As part of Engineers Week, the College of Engineering recognized recent graduates who are transforming industries and inspiring the next generation.
Since graduating from Northeastern University in 2016, Anvesh Gurijala has embraced a mantra: Don’t be afraid of bad news.
Gurijala has experienced plenty of challenges and setbacks in creating Boston Materials, a company based on the z-axis fiber technology he developed while studying under Northeastern mechanical and industrial engineering professor Randall Erb.
“I was so afraid of failing that I would not ask the questions that would actually indicate if I’m on the right path or not, almost like avoiding it, ” Gurijala says.
But he has learned that it’s through failure that you get ahead.
“You’ll bounce back. You’ll figure it out. It’s better that you fail sooner. Fail fast and fail often,” he says.
With that mindset, Gurijala has helped lead the company through tremendous success. In 2022, Gurijala was named to Forbes 30 under 30 list, and in 2023, the company was added to the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers community.
Celebrate #EngineersWeekNU2025 and "design your future" with COE!🔹2/18: Alumni panel + Young Alumni Impact Awards🔹 2/19: Women in Engineering Webinar🔹 2/20: Grad School of Engineering Webinar🔹 2/21: Engineering for Everyone ExpoDetails: https://t.co/pM6J408w0T pic.twitter.com/HPz5r7ww5D— Northeastern COE (@NortheasternCOE) January 31, 2025
Celebrate #EngineersWeekNU2025 and "design your future" with COE!🔹2/18: Alumni panel + Young Alumni Impact Awards🔹 2/19: Women in Engineering Webinar🔹 2/20: Grad School of Engineering Webinar🔹 2/21: Engineering for Everyone ExpoDetails: https://t.co/pM6J408w0T pic.twitter.com/HPz5r7ww5D
So it makes total sense why he would be one of six graduates to be given the inaugural Young Alumni Impact Award. The new honor in the College of Engineering was created to recognize recent graduates “who exemplify outstanding commitment, leadership, and meaningful contributions in their professional fields or communities.”
Gurijala is joined by a laudable list of fellow award recipients, each representative of the College of Engineering’s various disciplines. In honor of Engineers Week, the group was invited back to campus to share some advice for students following similar career paths.
McCarthy, who graduated in 2009 with a civil engineering degree, is the founder and CEO of Ionic Development Co., a Boston-based woman-owned real estate development company.
McCarthy has spent the past 16 years putting her skills to work to help elevate the city’s building infrastructure. She was involved with the first all-affordable housing development in Boston’s Seaport District and just this past week started ARX, a new venture focused on creating personal protection equipment for women on job sites.
She has previously worked as the vice president of The HYM Investment Group, a real estate development company in Boston.
The 2024 Women Who Empower Innovator Award Winner credits Northeastern, particularly its co-op program, with helping her figure out what she wanted to do.
“The connections I made, the experience of working in an office, the reputation that Northeastern has built, that when students graduate they are productive members because they have 18 months of work built up, I just can’t preach about it enough,” she says.
“I still work with all the firms that I have co-oped for, which is really cool and really helpful to have sort of been in their seat and see what they’ve done and now work with them in a different way,” she adds.
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Gharagouzloo received his doctorate in bioengineering from Northeastern in 2016 and took the work he did for his thesis and founded his own health care tech company, Imaginostics.
The Orlando-based company offers imaging services to hospitals and health care facilities and was recently named a finalist in the Hello Tomorrow tech startup competion. Gharagouzloo himself is the inventor of the QUTE-CE MRI, a non-invasive imaging platform that “transforms any MRI machine into a powerful quantitative diagnostic tool,” he says.
Gharagouzloo says the important thing he learned while completing his doctorate degree at Northeastern was building resilience.
“When you’re doing something as advanced as a Ph.D., you’re the world’s expert in X,” he says. “When you create a company, it’s really to deliver that technology to humanity and serve them. That route leads to a lot of different challenges. You have to stay focused and build up that resilience.”
In 2014, Tabkhi received his doctorate in computer engineering from Northeastern. Today, he is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Northern Carolina at Charlotte.
At Northeastern, he studied under electrical and computer engineering professor Gunar Schirner, learning about deep learning technologies and other artificial intelligence technologies.
In addition to his work in academia, Tabkhi is co-founder of ForeSightCares Inc., which leverages AI to “promote active independent aging for older adults.”
In giving advice to students, Tabkni highlights the importance of balance.
“Just make sure you have a nice student-life and social-life balance,” he says. “Later on in [my program], I started to do music, dance and go to the swimming pool here. … Different activities really helped me a lot.”
Wisniewski knew early on during her studies at Northeastern that she wanted to use her “skills in math and science to create medical solutions for patients.”
In 2015, Wisniewski earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering while completing co-ops at three biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Today, she is the associate director of CMC cell therapy process development at Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
“I started out as a scientist in the lab, learning about the different aspects of cell therapy and how that can be used to treat cancer and autoimmune disease and have grown into leading the process development team for cell therapy,” she says.
If Wisniewski were to go back and give advice to herself while she was studying at Northeastern, she would recommend two things: One, double down on building a network of contacts. Two, venture out and learn more about the computer science and AI side of things.
“AI is becoming so popular,” she says. “I wasn’t really focused on that as an undergrad. I think that would have been beneficial. It’s become very popular in biotechnology.”
A 2019 graduate of Northeastern’s information systems master’s degree program, Kotian now works as a product manager for McKinsey & Company.
While Kotian started her career as a software engineer, she pivoted and found an interest in product management.
“I started working with McKinsey as a senior software engineer, and that’s where I really started asking the big questions — why are we building this? I think my curiosity extended beyond execution.”
That led her to product management.
“If there’s anything all the young students can take away from my journey today, it’s that sometimes your career is not linear, and your passions will evolve,” she says. “Just lean into that uncertainty. Be flexible, be adaptive and be very proactive with your career.”