Honors & Awards

Grants, fellowships, awards and other honors that recognize and support innovative research and world-class teaching.

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Topic

  • Patent for network slicing policies

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    “Electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Salvatore D’oro, assistant professor Francesco Restuccia and professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for ‘Methods for the Enforcement of Network Slicing Policies in Virtualized Cellular Networks.'”

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  • Müftü and Özdemir receive Army Research Laboratory grant

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    “Sinan Müftü, College of Engineering distinguished professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and Ozan Özdemir, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, are leading a team that was awarded a $4.38 million grant from the Army Research Laboratory to advance wire-arc direct energy deposition for large-format metal additive manufacturing.”

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  • Ghoreishi receives funding to study AI in harsh environments

    “Fatemeh Ghoreishi, assistant professor of civil engineering, received a $60,000 grant from the U.S. Army for ‘BRITE: Bayesian Inference and Preference Learning for Unknown and Time-Sensitive Environments’ to further [her] research on AI systems in unpredictable environments.”

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  • Abur receives NSF grant to integrate renewable energy into power grids

    “Electrical and computer engineering professor Ali Abur was awarded a $350,000 grant from the NSF for ‘Robust Transient State Estimation for Three-Phase Power Systems.’ The project aims to facilitate the efficient integration of inverter-based renewable energy sources into future generation of power systems.”

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  • Daramola elected Scialog fellow in sustainable minerals, metals and materials initiative

    “Chemical engineering assistant professor Damilola Daramola has been named a Fellow of the Scialog initiative on Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials. This interdisciplinary community of Fellows represents institutions across the United States and Canada and brings together expertise from fields including chemistry, materials science, geology, ecology, engineering, mining, computational science, physics and more. The community focuses on ensuring a sustainable future.”

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  • Venkatesan named Massachusetts USA TODAY Woman of the Year

    Madhavi Venkatesan, associate teaching professor of economics, was named one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year. Founder of the nonprofit Sustainable Practices, Venkatesan has helped several plastic bans come into effect in Cape Cod, including municipal plastic bottle bans and commercial bans throughout the Cape’s towns. “How we treat animals and the Earth is eventually going to be the way we treat ourselves,” Venkatesan told the Cape Cod Times.

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  • Needa Brown receives Women’s Health Innovation Grant

    As part of Governor Maura Healey’s support of the Massachusetts Life Science Center’s Women’s Health Initiative, Needa Brown, assistant teaching professor of physics at Northeastern University, has received funding for her project “InCITE: A Biomaterial Platform to Overcome Barriers to Drug Delivery.”

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  • Whitford receives NIH grant to ‘enable translation’ across ribosomes

    “This award will use theoretical models and high-performance computing to study the ribosome, a massive molecular assembly composed of hundreds of thousands of atoms. The ribosome is responsible for translating our genes into proteins, making its function central to all life. In this study, we will identify the molecular factors that control protein synthesis in bacteria and higher-level organisms. Insights into bacteria will aim to identify novel antibiotics, while the study of human ribosomes can shed light on a range of diseases, including metabolic diseases and forms of cancer.”

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  • Weng receives funding to identify small molecules involved in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

    “The proposed research aims to develop a plant-based drug screening platform to identify small molecules that can disrupt protein and RNA aggregation associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The project will utilize the unique lyciumin peptide biosynthesis pathway in plants to generate a diverse library of cyclic peptides. These peptides will be screened in engineered tobacco BY-2 cells … to identify compounds that alleviate cellular toxicity and alter aggregation kinetics. … The established screening platform and identified compounds will be made available to the research community, potentially offering new tools and therapeutic strategies.”

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  • ‘The Evolutionary Origin of Naturally Occurring Intermolecular Diels-Alderases From Morus alba’

    “Biosynthetic enzymes evolutionarily gain novel functions, thereby expanding the structural diversity of natural products to the benefit of host organisms. Diels-Alderases (DAs), functionally unique enzymes catalysing [4 + 2] cycloaddition reactions, have received considerable research interest. However, their evolutionary mechanisms remain obscure. Here, we investigate the evolutionary origins of the intermolecular DAs in the biosynthesis of Moraceae plant-derived Diels-Alder-type secondary metabolites. Our findings suggest that these DAs have evolved from an ancestor functioning as a flavin adenine dinucleotide-dependent oxidocyclase, which catalyses the oxidative cyclisation reactions of isoprenoid-substituted phenolic compounds.” Find the paper and authors list at the National Library of…

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  • Engineering professor wants to revolutionize wireless communication by manipulating ‘acoustic waves in solids’

    Assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Siddhartha Ghosh has received two prestigious early career awards for his work on radio frequency front-end devices, developing materials that convert radio signals into acoustic waves at the microchip level.

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  • Large language models can lie to you — this professor wants you to know when they do

    Assistant professor of computer science Malihe Alikhani has received a DARPA AI Exploration grant to introduce “healthy frictions” into human-AI interactions. These frictions would help human users understand the varying levels of certainty large language models have regarding their own statements and decrease the likelihood of users falling for AI “hallucinations.”

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  • When it comes to building more resilient structures, it takes ‘a whole profession,’ Northeastern professor says

    CDM Smith Professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering Jerome Hajjar received both the AISC Special Achievement Award and the SSRC Beedle Award at the recent AISC annual conference, delivering a keynote to several thousand attendees on sustainable and resilient structural systems.

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  • Professor’s new book shines light on how architectural works are in constant conversation with the past

    With “The Architecture of Influence,” associate professor of architecture Amanda Lawrence explores how architectural copies, imitations, emulations and more interact to create an ongoing conversation between the present and the past.

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  • Lili Su receives NSF CAREER Award for developing ‘resilient, scalable distributed algorithms’

    Assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Lili Su has received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on federated learning, a “privacy-preserving and communication-efficient” methodology for large distributed systems.

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  • Ferrins receives NIH AViDD Center Development Grant

    “There are two goals in this project, firstly, to continue to develop our advanced hit compound … to identify a lead suitable for in vivo proof of concept studies. Secondly, to develop novel methods to study the structural dynamics of both covalent inhibitors and PLpro active site structures enabling the development of more potent covalent inhibitors.”

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  • Meni Wanunu, developer of sensitive biological sensors, receives Northeastern University NAI Innovator of the Year Award

    Professor of physics and chemistry and chemical biology Meni Wanunu develops “nanopores,” sensors composed of molecule-sized holes that stretch individual molecules for scientific observation. At this year’s annual gathering of the Northeastern chapter of the National Academy of Inventors, Wanunu received the Innovator of the Year Award.

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  • Dy elected as Fellow of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

    Professor Jennifer Dy, in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and in the department of electrical and computer engineering, was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) “For significant contributions to unsupervised and interpretable machine learning, advancing AI to address health care challenges and service to the AI community,” the organization wrote in its announcement.

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  • Cassella added to Fulbright Specialist Roster

    “Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Cristian Cassella was recommended by a panel of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning to join the prestigious Fulbright Specialist Roster for a tenure of three years. The program, which is part of the larger Fulbright Program, pairs highly qualified U.S. academics and professionals with host institutions in over 150 countries to share their expertise, strengthen institutional linkages, hone their skills, gain international experience and learn about other cultures while building capacity at their overseas host institutions.”

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  • Two members of the Northeastern community elected ACM Fellows for contributions to artificial intelligence and advances in computer science

    Professor of the practice at Northeastern University Kenneth Church and Northeastern graduate Natasha Noy have been elected 2023 ACM Fellows. Both Church and Noy have advanced research in artificial intelligence, and both have worked on tools to support other researchers’ efforts.

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  • For teaching computers to see, Northeastern professor receives eminent achievement award

    A leading researcher in the field of computer vision — which uses artificial intelligence to process images received from cameras that “mimic human eyes” — Yun Raymond Fu, distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, has received the 2024 Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award for making “impactful contributions” over a nearly 20-year career.

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  • Dos Santos wins award for the treatment of drug-resistant infection

    Thiago dos Santos has won the Hanna H. Gray Fellow’s Program Transition Award. “Our group will study the proteins that build the bacterial cell envelope and develop mechanism-based inhibitors of these proteins to treat multidrug-resistant infections.”

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  • Zheng winner of Energies 2023 Young Investigator Award

    “Mechanical and industrial engineering associate professor Yi Zheng received the Energies 2023 Young Investigator award. Zheng is the first recipient from the United States to receive this award, previous recipients were from Denmark, Singapore, Australia and China.”

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  • Zheng selected as Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineering

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    “Mechanical and industrial engineering associate professor Yi Zheng was selected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering for his exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession, particularly in the research field of micro/nanoscale heat transfer for sustainable energy harvesting, conversion and storage. Zheng was nominated by professor Hameed Metghalchi.”

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  • Ganguly and Melodia named Distinguished Members of Association for Computing Machinery

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    Auroop Ganguly, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Tommaso Melodia, William Lincoln Smith Professor of electrical and computer engineering, have been named Distinguished Members by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). According to the ACM, “inductees are longstanding ACM Members and were selected by their peers for work that has advanced computing, fostered innovation across various fields and improved computer science education.” Ganguly was particularly noted “for foundational advances, sustained service, and entrepreneurial accomplishments in climate data mining and machine learning,” while Melodia was commended “for contributions to architectures and algorithms for software-defined wireless networked systems.”

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  • Fu elected to European Academy of Sciences and Arts

    “Electrical and computer engineering and Khoury College of Computer Sciences professor Yun Raymond Fu was elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Technical and Environmental Sciences class. The Academy’s mission is to stimulate cross-disciplinary collaboration between reputable scientists of all disciplines, leading artists, and practitioners of governance. New members are received formally at the annual Festive Session of the Academy, which takes place on April 5-6.”

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  • With appointment to Scientific Council, Timothy Hoff makes global connections to local contexts

    Timothy Hoff, professor of management, health care systems and public policy, has been appointed to the Scientific Council of the European Academy of Management, which serves as an advisory body to the organization as a whole, on topics ranging from doctoral development and awards to the kinds of research the society promotes and pursues. “It’s a great alignment of what we’re doing as faculty,” Hoff says, “and what the university mission really is — to be a global university.”

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  • Fu and Sridhar named National Academy of Inventors Fellows

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    Among 162 other academic inventors, Northeastern University boasts two new additions to the National Academy of Inventors: Yun Raymond Fu, Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Srinivas Sridhar, Distinguished University Professor of physics.

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  • Murthy receives patent for dendritic cell collection

    “Devices, systems, and methods can be used for the automated production of dendritic cells (DC) from dendritic cell progenitors, such as monocytes obtained from peripheral blood, and the automated generation of immunotherapeutic products from those dendritic cells, all within a closed system. The invention makes it possible to obtain sufficient quantities of a subject’s own DC for use in preparing and characterizing vaccines, for activating and characterizing the activation state of the subject’s immune response, and to aid in preventing and/or treating cancer or infectious disease.”

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  • Improving the efficiency of medical device communication

    “Electrical and computer engineering William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia was awarded a patent for ‘Ultrasonic multiplexing network for implantable medical devices.'”

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