BU ENGineer Spring 2016 by Sara Cody-Larnard

SPRING 2016

IN SID E ROBOTS FIND A NEW HOME 足 A CLEAR VISION FOR THE CLOUD

DREAM FACTORY An EPIC Makerspace. PAGE 12.

message from the dean

Planning for a Bright Future

n what is now my tenth year as dean, it’s natural to reflect on the College’s many accomplishments over the past decade—but the dean’s job is to keep looking forward and lead planning for the next 10 years. Several months ago, I asked the leaders of our departments and divisions to establish new goals that are both ambitious and achievable, and what emerged was a remarkable confluence of ideas and priorities that fit exceptionally well with our vision for creating Societal Engineers, and with our commitment to growth in research impact and excellence. There was unanimous agreement that the College’s research portfolio should leverage and contribute to emerging technologies that will shape our lives in the coming years and decades; those areas evolved organically and are closely aligned with our faculty’s expertise. All of them involve interdisciplinary challenges that bring the strengths of multiple departments to bear. At present, a revolution is happening at the intersection of big data, the internet of things and cyber-physical systems. Computers can process vast amounts of information, which

can be used to manipulate something else. Optical and photonic technologies are increasing the speed and volume of information transmission, and creative networking technologies will allow for critical ways to exchange information at low cost. All of this has enormous implications for improving the function of cities, health care and many other facets of daily life. Synthetic biology, systems biology, and cell and tissue engineering will all transform our capacity to address medical challenges. Examples include understanding how mechanical forces influence the function of biological systems and how genomic systems can be controlled to address a huge range of diseases. These efforts will help us understand why cancer does or does not develop, or metastasize, and provide insights into diseases of the heart, lungs and joints. Understanding how and why Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer develop in the brain, and how neurostructures within the brain process information and perform functions, are also emerging areas. Optical and nano technologies merged with big data and computational modeling are being used to develop imaging and diagnostic techniques that aim to address these critical societal problems and opportunities.

Robotics will change our lives in many ways in the coming years. In the near future, robots will assist us in our homes in ways we only now imagine. They will enhance our security. They will help people who have lost muscular function and drones will transform the way we interact as people and with our environment. Developing sustainable sources of energy remains a topic that has attracted great interest in recent years and is accelerating. Multiple disciplines

Robotics will change our lives in many ways in the coming years. are involved with finding ways to produce, store and deliver lowcost, low-carbon energy, which will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in a complex fossil fuel ecosystem and lower the cost of computation. Virtually all of the applications here—and more—will engage researchers and technology innovators with communities, with public policy, with socioeconomic leaders and systems, with people and infrastructures throughout the world, and with concerns and needs for cybersecurity and privacy.

How can we amplify the number of multi-dimensional Societal Engineers we will need for these challenges? One way we are answering this question is by doubling down on our Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP). Our efforts to inspire young people with the possibilities of an engineering career are bearing fruit. In five years, TISP has reached more than 15,000 K–12 students across America and is growing rapidly. This scalable model for what engineering pipeline feeders might look like nationally has attracted major support from corporations, non-profits, government agencies and our alumni. We’re aiming to sustain momentum through our unique STEM Educator-Engineer Program, which allows students to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in education, preparing them to bring their passion for engineering into K–12 classrooms and inspire generations of young people. I hope that when we look back 10 years from now, Boston University will have played a leading role in developing technologies that improve our lives and in dramatically increasing the number and diversity of young people who choose engineering as a career that can impact society.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KALMAN ZABARSKY

BY DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

CONTENTS • SPRING 2016 FEATURES

22 Team Players

Companies are investing in ENG —and getting substantial value in return.

DREAM FACTORY YOU CAN MAKE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING AT THE ENGINEERING PRODUCT INNOVATION CENTER. ESPECIALLY ENGINEERS.

24 A Clear Vision for the Cloud

Alum’s startup aims to democratize creativity by expanding our access to software.

DEPARTMENTS 3

inENG

Faculty News

Alumni News

HIGHLIGHTS

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL D. SPENCER

New Material for Studying Cell Mechanics

A Rocket Named CuPID

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB O’CONNOR.

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engineering leadership advisory board John E. Abele Founder & Director, Boston Scientific

Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Anton Papp ’90 Vice President, Corporate Development, Teradata Inc.

Gregg Adkin ’86 Managing Director, EMC Ventures, EMC Corporation

Jon Hirschtick Founder & Chairman, OnShape Inc.

Sharad Rastogi ’91 Vice President, Marketing, Cisco Systems

Adel Al-Saleh ’87 Group Chief Executive, Northgate Information Solutions

William I. Huyett Director, McKinsey & Company Inc.

George M. Savage ’81 Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Proteus Digital Health

Alan Auerbach ’91 CEO, President and Chairman, Puma Biotechnology Inc. Nizar Dalloul ’83, GRS‘87 Chairman and CEO, Comium Group Roger A. Dorf ’70 Former Vice President, Wireless Group, Cisco Systems Brian Dunkin, MD‘85 Medical Director, Houston Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation & Education Joseph Frassica MED’88 Vice President, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Phillips Healthcare Ronald G. Garriques ’86 CEO and Chairman, Gee Holdings LLC

Amit Jain ’85, ’88 President and CEO, Prysm Inc. Dean L. Kamen, Hon.’06 President & Founder, DEKA Research & Development Corp. Ezra D. Kucharz ’90 President, Local Digital Media, CBS Corporation Peter Levine ’83 General Partner, Andreesen Horowitz Nick Lippis ’84, ’89 President, Lippis Enterprises Inc. Rao Mulpuri ’92, ’96 CEO, View, Inc. Girish Navani ’91 CEO, eClinicalWorks

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 Bill 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

eng west coast alumni leadership council Bettina Briz Himes ’86 Director, Technology Alliances, GoPro

Sanjay Prasad ’86, ’87 Principal, Prasad IP

Gregory Cordrey ’88 Partner, Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP

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

John Scaramuzzo ’87 Senior Vice President, Scan Disk Inc.

Claudia Arango Dunsby ’92 Vice President, Operations, Hybridge IT

Michele Iacovone CGS’86, ’89 Vice President, Chief Architect, Intuit Inc.

Vanessa Feliberti ’93 Partner, General Engineering Manager, Microsoft

Tyler Kohn ‘98 Founder/CTO, RichRelevance, Inc. Martin Lynch ’82 Executive Vice President, Operations, Xicato Inc.

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

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

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

Sandip Patidar, MD’90 Managing Partner, Titanium Capital Partners

Jamshaud Zovein ’95, Questrom’99 Chief Operating Officer, Algert Coldiron Investors

Richard Lally

Michael Seele

Gretchen Fougere

Sara Cody

Christopher Brousseau ’91 Global Commercial Director, Accenture Inc.— Spend Management Services

Richard Fuller ’88 Microlocation Lead, OmniTrail Technologies Timothy Gardner ’00 Founder & CEO, Riffyn Inc. Roger A. Hajjar ’88 Chief Technical Officer, Prysm Inc.

associate dean for administration associate dean for outreach & diversity Bruce Jordan Kenneth R. Lutchen

dean

Solomon R. Eisenberg

senior associate dean for academic programs Catherine Klapperich

associate dean for research & technology development Thomas D. C. Little

associate dean for educational initiatives 2 Please recycle B U C O0416 LLEGE OF ENGINEERING

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

friends of the Boston University College of Engineering.

Please direct any questions or comments to Michael Seele, Boston University College of Engineering, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617-353-2800 Email: engalum@bu.edu Website: www.bu.edu/eng

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

Francis Tiernan ’70 President, Anritsu Company (Retired)

editor

managing editor Jan Smith

staff writer contributors

Rich Barlow Joel Brown Mark Dwortzan Michael S. Goldberg Gabriella McNevin

design & production

Boston University Creative Services

photography

College of Engineering, except where indicated

STAY CONNECTED TO THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Join the ENG online community! Post, tag, tweet, ask questions, reconnect with alumni and learn about networking opportunities, job fairs, seminars and other news and events.

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BU Wins $13M in Patent Infringement Suit

Nanopore Valves Enable High-Precision Gas Transport

Researchers use the experimental arena to track robot movements while performing various tasks using a motion capture system containing more than 50 infrared cameras.

Drone Home

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL D. SPENCER

NEW ROBOTICS LAB GIVES RESEARCHERS AND THEIR ’BOTS ROOM TO ROAM

s an animation technique, motion capture has been prominently featured in a number of blockbuster films for more than a decade, bringing fictional characters like Gollum from Lord of the Rings to life. This same technology is allowing BU researchers to study robotics and the relationship between man and machine in the new home of the Robotics Lab, located behind the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC). “The nicest thing about the facility is that we are now self-contained and everything is in one place,” says lab director Professor Calin Belta (ME), who moved his team into the facility last semester and has been joined by the research groups of Professor John Baillieul (ME)

and Assistant Professor Roberto Tron (ME). “Normally these types of workshop spaces are hidden away in basements, but the fact that we have such a large facility that is out in the open makes a huge difference in terms of atmosphere. It’s a more collaborative environment, which makes the students happier.” Baillieul notes that in addition to making the space student-friendly, the Robotics Lab has also had a positive impact among faculty. “Faculty have embraced the facility as a shared resource,” he explains. “This has led to a renewed sense of collegiality among the ME robotics research groups.” The Robotics Lab includes an experimental arena, a workshop, a student seating area and a conference room. The experimental arena—which resembles a cross between a hockey arena and BattleBots ring—consists of a motion capture system containing more than 50 infrared cameras and several short-throw projectors that can create dynamic images on the floor. Reflective balls on the robots allow researchers to track their movements with infrared as the robots perform various tasks in the arena. E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

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Drone Home “Most of my research is centered on mobile robotics,” says Belta, who utilizes the arena frequently. “We are using both ground and aerial robots to develop control strategies for unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles in unstructured environments, such as disaster areas.” By projecting images onto the arena floor, Belta’s research team runs disaster relief scenarios; their goal is to send a robot into a disaster zone and have it find its way through collapsed buildings and debris, build a map, identify areas of interest and locate survivors. And in addition to gathering data about disaster zones, the robot should be self-aware in terms of knowing when it has to return to recharge. The Robotics Lab workshop—where lab members design and construct robots—features an open-concept student workspace and a soundproof, wireless conference room that makes it easy to work with colleagues off campus. Numerous whiteboards pepper the workshop, and scribbled notes from brainstorming sessions attest to the collaboration that takes place there. Future plans for the facility include recruiting other groups to work in the space and adding equipment. Given the dynamic, visual nature of the lab and its research, Belta anticipates incorporating more outreach initiatives within its scope as well, such as the Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP), which sends undergraduate engineering students into middle- and high-school classrooms to inspire the next generation of engineers. The Robotics Lab supplies the program with small-scale robots that can be packed up, transported to classrooms, and used by TISP “Inspiration Ambassadors” to give younger students fun, interactive presentations about engineering and help them design and create their own engineering projects. “We are funded primarily by the Department of Defense, but we have received support from the National Science Foundation as well, which has a strong focus on outreach initiatives,” says Belta. “Recently there has been a big push to study robot-human interaction, and maintaining this balance of giving the robot autonomy to make decisions and allowing the human to step in as needed. Our new facility allows us to experiment with this interaction in real time, which is invaluable.” —sara cody 4

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Project to Engineer Cells That Compute Awarded $10M NSF “Expeditions in Computing” Grant COMPUTER ENGINEER DOUGLAS DENSMORE AND TEAM AIM TO ADVANCE SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY USING COMPUTING TECHNIQUES AND SOFTWARE

he rapidly growing field of synthetic biology has made long strides in recent years as researchers have modified the genetic makeup of living organisms to get them to behave in different ways—flagging the presence of toxins in the environment, for example. Researchers have done this by breaking down biology into basic building blocks. However, using these building blocks has been increasingly difficult without a clear design methodology and the supporting quantitative metrics researchers could use to make decisions. Associate Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) would like to take the guesswork out of biological design and speed the development of synthetic biology in the process. Working under a new $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) “Expeditions in Computing” grant, Densmore will lead the Living Computing Project, a comprehensive effort to quantify synthetic biology using a computing engineering approach to create a toolbox of carefully measured and catalogued biological parts that can be used to engineer organisms with predictable results. These

parts will allow the entire field to better understand which computing principles can be applied repeatedly and reliably to synthetic biology. Project leaders Densmore and Assistant Professors Ahmad Khalil (BME) and Wilson Wong (BME), and Research Assistant Professor Swapnil Bhatia (ECE) will partner with colleagues at MIT and Lincoln Laboratory over the course of the five-year grant, which marks the first time explicitly exploring computing principles in multiple living organisms and openly archiving the results has been funded. “This puts a stake in the ground to make synthetic biology more rigorous,” Densmore said. “We want to build a foundation that’s well understood, built to use software tools, and that can serve as an open-source starting place for many advanced applications.”

Associate Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) would like to take the guesswork out of biological design and speed the development of synthetic biology in the process. Synthetic biologists take snippets of DNA and combine them in novel ways to produce defined behavioral characteristics in organisms; for instance, Densmore envisions a day when one might engineer a cell to change state when it detects cancer. The cell could be introduced into a patient, retrieved after a time and read like the memory of a computer, enabling disease detection much earlier and less invasively than is now possible. Engineering that cell could be far easier and faster if researchers had a detailed inventory of parts and corresponding software tools they could use to create it.

PHOTOGRAPH, LEFT, BY KALMAN ZABARSKY; RIGHT, BY JACKIE RICCIARDI.

Densmore is a core member of—and the only computer engineer in—BU’s new Biological Design Center, and has long been applying the kinds of tools used in computer engineering to synthetic biology. His software aims to identify and characterize biological parts (segments of DNA) and assemble them into complex biological systems. The NSF Expeditions in Computing grant will allow for expansion of that effort, but there are significant challenges in applying computer engineering principles to natural systems. “What is power consumption in biology?” Densmore cites as an example. “What are the metrics in biology that make sense, can be repeated and are reliable? You can’t make decisions in engineering without metrics and quantifiable information.” “Programming a flower to change color, a cell to repair damaged tissue or a mosquito to defeat malaria is likely to require a different computational model than programming an app for your laptop,” said Bhatia. “Discovering

this new type of computational thinking in partnership with synthetic biologists is what I am most excited about.” Densmore hopes this project will take synthetic biology from an artisanal endeavor to a true engineering discipline with a solid, quantified foundation. “Computation is important for moving any field forward and that’s what we’re trying to do with synthetic biology,” he said. “We’re trying to build a library based on computing principles for the whole community, an open-source repository of biological pieces that use those principles reliably, repeatedly and with broad applicability.” “The Expeditions in Computing program enables the computing research community to pursue complex problems by supporting large project teams over a longer period of time,” said Jim Kurose, NSF’s head for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. “This allows these researchers to pursue bold, ambitious research that moves the needle for not only computer science disciplines, but often many other disciplines as well.”—michael seele

His software aims to identify and characterize biological parts (segments of DNA) and assemble them into complex biological systems. The NSF Expeditions in Computing grant will allow for expansion of that effort, but there are significant challenges in applying computer engineering principles to natural systems.

Swapnil Bhatia (ECE)

Wilson Wong (BME), Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) and Ahmad Khalil (BME)

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BU Wins $13 Million in Patent Infringement Suit ENG PROFESSOR’S LED DISCOVERY AT HEART OF CASE

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Professor Emeritus Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE)

Electronics Co., Ltd., and Lite-On Technology Corporation, along with various subsidiaries, most located in the United States. Each is involved in manufacturing or packaging LEDs for use in consumer electronics. A number

Blue LEDs have become a key component in many products because they can generate white light when coated with phosphor. of big-name electronics manufacturers were initially part of the University’s case, but they avoided litigation by joining a settlement that includes licensing and confidentiality agreements. Moustakas’s invention dates to June 22, 1990, when researchers in his lab were trying to produce microscopically thin layers of gallium nitride to be used in the LEDs, growing

crystals of the substance at high temperatures. They discovered that a heater used in the experiment had malfunctioned and the material had cooled to 270 degrees Celsius, far below the intended 600 degrees. But instead of aborting the experiment, Moustakas told them to fix the heater and continue. The snafu led to the growth of a smoother, more translucent gallium nitride layer that also grew much faster when crystallized at the higher temperature, a result replicated—deliberately—the very next day. The main patent for the LED was issued in 1997, based on an application first submitted in 1991. Since then, blue LEDs have become a key component in many products because they can generate white light when coated with phosphor. “The real story is the robustness of Moustakas’s technology,” says Pratt. “It really did become a personal story. There was an attack, an affront to his creation. They had two experts saying it didn’t exist . . . and the jury wasn’t buying that at all.”—joel brown

PHOTOGRAPH BY KALMAN ZABARSKY

US District Court jury has awarded Boston University more than $13 million after finding that three companies infringed on a BU patent for blue LEDs (light-emitting diodes), used in countless cell phones, tablets, laptops and lighting products. After a highly technical three-week trial in November, the 10-person jury unanimously found that the companies had willfully infringed on BU’s patent for the invention by 2013 Innovator of the Year Theodore Moustakas, College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics Emeritus. Because the jury found the infringement to be willful, the $13,665,000 award could be doubled or tripled by Judge Patti B. Saris. No date has yet been announced for further proceedings. Despite the amount of damages awarded, “the best part of this is that it validates Professor Moustakas’s work,” said Michael Pratt (Questrom’12), interim managing director of BU’s Technology Development office. “The story is really not about the money. The first thing we want is recognition of his seminal contribution to this field.” Moustakas, who became a professor emeritus when he retired in June but continues to conduct research at the Photonics Center, testified extensively at the trial and was present in court every day. When the judge read the jury’s verdict, “I put my head down,” he said. “I cried.” He describes the jury’s decision as “amazing . . . everything we asked,” saying also that his lifetime’s work was being challenged. “Fundamental to our mission as a global research institution is nurturing an environment of discovery that supports our faculty and the incredibly important work they do,” said Jean Morrison, provost and chief academic officer. “We are delighted with the verdict in this case. Boston University has successfully fought, and will continue to fight, for our faculty members and the intellectual property they create here.” The three primary defendants, all Taiwanbased, were Epistar Corporation, Everlight

Dean Lutchen Speaks on STEM Education at the White House

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen spoke to an invitationonly group of the nation’s leading STEM educators at the White House. BU was the only engineering school invited to the event. (Photo courtesy of 100Kin10)

PHOTOGRAPH, LOWER, BY KRISTYN ULANDAY

ean Kenneth R. Lutchen and Associate Dean for Outreach & Diversity Gretchen Fougere were invited to the White House recently to highlight the College’s work in preparing excellent STEM teachers. Lutchen and Fougere were among a select group of educators chosen to speak at the event, sponsored by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and 100Kin10, an organization that aims to place 100,000 STEM teachers in the nation’s schools to educate the next generation of innovators and problem solvers. Fougere is among the initial group of 100Kin10 Fellows, who are challenged with finding ways to increase access to high-quality engineering education. According to Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director of 100Kin10, “The Boston University College of Engineering is a leader in STEM teacher preparation and has gone above and beyond as a partner in the 100Kin10 network.” The College was among just 42 universities, companies and nonprofits—and the only engineering school— invited to the event. Also speaking were leaders from the National Science Foundation and Jonathan Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and science advisor to the President. In his remarks, Lutchen stressed that while most of the national effort involved in STEM outreach focuses on science and math, BU makes the connection to technology and engineering. He noted the success of the Technology Innovation Scholars Program (TISP), which sends undergraduate “Inspiration Ambassadors” into middle and high schools to expose young people to the career possibilities in engineering. “A strong, and unexpected, byproduct was some of our engineering students developed enhanced passion and desire to change the world by becoming teachers themselves,” Lutchen told the gathering. This prompted the creation of the STEM Educator-Engineer Program (STEEP), a joint effort with the School of Education that allows students to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in education in five years. It is not enough to have more

teachers—in order to impact the next generation of innovators, we need teachers who can regularly and authentically connect the four STEM subjects, and STEEP and TISP are designed to do so. “Our commitment to 100Kin10 is to prepare 220 certified master teachers who regularly and authentically infuse engineering design and innovation into their secondary math and science curricula and place them in schools nationwide by 2018, partnering with the School of Education,” Lutchen said. “Boston University has a comprehensive model to address the goals of the President

Hackathon Draws 500 DR. FRANKENSTEIN HAD NOTHING ON SCAREBEAR

Demonic teddy bear creators, clockwise from upper left, ENG students Nicholas Maresco, Doug Roeper, Brian Tan and Pablo Velarde

and the Office of Science and Technology Policy: producing talented STEM teachers and engineers,” explained Fougere. “With the College of Engineering programs, we share our trained engineers in TISP with middle and high school teachers across the country, and then with STEEP, create a new type of math or science teacher who is passionate about engineering and has the research-based training to be effective teaching in urban schools. It was extremely gratifying to hear that our model aligns so well with those of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the mission of 100Kin10.”—michael seele

he movies’ mad genius took something unappetizing—bits and pieces of bodies— and stitched them into an equally unattractive monster. By contrast, ScareBear’s BU student inventors started with an adorable teddy bear and, through the magic of computer science, transformed it into a furry fiend, its eyes flashing demonic red while it growled, “I’ve got something for you,” in ghoulish tones. But while Frankenstein labored in solitude, ScareBear was born amid 500 student hackers who packed Metcalf Hall for BU’s Halloween weekend, 24-hour hackathon. While competitors worked on their own projects—an app to summon a ride home if you were too drunk to drive, an online stick figure aping the gestures of a person standing before a motion detector —ScareBear’s four BU creators disemboweled

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CON TIN UED

Hackathon Draws 500

their teddy to install hardware, plucked its brown glass eyes to place red lights underneath and designed the app putting the scare in ScareBear. “OK, so it smells a little bit,” shrugged Nicholas Maresco (ENG’17), after hot glue spilled on wiring, exuding a burning stink. “Only you can prevent forest fires,” quipped teammate Brian Tan (ENG’16), pushing the bear motif. Later, Maresco confessed, “That’s our second Raspberry Pi. We fried the first one.” He wasn’t talking about lunch. Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer, and the team needed one to communicate with the creature-controlling app.

Hacking Square ENG STUDENTS DISCOVER CYBERSECURITY RED FLAG According to three recent ENG grads, the Square Reader—used by millions of businesses in the United States—could at one point be converted in less than 10 minutes into a skimmer that could steal and save credit card information. Their findings were presented at last summer’s Black Hat USA cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Class of 2015 Computer Engineering grads Alexandrea Mellen, John Moore and Artem Losev discovered the vulnerability in a project for their cybersecurity class taught by Professor Ari Trachtenberg (ECE). They also found that Square Register software could be hacked to enable unauthorized transactions at a later date. “The merchant could swipe the card an extra time at the point of sale,” said Moore. “You think nothing of it, and a week later when you’re not around, I charge you $20, $30, $100, $200 . . . you might not notice that charge. I get away with some extra money of yours.” Moore (who was valedictorian of his ENG class) and the other students reported the vulnerabilities to Square in 2014, and the company quickly moved to close them. Square also sent Moore a $500 “bounty” for his work. 8

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

The project punctuated what the BU organizers called a “Hacky Halloween,” the University’s third annual computer competition. This year’s event outdrew the previous two, with even two busloads of Canadian participants coming in. Hackathons, which have sprouted on many campuses in the last decade, offer computer enthusiasts opportunities they can’t always get in classes. Several major corporations—among them Microsoft, Liberty Mutual and Capital One—sponsored the hackathon, which was organized by the student groups MakeBU and BUILDS and evaluated by 15 judges, mostly from the technology industry. Completing a project was less important than the quality and feasibility of the idea. “If you didn’t finish a project,” said Sean Smith (CAS’17), one of the event organizers, “but

you have this awesome idea and you can show some functionality, then you could probably be a strong contender. Things that are easy, things that have been done before, are generally not going to do that well in the judging.” Neither ScareBear nor any BU team walked away with prizes for top projects, but for the organizers, winning wasn’t the point. “We want it to be fun and collaborative,” said Smith. “We don’t want it to be competitive or cutthroat. We want people to work together and meet new people and learn new things and maybe have something that they can put on their résumé.” As ScareBear co-creator Doug Roeper (ENG’17) put it, “It’s like, whatever we want, we can implement, whether it works or not. We could try.”—rich barlow

Moore says there is no evidence that either of the vulnerabilities has been used to scam credit card holders, but warns that the group’s findings raise red flags for the fast-growing mobile commerce field in general. “This isn’t just about Square,” he said. “Over the past six years, mobile point-of-sale has really taken off . . . all of these providers are offering new hardware and software to process payments, and customers are trusting their credit card information to new devices that haven’t been tested as much as traditional point-of-sale devices. They’re interacting with the personal cell phone of the merchant in a lot of cases. There’s just a lot going on.” The students turned their class project into a paper that won them an invitation to the Black Hat conference. According to Trachtenberg, students have produced papers from class projects before, but none were undergraduates and none of the conferences had the stature of Black Hat. “This is a conference with a very high impact,” he explained. “There are 10,000 security professionals that pay a lot of money to come to this conference and listen to the latest interesting security research.” All three alums have other plans now. In September, Mellen returned to running her own company, Terrapin Computing LLC in Cambridge, which sells four iOS apps; Moore started as a software engineer for Google; and

Losev continued his computer science education at New York University. Moore believes that another lesson to draw from their experience has nothing to do with hackers or credit cards and everything to do with the classroom. “Don’t be afraid to take on a project that goes a little bit above and beyond what’s required,” he said. “We could have done a project that was a lot simpler and easier, but instead we decided to do something that was quite challenging for us. We learned a lot in the process. We put in a lot more time than we expected, and it ended up paying off in the long run.”—joel brown

Alexandrea Mellen (photo by Dmellendesigns), John Moore (courtesy of John Moore) and Artem Losev (courtesy of Artem Losev)

New Material for Studying Cell Mechanics May Spark Fresh Outlook on Disease CHEN LAB PAPER PUBLISHED IN NATURE MATERIALS

PHOTOGRAPH OF CHEN BY CHITOSE SUZUKI

esearchers have long known that most cells living in tissues produce stabilizing networks of fibers, and that the stiffness of those tissues, in turn, influences cell behavior. When this relationship goes awry, diseases like cancer and organ fibrosis result— but researchers have largely been studying this interaction using two-dimensional models that don’t mimic the fibrous materials in the body. Enter Professor Christopher Chen (BME) and his team, who have developed a three-dimensional platform for studying cell interactions with fibers and discovered some relationships that may upend some of the thinking on how cells sense tissue stiffness. Chen and his colleagues detail their findings in a paper published in Nature Materials, “Cell-Mediated Fibre Recruitment Drives Extracellular Matrix Mechanosensing in Engineered Fibrillar Microenvironments.” Past investigation has suggested that the stiffness of the tissue that cells sit in affects their ability to spread and proliferate. Using a culture of cells grown on an elastic, flat, gel surface, previous researchers have found that as they increased the gel’s stiffness, the cells grew in size and proliferated. Recognizing that these physical conditions hardly mimicked the structure of actual tissues in vivo, Chen and his team set about creating a three-dimensional, fibrous network model where the effects of tissue stiffness could be studied in a more realistic setting. But first, they needed to develop a new material they could manipulate to adjust stiffness while mimicking the natural fiber structure of tissues. Bioengineer Brendon Baker and polymer chemist Britta Trappmann, two postdoctoral fellows in Chen’s lab, devised such a material, constructed three-dimensional matrices of fibers, embedded adult stem cells into this scaffolding, and began studying the cells’ response. Surprisingly, they found that the cells behaved very differently in these fibrous networks compared to flat gels. For one, the pulling forces generated by cells only modestly stretched the Jell-O-like surface

Professor Christopher Chen (BME)

The colored cell attaches to the fiber network and draws the web in closer. (Image courtesy of Chen lab)

of the 2D model, but in contrast caused dramatic and permanent structural rearrangements in their matrix. They then adjusted the stiffness of the fibers and found that the cells—unlike those on the 2D gel—grew and proliferated more in a softer environment than a stiffer one. “The cell sits much like a spider within a web, applying forces to the fibers of the network,” said Baker. “These forces applied to the softer fibers allow cells to pull in, or recruit, more fibers, bringing more of the matrix within the cell’s reach. The cell’s ability to change its local environment could explain why we see more proliferation in this setting.” “These findings highlight a gap in our understanding of how cells interact with their fibrous surroundings,” said Chen. “Hopefully, this new material can serve as a springboard for helping researchers elucidate the complex relationship between cells and their environment, which may bring us closer to understanding the mechanism of several diseases.”—michael seele

Past investigation has suggested that the stiffness of the tissue that cells sit in affects their ability to spread and proliferate. Using a culture of cells grown on an elastic, flat, gel surface, previous researchers have found that as they increased the gel’s stiffness, the cells grew in size and proliferated.

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Naturally Inspired ZHANG’S RESEARCH TAKES A PAGE FROM BIOLOGY TO BUILD MATERIALS

The porous, threedimensional structure of the diatom frustules can be oriented on a large scale and used as a potential alternative for creating micro- and nanopattern surfaces, which have many practical applications in research. (Image courtesy of Zhang lab)

t first glance, diatoms seem to have little to do with engineering. However, they are the focus of a recently published study from Professor Xin Zhang’s (ME, MSE) laboratory for microsystems technology. “By drawing inspiration from different fields of science, we come up with unconventional approaches to study the materials, which allows us to learn more about them,” said Zhang. “In this case, we learn from nature to build materials of our own.” The study, the cover story for Extreme Mechanics Letters, used the exoskeletons of diatoms (called frustules) to develop a stencil that can be easily produced and replicated in a certain range of sizes for use in research protocols. The porous, bowl-shaped, three-dimensional exoskeletons, made naturally of pure silica, lent themselves well to stencil making and served as a unique fabrication method. “The ability to uniformly orient the frustules will be beneficial for enhancing their applica-

Nanopore Valves Enable High-Precision Gas Transport A STUDY LED BY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SCOTT

Bunch (ME, MSE) has demonstrated the ability to measure and control the transport of gas through a single molecule-sized pore in graphene, a strong, flexible material made of one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms. By using gold nanoparticles to block and unblock such pores in a graphene membrane, Bunch and his research team have provided the first evidence of controlling the transport of gas through a molecule-sized opening in any existing membrane material. “These nanopore molecular valves provide the unique ability to control a single-file flow of molecules, and may lead to important applica10

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tion to practical technologies, from sensors to solar cells,” said Aobo Li (ME), a graduate student who worked on the study. “We were able to figure out how to orient them uniformly on a large scale, which allowed us to make micro- and nanostencils.” Current methods of creating nanopattern surfaces present a number of problems for researchers—they can be costly, timeconsuming or it can be difficult to achieve scalability or control over the size of the stencil. Zhang’s novel approach seeks to address these limitations by using the bio-structures

tions in nanoscale 3D printing, catalysis and sensor design,” said Bunch. Nanoscale 3D printing could be used to manufacture high-precision devices ranging from micro-needles to nano-robots. New applications in catalysis, the acceleration of chemical reactions, could yield new chemical compounds for scientific and commercial applications. The research may also improve the performance of graphenebased separation membranes, which can be used to purify gas, capture carbon from power plant carbon dioxide emissions and perform other applications. Bunch and collaborators at Boston University, MIT, University of Colorado and National University of Singapore used two methods to create the nanopores in the graphene membranes. They either applied a voltage pulse with an atomic force microscope, or exposed the graphene to ultraviolet light. They also used an atomic force

of the diatoms as a potential alternative for fabricating micro- and nanopatterns. “You can make chips, you can make computers, but if you humbly turn to nature, you see so many unique micro- and nanostructures that already exist,” Zhang explained. “You can be inspired by these beautiful, available structures and can even build engineering components directly out of them. By looking to diatoms, we are trying to understand nature, and leverage these biological components for our specific engineering purposes.”—sara cody

A composite of atomic force microscope images of pressurized graphene membranes. (Image courtesy of Bunch lab)

microscope to monitor the flow of hydrogen, nitrogen and other gases. The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, is described in the online edition of Nature Nanotechnology. —mark dwortzan

Materials Day Focuses on Health Care ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX MATERIALS

researchers from as near as Boston and as far away as California and Iran convened in the Photonics Center in September for the BU Materials Day Symposium, “Nanomaterials in Medicine: Improving Health Care Through Small Innovations.” The daylong event featured an array of speakers who addressed the promise and use of nanomaterials in drug delivery, biomedical imaging and fighting cancer and infectious diseases. Dean Kenneth Lutchen welcomed the symposium participants and noted the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary strength of the College of Engineering’s Materials Science & Engineering division. Materials research, he said, will play an important role in advancing society, particularly health care. “The current challenges facing health care call for biomaterials solutions,” he said. “It is an inherently complex, multi-scale problem you are trying to address.” Two College of Engineering faculty members affiliated with MSE—Professor Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME) and Assistant Professor Allison Dennis (BME)—presented at the symposium.

PHOTOGRAPH OF GRINSTAFF BY CYDNEY SCOTT

Student Team Makes Final Round in Air Force Satellite Competition

NDESITE, a task force within Boston University’s Small Satellite Program, has qualified to launch a self-designed satellite into orbit. The ANDESITE team is one of six that reached the final round of the US Air Force University Nanosat Program competition. ANDESITE is a unique, interdisciplinary, University-wide collaboration consisting of 16 students in astronomy, electrical engineering, computer engineering and mechanical engineering, and two faculty advisors, Professor Joshua Semeter (ECE) and Associate Professor Ray Nagem (ME). ECE Research Engineer

Grinstaff’s presentation focused on his lab’s work in using drug-infused nanoparticles to treat mesothelioma, a highly fatal cancer associated with asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma progresses locally, Grinstaff noted, and the current chemotherapy treatments that infuse toxic drugs throughout the body for a relatively brief period have not been effective. Grinstaff’s approach has been to develop nanoparticles on the order of 100 nanometers that are infused with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel. These particles are small enough to be admitted into a cancer cell, where the more acidic environment causes them to expand to 1,000 nanometers and begin releasing the drug. The cells are not able to quickly expel the particles, which can release paclitaxel into the cell—and only the cell—for up to two weeks. His research has produced excellent results in vivo, Grinstaff noted, and he hopes that this approach may also benefit patients suffering from breast, lung and ovarian cancers. Dennis’ presentation focused on her work with quantum dots, which she described as semi-conductor nanocrystals with optical properties. Quantum dots have many applications in solid-state lighting and consumer electronics, as well as biomedical imaging. She described how her lab has been working to manipulate the dots to change the color of light they emit and explained that dots

emitting multiple colors can be used to more effectively conduct tissue-depth imaging. Some of the dots are exceptionally bright, making their detection easier. More recently, she has been working with the chemistry of quantum dots in order to find an alternative to the toxic element cadmium so the dots can be used more readily in biomedical applications. Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME, MSE) organized the symposium and moderated the discussions that followed each presentation. “Nanomaterials in medicine is such a timely subject as we have seen unprecedented activity in the design and production of biologically and medically relevant materials on the nanoscale,” Porter said. “The symposium featured leaders in the field who are pushing the boundaries to generate novel constructs and platforms that ultimately will revolutionize how we image, diagnose, detect and treat disease.”—michael seele

Aleks Zosuls also provides support and acts as a liaison with the Engineering Product Innovation Center. The ANDESITE satellite is on the forefront of an international movement to advance our understanding of “space weather”—which arises from interactions between the Earth’s plasma environment and the impinging solar wind—and its effects on society. These interactions can damage satellites, harm astronauts in space, render GPS information erratic and unreliable, disrupt ground-space communications and even cause electricity blackouts on Earth. In 2013, the White House raised inadequate space weather forecasting to the global agenda, citing the significant “threat to modern systems posed by space weather events” and “the potential for significant societal, economic, national security and health impacts.”

The ANDESITE satellite is designed to deploy a network of magnetic sensors that will operate collectively as a space-based wireless mesh network that will study fine-scale variations in Earth’s geomagnetic environment caused by space weather events. The ANDESITE satellite’s scientific and technological innovations are on the leading edge of the burgeoning CubeSat movement. The qualifying competition took place at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico last year. According to Semeter, “It was a stressful experience for the students with an exciting outcome.” Now, the qualifiers must shift their focus from satellite fabrication to implementation. The University Nanosat Program will provide Air Force technical guidance and $110,000 to support each of the remaining six competitors. —gabriella mcnevin

Professor Mark Grinstaff (Chemistry, BME) detailed his research in using nanoparticles to deliver chemotherapy at the Materials Day Symposium.

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BUZZ DISMANTLING MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS TAPE DISPEN SERS FOR THE BLIND EPIC AND BUDGET AN DREAM FACTORY IND USTRY PARTNERS OP YOU CAN MAKE JUST THINKING OUTSIDE TH ABOUT ANYTHING CLASSROOM INSPIRE AT EPIC. ESPECIALLY ENGAGEENGINEERS. REALISTIC A MANUFACTURING DYNAMIC MAKERSPACE REAL-WORLD EXPERI ENCE ROBOTICS CRE BY SARA CODY

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Taylor Mortell’s (CFA’16) art installation consisted of projecting light through this kinetic sculpture she fabricated in EPIC to create a dynamic shadow on the wall.

N THE HEART OF THE ENGINEERING PRODUCT INNOVATION CENTER (EPIC), THE LORRAINE A. TEGAN DESIGN STUDIO THRUMS WITH ACTIVITY. Students

stream into the classroom where Introduction to Engineering Design (EK 210) is about to start, and as they open and close the doors the sounds of whirring, buzzing, drilling and puffing from the machines across the hall follow them. They take their seats at the high-top wooden tables, mounted on castors that allow them to be pushed together to form and reform groups. At the front of the room, a fireengine red toolbox overflows with wires and tools. Three walls sport large whiteboards; the fourth is a vast expanse of glass that allows visitors a full view of the fabrication shop across the hall. Professor of the Practice Gerry Fine calls their attention to the front of the classroom. After a brief discussion the students troop into the storage room to fetch their projects. Dismantled parts of bathroom scales, blood pressure cuffs, water flossers and other common household objects soon litter the tables as students literally put their heads together in groups to examine them closely. Their first assignment is to work together to reverse engineer a common household product; from there, they will spend the 11 remaining weeks of the semester designing and building a prototype of an engineered product to meet the needs of an external client. In the fall semester, all College of Engineering sophomores, regardless of major, began taking this course in EPIC, which has been optional since the facility opened and is now a curriculum requirement. The goal is to get students out of the traditional classroom and into a realistic manufacturing environment—where they have to rely on their creativity and grasp of theoretical concepts—to give them a basic understanding of developing a product from concept through design and deployment. Students work in multidisciplinary teams with time and budget constraints on externally sponsored design projects. The flipped classroom model, where students watch required lectures online before class, allows them to maximize group project time during class. Often, it’s their first time interacting with machine equipment, much less taking an idea for a product and bringing it to life. “It’s our core belief that engineers who don’t understand the way that products are manufactured are not good designers, and frankly, you can’t have one without the other,” says Fine, an EPIC instructor and also the facility’s director. “We try to teach design and manufacturing as a unified theme so we can create a better generation of engineers.” Fine arrived at BU three and a half years ago after spending more than 30 years in industry, where he often found hiring newly minted engineers to be a frustrating experience. Many came into the job market with little or no experience working with manufacturing equipment; some had never even been on a manufacturing floor. In a field with a wealth of opportunity for recent graduates, this was not

The goal is to get students out of the traditional classroom and into a realistic manufacturing environment where they have to rely on their creativity and grasp of theoretical concepts. acceptable. So when Dean Kenneth Lutchen offered him the opportunity to spearhead a new facility where he could teach these valuable skills, Fine jumped at the chance. Open since January of 2014, EPIC contains 15,000 square feet of space that houses a computer-aided design (CAD) studio, demonstration areas, machine shop, carpentry shop, metals foundry, materials testing laboratory and automated manufacturing line available to engineering students in all specialties—from computer and electrical engineering to biomedical engineering and nanotechnology. The facility has a flexible design and offers students tools such as 3-D printers, robotics, laser cutters, CNC machines, lathes and mills. Among the few such “makerspaces” found in engineering schools nationally, EPIC is one of the largest and most visible. The facility boasts soaring ceilings and large windows that allow passersby to stop and watch the work being done in the machine shop and in the Merrill Ebner Automated Design & Manufacturing Facility [see story on page 18]. “It’s very rare to find a facility of this enormous size that is so out in the open and public,” says Fine. “It’s the only building on campus that fronts both Commonwealth Avenue and the Massachusetts Turnpike and because of that, it is impossible to drive past BU and not see the word ‘Engineering.’” EPIC has also attracted industry partners who provide funds to purchase equipment and offer invaluable guidance on everything from the type of equipment to buy to how best to incorporate important job skills into the curriculum. Proctor and Gamble, General Electric, Rolls Royce, PTC and Schlumberger are all on EPIC’s advisory board. Students have plenty of opportunities to gain face time with company executives through networking opportunities that sometimes lead to coveted internships and jobs. THINKING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM As they planned projects for EK 210, course instructors made sure that each one was multidisciplinary and had a significant societal impact. Whether they were working on tape dispensers for the blind, portable newborn baby incubators or other products, students from each of the College’s departments were included in every group. “In EPIC, we have our students work on projects that are the living embodiment of a Societal Engineer,” says Fine. “We’re trying

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PHOTOGRAPHY: TOP FOUR BY MICHAEL D. SPENCER. BOTTOM BY BOB Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CONNOR.

In EK 210, Professor of the Practice Gerry Fine, above, consults with students about their reverse engineering projects, where they work in groups to take apart common household objects such as blood pressure cuffs, water flossers and bathroom scales.

EPIC boasts 15,000 square feet of bright, open space that houses a variety of manufacturing equipment, design tools and many other resources.

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With his team in EK 210, Eric Sun (MEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;17) built an attachment for mass spectrometers used by first responders.

3-D PRINTERS INCUBATORS FLEXIBLE DESIGN COLLABORATE EXPER

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL D. SPENCER

After six weeks of planning and construction, they had a tangible, functioning product they could present to their client. And Sun was hooked. to demonstrate in the projects we pick that engineers can have societal impact through that which they design and manufacture, and growing our capability and therefore their skill set is crucial for the economic vitality of our country and our region. It can only mean good things for the future.” In the fall semester, Eric Sun (ME ’17) and his EK 210 team were assigned 908 Devices, a local company that manufactures a portable mass spectrometer used by first responders to help identify unknown—and possibly hazardous—substances they encounter in the field. The device works by vaporizing the questionable substance and analyzing its chemical composition. Powders and liquids are readily vaporized, but analyzing more solid substances is problematic. So, Sun’s team set out to develop an attachment that could vaporize a solid. After brainstorming ideas for the function they wanted their device to have, the students worked with EPIC staff to determine the best type of materials to use, which influenced their design. A cast acrylic shell would not only be easy to assemble, but would withstand the temperature constraints their assigned company had set. They chose electrical components based on the voltages they needed. After six weeks of planning and construction, they had a tangible, functioning product they could present to their client. And Sun was hooked. “One of the big selling points of BU was seeing EPIC when I was touring colleges and after taking a class in there, I wish all of my classes could be in EPIC,” says Sun, who is not only taking another course in EPIC this semester, but also recently landed a student job to work in the facility. “Being able to work with the tools and machines knowing that might be what I am going to do for the rest of my life motivates me to get through my schoolwork. It’s a unique, incredible experience for students.” Professor Jeffrey Carruthers (ECE), also an EK 210 instructor, says he has noticed an increasing buzz among students who have taken courses in EPIC. He can usually gage the impact a course has on students by the number of requests he gets for letters of reference and the requests from his EK 210 students are plentiful. Students often cite the experience as the first time they actually felt like engineers, which he attributes to the connection the space fosters between students and professors. “The space really affects the way students perceive their role in the classroom,” Carruthers says. “The glass walls let you see people in there working all the time—you can hear them drilling holes and running machines and making parts—so it’s an active energy that’s different from a classroom. Students are energized by it.” Carruthers also sees the long-term benefits of students learning to collaborate with machinists. “In the real world you work

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FACULTY, STUDENTS AND ALUMNI gathered in the

Engineering Product Innovation Center on October 23 to dedicate a portion of the facility to Merrill Ebner, one of the College’s longest-serving and most influential faculty members. The event culminated with the unveiling of a bronze plaque featuring Ebner’s likeness. The Merrill Ebner Automated Design & Manufacturing Facility was Merrill Ebner named in honor of Professor Ebner, who served on the faculty from 1964 until 2006 and is widely credited with pioneering the field of manufacturing engineering. “Merrill Ebner was a historic figure in the history of the College of Engineering,” Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen told the assembled guests. “He was here when the College was just starting. He had a vision that engineers needed to understand how to connect design to manufacturing and improve people’s quality of life. “He spent 40-plus years enhancing the experience of our students and mentoring generations of faculty,” Lutchen added. “We recognized the need to honor Merrill’s legacy by naming this facility.” “It’s an honor to have Merrill’s plaque in here and show generations of students who he was and what he did for the College of Engineering,” EPIC Director Gerry Fine said. Ebner was among a small group of faculty members recruited in the early 1960s who played a transformative role in the College’s development. He served as the first chair of the Manufacturing Engineering Department, and for 40 years every undergraduate who passed through that program took at least one of his courses. As dean ad interim in the early 1970s, his skill and engaging personality helped reverse declining enrollment. Later in his career, he reinvigorated the Distance Learning Program and after retiring, remained a presence at the College until his death in 2008. Former Ebner student Roger Dorf (‘70) said, “He was a friend and a mentor, and for me what was most important was his leadership in manufacturing that endured during his entire time at Boston University, and what he did for Boston University and for manufacturing in the United States.” Associate Professor Theo deWinter (ME), the longest-serving member of the ENG faculty and a colleague of Ebner’s from the College’s early days, noted that Ebner’s contributions continue to ripple through the College today. “His courses in manufacturing engineering gave rise to the College’s machine shop,” deWinter said, “And this Automated Design & Manufacturing Facility we are naming for him today is something he brought here.” Several members of the Ebner family were on hand for the event. His son, Merrill, said, “He loved his professional family of colleagues and students, and today shows it is reciprocated. My father didn’t see his work here as just a job. He saw this as his community. That is the feeling that defined his legacy and I thank all of you for that. He didn’t only give a lot to you; he took a lot, too. And most of that was in joy.”—Michael Seele

closely with them by communicating your design idea to them and they prototype it for you, so it’s great experience for students to learn the best way to communicate with them,” he explains. In addition to the sophomore course, there has been a focused effort to incorporate other courses from throughout the College. Senior lecturer Jonathan Rosen (BME) teaches Advanced Biomedical Design, a product-based, graduate-level design course that uses the Lorraine A. Tegan Design Studio and 3-D printing for rapid prototyping. “Typically, to manufacture products in a classroom setting, designs are sent away for weeks at a time, where machinists do the production work. It’s time consuming, expensive, and students are left out of the process,” says Rosen. “EPIC is unique because you have students teaching each other and working with EPIC staff to produce their ideas themselves. You can fit four generations of prototypes into one semester, which allows students to tweak their designs further. The opportunities for learning are endless.” Associate Professor of the Practice William Hauser (ME) coordinates senior capstone projects, which are group assignments required for graduation where seniors execute a project that solves a complex engineering problem. Hauser credits the facility with inspiring creativity and fostering a respect for making things. “The amazing thing about EPIC is that it attracts projects,” says Hauser. “People outside the immediate engineering community at BU see it, learn about it and are curious. It is such an impressive space that it gets the wheels turning in your head as to how you can use it, and we’ve gotten sponsors from other departments and even outside companies who come to us with project ideas.” BUILDING A COMMUNITY Indeed, Fine has always envisioned EPIC as being open to the entire Boston University community. Anyone who has a design on paper and has taken the requisite safety training can utilize the space, regardless of major. As EPIC has integrated into the engineering curriculum, word has spread about the available resources, and extracurricular activity groups and departments from other BU colleges have been exploring how they might use EPIC, too. “I think there is a tendency to think of EPIC as purely an engineering machine shop, but that isn’t really what it is,” says Fine. “The vision was to create a makerspace for the BU community in addition to supporting the engineering curriculum. As a result, we have had people from all over the University use the facility, from student organizations to the College of Fine Arts to the Questrom School of Business, and we want this to keep growing.”

PHOTOGRAPH, RIGHT, BY MICHAEL D. SPENCER

MERRILL EBNER AUTOMATED DESIGN & MANUFACTURING FACILITY DEDICATED

Anyone who has a design on paper and has taken the requisite safety training can utilize the space, regardless of major.

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Members of BU Racing used EPIC resources such as the welding studio to fabricate parts of their electric race car.

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Emily Stern (ME’16) has mentored Boston University Academy’s FIRST team since her freshman year and recently brought team members to EPIC to build parts of the robots for their competition.

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College of Fine Arts Associate Professor Deborah Cornell teaches a digital printmaking course focused on creating fine art prints on paper and fabric using both traditional and new techniques. Cornell arranged for her class to use EPIC’s laser cutters and CNC routers to create work for assignments in this course—including 3-D digital objects, printing blocks and stencils. “If you give a visual arts student new tools, that student will take them on and master them, covering new creative ground in the process, and informing everything else in their studio practice,” says Cornell. “At EPIC, our students are encouraged to think outside the box, using equipment that is otherwise unavailable to them, for experimentation and creative pursuit. EPIC is a huge resource for many disciplines because engineering touches so many fields. It’s an incredible opportunity for expanding the possibilities for teaching.” College of Fine Arts senior Taylor Mortell took a kinetic sculpture class and used EPIC resources to build a dynamic sculpture. The worlds of art and science collided as Mortell worked with a group of engineers and machinists to turn her idea into reality. “Most people think of sculpture as a sedentary, marble-carved thing on a pedestal in a gallery,” says Mortell. “But it can be so much more than that. We built something that moved and fabricated parts and it took on a whole new meaning of what sculpture can be. We practically built robots.” In addition to supporting curricula across BU, EPIC provides resources for extracurricular activities on campus. Boston University Racing is an interdisciplinary, student-run formula-racing group focused on developing a fully electric racing vehicle. In the fabrication phase, the team splits into subgroups, each assigned a different part of the vehicle to design and manufacture, with the goal of racing against 30 other universities from around the world. EPIC resources allow the students to do all of their own building; they can usually be found sending up sparks in the welding studio. “Because of the state-of-the-art equipment and knowledgeable staff, we have the capability to do high-quality, precise work, which definitely gives us a leg up in competition against the other schools,” says Josh Byington (ME’16), president of BU Racing. “Not only is it cost effective for the group to build our parts in house, but we are also able to learn from that experience. I think the facility is amazing because as a hands-on learner, it’s great to apply what you’ve learned to an activity you are passionate about.” Emily Stern (ME’16) has a lifelong love of building and has taken three courses centered in EPIC. “Having EPIC right there made a huge difference in taking these classes,” says Stern. “Building a product requires a lot of planning and if we had a question about the manufacturing process or the materials we were exploring, we could just walk right across the hall and the EPIC staff would help answer our questions.” In high school, Stern participated in FIRST, the annual robotics challenge created by Segway inventor Dean Kamen (Hon.’06)—a founding member of the College’s Engineering Leadership Advisory

Even though it has only been open for a few short years, EPIC has had a widespread impact on engineering students.

Board—to promote student interest in STEM fields. Since her arrival at BU, Stern has mentored the Boston University Academy’s FIRST team and brought it to EPIC to build robots for the competition. Not only did the team build the most important pieces of their robot in EPIC, it was also granted access to the empty space that now houses BU Robotics Lab behind the facility [see story on page 3] so it could practice and host scrimmages with other Boston-area FIRST chapters. “The efficiency and precision of the machines in EPIC put us way ahead of schedule when designing and building our robot,” says Stern. “Having this practice space allowed us to test and tweak our design, and allowed us to produce our highest-quality robot yet, which made us a stronger, tougher competitor in the end. EPIC completely changed the course of the season for us.” Even outside companies regularly tour the facility, looking for ways to utilize the unique resources EPIC provides. “We do allow outside companies to use the facilities, but with a catch,” says Fine. “In exchange, they have to provide a learning experience for our students.” LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Even though it has only been open for a few short years, EPIC has had a widespread impact on engineering students. According to Carruthers, EK 210 gives students a taste of what EPIC can do early on in their education. He also points out that the students who have taken classes in EPIC prior to their senior capstones have a deeper understanding of the facility, what it is capable of and how to utilize the resources. “When we see our returning seniors working on their capstones, their prior experience with EPIC gives them an understanding of how to get things done, and as a result we are seeing much more polished senior design projects,” says Carruthers. “Since this is the first year that EK 210 is a required course, it will be interesting to see how it translates to their senior projects.” Future plans for the space are simple: maintain momentum and keep growing. Fine wants to continue to add and update equipment, and bring in more members of the BU community to use it. However, engineering will always be at the heart of EPIC. “If nothing else, we think that EPIC is a great tool to keep engineering students connected and engaged,” says Fine. “It’s hard to become an engineer; our job in EPIC is to remind students why they are doing it at all. To remind them why engineering is fun, to remind them that engineering can have an impact on society.”

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COMPANIES ARE INVESTING IN ENG—AND GETTING SUBSTANTIAL VALUE IN RETURN BY JAN SMITH

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TRATEGIC ALLIANCES between engineering educators and business leaders are essential to achieving leadership in the global economy. Throughout their careers, engineering graduates will be tasked with finding solutions to pressing societal challenges in wide-ranging fields from critical energy breakthroughs and transportation innovations to advances in health care, civic infrastructure, materials and manufacturing technologies, and telecommunications. Recognizing the importance of these strategic alliances, the College of Engineering has worked very hard in recent years to build strategic and long-term relationships with numerous industry leaders. The College and its corporate partners benefit by deepening student understanding of real-world engineering needs, establishing internships during the college years and full-time positions after graduation and sharing research innovation. This effort recently entered a new era as the College created its Corporate Leaders Circle. The first members of the program— AT&T, Accenture, Biogen, GE Aviation, PTC, P&G, Rolls-Royce, and Schlumberger—are making significant commitments to the College and getting substantial value in return. “We have been working hard to build sustainable, productive partnerships with companies that share our vision,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen. “The Corporate Leaders Circle ensures that we provide the right opportunities to partners who make significant investments of time, treasure and talent in our students, our research and our programs.” To become a member of the Corporate Leaders Circle, a company must demonstrate commitment through some combination of significant financial investment; recruiting students for internships and full-time positions; advising on the curriculum; serving on advisory boards; sponsoring student projects; serving as guest lecturers; participating in seminars or workshops; and investing in collaborative research and educational initiatives. The College works with Corporate Leaders to create a strategic roadmap that aligns company goals with strategic research and educational and recruiting opportunities. Corporate Leaders also receive exclusive access to special events with students and faculty and automatic complimentary registration to the Engineering Career Fair, among other perks. MULTI-LEVEL INVOLVEMENT BY SCHLUMBERGER Schlumberger-Doll Research Center (SDR)—the Cambridge, Massachusetts, research arm of global oil and gas drilling technology leader Schlumberger—engages with the College on multiple levels, including as a research fellowship sponsor; an on-campus presenter; a member of the Industry Advisory Board for the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC); and a sponsor of both sophomore and senior design projects. Last year, the company awarded the first Schlumberger-Boston University Research Fellowship grants for early stage research in technical areas of potential importance to Schlumberger—such as sensor physics, mathematics and modeling, reservoir geosciences, mechanics and materials science, and carbon dioxide mitigation and sequestration—to Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) and Assistant Professor James C. Bird (ME, MSE).

Schlumberger Research Director for Mechanical and Materials Sciences David Rowatt has also promoted numerous face-to-face opportunities with the College’s students and faculty. In addition to presenting at the annual employer event, he recently hosted an incoming class of international master’s degree students to discuss career opportunities and readiness. The students met with his design engineers and asked pointed questions about career planning and how to shape their master’s studies. “As the leading provider of technology in the oil and gas industry, Schlumberger is committed to establishing and growing relationships with leading academic institutions around the world through its University Relations program,” Rowatt said. “We’ve chosen to contribute to and partner with the College of Engineering at Boston University due to the strength of its faculty and research and its commitment to the development of students and faculty through innovative educational programs and engagement with industry.”

GE Aviation’s Jose Calderon (ME’96), manager, F404 Hornet Programs (center), and Casey Foote (ME’00), senior staff engineer (left), discuss careers with student Francois Bassil (ME’17), at a reception for Corporate Leaders and top engineering students.

Joe Frassica (MED’88), vice president, chief medical informatics officer and chief technology officer, Philips Healthcare, speaking with engineering undergraduates at the Corporate Leaders reception.

GE AVIATION: A MAJOR ENG RECRUITER A leading global provider of jet engines, components and integrated systems for commercial and military aircraft, GE Aviation is a longstanding partner of the College as well as a talent recruiter. The company also has become involved in EPIC through sponsoring design projects. Every September, GE Aviation conducts “Access GE” for students, an on-campus training session during which GE staff members discuss internships and careers at GE, and advise students as to how they can best take control of their futures. Colleen Athans (ENG ’89), vice president and general manager for GE’s Aviation Global Supply Chain, champions the College’s relationship with her company. “BU and GE have a strong partnership based on people development, collaboration and innovation,” she said. “We look forward to our continued partnership as a Corporate Leader of the College of Engineering.” Corporate Leaders demonstrate a high level of commitment that allows pioneering partnerships to grow and flourish. “As we train tomorrow’s engineers to meet real-life societal problems, our partners keep us close to the cutting edge and tuned in to the real hiring needs of industry,” said Dean Lutchen. “It’s a win-win for students, faculty and the companies that participate with us.” E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

A Clear Vision for the Cloud ALUM’S STARTUP AIMS TO DEMOCRATIZE CREATIVITY BY EXPANDING OUR ACCESS TO SOFTWARE BY MICHAEL SEELE

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SILICON VALLEY

ENG

SERBIA

IKOLA BOZINOVIC’S VISION OF THE FUTURE—ONE THAT’S BEING REALIZED IN HIS SILICON VALLEY STARTUP— CAN BE TRACED TO THE DAY HE ARRIVED AS A NEW GRADUATE STUDENT AT THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FROM HIS NATIVE SERBIA.

FOR BOZINOVIC, WHO HAD BEEN LONG DEPRIVED OF ANYTHING BUT THE MOST BASIC COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE IN A COUNTRY TORN BY WAR AND HOBBLED BY INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS, AUGUST 22, 2000 WAS THE DAY HIS LIFE CHANGED.

“MY FIRST DAY AT BU, I’M AT THE COMPUTER LAB ON CUMMINGTON

MALL AND I’M LIKE A KID IN A CANDY STORE,” HE SAID, VIVIDLY RECALLING THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE. “ALL THE SOFTWARE I NEEDED WAS THERE. AND MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS, ‘THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD WHO DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO THIS.’”

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oday, Bozinovic is the founder and CEO of Frame, which is making creative software available to users via the cloud. His goal is to democratize creativity and make any software—even the most powerful design and engineering applications—accessible to any user from any device. He sees this model as the future of computing, and major software companies and investors are agreeing. Last summer, Frame secured $10 million in venture capital funding, the latest investment in a company that is generating revenue and gaining a customer base drawn to the cloud’s technical and financial advantages. Frame’s initial foray was a low-key demonstration that made the popular Adobe Photoshop application available to users on Amazon Web Services in the fall of 2013; within two days, tens of thousands of people from 190 countries were using it on desktops, tablets and phones. Since then, Frame has attracted customers like SolidWorks, MathWorks, Procter & Gamble and Siemens, among others, and is scaling up operations to lead at the newest frontier of computer technology. If there’s a single case study of the American Dream, Nikola Bozinovic might well be it. Born in then-Yugoslavia, he came of age during the tumultuous 1990s, when the country had fractured along ethnic lines into several smaller republics. War, genocide and other atrocities were common throughout the region, including in Bozinovic’s Serbia. While studying for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Nis, 22-year-old Bozinovic organized rallies protesting the rigged election of 1996 that kept Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in power. In this pre-Twitter age, he gathered representatives of 17 voting precincts, who collected evidence of voting fraud, and marched 150 miles to Belgrade with a letter petitioning Milosevic to hew to the law. Opposing the strongman was dangerous—dissenters were sometimes murdered—so Bozinovic successfully courted international news coverage for protection. The march culminated in a 50,000-strong rally in Belgrade and a knock on Milosevic’s office door. “We were trying to bring democracy to the country without getting killed,” Bozinovic recalled. “As we were ushered into his office, you could hear the roar of the crowd. I read him the letter and presented the evidence of fraud.” The protest undid the election and started the movement that ultimately forced Milosevic out of power in 2000, the same year Bozinovic arrived to begin studies in the ECE PhD program. He chose BU for its engineering program and the fact that the University also admitted his fiancee (now wife), Mina, as an English PhD student. Bozinovic joined Professor Janusz Konrad’s (ECE) group, working on ways to compress video and deliver it efficiently. “That turned out to be the fundamental basis of my companies and it’s at the core of what we do now,” Bozinovic said. Konrad remembers Bozinovic, his first PhD student, as “extremely enthusiastic. He won a best paper award from a European scientific journal for a very interesting new approach to video 26

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“We were trying to bring democracy to the country without getting killed,” Bozinovic recalled. compression. You need to come up with something very novel to win that kind of award.” Following graduation in 2006, Bozinovic headed for California, determined to start his own company. He helped start MotionDSP in San Mateo, where he developed software that stabilized and clarified low-resolution video in real time. His innovation drew the attention of the defense and intelligence communities interested in refining video shot from unmanned aircraft. Within a couple of years, the company had more than two dozen employees and customers in and out of the government, but further growth appeared stymied. “The software needed a very powerful workstation, a high-end computer that many potential users didn’t have,” he said. “Lots of customers wanted software delivered from a data center. In this new scenario, the user would open a browser, click on an application, and start using it a few seconds later, with nothing to install.” Such technology had existed for years, but it was slow, expensive, and hard to use. As the market for tablets and smartphones began to take off, Bozinovic had an idea for delivering applications—either custom-made or off-the-shelf commercial products—to any device, but he didn’t have the millions of dollars it would take to build a data center. Then another technological revolution presented the opportunity he needed. “With the early emergence of the cloud in 2012, I thought that if we built a platform to deliver apps from the cloud, we would have a great product,” he said. With its huge storage capacity and low cost, cloud-based computing quickly revolutionized the industry. Bozinovic likens his product to Dropbox, the app that allows users to share documents, graphics, videos and other files via the cloud: “They made access to any file really easy. We wanted to do that with software.” Bozinovic launched what would become Frame in the fall of 2013. He put the Photoshop demo on Amazon, along with a YouTube-like embeddable player that worked with any operating system on any device without needing to be downloaded. Effectively, users were able to run Photoshop on demand. “There was a humongous response,” he said. “It was an experience never seen before. Click on the app and five seconds later, you’re in business. It’s full-feature software, running on a robust, stable and secure platform. People’s minds were blown.” But an instant success story, this is not. For the first year, Bozinovic “bootstrapped” the business, funding everything with savings and forgoing a salary while starting a family. He wore every hat: technology developer, marketer, human resources manager and—perhaps most importantly—salesman, as he attracted venture capital with only a prototype and a vision.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NIKOLA BOZINOVIC

Nikola Bozinovic (MSc ECE‘01, PhD ECE’06)

As the market for tablets and smartphones began to take off, Bozinovic had an idea for delivering applications. Then another technological revolution presented the opportunity he needed.

“The story of every startup is selling the vision and the promise,” he said. “First, I had to sell it to my wife when we had a young child and another one on the way. I had to sell it to potential customers. I had to sell it to employees. Want to come work with me? By the way, I can’t pay you right now. Then I had to build something and sell it to investors. In the Valley, these guys are looking for the next Google, the next Microsoft. They are thinking big.” Not every venture capital pitch produced funding, but he was able to secure escalating investments culminating in $10 million last year, while taking care not to give up too much control of the company in return. That vision is being increasingly validated. Recently, Forbes seized on this idea of ubiquitous computing as the future in the post-mobile age. “That’s what we see—access to computing from everywhere,” Bozinovic said. And he believes that with that access will come the democratization of innovation. Engineers, scientists, designers and others will no longer need to purchase high-performance computers and expensive software to create products that can improve people’s lives. “We can unleash creativity and help people create the next medical device, make more fuel-efficient cars, a better airplane wing,” he said. Bozinovic remembers how his BU experience opened the world to him with computer resources that revolutionized his life. “In Serbia, I couldn’t get the engineering or design software that I needed. At BU, I could be a designer, an engineer, a creator, with every tool at my fingerprints. What BU did for me 15 years ago is what we’re trying to do for the world today.” E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

BIG THINGS IN SMALL PACKAGES

Kulis Named First Levine Career Development Professor STIPEND TO SUPPORT SCHOLARLY LAB WORK

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Assistant Professor Brian Kulis (ECE)

Millions or billions of data points Data science is about managing huge data sets—think millions or billions of data points, from an array of sources—and programming computers to analyze the data and make predictions based on identified patterns. Advances in storing and analyzing these growing collections of information has made Big Data a hot field in both academia and industry, with Harvard Business Review pronouncing data scientist “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” Those advances include artificial intelligence and machine learning, and they are what enable Kulis to develop exciting connections between theory and action. “There is a nice combination between the mathematics and the theoretical aspects of machine learning. It’s a very applied field, trying to solve real problems,” he says. “That balance is pretty rare.” He describes his specific area of research as scalable nonparametric machine learning. While a traditional statistical model for analyzing a large amount of data would establish a model for performing the analysis, Kulis pursues a different method. In his research, the data itself determines how simple or complicated the analysis should be.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

o Brian Kulis, advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence bring with them the opportunity to mesh theory with real-world applications, like driverless cars and computers that can describe aloud the objects in front of them. “You want computers to be able to recognize what they are seeing in images and video,” says Kulis, a College of Engineering assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “For instance, can it recognize all the objects in a picture? Or a more difficult problem would be, can it look at a video and describe in English what is happening in the video? That is a major application area for machine learning these days.” Kulis’s expertise in machine learning, along with his research in computer vision systems and other applications, brought him to BU this fall and has earned him the University’s inaugural Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship, which will be awarded annually to rising junior faculty in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. The professorship, a three-year stipend that will support scholarly and laboratory work, was established by a gift from Peter J. Levine (ENG’83), a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and a part-time faculty member at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. The Levine professorship speaks to BU’s recognition of Kulis’s achievements thus far, says Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen, and is a commitment to helping the rising star in the machine learning field build on his world-class research and teaching. Lutchen adds that Kulis, who earlier this year also received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for research into machine learning systems, will be a critical faculty member in ENG’s new master’s degree specialization in data analytics. “We think it will be one of the most popular specializations we have, and it will be accessible not just to students in this department, but also to biomedical, mechanical engineering and systems engineering students who will want to have this same specialization. Brian’s expertise is perfectly aligned with teaching this,” Lutchen says. Also a College of Arts & Sciences computer science assistant professor, Kulis earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Cornell University and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin. He did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, then spent three years on the faculty of Ohio State University before coming to BU.

An example of this approach, he says, is analyzing a large collection of documents for the content they contain. A parametric model would establish 10 clusters of documents to analyze, one each on a set topic; a nonparametric model would instead analyze all of the documents and determine how many topics should be included in the analysis. “You want the data itself to guide the discovery process, and so if there is a lot to say, then you want your algorithm to reveal that structure,” he says. “It’s a more flexible way to do analysis.” The field is ripe for approaches that allow researchers from different fields—biology and business, for example—to apply machine learning

techniques to develop new ways of looking at the data they collect. Kulis is looking forward to working with faculty and students from different BU departments both in research and his courses. “Machine learning brings together a lot of fields that for a long time have been fairly disjoined. When it comes to teaching, a lot of my excitement is in trying to bridge these different disciplines and to teach courses that bring together people from different areas,” he explains. Lutchen says the curriculum is relevant to the world at large: “As an engineering faculty, we want people to understand how these new tools and techniques can help society.” —michael s. goldberg

Zhang, Damiano and ShinnCunningham Elected to AIMBE College of Fellows

study blood flow in the microcirculation and to elucidate mechanisms by which the lining of blood vessels determines vascular health and disease. Damiano’s current work is focused on creating an artificial “bionic” pancreas that automatically regulates blood glucose in Type 1 diabetes. He was elected to the College of Fellows for his fundamental contributions in our understanding of microcirculation, and for designing, building and testing a wearable bionic pancreas. A faculty member since 1997, Shinn-Cunningham was recognized for outstanding contributions to auditory neuroscience, especially information processing in auditory attention and spatial hearing. In addition to being a professor of biomedical engineering, she is director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience & Neural Technology (CompNet), an interdisciplinary BU research center that fosters collaborative

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KALMAN ZABARSKY, LEFT, VERNON DOUCETTE AND CYDNEY SCOTT, RIGHT

rofessors Xin Zhang (ME, MSE), Edward Damiano (BME) and Barbara ShinnCunningham (BME) have been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows, which is made up of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country and includes engineering and medical school chairs, research directors, professors, innovators and successful entrepreneurs. Since 1991, AIMBE‘s College of Fellows has lead the way for technological growth and advancement in the fields of medical and biological engineering. Zhang, Damiano and Shinn-Cunningham were nominated, reviewed and elected by their peers and members of the college. A faculty member since 2002, Zhang leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/ NEMS or micro/nanosystems). Her research group—the Laboratory for Microsystems Technology—seeks to understand and exploit fundamental and interesting characteristics of micro/nanomaterials, micro/

nanomechanics, and micro/ nanomanufacturing technologies with forward-looking engineering efforts and practical applications ranging from energy to health care to homeland security. Zhang was elected to the College of Fellows for her pioneering contributions in expanding the toolset for measuring cellular behavior through the development of optomechanical and impedance-based sensing platforms. This is her third election in the past year to fellow status in a major professional organization. In the spring of 2015, she was elected as a fellow in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in recognition of her interdisciplinary MEMS research. Last fall, she was elected as a fellow of the Optical Society for her outstanding achievement and contribution in terahertz metamaterials, biophotonics and energy-using microelectromechanical systems. A faculty member since 2004, Damiano engages in basic scientific research that combines mathematical modeling, computational analysis and experimental investigations across length scales ranging from macromolecular assemblies, cellular mechanics and microscale biofluidics to cardiovascular fluid mechanics and the biomechanics of vestibular sensory systems. His lab’s microvascular research activities integrate fluid dynamics with intravital microscopy to

Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE)

research and education on mechanisms of neural computation and their applications. She also is director and principal investigator of CELEST, a National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center that seeks to understand brain mechanisms responsible for learning in realworld situations and to translate this knowledge into intelligent technologies. Shinn-Cunningham is an auditory neuroscientist known for her work on attention and the cocktail party problem, sound localization and the effects of room acoustics and reverberation on hearing. She also collaborates with researchers conducting functional magnetic resonance imaging and neurophysiology. Zhang, Damiano and ShinnCunningham will be formally inducted into the College of Fellows in April during AIMBE’s 25th Annual Meeting at the National Academy of Sciences Great Hall in Washington, DC.—sara cody

Professor Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (BME)

Professor Edward Damiano (BME)

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The Acoustical Society of America has named Professor Emeritus Allan D. Pierce (ME) the recipient of its Distinguished Service Citation in recognition of his outstanding service, particularly his 15-year tenure as editor in chief. “I owe a great deal to the Acoustical Society of America,” Pierce says. “It has given me the opportunity to meet many people

who have similar interests, it has published the journal that has been my principal source of research stimulation since my earliest years as a researcher and it has provided a long-term forum for the exchange of ideas with people whom I admire and respect.” Pierce joined the Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1993 after serving on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Pennsylvania State University. His book,

Acoustics: An Introduction to Its Physical Principles and Applications, is widely considered the definitive textbook on the subject. Pierce’s research includes the mechanics of waves, acoustics and structural vibrations. An ASA fellow, Pierce is also a past recipient of the organization’s Gold and Silver medals and its Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. He is a life fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the recipient of several other national and international honors. —michael seele

eral scientific society. Fellows are elected from the organization’s membership for their distinguished contributions to science and technology. “This is an unexpected honor to be recognized by such a national scientific organization, and given

the many known past inducted, a bit humbling,” Smith said. Smith, a leader in bioinformatics and computational biology, was elected as a member of the association’s Section on Biological Sciences and was among the newly elected fellows recognized at the AAAS annual meeting in Washington, DC, in February. Shortly after earning his PhD in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, Smith joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he helped found GenBank (the repository of all known DNA sequences) and began applying computational mathematics to biological problems. In the nascent field of bioinformatics, Smith and colleague Michael Waterman of the University of Southern California were among those searching for a reliable mathematical method for identifying segments of DNA encoding proteins of similar function from different organisms. The resulting Smith-Waterman sequence alignment algorithm became the standard tool underlying most DNA and protein sequence comparison, and their

Professor Emeritus Temple Smith (BME)

Smith Elected AAAS Fellow Professor Emeritus Temple Smith (BME) has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest gen30

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Professor Emeritus Allan D. Pierce (ME)

The resulting Smith-Waterman sequence alignment algorithm became the standard tool underlying most DNA and protein sequence comparison.

article on the topic remains one of the most referenced papers in molecular biology. Smith joined the Biomedical Engineering Department faculty in 1991 and established the BioMolecular Engineering Research Center, which focuses on the development and application of computational methods for the analysis and design of biological macromolecules and the reconstruction of their evolutionary history.—michael seele

PHOTOGRAPH, BOTTOM, BY KALMAN ZABARSKY; TOP, BY VERNON DOUCETTE

Acoustical Society Honors Pierce

Horenstein Named IEEE Fellow OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS ARE RECOGNIZED

Professor Mark Horenstein (ECE) has been named an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow for his contributions to the modeling and measurements of electrostatics in industrial processes. His experimental and theoretical work focuses on some of the more complex electrostatic problems that relate to instrumentation and safety and on understanding the fundamental theories behind many industrial processes, and spans such broad subjects as the propagating brush discharge, electrostatic phenomena in MEMS devices, modeling of corona discharge, and the electrostatics of parachutes. He currently develops technology for self-cleaning

Pavlidis Wins IEEE Distinguished Educator Award

PHOTOGRAPH, TOP, BY KALMAN ZABARSKY

HONORED AS EDUCATOR, MENTOR AND ROLE MODEL

Professor Dimitris Pavlidis (ECE) received the 2015 Distinguished Educator Award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). The award—a recognition plaque, a certificate and an honorarium of $2,500—honors an individual who has achieved outstanding success in the field of micro-

photovoltaic solar panels and concentrating solar mirrors, and ultra-sensitive electrostatic field sensors. With 400,000 members in 160 countries, the IEEE is the world’s foremost professional association for advancing technology for humanity, and is a leading authority in areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. The IEEE Board of Directors confers the grade of Fellow for outstanding accomplishments in any of the organization’s areas of interest. The number of fellows selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one-percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership one can attain, and is recognized by the technical community as an exceptionally prestigious honor and extremely significant career achievement. —gabriella mcnevin

wave engineering and science as an educator, mentor and role model for microwave engineers and engineering students. He was conferred last May at the IEEE International Microwave Symposium in Phoenix, Arizona. Pavlidis has pursued microwave research while remaining active in both academia and the microwave engineering industry. He has been cited in more than 550 publications, and his work with semiconductor devices and circuits has had an extraordinary impact on high-speed, high-frequency and photonic applications. —gabriella mcnevin

Professor Mark Horenstein (ECE)

Pavlidis pic to come

Professor Dimitris Pavlidis (ECE) receives the Distinguished Educator Award from MMT-S Society President Tim Lee.

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Walsh Wins NASA Grant to Get a Wider View of Earth BU RESEARCHERS, STUDENTS TO BUILD SPACECRAFT

Assistant Professor Brian Walsh (ME) plans to develop and launch a small x-ray imaging spacecraft to study the interaction between solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field under a four-year, $2.4 million NASA grant. The Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector (CuPID) aims to use a wide-field-of-view x-ray telescope to learn how energy from the sun

is transferred into the near-Earth space environment. Though astronomers have long used x-ray technology to collect data in space, Walsh’s approach is unique. “In the past, x-ray telescopes on satellites have had tiny, pencil-beams fields of view, which limited them to only collecting data in their immediate area,” says Walsh. “We have created the first wide-field-of-view x-ray detector, which will allow us to look at the big picture all at once. This will allow us to gain an understanding of the interaction between the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field and will assist in designing future spacecraft that can withstand the harsh space environment.”

The Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector (CuPID) aims to use a wide-field-of-view x-ray telescope to learn how energy from the sun is transferred into the near-Earth space environment. Though astronomers have long used x-ray technology to collect data in space, Walsh’s approach is unique.

Walsh, who is concurrently working with Professor Joshua Semeter (ECE) on small satellite research, will spearhead the project. He anticipates that researchers and students across a variety of disciplines at BU will work together to build the spacecraft while collaborating

with partner institutions. Scheduled for launch in 2019, the mission is being led by Boston University and involves collaborations from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Johns Hopkins University, Drexel University and Merrimack College. —sara cody

Scheduled to launch in 2019, CuPID (Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector) will use the first wide-field-of-view x-ray detector to study the interaction between the sun and Earth’s magnetic field.

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NEWS BYTES FACULTY

Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee.

STUDENTS & ALUMNI

Onur Sahin (left) with advisor Associate Professor Ayse Coskun (ECE).

Above, Professor Christos Cassandras; below, Professor Ionnis Paschalidis Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) chaired a National Science Foundation workshop on smart cities, a subject of great national interest and a focal point of many recent federal and local government activities. The invited participants, including Professor Ionnis Paschalidis (ECE, SE) and highlevel government officials and industry professionals, discussed smart cities programs, and current and emerging research. The event was coordinated by the BU Center for Information & Systems Engineering. Professor of the Practice Greg Blonder (ME) contributed an article on trisecting the angle in 3D to the University of Cambridge’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) publication, Plus. In October, Professor Roscoe Giles (ECE) was elected to a two-year term as chair of Associated Universities, Inc. The same month, he was invited to the White House National Strategic Computing Initiative Workshop, which focused on the heightened role of big data in the ever-evolving technological landscape. Giles recently completed a seven-year chairmanship of the

ECE PhD student Onur Sahin won first prize in November at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Design Automation Student Research Competition. Sahin, who is advised by Associate Professor Ayse Coskun (ECE), won for his project on providing sustainable performance to mobile device users, titled “Pushing QoS-Awareness into Thermal Management for Sustainable User Experience in Mobile Devices.” Class of 2015 members Jeremy Kramer, Christopher Powers, Edward Leung, Suleyman Kahyaoglu and Rachel Petersile entered their senior design project, “Smart Grid Test Facility,” in the national Texas Instruments Innovation Challenge last summer. In addition to placing in the top 10 among more than 300 teams, the group won the Best Video Demonstration Award and the $2,000 prize that came with it. Their work was guided by Associate Professor of the Practice Alan Pisano (ECE) and Lecturer Osama Alshaykh (ECE). John Gendi (’15), Chiraag Devani (’15), Elliot Davis (’17), Zachary Chapasko (’16) and Janessa Pettway (’15) traveled to Nice, France, last summer to participate in the European Innovation Academy. The three-week program offered them and 600 other interna-

tional participants a crash course in how to build a startup company. Robert Clarke (‘90), CEO of Pulmatrix, Inc., was on hand to ring the opening bell at the start of NASDAQ trading on December 22, 2015. Pulmatrix, which develops innovative inhaled therapies to address serious pulmonary disease, had recently been uplisted to the NASDAQ Global Market. Zachary Lasiuk (‘17, ECE), Nathaniel Michener (‘16, ECE) and Ami Vyas (‘17, ECE) were among 210 scholarship recipients through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Power & Energy Society (PES) Scholarship Plus Initiative. The scholarships recognize undergraduate students majoring in electrical and computer engineering who have achieved high GPAs and distinctive extracurricular involvement, and have demonstrated commitment to exploring the power and energy field. Michener received further recognition

as the northeast region’s John W. Estey Outstanding Scholar, one of six top PES Scholars in North America to be so honored. Denise Schier (ENG’81), center, vice president/general manager of Amatek’s Commercial Floorcare Division, was on campus recently to present a $15,000 gift to the College of Engineering’s Technology Innovation Scholars Program on behalf of the Amatek Foundation. Accepting the check are Dean Kenneth Lutchen and Associate Dean for Outreach and Diversity Gretchen Fougere.

Kirk Westphal (ENG’91) has just published his first book, No Ordinary Game: Miraculous Moments in Backyards and Sandlots (DownEast Books, 2015), a collection of great moments in sports that happen to everyday people, told with poignancy and humor. Two of the stories in the book occurred at BU during Westphal’s days as an undergraduate in the late 1980s (including a game of pickup basketball between five male engineering students and the women’s varsity team). As a New York Times sportswriter describes, “With moving and powerful anecdotes, Westphal explores the soul of sports, finding universal truths and lessons for us all.” For more details, visit Westphal’s website: kirkwestphalwriting.com. He currently resides in Stow, MA, and works as a water supply consultant around the world for Boston-based CDM Smith.

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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! SEND YOUR CLASS NOTES SUBMISSIONS TO ENGALUM@BU.EDU OR VISIT WWW.BU.EDU/ENG/ALUMNI.

Three Named Outstanding Alumni TECHNOLOGY LEADERS FETED

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Three College of Engineering alumni, all leaders in the technology field who remain highly engaged with the College, have been honored as 2015 Outstanding ENG Alumni Award recipients.

“

committee of previous award recipients helped me select three outstanding individuals to honor this year—Chris Brousseau (‘91), Vanessa Feliberti (‘93) and Girish Navani (‘91),” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen. “These alumni have distinguished themselves through their career achievements, contributions to their community and society and support for the College. These alumni truly embody the BU Engineering tradition of excellence.” Brousseau, who holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, is the global commercial director, procurement BPO at Spend Management Services, Accenture. He is a supply chain expert with extensive experience in procurement, sourcing, consulting transformation and business process outsourcing. He also has extensive global, commercial, contracting and sales management experience, and a

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK CURRAN

“ These alumni truly embody the BU Engineering tradition of excellence.” —Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen good understanding of supply chain planning and fulfillment, as well as product development and the evaluation and application of emerging technologies. He has worked in the electronics and high-tech industries, as well as with government clients. He is a member of the ENG West Coast Alumni Leadership Council. A partner and general engineering manager at Microsoft Corporation, Feliberti is an engineering leader with demonstrated technical and managerial results in software development. Her experience includes more than 20 years of end-to-end product development in software engineering at Microsoft; more than 15 years of leading, nurturing and empowering teams of software engineers, program management and architects; and shipping seven releases of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise server application, both as an engineering manager Dean Lutchen (second from left) and an individual contributor. A congratulates 2015 Outstanding ENG Alumni Award winners graduate of the master’s program (from left) Girish Navani, Vanessa in systems engineering, Feliberti is Feliberti and Chris Brousseau. a member of the ENG West Coast Alumni Leadership Council. Co-founder, CEO and president of eClinical Works—which offers unified electronic medical records and practice management solutions—Navani leads a company that has maintained high profitability serving more than 25,000 clients spanning all 50 states. eClinical Works has emerged as a leader in medical software solutions by building electronic health records software top rated in customer satisfaction and usability. Navani, who holds a master’s degree in manufacturing engineering from BU, also worked for Teradyne and Fidelity Investments and was on the founding team of PetroVantage. He is a member of the Dean’s Leadership Advisory Board. All three Outstanding Alumni were feted at the College’s Celebration of Excellence Dinner during Alumni Weekend last fall.

IN MEMORIAM Eugene Jackson (‘48) North Marshfield, MA Harris Weston (‘49) West Yarmouth, MA Donald Lillicraf (‘53) Fairfield, CT Gordon Brown (‘56) Weymouth, MA Walter Montague (‘56) Menden, CT Dominic English (‘57) Randolph, MA Vincent Luciano (‘57) Saugus, MA Robert Gordon (‘59) Uncasville, CT Leonard J. Mockapetris (‘59) Chesterfield, MO Charles Monterio (‘60) Myrtle Beach, SC Russell Kelley (‘61) West Chester, PA Robert Pettengill (‘62) North Myrtle Beach, SC Simon Glatz (‘63) Longboat Key, FL Timothy Pellegrino (‘63) Naples, FL Peter Pelton (‘64) Cohoes, NY F. Howard Blake (‘66) Auburn, NH Anita Wilcox (‘88) North Billerica, MA

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College of Engineering Celebrates Alumni Weekend NSBE RECEPTION UNITES ALUMS FOR REFLECTION & FUN.

At the reception for National Society of Black Engineers alumni, Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME) reconnects with (from left): Abena Kwakyi (’11), Eni Adedokun (’12) and Gemma Acheampong (’15). Current NSBE President Fritz Jolivain (’17) breaks into dance during the reception.

FACULTY AND ALUMNI RECONNECT AND CATCH UP AT THE ALUMNI DINNER IN THE TRUSTEE BALLROOM.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRANK CURRAN

Classmates Nourin Alsharif (’15, ’20), Ruohan Wang (’15, Questrom’16) and Jennifer Larbi (’15, Questrom’16).

Professor Ted deWinter and Al James (’85, Questrom’95).

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Chris Brousseau (’91) and Paul Faustin (’85, ’88).

the engineering annual fund

SUPPORTING RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS The Summer Term Alumni Research Scholars (STARS) Program is a compelling example of the Engineering Alumni Fund in action. Your gift can provide a summer housing allowance to students engaged in hands-on, facultymentored research on real-world problems.

“ I worked in the Applied Acoustics & Ultrasound Laboratory

on a swarm robotics project for the US Navy, creating an underwater mobile sensor network to map acoustic data collected from small boats deployed in the ocean. The purpose of our research was to come up with the best acoustic readings for the lowest possible cost.

I was responsible for all of the electronics—from hardware component research, selection and wiring to coding and programming all devices. Working as part of a research team in the laboratory was a great experience. It definitely made me a better engineer.” —Pablo Velarde (CE’16) GE Aviation (above left)

Support students like Pablo by contributing to the Engineering Alumni Fund. Visit bu.edu/eng/alumni to make your gift. Connect with the ENG Alumni Facebook Group at facebook.com/BUengalumni.

Tyrone M. Porter PHD, BIOENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, MATERIALS SCIENCES & ENGINEERING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BOSTON UNIVERSITY NANOTECHNOLOGY INNOVATION CENTER (BUNANO) Cancer and diseases like Alzheimer’s can be elusive to current therapeutics, hiding behind barriers in the body that make them difficult to treat. My lab’s approach is to leverage biochemical (i.e., ligands) and/or physical methods (i.e., focused ultrasound) to circumvent these barriers and deliver treatment to the affected area directly, or to elicit a robust and sustained immune response from the body. In addition to treating a variety of diseases, there is potential for using this technology to

combat nerve agents and treat traumatic brain injuries, particularly in the military. As a Boston University faculty member, I have a wealth of opportunity to work with different departments, and have found that other faculty members are open to exploring new collaborations and driving research in new directions. This collaborative spirit permeates the College of Engineering, and the culture promotes student involvement in research. When you actually get to use what you learn in the classroom, it becomes “alive” and leads to a better understanding of the fundamentals that are the bedrock of innovation. Students enjoy access to world-class resources and facilities such as the Singh Imagineering Lab and the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC), and they also have faculty, staff members and other experienced students who can guide them. It makes for a fertile learning environment that is beneficial to everyone.

To Tolearn learnmore, more,visit visitwww.bu.edu bu.edu/eng./eng.

PHOTOGRAPH BY VERNON DOUCETTE

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