for more than a decade now, and the concept has resonated with students and alumni. Also about a decade ago, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced its Grand Challenges for Engineering, a set of 14 goals for improving life worldwide. Starting this fall, BU College of Engineering students will have the opportunity to take advantage of this synergy in the new NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program. As Grand Challenges Scholars, students will have the opportunity to tackle a major societal challenge, such as carbon sequestration or cybersecurity, from a multidisciplinary perspective to gain a designation on their degrees. “There is real alignment between the goals of the NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program and our long-standing commitment to creating Societal Engineers,” says College of Engineering Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen. “This program is designed to incentivize our students to use the power of engineering and the Grand Challenges competencies to advance society.” Student commitment to working on technologies that will have a positive impact on the world has been duly noted in recent

years, says Associate Dean for Educational Initiatives Thomas Little. “The essence of this program is to steer student learning toward big-ticket goals and find ways for motivated students to tailor their learning in association with these Grand Challenges,” he explains. “The other element of the program is to reinforce the skills and discipline required to be effective in leading in the Grand Challenges. We really want to send students into the world with skills that will enable transformation in the Grand Challenges areas.” Participants will fulfill five competencies specified by NAE: talent; multidisciplinary engineering systems; viable business/ entrepreneurship; multicultural; and social consciousness. Completing the NAE requirements to become a Grand Challenges Scholar can dovetail with a student’s BU degree and major requirements. Senior design projects, completing certain concentrations or minors and study abroad are examples of some curricular offerings that would also fulfill Grand Challenges Scholars competencies. Work completed in some extracurricular activities, such as the Imagineering Competition or Technology Innovation Scholars Program, could also count. A student interested in clean energy technologies as a way to reduce carbon emissions might be matched with novel materials research in a summer lab internship, work in a

“ The NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program gives students the opportunity to work on these problems and profoundly help humanity if we can solve them.”

–Associate Dean Thomas Little

technology start-up using algae to convert sunlight into fuel, or do a senior design project to study how batteries could be used to balance smart electricity grids for future smart cities. “Completing degree requirements and NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program competencies will take careful planning,” Little notes, recommending that students begin the program no later than sophomore year. He says that informational sessions and other outreach activities will begin in the fall, and students will be expected to take the initiative and apply to the program. A faculty committee will review applications, admit students, approve or reject specific competency proposals and participate in the evaluation process. “The NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program gives students the opportunity to work on these problems and profoundly help humanity if we can solve them,” he concludes. “We anticipate a lot of student interest.” —michael seele

ENG Recognized as Leader in Diversity Action

he College of Engineering has been recognized by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) as a leader in inclusive excellence as part of the society’s Diversity Recognition Program. “We aren’t just advocating for underrepresented groups for social justice, but to improve the college through diversity,” says Wynter Duncanson, assistant dean for Outreach and Diversity. Duncanson recently succeeded Stacey Freeman, who spearheaded the ASEE application and is now the director of national outreach initiatives at the college. In order to gain ASEE distinction, the college

had to demonstrate a commitment to four outcomes: establishing baseline support for groups underrepresented in engineering; quantifiably analyzing and assessing unit composition, policies, culture and climate related to groups underrepresented in engineering; implementing programs and initiatives that strengthen the K–12 or community college pipeline, thereby reducing significant barriers related to long-term growth; and developing an action plan focused on continuous improvement. Duncanson says the college outlined in its application how it plans continued progression in the four areas the ASEE highlighted. Some of those initiatives include

the Technology Innovation Scholars Program, the U-Design summer program for middle school students, the chapter for the National Society of Black Engineers and the National GEM Consortium. Beyond specific programs, Duncanson looks forward to improving the action plan through faculty workshops and conferences and listening to students regarding their needs in terms of academic and non-academic support. “I think a good place to start is to develop an understanding and language for diversity,” Duncanson says. “Then we can build programs, workshops and services to improve our inclusivity and diversity.”—liz sheeley ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

Wong Builds Catalog of Tools for Genetic Research

New Center for Multiscale & Translational Mechanobiology Announced

iber optics technology has revolutionized data communications, including the internet and telephone systems, by allowing information to be transmitted via light through flexible cables, which is faster and more efficient than using electrical wire. Now, Professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, Physics, MSE) and his team have discovered a new method and a new fiber that can transmit 24 times the amount of data of any previous single optical fiber. Their work has been published in Nature Communications. “Although we demonstrated that this fiber could transmit 24 times the amount of data supported by a single strand of fiber, theoretically, subject to material limitations, this design can scale much further,” Ramachandran points out. This work builds on a 2013 paper he published in Science that demonstrated that if light could be twisted instead of sent in a straight 6

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line, the transferable amount of data would significantly increase. Even so, these twisted beams had an inherent fundamental limitation as to how much data could be packed in them. The breakthrough came when Ramachandran and his team realized that an optical fiber could transmit beam shapes dramatically distinct from those in a freespace medium like air. And, these new beam shapes—which can never propagate outside a fiber but which share similarities with how electrons transmit in atoms and molecules— offer limitless combinations, leading to much higher data-capacity scaling than was previously thought possible in optical fibers. The amount of data being sent around the world increases every day, and new ways to send that data more efficiently and faster than before are needed to meet the growing demands of networks. This first step represents just the beginning of how researchers can scale these new light modes to satisfy the exponentially growing demands of

W Professor Elise Morgan

they are no longer exerting the same forces on their bones because of the loss of gravity.” Researchers can measure the change in force the bone is experiencing, but they can’t yet understand how that change in force is leading to changes in a biological pathway that affects bone mass. Beyond the collaborative research that the CMTM will facilitate, it will also hold symposia and seminars and host visiting researchers. —liz sheeley

high-performance data centers, supercomputers and telecommunications networks. —liz sheeley

Professor Siddharth Ramachandran

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT NOBLES

Twisting Light

of our bodies as being composed of different systems,” Morgan says. “We have the cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, the musculoskeletal system, and all of the components of those systems are experiencing mechanical signals.” She notes that while it’s not clear whether all of those mechanical signals are stimuli for biological processes, there’s evidence that in many cases, they are. “But broadly in science and engineering, we tend to study those systems somewhat independently,” she says. “It seems like there was a need to begin to communicate across those silos.” Morgan’s research focuses on understanding the physical cues that affect the development, adaptation, degeneration and regeneration of bone and cartilage. “We know that in many cases the mechanical environment plays a role simply because we know if we alter it somehow, then that system changes,” she explains. “For instance, astronauts lose bone mass in space because

TOP PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT; BOTTOM PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK CURRAN

he College of Engineering has established the new Center for Multiscale & Translational Mechanobiology (CMTM), which will facilitate new research projects between ENG faculty, the College of Arts & Sciences, Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences and BU Medical School. CMTM’s mission is to serve as the leading nexus for engineering and quantitative methods to understand and control mechanobiology and develop clinically translatable approaches for enhancing quality of life. Professor Elise Morgan (ME, MSE) will serve as inaugural director. A driving force in establishing the center by securing internal funding from the college and University, she will lead with her expertise in mechanobiology. The study of how physical cues affect biological processes, mechanobiology is one of the most untapped and, potentially, revolutionary avenues for advancing the understanding of fundamental mechanisms that drive altered function in disease. “Classically, in terms of anatomy, we think

hen researchers want to study a specific gene’s function, a powerful strategy is to completely turn off the gene of interest, which makes it easy to understand if it’s important, especially when you can control when and where to turn it off. Developed in the 1980s, that type of experiment creates what is called a knockout model, which is frequently used throughout the scientific community today. But the tools commonly used to produce a knockout model, recombinases—enzymes that can recognize a specific DNA sequence and then perform a specific function at that site such as cutting out a gene from the DNA—haven’t evolved much since their inception. Now, with a new publication in Nature Communications, Associate Professor Wilson Wong (BME) has accelerated the development of recombinase technology. “Typically, when researchers need to build a new recombinase for a specific study, they only build that one they need,” Wong says. “We decided to go further and construct the beginning of a library of inducible recombinases that are well classified and quantitatively tested.” The key, new element in this work is that these recombinases are inducible—their functions can be turned on and off. “In cancer development, genes can get mutated in different orders, and there’s an indication that the order matters,” Wong explains. “With our collection of recombinases, researchers could study how mutation order affects how diseases progress.” Those types of studies could lead to a better understanding of why behavior between types of cancer can differ greatly, and potentially why one type of cancer has a wide array of responses to the same treatment in different patients. Wong and his team built 20 versions of recombinases and tested how well each one functioned under inducible conditions. They were able to turn the recombinases on and off using a chemical, temperature or light signal; some of the recombinases can be con-

trolled with more than one of these signals. That matters because if a researcher wanted to understand multiple functionalities, they would want to be able to turn on and off those functionalities with separate signals as to not confound the study. They also built logic-based inducible recombinases, which will only turn on if multiple different conditions are met. This type of function helps researchers develop highly specific experiments, for example, they may want to study only what happens when they turn off a gene in a certain type of tissue. By requiring the recombinase to Associate Professor Wilson Wong turn on only when multiple and all signals are present, it reduces the risk of the system turning on somewhere The multi-instructional it shouldn’t. project allows the The team didn’t just produce a large scientists and engineers collection of recombinases that are shown to involved to collaborate work, but also classified how well they work with one another on under each type of inducer—chemical, temprojects such as this one, perature and light. Creating an open-source, quantitatively evaluated library like this for which is why Dr. Jacob any experimental element is one goal of the Beal, a senior scientist Living Computing Project, a $10M, five-year at Raytheon BBN National Science Foundation grant that Technologies and also a Associate Professors Douglas Densmore principal investigator on (ECE, BME), Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (BME) and the Living Computing Wong are leading. The multi-instructional project allows the Project, was brought scientists and engineers involved to collaborate onto the team. with one another on projects such as this one, which is why Dr. Jacob Beal, a senior scientist These new recombinases were sent to at Raytheon BBN Technologies and also a Addgene, a nonprofit plasmid repository; any principal investigator on the Living Computing lab can order from their catalog in an effort Project, was brought onto the team. Wong to increase collaboration and openness in notes that Beal, a co-corresponding author on science. This new recombinase collection will this study, was instrumental in developing the be very useful in mammalian genome engiquantitative techniques they used in the paper neering and gene expression control, and their to understand just how well each recombinase applications will be in animal model developwas working. ment and cell-based therapy. —liz sheeley ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

College Hosts Conference with Higher Education Outreach Program Leaders

he College of Engineering hosted a three-day, National Science Foundation– funded conference on September 23–25, 2019, as part of an early-concept grant for exploratory research (EAGER) that gathered 37 university outreach administrators, K–12 administrators, university students, educational researchers and evaluators to discuss ambassador-based, K–12 outreach programs. “The goal of the conference was for attendees to discuss their outreach programs, make connections with potential collaborators, share best practices and consider ways to make our programs more effective,” says Stacey Freeman, director of national outreach initiatives at the College of Engineering. The meeting kicked off with a welcoming address from Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen and four keynotes from attendees touching on different subject matters, including introducing the discussion of developing a robust model to measure outreach outcomes on a national scale.

This EAGER program had three phases, the first of which launched in September 2018; this conference was the third and final phase. EAGERs are meant to allow initial, exploratory research into untested, but potentially transformative, ideas or approaches. The first phase included interviews with potential stakeholders and attendees of the meeting. Sandra Rodegher, manager of national outreach programs at BU, compiled the data from those interviews and turned them into the workshop design. The college’s signature outreach effort, the Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP), trains undergraduate students to work with middle and high school students, teaching them about engineering as a discipline and a career. “From our surveys to the students who have participated in TISP, we know that they enjoyed the program, but we don’t know if the program made an impact on their educational future,” Freeman explains.

BU—is piggybacking new technology on another X-ray instrument built by the same team, which has already been shot up to space and returned back to Earth. “We’ve never had a full view of the Earth’s magnetosphere, or known if it changes with time or even if it has holes in it,” he explains. “We haven’t had a wide enough view of our planet to take those kinds of images.” Just how hard is it to study Earth while sitting on its surface? “It’s like trying to study a whale from inside its stomach.”

She hopes that the foundations laid during all three phases of the program will help administrators and leaders from K–12 schools and universities work together to build tools to understand if programs like TISP are making a difference in student trajectories. “Creating these communities is really valuable. We can all learn from each other to incorporate new ideas into our programs and gain fresh perspectives.” With additional funding, her aim is to continue the meetings annually and eventually develop robust research tools that schools across the nation can use to perform longitudinal studies. “This first meeting was definitely a success and hopefully just a starting point for what’s to come,” says Wynter Duncanson, lecturer and assistant dean for Outreach and Diversity. “Learning what my colleagues at other universities are doing and discussing what we think the best evaluation points are for these programs was important and mutually beneficial.”—liz sheeley

To build LEXI, Walsh will suit up inside a “clean room” in his lab. He stresses that contaminating LEXI with even trace amount of oils from his fingers or a tiny piece of hair from his head would expel gases during the ride to the moon that could potentially be damaging to the extremely sensitive (and expensive) instruments aboard the lunar lander. LEXI and the other investigations are part of NASA’s Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) Mission. Walsh, who studies interactions between

planetary environments and the sun, is also part of the ongoing European Space Agency and Chinese Academy of Science mission SMILE, which will study how Earth’s magnetic fields connect and disconnect with the magnetic fields of the sun. He also leads the CuPID Cubesat Observatory team at BU, which is building a toaster-sized device that will use a wide-view X-ray telescope to examine interactions between solar winds and Earth’s magnetosphere. Supported by NASA, CuPID is set to launch into orbit in 2020. —kat j. mcalpine

Magnetic Metamaterial Can Turn Up the Volume of MRI

tissue, including the spinal cord and joints. “[MRI] is one of the most complex systems invented by human beings,” says Zhang, a College of Engineering professor of mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, materials science and engineering, and a professor at the Photonics Center. By combining their expertise, Zhang, Anderson, Duan and Zhao designed a magnetic metamaterial that can create clearer images at more than double the speed of a standard MRI scan. Depending on what part of the body is being analyzed and how many images are required, an MRI scan can take up to an hour or more. Patients can face long wait times when scheduling an examination and operating the machines is time-consuming and costly for the healthcare system. Strengthening MRI from 1.5 T (the symbol for tesla, the measurement for magnetic field strength) to 7.0 T can definitely “turn up the volume” of images, as Anderson and Zhang describe. But although higher-power MRIs can be done using stronger magnetic fields, they come with a host of safety risks and even higher costs to medical clinics. The magnetic field of an MRI machine is so strong that chairs and objects from across the room can be sucked toward the machine, posing danger to operators and patients alike. In contrast, Zhang and Anderson say that their magnetic metamaterial could be used as an additive technology to increase the imaging power of lower-strength MRI machines, increasing the number of patients seen by clinics and decreasing associated costs, without any of the risks that come with using higher-strength magnetic fields. They even envision the metamaterial being used

A BU X-ray Instrument Is Heading to the Moon

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Walsh examines a lens that will be a component of the X-ray imager.

NASA announced the launch of LEXI (Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager) and 11 other lunar science investigations on July 1, 2019.

To meet NASA’s aggressive deadline of putting LEXI on the moon within a year and a half, Walsh—who was an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center before joining

PHOTOGRAPH BY JACKIE RICCIARDI

This array of helical resonators stands at three centimeters tall and is constructed from 3D-printed plastic and coils of thin copper wire.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

ASA is racing to put humans back on the surface of the moon by 2024 in preparation for an eventual mission to Mars. But between now and then, the moon will have several other visitors, including an instrument built by a team led by the Boston University Center for Space Physics researchers. Space scientist and engineer Brian Walsh, a College of Engineering assistant professor of mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering, is developing an X-ray imager he calls “LEXI” that will be rocketed up to the moon aboard a lunar lander within the next 18 months. From her vantage point on the moon’s surface, where she’ll sit for two to three weeks, LEXI will peer back at Earth and take the first comprehensive images of our planet’s magnetic fields and how they interact with the solar wind.

ould a small, ring-like structure made of plastic and copper amplify the already-powerful imaging capabilities of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine? Xin Zhang and Stephan Anderson, and their team at the Boston University Photonics Center, can clearly picture such a feat. With their combined expertise in engineering, materials science and medical imaging, Zhang and Anderson, along with

Guangwu Duan and Xiaoguang Zhao, designed a new magnetic metamaterial—reported in Communications Physics—capable of boosting the performance of MRI in more ways than one. MRI uses magnetic fields and radio waves to create images of organs and tissues in the human body, helping doctors diagnose potential problems or diseases. Doctors use it to identify abnormalities or diseases in vital organs, as well as many other types of body

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with ultra–low field MRI, which uses magnetic fields that are thousands of times lower than the standard machines currently in use. This would open the door for MRI technology to become widely available around the world. “This [magnetic metamaterial] creates a clearer image that may be produced at more than double the speed” of a current MRI scan, says Anderson, a School of Medicine professor of radiology and vice chair of research in Boston Medical Center’s radiology department. The magnetic metamaterial is made up of an array of units called helical resonators— three-centimeter-tall structures created from 3D-printed plastic and coils of thin copper wire—materials that aren’t too fancy on their

Floating to the Top

hipbuilding is not part of the College of Engineering’s curriculum, but several teams of students waded into those waters when they built model ships and tested them in a competition on the Charles River. The College of Engineering hosted the inaugural model shipbuilding workshop and competition during Alumni Weekend. Put on by the Singh Imagineering Lab—where students can put their engineering skills to use on extracurricular projects—the contest drew interest from over 60 students, with nine teams competing in the final event. Eleven teams were judged on their ship’s weight capacity and average speed through a predetermined course. The winning team, Kaihui Gou (ECE’20) and Andrea Cheng (Chemistry’20), designed the largest boat,

The winning team shows off their boat before testing it in the water. 10

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

own. But together, helical resonators can be grouped in a flexible array, pliable enough to cover a person’s kneecap, abdomen, head or any part of the body in need of imaging. When the array is placed near the body, the resonators interact with the magnetic field of the machine, boosting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the MRI and, as Anderson says, “turning up the volume of the image.” “A lot of people are surprised by its simplicity,” Zhang observes. “It’s not some magic material. The ‘magical’ part is the design and the idea.” To test the magnetic array, the team scanned chicken legs, tomatoes and grapes using a 1.5 T machine. They found that the magnetic metamaterial yielded a 4.2 fold

increase in the SNR, a radical improvement, which could mean that lower magnetic fields could be used to take clearer images than currently possible. Now, Zhang and Anderson hope to partner with industry collaborators so that their magnetic metamaterial can be smoothly adapted for real-world clinical applications. “If you are able to deliver something that can increase SNR by a significant margin, we can start to think about possibilities that didn’t exist before,” Anderson explains—such as the prospect of having MRI near battlefields or in other remote locations. “Being able to simplify this advanced technology is very appealing.” —jessica colarossi

measuring 5 feet 2 inches, that could carry the maximum cargo of 38.25 pounds. The idea was sparked by the work of doctoral fellow Alexei Sondergeld (ME) when he began using the Imagineering Lab this past summer as a place to continue one of his lifelong interests— boatbuilding. His sophisticated and Students construct their boats in the Imagineering Lab. impressive designs led the assistant manager of the Imagineering and learn from someone who is an expert in Lab, graduate student Oluwagbebemi Oyeniyi model shipbuilding,” Oyeniyi says, adding that (BME), to ask Sondergeld for help designing because of the success of this first competithe contest. tion, the Imagineering Lab wants to continue “All of the teams ended up using distinctly hosting this annual event for students across different designs,” Oyeniyi notes. “Each one the University to compete. had the same motor, so the speed really Second place went to Kali Hamilton, depended on the design of the ship.” Christian Medina, Tomohiru Shu and Yuya Because shipbuilding is a unique skill, Matsuda, and third place to Siyang Zhang Oyeniyi and Sondergeld decided to host a and Lin Fan. The first-place team received workshop the Friday before the contest to $300 as a prize, second place $200 and teach students the basics. During the workthird place $100. shop, Sondergeld demonstrated how to build Associate Dean for Administration Rich a ship twice, once using aluminum and once Lally, Professor Alice White (ME), Associate using popsicle sticks and duct tape. Professor Gregory McDaniel (ME, MSE), “The students were able to ask Alexei Research Engineer Aleksander Zosuls (ECE) questions during the demonstration about and two alumni, Aidan Rose (ME’17) and James how and why he was designing the ship in Wang (ME’17), judged the competition. a certain way, and were able to get advice —liz sheeley

BU’s Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers Thrives

emi Shittu (ENG’19) was recruited into the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) at BU early in her freshman year. This past academic year as a senior, she was chapter president. Her leadership pushed the group to create new programs and recruit many more members, resulting in the BU chapter winning more awards than any other in their region last year. She credits much of the success to letting her executive board run with their own ideas. “I gave them the freedom to be creative with our weekly meetings and to change

Semester, the Pre-Collegiate Initiative Award, the Award of the Colorful Flame (for their community service efforts) and Member of the Spring Semester, which went to Phoebe Ato (ENG’21). The new programs that drove this attention included STEM Day, a conference hosted by NSBE students that welcomed underrepresented students from area schools to tour the engineering facilities on campus, learn basic engineering principles, hear speakers and participate in an egg-drop challenge. “I really wanted to plan events that were impactful and involved students outside of

host one night rather than conduct separate events; this resulted in the largest networking NSBE chapter event ever, with 14 companies attending instead of six. The group also held open-forum discussions to discuss pressing issues in the community in a series called Real Talks. Students from outside of ENG could attend, but the topics were still relevant to the group’s mission and included topics like technology addiction and internet bullying. She notes that the NSBE didn’t just help her grow professionally, but also gave her a support system.

BU chapter members of the National Society of Black Engineers receive their awards at the society’s national convention. (Top row, left to right): Oluwagbebemi Oyeniyi, Abdullaah Robis, Avery Brown (NSBE Region 1 Vice Chair; does not attend BU), Ashaki Gumbs, Ryan Cully, A’zsa Johnson, Abdul Ka; middle row (left to right): Stacey Samedi, Empress Kelley, Fatima Dantsoho, Marybelle Raymond, Briana Mayes, Phoebe Ato, Ciara Allen; seated: Remi Shittu

things up,” she says. “As a leader I knew I couldn’t do everything myself, and that there was someone on the board who could execute an idea better than I could.” During the national NSBE convention in March, BU’s chapter won six awards in their region, which includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, East Canada and West Africa. They were awarded Chapter of the Year, Chapter of the Month for January, Chapter of the Spring

engineering,” Shittu says. “I noticed there was a large amount of people who we could reach, but who we weren’t, and I realized that there was a lot we could learn from the people within the BU community.” She decided to partner with other similar groups on campus to make each group’s programming more effective. Instead of repeating the same networking night they had held before, Shittu decided to ask the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) if they wanted to join forces and

“There are many points in engineering when certain classes can break you,” she says. “But having this gave me a network outside of my family; people who helped me along the way.” When Shittu was vice president of external affairs during her junior year, the chapter had about 15 to 20 active members; under her leadership this past year, they had 40 to 45. “I didn’t want to settle for what had always worked,” she says. “I wanted to push the envelope.”—liz sheeley ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

8,934

Funded by donors, the Summer Term Alumni Research Scholar program pays for student housing, allowing Ryan Cully (ME’20) to focus on his summer research project full time.

WAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD THIS PAGE: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SIMON SIMARD, CYDNEY SCOTT, JACKIE RICCIARDI, VERNON DOUCETTE

THANKS TO OUR 8,934 DONORS.

You’ve raised more than $99.3 million that’s helped ENG students, faculty and researchers with their life-changing work.

THIS PAGE: CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYDNEY SCOTT, DAN AGUIRRE, JACKIE RICCIARDI

BY LIZ SHEELEY

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

get a sense for what a full-time research career would be like by participating in the STARS or Distinguished Summer Research Fellows (DSRF) programs; in both, students secure a summer placement doing meaningful research in a faculty laboratory while philanthropic donations cover their on-campus housing costs for the summer. Since the Choose to Be Great campaign began, the college has been able to extend funding to 249 STARS students. “Your level of dedication to research during the semester can be compromised because of classes and other commitments,” Cully notes. “Whereas during the summer, during the STARS program, you’re given the opportunity to fully devote your time, 40 hours a week, to be able to think about the research you want to complete, how you’re going to get more creative in terms of investigating your goal, and make it the sole focus you have for that time period. “The program makes it a lot easier to live on campus and to be close to your research physically,” he continues. “It’s very helpful and enticing for students because even if I had research funding, I’d still have to take on a part-time job to pay for housing. The STARS program has given students the opportunity to focus directly on the research they’re doing over the summer.” The resourcefulness Cully demonstrated—and emphasized during the application process—is what manufacturing companies are looking for in their new hires. “I have been able to turn my additive manufacturing background into something that’s of value to potential employers,” he says. “They could see how I was able to effectively problem solve and conquer the unexpected roadblock we hit, which is something that companies experience all the time when creating new manufacturing practices.”

34 GROUPS THANK YOU!

he practice of metal 3D-printing—melting metal powder into a desired shape with a laser—isn’t perfect. Air pockets can form during the manufacturing process, which can contribute to parts breaking down faster than they should. Last summer, Ryan Cully (ME’20) examined metal 3D-printing in Associate Professor James Bird’s (ME, MSE) interfacial fluid dynamics lab as a Summer Term Alumni Research Scholar (STARS), seeking to understand how and why tiny air bubbles form in the process so as to avoid creating them in the future. “Recent studies in the field used high-speed cameras and X-ray machines for visualization, but that equipment wasn’t available to us,” Cully explains. “That limited the usable materials, so we had to get creative.” Instead, he used a transparent material to gain insight into the bubble formation. “We had a roadblock that we didn’t expect, and the next question is: how are we going to adapt?” he said. “I was able to use my creativity to solve a research problem and adapt to the situation in the moment.” Cully and his fellow STARS are among the many College of Engineering students and faculty who 256 GENEROUS benefit from programs supported by philanthropic donations to the college that were greatly amplified DONORS by the recently concluded Choose to Be Great capGAVE GIFTS ital campaign (2012 to 2019). The final total reached $1.85 billion, surpassing the University-wide fundOF OVER raising goal of $1 billion; the College of Engineering $100,000 raised $99.3 million of that amount due to the generosity of 8,934 donors, with 256 gifts over $100,000. These donations from alumni, parents, faculty, friends, corporations and foundations have helped launch Boston University and the College of Engineering into a new phase of its history—one with expanded opportunities for students to pursue enriching experiences such as lab research, more support for driven and productive faculty and better facilities for all to accomplish their goals.

The Societal Engineering Fund has supported the following student groups: Alpha Eta Mu Beta (BME Honor Society) American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics American Society of Mechanical Engineers Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) BU Racing Boston University Rocket Propulsion BU Students for the Exploration & Development of Space Cleantech Club Design Community Engineering Student Government Engineering World Health Engineers Without Borders Entrepreneurship Club For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Global App Initiative Global Engineering Brigade

Cully is ultimately interested in product design, but wanted to gain hands-on experience in manufacturing so he could understand how what he’d be designing would be made. This well-rounded knowledge is a concept that the College of Engineering works to instill in all of its graduates, from the biomedical engineers who are looking to design medical devices to the computer engineers who are building software. “I think knowing manufacturing and being able to design for it is invaluable,” he says. “I see my path going from manufacturing, to design engineering, to later doing something strictly in design. But I need to build my path first and understand what goes on behind design.”

International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Team BU Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Make BU National Society of Black Engineers Pi Tau Sigma (ME Honor Society) Robotics Team Graduate Women in Science & Engineering Sigma Gamma Tau (Aerospace Honor Society) Society of Asian Scientists & Engineers Society of Automotive Engineers (Baja) Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Society of Manufacturing Engineers Society of Minority Engineers Society of Women Engineers Students for the Advancement of Nanotechnology Student Association of Graduate Engineers Tau Beta Pi The Engineering Honor Society Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity BU Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Team

FACILITIES While 3D printers that use plastic are relatively common, the metal 3D printer Cully wanted to use is rarer in university settings. It is housed in the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC), a unique, 15,000-square-foot makerspace filled with cutting-edge equipment. EPIC opened in January 2014, after significant donor contributions made the facility a possibility. Donor gifts help students like Ryan Cully (far left) pay for summer housing so they can focus on research. They also fund state-of-the-art facilities like the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (middle) and the Engineering Product Innovation Center, which Professor of the Practice Gerry Fine (right) runs.

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

LEFT TO RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SIMON SIMARD, LIZ SHEELEY, KARIN DAILEY

STUDENT EXPERIENCES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE Creating opportunities outside of the classroom is often a distinguishing element of an excellent engineering education. Campaign donors provided the college with the means to create new opportunities for students and enhance existing ones, including supporting student service and professional organizations, offering research opportunities to undergraduates and creating new initiatives like the Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP). TISP aims to inspire the next generation of students to pursue engineering careers, giving talented BU undergraduates stipends for participating in outreach programs in local middle and high schools. Programs range from simply explaining what engineers do, to teaching students how to build a circuit, to offering advice on which high school courses to take in order to gain admission to an engineering college. Since the beginning of the campaign, the college has funded 421 TISP students. ENG undergraduate students seek out hands-on research experience to learn how to solve problems from start to finish. They can ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Mundon began working at Altaeros—a company that delivers high-speed internet to remote communities via aerial cell towers—as a mechanical engineering intern, and now works there full time as a mechanical engineer. “I actually learned all my machining and prototyping skills from Tinker,” she says. “When I was an intern at Altaeros, I had to create designs on the fly and put together a prototype as quickly as possible, test it out and then move on towards the SUMMER MUNDON next iteration. Those were all skills that I (ENG’17,’18) developed at Tinker.” The lab also runs an annual Imagineering Competition with cash prizes donated by John Maccarone (ENG’66) that encourages students to find creative solutions to engineering challenges. Winning projects have included a portable blue-LED water filter and a traffic-powered vertical wind turbine. Beyond EPIC and the Imagineering Lab, ENG is also opening the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC) in the spring of 2020, innovative lab space that will allow undergraduates to learn advanced techniques like cell culture on their own time. New classes will be built around the space, teaching students aspects of digital and personalized medicine. Biomedical Engineering Department Chair and Professor John White sees BTEC as almost an amalgamation of EPIC and Tinker, but for biological engineering: it’s a makerspace like Tinker and a facility for structured learning like EPIC. Also similar to EPIC, BTEC will allow the college to form research partnerships with industry leaders who could pair research projects with students to give them experience while gaining results.

“ I LEARNED SO MUCH IN TINKER, AND NOT JUST TECHNICAL SKILLS, BUT ALSO SOFT SKILLS, LIKE HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER ENGINEERS.”

SUPPORTING FACULTY RESEARCH In addition to enriching the lives and education of students, donor contributions have greatly benefited professors and their research. During the campaign, the college has been able to raise funds for seven named professorships, providing more than $13.5 million to faculty. Established in 2014 through the philanthropy of Engineering Leadership Advisory Board member Roger Dorf (MS, MFG’70), the Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Faculty Fellow award was one of the first such professorships. Named in memory of Professor Merrill Ebner (MFG), Dorf’s mentor and pioneer of the field of manufacturing engineering who established the College of Engineering as a US leader in the late 1960s, the award grants $100,000 over five years for discretionary initiatives in research and education. Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE, ME), the first Dorf-Ebner Fellow, works on developing point-of-care diagnostics and utilized the funds to move some of her projects forward. “We used it primarily for things that were pushing towards translation,” she says. “Some of the diagnostics that we make are getting past the laboratory and experimental phases, and we wanted to get prototypes that were more reliable in the real world, so we used some of the money to engage with industrial designers to start to look at ways that we could make the design more manufacturable or friendlier for scale up.” Klapperich viewed the award as a way of paying homage to one of its namesakes in addition to being practical.

FACULTY AND STUDENTS ALIKE ARE BENEFITING FROM THE NEW FACILITIES FOUND AT FEW OTHER ENGINEERING SCHOOLS. Klapperich (bottom) was the inaugural holder of the Dorf-Ebner Faculty Fellowship; Khalil (top) has been named the next honoree.

TOP PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT NOBLES; MIDDLE BY KELLY DAVIDSON

“We, the College of Engineering, embraced a combination of classroom and hands-on learning in a way that we hoped was state of the art for engineering education,” says Director of EPIC and Professor of the Practice Gerry Fine (ME, MSE). “And now you can see a lot of schools trying to embrace the same model, only to find themselves without such a robust physical facility.” Staffed by experts who can help anyone looking to learn and develop the skills necessary to make their ideas come to life, EPIC is open to the entire BU community. According to Fine, an average of 1,300 students per year take advantage of the space. Professors have begun integrating it into their curriculums and requiring students to use the facility as part of their course, and students who are performing research outside of the classroom use it regularly. “Even though the equipment at EPIC is available to other universities, it’s still a unique space and other schools in the area often come to us and ask to tour it,” says Fine. “We also have students from those schools asking to use the facilities, but those requests are difficult to honor because we have such high demand just within the BU community.” Just as industry standards change when new technology becomes commonplace, EPIC has adapted as well. Fine and EPIC’s Industrial Advisory Board, comprised of local interested business partners, are continually examining ways to integrate cutting-edge equipment or technology into the center. The metal 3D printer Cully used in his research is just one example of a piece of new equipment that was donated by an industry partner (GE Aviation). Fine notes that the center is also in the process of upgrading its automated manufacturing line to include internet of things and augmented reality capabilities to keep the facility and curriculum updated and ensure that students are getting the best hands-on training to prepare them for the postgraduate world. The college also offers the Singh Imagineering Lab—fondly known among students as the “Tinker Lab”—where they can do extracurricular work. A makerspace with plenty of tools, supplies and staff to guide students, the Singh Imagineering Lab was made possible by a gift from Binoy K. Singh (BME’89), associate chief of cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He is also a member of the college’s Engineering Leadership Advisory Board. “It’s a very welcoming and comfortable environment,” says Summer Mundon (ENG’17,’18), who was a student lab advisor starting in her sophomore year at BU. “I learned so much in Tinker, and not just technical skills, but also soft skills, like how to communicate with other engineers.” Mundon also worked with a manual lathe, a machine commonly used in woodworking, a 3D printer and a manual mill, used to machine flat surfaces. “You’re able to gain cross-functional skills and learn about other engineering sectors outside your major,” she says. “As a mechanical engineer, I learned how to build and troubleshoot circuitry, and if a machine goes down for whatever reason, we have to understand how to fix it and bring it back up.” As a lab advisor, she also assisted students in executing ideas they brought to the lab, a task that sharpened her communication skills. “I picked up so much jargon by just immersing myself in an environment such as this that is basically a makerspace,” she explains. “A lot of the skills that I took from the lab I also was able to apply to my internship outside of BU.”

“The spirit of the Dorf-Ebner is about honoring Merrill,” she says. “Ebner was a manufacturing engineer and so I always think about that and ask questions like, Is this helping us prototype? Is this something that’s actually going to get out into the world?” She has also used the funds to send students to conferences; this year she sent an undergraduate to the Biomedical Engineering Society conference to present research, an opportunity made possible by the fellow money. Klapperich’s award ended this year and a new appointee was named, Associate Professor Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (BME) (see story on page 22). Khalil’s focus is in systems and synthetic biology, where he not only makes significant research contributions, but also develops devices, such as the eVOLVER, that could help streamline and standardize the newer field of synthetic biology. Built as an automated

platform and constructed entirely in the lab, this device can continuously monitor and control hundreds of individual cell cultures in real time and can be connected to a network. He published this work in the summer of 2018, when there were a few labs across the country beta-testing the device. Now, they have a second-generation version of the device that has been distributed. “We want to continue to make improvements to eVOLVER and build a complete system around it, and that includes developing better software, but also improving the off-the-shelf design of the device,” Khalil says. The eVOLVER is pieced together with custom 3D-printed parts, which is a cheap and effective way to build the first or second generations of a system. Like Klapperich, Khalil sees the Dorf-Ebner funds as a way to propel his invention to the next phase, where the components—which can also include the software—are more packageable. “I like that the eVOLVER could become a standardized system where everyone is using this open-source platform, and users can update and improve it, as well as personalize it to their needs,” he says. That’s just one idea Khalil has as he starts his first year as the Dorf-Ebner Faculty Fellow. “I can see this money being useful for our lab to cook up ambitious ideas and try out new things and see what we can reprogram cells to do, things that we can’t do with other designated grant money,” he adds. He also sees the money extending beyond the research—the four teaching awards he’s won from the college since 2012 are a testament to his focus on the students in his lab and classroom. “It’ll be nice to put some of these funds towards building our lab culture, too,” he says. “Collaboration and brainstorming are vital to science, and I’m definitely an advocate for creating an environment for those things to happen naturally.” Established in 2016, the Tegan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship was the second faculty fellowship endowed during the campaign. Professor Calin Belta (ME, ECE, SE), director of the BU Robotics Lab and renowned for his work in robotics control research, is the fellowship’s inaugural holder. “Robotics is evolving rapidly, and this fellowship allows me to expand innovation efforts in this dynamic field,” he says. Belta also uses his expertise in autonomy as the director of the Center for Autonomous and Robotics Systems, a multifunctional space used to design robots that can perform complex physical tasks like moving objects around. John Tegan (ENG’88) has given to support faculty research as well as the Technology Innovation Scholars Program. He also established the Tegan Family Scholarship Fund for undergraduates and the Lorraine A. Tegan Design Studio in the Engineering Product Innovation Center. The College of Engineering at Boston University has a mission to educate graduates to be engineers who will push society forward. The influx of resources donors generated during the Choose to Be Great campaign created opportunities for students like Cully and Mundon and helped professors like Khalil and Klapperich explore their research capabilities. Faculty and students alike are benefiting from the new facilities found at few other engineering schools. Those outcomes are how the college creates a lasting impact on society, and it relies on support from donors who understand the goal of building strong talent who will be prepared to take on the challenges our society faces now and in the coming years. ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

E WHEN SOLVING PROBLEMS BECOMES A

PASSION ALUM COMBINES ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT SKILLS AT RAYTHEON

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAKE BELCHER

BY LIZ SHEELEY

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

NGINEERS ARE TRAINED PROBLEM-SOLVERS with skill sets applicable to myriad situations. Nora Tgavalekos (ENG’00,’03,’06) is not just good at solving problems, she is passionate about it. This passion has led her to complete three degrees at the College of Engineering and guided her career from biomedical engineer to chief software engineer at Raytheon Company, a position she is using to cultivate the same skills in girls. “I’m an engineer at heart, and engineers like to focus on wherever a problem comes up,” she says. “As long as I’ve got a problem, I have a tool set of skills that I can pull from to solve it. And because I’ve worked on a lot of different problems, my tool set has really expanded.” Her drive for problem-solving blossomed early in her undergraduate career. Working in the Biomedical Engineering lab of Professor (now Dean) Kenneth R. Lutchen by the beginning of her sophomore year, Tgavalekos used modeling and simulation to understand the pathology of asthma and other lung diseases better. Her first project was translating code from one programming language to another to build a simulation of lung physiology. Through years of work, including doctoral research, she evolved the model from a two-dimension into three, and eventually into one that was patient specific. “When I left graduate school, I was doing patient-specific modeling, which was pretty incredible at the time in terms of where we were with technology,” she says. “There was so much to learn, and at the same time you could solve problems. The problems were exciting and changed over time, so I was able to develop a tool box of skills in computer programming, mechanics and signal processing, and then apply those skills to understanding the human body.” Her experience in Dean Lutchen’s lab pushed her to fully commit to biomedical engineering. After graduating with a doctoral degree, Tgavalekos went on to work at a medical device company, and says her skills easily transferred to the different industry. “The physics and the science were the same; I was just working at a different frequency,” she explains. “And the same concept held true at Raytheon. The technical skills I learned at BU could be applied very seamlessly to the medical industry as well as to the defense industry.” She says she first transitioned to Raytheon because as an engineer, she wanted to solve hard problems and saw Raytheon as an ideal place to do that. As chief software engineer, she works with multiple divisions and teams to deliver the best product for their clients. For Tgavalekos, the excitement of solving difficult problems took root early; growing up, she liked doing logic puzzles and writing computer programs. She was also a Girl Scout, and now is helping Raytheon build programs to teach today’s Girl Scouts problem-solving skills. In 2018, Raytheon and the Girl Scouts of the USA partnered to launch the first nationwide computer science program and cyber

As chief software engineer at Raytheon, Tgavalekos understands the need to encourage young women to pursue STEM and has helped develop the first cyber challenge for the Girl Scouts of the USA.

challenge for middle and high school girls. “Think Like a Programmer Journey” empowers Girl Scouts in grades 6–12 to earn badges by learning and applying programming and coding skills that prepare them for careers in cybersecurity, robotics, data science and artificial intelligence. The inaugural Girl Scouts Cyber Challenge took place across 10 US cities in 2019, involving thousands of girls solving a hypothetical ransomware attack on a moon base with the support of Raytheon volunteers and mentors. In eastern Massachusetts alone, the program drew interest from hundreds of middle and high school girls. “The idea is to get girls and women comfortable working in this area and seeing role models in this area so that they’re more likely to pursue careers in STEM fields,” Tgavalekos notes. “I also support the program through my own daughter’s participation in Girl Scouts, helping her troop earn their cybersecurity and computer science badges.” She has risen through the corporate ranks during her 11-year career at the company, transitioning from solving nitty-gritty technical problems as a senior principal systems engineer to managing large teams in her current role—and she’s been able to translate her skills as an engineer to management. “I need to make sure I have the right team in place and, if I need to, have a diverse team in place that will be able to solve the problems,” she says. “They have to have different skill sets, so I need to figure out what the problem is that we’re solving and what skill sets are needed, and then I build the team that way.” As a business leader, she knows that it’s not just about solving the technical problems. “It’s also communicating with our leaders to make sure the solution fits into their strategy and business needs,” she stresses. “There are a lot of different pieces and layers at play when you’re managing large-scale projects for business.” With experience in multiple fields from technical engineer to management, Tgavalekos sees how vital fundamental problem-solving skills are to professional success. And as a woman in STEM and a former Girl Scout, she sees the partnership between Raytheon and the Girl Scouts as a valuable place for her to be. “Raytheon is very committed to developing girls in the STEM pipeline,” she says. “We think it’s important having that pipeline of women who can create innovative solutions and provide more opportunity to women in the future.” She advises women and underrepresented groups in STEM not to be afraid to tackle the difficult problems. “The more you take on, the more you can gain confidence in yourself that you can solve them,” she says. “Also be continuously learning, because it will never stop throughout your entire career. If you feel like you stop learning, then you should look for another opportunity that you can work on to fill in your knowledge gaps, because there’s always more to learn.” ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

At MassChallenge, Dougherty has not only helped healthcare technology start-ups flourish by pairing them with the right industry partner, he’s also created standardized practices that help these new companies grow even faster.

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

One company from the first cohort of HealthTech companies was in jeopardy of shutting down, but Dougherty knew the employees well and was sure that they were motivated to stay on and keep pushing. “They had signs of really early growth and they had a great team, so I called one of the teammates who I felt was really putting the time and energy in and was doing a lot of the work,” he recalls. “We ended up being able to transfer the ownership of the company from the co-founder to the new team. They’ve never had to raise money, they still exist, and they’re making millions of dollars a year with a small team.” One of the perks MassChallenge offers to their chosen cohort is office space at their Boston headquarters, facilitating the type of bond that allows Dougherty to understand those companies deeply and enable innovation. THIS TYPE OF “Early on they worked out of our office, PROBLEMand they would get a $20,000 check in the SOLVING IS mail,” he remembers. “They would wait to SYSTEMS-LEVEL open it, until our whole team was there and THINKING THAT we could celebrate with them. So, it was just GOES BACK TO special to see the perseverance and what they’re able to take to make their company DOUGHERTY’S the success that it is now.” BU EDUCATION. Another way MassChallenge HealthTech is helping companies get started is by creating ways they can overcome some of the early challenges that health technology companies face, like complying with patient-data privacy laws. “What we want to do is educate the entrepreneurs if they are building to enterprise-grade specifications, so that they don’t have to go back and rework everything when they get to the point of asking healthcare organizations for patient data,” he explains. This type of problem-solving is systemslevel thinking that goes back to Dougherty’s BU education. By examining many different problems and finding a specific root cause, he was able to develop an innovation that could help save companies thousands of dollars in the long run. “There’s no shortage of problems to tackle in healthcare,” he says. “The more you know about healthcare, the more issues you realize there are. There’s such a huge barrier to entry on the front end, but the more you know, the more problems you can solve and the greater the impact you can have, so it kind of becomes addictive. At MassChallenge, I get to see the problems that the industry is facing, the opportunities that entrepreneurs are working on, and how we can bring all these things together to improve the world.”

THE HEALTHY

INNOVATOR PHOTOGRAPH BY CONOR DOHERTY

ICK DOUGHERTY (ENG’12) has always been entrepreneurial. In kindergarten, he’d tear up a piece of paper, draw unique designs on each scrap and sell them for lunch money. Now, he’s putting his innate business and negotiation skills to work as the managing director of MassChallenge HealthTech, the digital health accelerator within MassChallenge. A global nonprofit based in Boston’s Innovation District, MassChallenge aims to help entrepreneurs develop their ventures by working with corporate organizations and pairing them with start-ups in its accelerator program. MassChallenge welcomes new companies in all industries and has two programs dedicated specifically to health technology and financial technology. “Our mission is to solve the world’s massive challenges in healthcare through entrepreneurship and innovation,” Dougherty explains. “We match start-up companies with some of the world’s leading health institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital, Microsoft and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. We’re like a corporate matchmaker.” “We take the challenges proposed to us by our champion partners, and we source start-up companies from all over the world,” he continues. “Then we bring the top companies into the matchmaking process, and we’ve generated over 370 partnerships in the last four years. The start-ups have gone on to impact millions of patients’ lives; they’ve raised millions in funding, millions in revenue, and created thousands of jobs.” Identifying the best companies to accept is a complex process, and Dougherty uses some of the skills he acquired at the College of Engineering to help streamline it. “As a computer systems engineer, it’s been fun to apply my systems thinking in a business setting,” he notes. “I’ve had a lot of success by taking a systems process to the work that we do—how we use data—and I’ve written several algorithms to make us better at matching start-ups.” Dougherty got involved at MassChallenge as a BU student on a senior design project team that developed an app called VerbalCare, which nonverbal patients use to communicate a desire for things like food, medicine and pain relief by touching one of an array of large, picture-based icons. Dougherty and his team entered a BU ENG pitch contest and impressed MassChallenge’s Robby Bitting, who encouraged them to enter MassChallenge. They followed through, winning a spot in that year’s cohort of start-ups in the summer of 2013. MassChallenge is known for supporting companies and not taking any equity in the process. Their funding comes from their company partners, which benefit by being matched with start-ups working toward one or more of their goals. Dougherty says that while there are a couple of start-ups that have been bought by their industry partners, most aren’t—and that isn’t the goal for MassChallenge. Rather, it wants these budding companies to succeed and grow with employees that value their company’s mission.

ALUM MATCHES COMPANIES WITH START-UPS TO IMPROVE HEALTHCARE BY LIZ SHEELEY

ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

$1.2M GRANT AIMS TO IMPROVE WOMEN’S HEALTH

Damiano Raises $126 Million for Bionic Pancreas

ENG Announces Three Distinguished Faculty Fellows

Associate Professor Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (BME) will be the next holder of the DorfEbner Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which honors a mid-career College of Engineering faculty member who has demonstrated exceptional performance and impact in research, teaching and service to the college, and is on track to become an outstanding senior leader in his or her field. Bestowed once every five years, the award funds each recipient over a five-year period for discretionary initiatives in research and/or education. The Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Faculty Fellow award is made possible by the generous philanthropy of Roger Dorf (MS, MFG’70), who serves on the College of Engineering’s Leadership Advisory Board. The award is named in memory of Professor Merrill Ebner, Dorf’s mentor and pioneer of the field of manufacturing engineering, who

established the College of Engineering as a leader in the US in the late 1960s. “I am thrilled to have been selected as the next holder of the Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Faculty Fellowship,” Khalil says. “Dr. Ebner’s pioneering efforts to develop manufacturing engineering into a true engineering discipline are an inspiration for me and my research group as we try to advance the emerging discipline of synthetic biology. Additionally, I aspire to follow his innovative and enduring focus on teaching and mentorship. I am extremely grateful to Mr. Dorf for his generous philanthropy to establish this visionary fellowship for the College of Engineering.” Associate Professor Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE) will be the next College of Engineering Distinguished Faculty Fellow, an award that recognizes mid-career faculty members for significant contributions to their field. The fellowship will provide Nazer with research support funding for the next five years. “I am thrilled and honored to be selected for this fellowship,” Nazer says. “We are lucky to have such a friendly and collaborative culture in BU ENG, and I am looking forward to using these funds to explore new research directions and teaching initiatives with colleagues and students.”—liz sheeley Associate Professor Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (right) with Roger Dorf (center) and Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen (left).

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PHOTOGRAPH OF DAMIANO BY JACKIE RICCIARDI; IMAGE OF ILET COURTESY OF BETA BIONICS

Associate Professor James Bird (center) receives the inaugural Theo de Winter Faculty Fellowship from Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen (left) and de Winter (right).

TOP PHOTOGRAPH BY ILENE PERLMAN

he College of Engineering is honoring three mid-career faculty members as Distinguished Faculty Fellows in recognition of their extraordinary performance and impact in research, teaching and service to the college and profession. Associate Professor James C. Bird (ME, MSE) will be the inaugural holder of the Theo de Winter Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which honors a mid-career faculty member who has had an extraordinary impact on students through both teaching and mentoring. With more than 50 years of teaching experience, de Winter is the most senior College of Engineering faculty member. The endowed fellowship was announced after he stepped away from teaching in the spring of 2018, and generous alumni donations have provided an annual stipend, which can be used for research or teaching initiatives and goals. “I’m delighted to have been selected for an award that equally values contributions to teaching and research,” Bird says. “What makes this award all the more personal is that it honors a colleague who was so welcoming to me when I arrived on campus, and is supported by our inspirational alumni.”

rofessor Ed Damiano’s (BME) journey to help the millions of people who suffer from type 1 diabetes—which began nearly 20 years ago, when his infant son, David, was diagnosed with the disease— recently took a huge leap forward when Damiano announced that the company he formed to commercialize a portable, wearable device that automatically controls blood sugar levels has raised $126 million. This is enough to get the device, known as a bionic pancreas, through the last stages of development, final clinical trials, regulatory approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, and into the hands of people with the disease. Damiano’s company, Beta Bionics, a socially minded, for-profit public benefit corporation, raised the money mostly from institutional investors. “Having raised more than $120 million over the past 10 months, we have placed Beta Bionics on a secure footing for the future and positioned ourselves well for the commercial success we envision for the [bionic pancreas],” Damiano explains. He expects his bionic pancreas, called the iLet, to become commercially available within the next 18 months or so. “The success of Ed and his team on both the scientific-technical side and the fundraising side is remarkable and provides hope for a real breakthrough in the management of type I diabetes,” says Gloria Waters, BU vice president and associate provost for research. Affecting about two million people in the United States, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys the pancreatic beta cells that normally produce insulin,

Damiano developed the iLet, a portable, wearable artificial pancreas, at his BU biomedical engineering lab. Not yet commercially available, the medical device automatically regulates blood sugar levels around the clock in people with type 1 diabetes.

which allows the body to convert carbohydrates to energy. If blood sugar levels are not carefully managed over the years, the disease can damage organs such as the kidneys and eyes, as well as blood vessels and nerves. That’s where the iLet can make a big difference—it mimics the efficiency of the natural pancreas, After his infant son was diagnosed with the disease nearly 20 years ago, which fine-tunes Professor Ed Damiano began his quest to develop a medical device that would help millions of people with type 1 diabetes. the body’s glucose level both by lowering it (with minute amounts of insulin) and raising it “It became clear to us that the best way (with tiny doses of glucagon). to ensure that the bionic pancreas would be The iLet represents a deeply personal available to as many people as possible was to quest to Damiano. Soon after his son, David build a corporate structure that was as innova(now a BU junior), was diagnosed with type 1 tive as the technology itself,” he continues. “As diabetes, Damiano began dedicating himself, a Massachusetts public benefit corporation, and his lab, to developing a bionic pancreas Beta Bionics is empowered to place the interso that eventually his son—and millions ests of the type 1 diabetes community ahead of other people with the disease—could of all other considerations in carrying out its be freed from the round-the-clock burden corporate mission. Beta Bionics was born out of managing a potentially life-threatening of this commitment, and out of the principle disorder by himself. that such a commitment would naturally lead Three years ago, Damiano and other parto the best and most desirable technology for ents of children with type 1 diabetes founded people with diabetes. It was a theme that resBeta Bionics as a public benefit corporation onated with our investors. We were delighted (the first such company was started in 2010, by their progressiveness and their eagerness and Massachusetts is now among 31 states to embrace and share this core value with us.” that allow this business model). Unlike traIt is significant, says Michael Pratt ditional, profit-driven companies, these new (Questrom’13), managing director of BU’s for-profit companies are dedicated to social Technology Development office, that responsibility and a public benefit mission. Damiano was able to raise the money he “The technology that we developed at BU did for an unorthodox, socially minded is the centerpiece upon which everything else company: “This is paving a new path not has been built,” Damiano points out. “The just in the science of diabetes treatment, remarkable clinical data that we have collected but also in showing that it is possible to be a over the years with our collaborators at mission-oriented organization and raise the Massachusetts General Hospital is an objeccapital necessary to fully develop a complex tive measure of the success of that technology. medical device.” —sara rimer ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

White Elected President of the Biomedical Engineering Society

rofessor John White (BME) has been elected the next president of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the leading professional society for biomedical engineers. He will begin his term as president elect in October, following two years as president and a fourth and final year as past president. White has been involved with BMES for more than 20 years. He has chaired the annual meeting and served as the National Meetings Committee chair, secretary and treasurer; and as Executive Committee, Fellows Selection Committee, and Development Committee member. “We’ve done a very good job of making ourselves the best go-to meeting for academics in our field,” White notes. “But as president, I want to increase industry representation in the society and create a more outward facing organization.” Beginning with 269 founding members in 1968, BMES now has more than 8,000

Stepp Receives Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

ssociate Professor Cara Stepp (Sargent, BME) has been selected to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. “I’m honored and thrilled to have won this award and be recognized at this level,” Stepp says. PECASE selection is highly competitive; awardees must first receive an early career award from one of the research-funding government agencies, and then are selected by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy based on a nomination 24

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members. It is committed to continue supporting the biomedical engineering workforce for advanced education, research and healthcare technology. By bringing more industry leaders onto the BMES board of directors, which is currently about a quarter corporate, White says that he can listen to insiders. Then, BMES can roll out programs that industry workers want in order to implement the most effective programming, perhaps starting with better professional development programs for those in industry. He says that as chair of the BME Department at BU, he is also working to increase industry and academic relations to advance partnerships inside the University. Creating those connections allows research and ideas to be brought into practice faster and more efficiently, streamlining the process from lab to clinic. “I want to create an environment where we can work productively with industry and promote translational biomedical work,” he explains. “Because that’s where the patient impact is.” White employs engineering approaches to better understand how information is processed in the brain. Combining computational modeling, electrophysiological and optical

process. Nominated by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Stepp received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for a project that aimed at building better human-machine interfaces for communication. Funding from the CAREER award was used to build better communication for people who can’t use their typical oral speech, and who also can’t use a mouse or keyboard—typically those with a high spinal cord injury. A sensor records the electrical activity of muscle tissue and selects sounds in an order, then a digital voice speaks the selection, allowing the patient to communicate. Instead of making a device that uses a full alphabet, Stepp’s uses phonemes, common sounds that make up words. Since there are fewer of them, the selection process is faster. According to the White House announcement, PECASE recipients are selected “for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community service as demon-

Giles Elected AAAS Fellow

P Chair of the BME Department and Professor John White

techniques and imaging methods, he and his team have worked to advance new biomedical devices to understand memory disorders and epilepsy. A fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, White has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and, as a principal or co-principal investigator, has raised over $50 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, private foundations and other sources.—liz sheeley

rofessor Roscoe Giles (ECE) has been elected a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his leadership and major contributions to increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in computing disciplines, particularly via leadership in curricula and organizations that advance inclusion. AAAS is the largest general scientific society in the world and publisher of the journal Science. Their fellowship dates back to 1874 and is awarded to members by a panel of their peers. Giles’ work on equity and expanding representation has been unwavering in all of his professional and academic endeavors. As the first black doctoral graduate of the Stanford University physics department in 1975, Giles and his colleagues put procedures in place to identify and recruit more minority doctoral candidates; by 1999, the Stanford physics department produced the largest number of black doctoral graduates in the country. In 1992, Giles was named Boston University Scholar-Teacher of the Year and became deputy director of the Boston

University Center for Computational Science. In 1996, he won the College of Engineering Award for Excellence in Teaching. His research focuses on distributed and parallel computer and supercomputer applications, simulations of large-scale molecular systems, advanced computer architectures, computational science and micromagnetics. In 2000, he was awarded the A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computing Research Association (CRA) for “outstanding contributions aimed at increasing the numbers and/or successes of underrepresented groups in the computing research community.” The CRA recognized his efforts to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in the computing disciplines, his service as a faculty advisor and mentor for the Minority Engineers Society, and his mentoring of high school, undergraduate and graduate students. Giles is a chairman and board member of Associated Universities, Inc., a nonprofit research management corporation that builds and operates facilities for the research community. The corporation’s major current operating unit is the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which it operates under a cooperative agreement with the National

Professor Roscoe Giles

Science Foundation. He is also chair of the BU Diversity and Inclusion office recruitment committee. As a new AAAS fellow, Giles joins the ranks of four other Boston University College of Engineering professors: Professor Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE); Professor Emeritus Temple Smith (BME); Professor David Campbell (Physics, ECE, MSE) and Professor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE) have all been recognized for “their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.”—julie weiss

Coskun Selected to Attend the National Academy of Engineering’s 2019 Symposium

A Associate Professor Cara Stepp

strated through scientific leadership, public education, or community outreach.” Stepp joins fellow PECASE recipients Associate Professor Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (BME), who won the award in 2017, and Associate Professor Xue Han (BME), who won in 2014. —liz sheeley

ssociate Professor Ayse Coskun (ECE) was selected as one of 87 innovative early-career engineers to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) symposium on September 25–27 in North Charleston, South Carolina. Chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines, the attendees were nominated by fellow engineers and organizations. “Participating in FOE will help me expand my vision on important open research and engineering problems, especially the talks on blockchain technology and self-driving vehicles,” says Coskun. “Attending such a symposium that has the right size for effective networking and a mix of people with diverse

expertise from academia, industry and government opens up new opportunities, ignites new synergies and helps develop new, big ideas.” Coskun brings expertise in designing intelligent computing systems that are capable of improving their efficiency and performance dynamically. Her research stretches into fields including energy-efficient computing, design automation of computing systems and novel computer architectures with emerging technologies. All the attendees are researchers who have previously been awarded early-career grants from various institutions and organizations. Coskun received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award in 2012. The College of Engineering

Associate Professor Ayse Coskun

has had 11 previous attendees of various NAE symposia, all of whom received the CAREER award before being nominated to attend their respective conferences: Professors Thomas Bifano (ME, MSE, BME); Christopher Chen (BME, MSE); Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE, ME); Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE); ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

Joyce Wong (BME, MSE); Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) and Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE); Associate Professors Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME); Ahmad ‘Mo’ Khalil (BME) and Xue Han (BME); and Assistant Professor Lei Tian (ECE). Boeing hosted this year’s FOE program, centered around cutting-edge developments

in four areas: Advanced Manufacturing in the Age of Digital Transformation; Engineering the Genome; Self-Driving Cars: Technology and Ethics; and Blockchain Technology. The symposium joined Coskun with other early-career engineers who are advancing their own technical areas in a variety of engineering disciplines. In workshops, dis-

BU-Harvard Team Wins $1.2M NSF Grant to Improve Women’s Reproductive Health

multidisciplinary team of researchers from Boston University and Harvard University is working to address women’s reproductive health challenges with the help of a $1.2M, four-year grant funded by the National Science Foundation through its Smart and Connected Health program. The BU-led project will leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to develop an integrative approach to enable personalized reproductive and fertility predictions and prescriptions. The researchers will also focus on improving the understanding of socioeconomic disparities in the use of infertility treatment services. The BU team is led by Principal Investigator (PI), Professor and Director of the Center for

Information & Systems Engineering Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE). He is joined by Associate Professor Alexander Olshevsky (ECE, SE) and School of Public Health Professor Lauren Wise (Epidemiology). The sub-award recipient on this grant, Harvard University brings the expertise of co-PI and Assistant Professor of Environmental Reproductive and Women’s Health Shruthi Mahalingaiah, who holds an adjunct appointment at the BU School of Medicine. “This project is an exciting illustration of the tremendous potential modern data science methods have to leverage the increasing availability of data and impact our health and well-being,” Paschalidis says. “With the emergence of personalized medicine, aided by data and algorithmic advances, we now have the ability to learn from available data and develop personalized predictions and intervention recommendations for each individual. The overall goal is

Bishop Lands Grant from Sony to Develop Magnetometer

cussions and networking events, participants exchanged ideas, networked and hopefully developed future collaborations. “I am particularly enthusiastic about identifying new interdisciplinary engineering problems through this event and starting new projects,” she says. —liz sheeley

rofessor David Bishop (ECE, Physics, MSE, ME, BME) has been awarded a $100,000 research grant from Sony Electronics to further develop a novel, ultrasensitive and contactless magnetometer to be used for anything from location sensing to heart monitoring. “Our technique is about 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive than what others have done before,” Bishop notes. “Once developed, this could be used for biosensing and perhaps become a mobile monitoring tool for patients because of its portable size.” This award will allow Bishop and a doctoral student in his lab, Josh Javor, to build itera-

to enable people to optimize health before conception, identify modifiable determinants of fertility and reduce health risks during pregnancy and beyond.” The researchers will develop an integrative approach to enable personalized reproductive/fertility predictions and prescriptions using distributed, privacy-preserving algorithms trained using multiple data sources. The algorithms will combine information from self-administered surveys, electronic health records and personal health records to produce highly accurate personalized predictions and prescriptions or recommendations, enabling individuals and their physicians to make the most appropriate, individualized healthcare decisions. “It’s one thing to be able to predict one thing will happen, but the important question is, what do you do and how do you improve the condition of the individual?” Paschalidis adds. “By bringing together this truly multidisciplinary collaboration of clinicians and engineers, this project brings the deep, diverse expertise and requisite resources for advancing the health and well-being of women.”—maureen stanton

Professor Xin Zhang

Zhang Receives Accolades for Innovative Research

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P PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYDNEY SCOTT

PHOTOGRAPH OF PASCHALIDIS BY CYDNEY SCOTT

Researchers (from left) Paschalidis, Olshevsky

tions of the device and deliver prototypes to Sony. Together, the teams can continuously develop the device to work toward a commercially viable product that is user-friendly and can be easily manufactured. Bishop’s process is different because it uses microelectromechanical systems—or MEMS—an inexpensive, chip-scale technique that could significantly advance the field. “Sony has been a leader in not just consumer electronics, but also medical devices,” Bishop says. “It was an honor to be selected to receive this award, and I’m excited to work with their team to hopefully create a robust and reliable technology.”—liz sheeley

rofessor Xin Zhang (ME, ECE, BME, MSE) has received many accolades for her years of research using metamaterials; most recently, she has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and received a 2019 Innovation Award from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) for Emerging Technology Design. She was elected an APS fellow for her research and educational initiatives using microelectromechanical systems and metamaterials to address a wide range of important

problems in areas ranging from energy to healthcare to homeland security. The IET Innovation Awards recognize the most pioneering engineering and technology innovations across sectors such as energy and sustainability, transport and healthcare. Zhang was chosen from more than 360 entries for her recent work in developing a new metamaterial that can improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) quality and decrease scan time (see story on page 9). “It is an honor to receive international recognition from the IET and I am immensely proud

Professor David Bishop

of my team at Boston University,” she says. And I am honored to be elected a fellow of the APS. I have such respect for the important work that the APS does, and am especially pleased to be part of the industrial and applied physics community, which helps the society take advantage of the evolving opportunities in the practice and application of physics.” Zhang’s work in metamaterials has been able to influence a wide range of fields because of its adaptability. A metamaterial’s properties are derived from its shape, not its material, and, by manipulating the shape, Zhang can develop new ways to manipulate non-visible waves and fields such as sound, magnetic fields, microwaves and infrared radiations. Zhang’s APS election adds to her already impressive list of appointments. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Optical Society of America and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2018, she received Boston University’s Innovator of the Year Award as well as the College of Engineering’s Charles DeLisi Award and Distinguished Lecture. —liz sheeley

ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

ENG Welcomes New Faculty MICHAEL ECONOMO, BME ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Economo received his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and mathematics from Duke University and his PhD from Boston University College of Engineering in biomedical engineering in 2012. Before joining the faculty in January 2019, Economo was a postdoctoral research fellow at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus, where his research focused on understanding the role of long-range neural circuits in motor control. His work leverages cuttingedge optical, electrophysiological and genetic tools for recording and manipulating neural activity during behavior and for illuminating the structure of neural circuits.

LAURA LEWIS, BME ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Lewis joined the faculty in January 2019. She completed her PhD in neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she used intracranial electrocorticography in humans and optogenetic techniques in mice to identify neural circuit mechanisms of sleep and anesthesia. She was then appointed a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, conducting research at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she developed new multimodal neuroimaging approaches to map neural dynamics during sleep and wake states.

HADI TAVAKOLI NIA, BME ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Before joining the faculty in January 2019, Nia was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research interests include multiscale cancer mechanobiology and the development of innovative tools and model systems to investigate the physical microenvironment of tumors. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investigating the molecular origin of solid-fluid interactions in cartilage and its association with osteoarthritis. Nia has been awarded fellowships from the National Cancer Institute (F32), Fund for Medical Discovery and Whitaker Health Sciences Fund.

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ANNA DEVOR, BME ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Devor joined the faculty in November 2019. In 2002, she completed her PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where her research focused on biophysical mechanisms of the membrane potential oscillations in a network of electrically coupled neurons. In 2005, she established the Neurovascular Imaging Laboratory at the University of California San Diego. For the past 14 years, the Devor laboratory and its collaborators have assembled a suite of micro- and nanoscopic technologies that allow precise and quantitative probing of large numbers of physiological parameters that, when analyzed, can help understanding of how specific patterns of microscopic brain activity (and their pathological departures) translate into noninvasive macroscopic observables such as those obtained with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

EMMA LEJEUNE, ME ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Lejeune was a postdoctoral fellow at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin before joining the faculty in January 2020; her educational background is in computational mechanics and computational biomechanics. Her research focuses on leveraging the state of the art in computational mechanics to investigate multiscale emergent behavior in biological systems and inform patient-specific medical protocols. Lejeune’s current areas of research involve integrating data-driven and physics-based computational models and predicting the mechanical behavior of highly heterogeneous soft tissue.

RABIA YAZICIGIL, ECE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Yazicigil joined the faculty in January 2020 and is also a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before coming to BU, she was an MIT postdoctoral research associate in the electrical engineering and computer science department. In 2009, she received her bachelor’s in electronics engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, her master’s in electrical and electronics engineering from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in 2011, and her PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 2016. Her research interests lie at the interface of integrated circuits, signal processing, security, bio-sensing and wireless communications, and building innovative system-level solutions for future energy-constrained applications.

ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

Goyal Elected OSA Fellow

ssociate Professor Vivek Goyal (ECE) has been elected a fellow of The Optical Society (OSA) “for outstanding inventions in computational imaging and sensing, including unprecedented demonstrations of the utility of weak, mixed, and indirect optical measurements.” “I’m deeply honored to be elected fellow of the OSA, especially since my research career started far from optics,” Goyal says. “It’s a testament to the value in letting academic research be driven by curiosity.” According to OSA, “Fellows are members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics. No more

than 10 percent of the total OSA membership may be chosen as fellows, making the process both highly selective and competitive.” “Goyal’s innovations have changed our understanding of what is possible with optical measurements,” Professor and colleague Selim Ünlü (ECE, MSE) observes. Ünlü highlighted Goyal’s work in demonstrating that very few detected photons are sufficient for imaging. His research has focused on using very small amounts of information, like a weak light signal, to extract much more information than seems possible. Recently, in Nature, Goyal and his team demonstrated a method to extract a full-color

Former ECE Professor Anton Mavretic Mourned Professor Anton “Tony” Mavretic (ECE), a gifted College of Engineering faculty member and research associate with Boston University’s Center for Space Physics, died on November 21, 2019, at the age of 84. Mavretic came to BU in 1979, joining the full-time faculty as an associate professor in 1980. During his time with ECE, he taught courses such as Modern Active Circuit Design, Analog VLSI Design and Electronics I and II. “We were a nascent department back then, and Tony shepherded our electronics department through the early years,” said Professor Mark Horenstein (ECE). “I recall that one of his students often referred to him as ‘the god of electronics,’ and he knew his stuff. I learned a lot just from working with him.” Well regarded by students, Mavretic received the Outstanding Professor of the Year award in 1981. In a 2011 interview, alumnus Mark Tubinis (ENG’81) said, “His humor and generous sharing of his time helped me to achieve a lot at BU.” Horenstein attributes Mavretic’s rapport with students to his experience in the field. “Tony had a very practical orientation because he came from industry,” he explained. “He was an engineer through and through, and he brought his understanding of engineering to the classroom.” Before joining the BU faculty, Mavretic worked in industry and research, including as

Associate Professor Vivek Goyal

2D picture of a scene from a photograph of indistinct shadows, known as a penumbrae, on a neighboring wall—showing a way to see around a corner. —liz sheeley

Sander Elected to IEEE Photonics Society’s Board of Governors

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Mavretic was also lauded in his native Slovenia, becoming a lifetime member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2007 and receiving the Silver Order of Service in 2015 for his extraordinary contribution to science. His drive to mentor students never wavered; near the end of his life, he was still working with engineering professors and students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. As he reflected back on his colleague, Horenstein quoted one of Mavretic’s favorite sayings: “It’s not good enough to understand the subject theoretically—you have to sweat it out on the bench.” A Mass of Christian Burial was held on November 27, 2019, at Good Shepherd Parish in Wayland, Mass. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, and four grandchildren. —emily wade

NEWS BYTES FACULTY

Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a College of Engineering Dean’s Catalyst Award. She also served as an ambassador for the Optical Society in 2017. Sander has built an interdisciplinary research program expanding beyond tradi-

tional areas of electrical engineering. In collaboration with another BU faculty member, she received a $2.7 million grant from the NIH BRAIN Initiative to design a novel fiber laser system that captures neuronal activity faster and with higher precision than previous methods had. —julie weiss

Assistant Professor Gianluca Stringhini’s (ECE) research about understanding and developing ways to combat online hate speech and harassment was featured in TechRepublic.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BU PHOTO

Assistant Professor Michelle Sander, front right

BOTTOM PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS MCINTOSH

ssistant Professor Michelle Sander (ECE) was elected to serve a three-year term on the Board of Governors for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society, a section of the institute focused on optical technologies ranging from quantum physics, fiber optics and lasers to solar energy and biomedical applications of light. She will join the board in 2020 with three other new worldwide-elected members. “I feel honored to have been chosen for this position as a fairly junior professor,” Sander says. Together with her fellow board members, she hopes to create a dynamic force to tackle their field’s most critical issues and create a new vision for society. Sander’s achievement is one of many of her young career. Her research interests include femtosecond lasers, novel fiber optics, photothermal light interactions that are applied to infrared spectroscopy and imaging, and infrared nerve stimulation. Focused on fiber optics and ultrafast lasers, she has received an Air Force

a project engineer at MIT’s Center for Space Research, where his group developed the Plasma Science Experiment (PLS) for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Voyager spacecrafts, work that was recognized by the agency with a Professor Anton Mavretic group achievement award in 1981 and remains relevant to the present day. “The PLS continues to provide new data and new discoveries 42 years later, as Voyager 2 leaves the heliosphere and enters interstellar space,” said Professor Josh Semeter (ECE), director of BU’s Center for Space Physics. After 15 years on the ECE faculty, Mavretic left BU in 1995 for an opportunity in the semiconductor industry, returning 10 years later as a research associate in the Center for Space Physics working with Professor Emeritus Ted Fritz (ECE). During that time, Professor Ron Knepper (ECE) remembered, his colleague continued to be an extremely knowledgeable and committed mentor. “I was mentoring a PhD student on his design of a MIROC chip in IBM 7WL technology, and Anton Mavretic used to come to our weekly meetings,” Knepper recalled. “His circuit design experience was invaluable in helping students in their PhD research and circuit design work.”

Assistant Dean for Outreach and Diversity Wynter Duncanson was named an IAspire Leadership Academy Fellow for 2019. The IAspire program trains rising leaders in STEM higher education who are underrepresented in the field.

In a collaborative project with UMass Amherst and Northeastern University through a three-year, $5M grant from the National Science Foundation, Professors Orran Krieger (ECE) and Martin Herbordt (ECE) joined a team of researchers that will create a test bed for the research and development of new cloud computing platforms. Professor Ji-Xin Cheng (ECE, BME, MSE) received the 2020 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award for his outstanding contributions to spectroscopy throughout his 30-year career in the field.

Assistant Professor William Boley (ME) was awarded a three-year, $450,000 grant from the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program to continue his work on 4D-printing materials with programmed responsiveness and stiffness.

STUDENTS Austin Negron (ECE‘21), Rishab Nayak (CAS‘21) and two Northeastern University students won the HackHarvard hackathon in October 2019 by developing Phillinda.space, an app that can eliminate the language barrier for non-native English speakers when they are filling out forms. ENGINEER SPRING 2020 BU.EDU/ENG

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Distinguished Alumni Awards Honor Two ENG Grads

engineering leadership advisory board

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen (left) with Distinguished Alumni Award winner Justine Laugharn (center) and Reece Huff (right) (BME’21), who introduced Laugharn. Photograph by Ilene Perlman

John E. Abele Founder & Director, Boston Scientific

Jon Hirschtick Founder & Chairman, OnShape Inc.

Adel Al-Saleh ’87 CEO, T-Systems

William I. Huyett CFO, Cyclerion

Alan Auerbach ’91 Chairman, Founder, President & CEO, Puma Biotechnology

Amit Jain ’85,’88 President and CEO, Prysm Inc.

Tye Brady ’90 Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics Deborah Caplan ’90 Executive VP, Human Resources & Corporate Services, NextEra Energy Nizar Dalloul ’83, GRS’87 Chairman and CEO, Comium Group Roger A. Dorf ’70 Former Vice President, Wireless Group, Cisco Systems Brian Dunkin ’85 VP of Medical Affairs, Boston Scientific Endoscopy Global Vanessa Feliberti ’93 Distinguished Engineer, Substrate Platform, Microsoft Joseph Frassica, MED’88 Chief Medical & Innovation Officer, Head of Philips Research, Philips Healthcare Ronald G. Garriques ’86 CEO and Chairman, Gee Holdings LLC

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen (left) with Distinguished Alumni Award winner Daniel Maneval (center) and Lucas Watson (right) (ME’19,’21), who introduced Maneval. Photograph by Ilene Perlman

Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Gregory Cordrey ’88 Partner, Jeffer Mangles Butler & Mitchell LLP Claudia Arango Dunsby ’92 Vice President, Operations, Hybridge IT Richard Fuller ’88 Senior Principal Engineer-Systems, Semtech Corporation Timothy Gardner ’00 Founder & CEO, Riffyn Inc. Roger A. Hajjar ’88 Chief Technical Officer, Prysm Inc. Mark Hilderbrand ’87 Managing Director, Housatonic Partners

BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Bettina Briz-Himes ’86 Director, Technology Alliances, GoPro

Antoinette Leatherberry ‘85 Principal, Deloitte Consulting Peter Levine ’83 General Partner, Andreesen Horowitz Nick Lippis ’84,’89 President, Lippis Enterprises Inc. Andy Marsh ’83 Chief Operating Officer, Dynavac Kathleen McLaughlin ‘87 President, Walmart Foundation, Senior VP & Chief Sustainability Officer, Walmart Inc. Rao Mulpuri ’92,’96 CEO, View, Inc. Girish Navani ’91 CEO, eClinicalWorks

Kimberly Samaha ‘89 CEO, Born Global LLC George M. Savage ’81 Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Proteus Digital Health Binoy K. Singh, MD’89 Associate Chief of Cardiology, Lenox Hill Hospital, North Shore LIJ John Tegan ’88 President and CEO, Communication Technology Services LLC Francis Troise ’87 Former CEO & President, Investment Technology Group William Weiss ’83,’97 Vice President & General Manager, General Dynamics-C4 Systems Emeritus Board Members Richard D. Reidy, Questrom’82 Former President and CEO, Progress Software Corp. Venkatesh Narayanamurti Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology & Public Policy; Former Dean, School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Kenneth R. Lutchen

dean

Solomon R. Eisenberg

senior associate dean for academic programs

Kent W. Hughes ’79 Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Verizon

Anthony “Tony” Pecore ’95 Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Franklin Templeton Investments

Michele Iacovone CGS’86,’89 SVP, Chief Information, Security & Fraud Officer, Intuit Inc.

Sanjay Prasad ’86,’87 Principal, Prasad IP

Tyler Kohn ’98 Director, Software Engineering, Ghost Locomotion

John Scaramuzzo ’87 President, Broadreach Consulting LLC

Yitao Liao ’10,’11 Chief Technology Officer, RayVio Corporation

Gregory Seiden ’80 Former Vice President, Applications Integration, Oracle Corp.

Martin Lynch ’82 Chief Operating Officer, Freewire Technologies

Dylan P. Steeg ’95 Vice President of Business Development, Skytree Inc.

Daniel C. Maneval ’82 Former Vice President, Pharmacology & Safety Assessment, Halozyme Therapeutics

Francis Tiernan ’70 Former President, Anritsu Company

Sandip Patidar ’90 Founder and Managing Partner, Titanium Capital Partners

Joseph Winograd ’95,’97 Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Verance Corp

Richard Lally

Michael Seele

Wynter Duncanson

Liz Sheeley

Lisa Drake

Jessica Colarossi, Kat J. McAlpine, Sara Rimer, Maureen Stanton, Emily Wade, Julie Weiss

assistant dean for outreach & diversity assistant dean for development & alumni relations ENGineer is produced for the alumni and

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friends of the Boston University College of Engineering.

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Please direct any questions or comments to Michael Seele, Boston University College of Engineering, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617-353-2800

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directors for the Beacon Hill Women’s Forum, which connects women across the Beacon Hill community through social events. Daniel Maneval (ENG’82) has been vice president of research & nonclinical development at Halozyme Therapeutics—which is currently developing clinical-stage cancer therapies that target the tumor microenvironment—for the past eight years. He graduated from the College of Engineering in 1982 with a BS in biomedical engineering and continued his studies at the University of Southern California, where he earned his MS and PhD in biomedical engineering with an emphasis on pharmacokinetics. After a successful career in biotech, he co-founded a gene therapy company and worked as a consultant for several biopharmaceutical organizations prior to joining Halozyme in 2011. Maneval has served on the college’s West Coast Alumni Leadership Council since December 2012.—liz sheeley

Ezra D. Kucharz ’90 Chief Business Officer, DraftKings Inc.

Sharad Rastogi ’91 Senior VP, Products & Strategy, Dell EMC

eng west coast alumni leadership council Christopher Brousseau ’91 Partner, IBM Cognitive Process Services

he College of Engineering honored two graduates with Distinguished Alumni Awards during BU Alumni Weekend in September, recognizing their career achievements and support of their alma mater and community. Justine Laugharn (ENG’83) is vice president of finance & administration at Covaris, Inc., which creates tools and technologies to aid in preanalytical sample preparation for drug development. She earned her BA in biology from Boston College and her MS in computer engineering from the College of Engineering in 1983. She runs the Covaris human resources, finance, information technology and administration teams. The company has more than 70 patents affiliated with various disciplines such as mechanical engineering, molecular biology, biophysics and acoustic physics. Laugharn is also finance director and treasurer of the board of

Dean L. Kamen, Hon.’06 President & Founder, DEKA Research & Development Corp.

Anton Papp ’90 Vice President, Investments and Corporate Development, Rockwell Automation, Inc.

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FACTS & FIGURES

College of Engineering

PERCENT OF UNDERGRADUATE APPLICANTS ADMITTED (VS. 63% IN 2010–11)

$97.2

MILLION ENGINEERING-

RELATED RESEARCH EXPENDITURES IN 2018

18,892 25,000+ LIVING ALUMNI

K–12 STUDENTS SERVED BY TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION SCHOLARS PROGRAM SINCE 2011

FACULTY

8 5 7

MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

FELLOWS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE FELLOWS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF INVENTORS

RANKING

36 16 3 9

Among US graduate engineering programs (U.S. News & World Report) Among private US graduate engineering programs (U.S. News & World Report) In graduating women PhDs in engineering (American Society for Engineering Education) Among US graduate BME programs (U.S. News & World Report)