Engineering leadership and innovation: Michael Silevitch’s enduring legacy at Northeastern

“Michael is a Northeastern institution,” says David Madigan, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “We are so lucky to have Michael as a colleague and to be able to tap into his boundless energy and wisdom.”

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Michael Silevitch, a grandson of Russian immigrants who has launched numerous security and educational research initiatives at Northeastern, is one of the university’s longest-tenured and most accomplished professors.

“Michael is a Northeastern institution,” says David Madigan, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “Perhaps more than any other person, Michael has led our transformation to a global research powerhouse. We are so lucky to have Michael as a colleague and to be able to tap into his boundless energy and wisdom.”

At 81, Silevitch is still going strong while leading a major Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence based at Northeastern. Silevitch is director of SENTRY (Soft Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality), a coalition of more than 15 universities headed by Northeastern. 

Silevitch is also the founding director of an emeritus DHS Center of Excellence, ALERT (Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats), a center now led by Carey Rappaport, a distinguished professor in electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern.

Silevitch’s success in creating programs that respond to national needs has earned him credibility with DHS, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other sponsoring organizations. He is a public-minded academic who has learned how to fortify his proposals with salesmanship.

“There is a methodology for winning a big award — you’ve got to define its vision and mission succinctly in the format of ‘so what, who cares?’” says Silevitch, the Robert D. Black Professor and distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern. “This definition must make sense to ordinary people, not just research specialists.

“Almost as important is the need to come up with a compelling name,” adds Silevitch of his preference for catchy acronyms. “You’ve got to create a name for the center that will evoke emotion.”

Many lessons have been learned by way of his hard-earned experiences. Silevitch, the son of a Boston window washer, became the first person in his family to attend college when he enrolled at Northeastern in 1960. His self-confidence as a young student was deepened by his response to congenital nystagmus, a condition of small, rapid, uncontrollable eye movements.

“There’s always this underlying jitter in my eyeball that prevents me from seeing sharply,” says Silevitch, whose eyesight peaks at 20-60. “It hampers how fast I can read. I have night blindness and I can never drive a car. It’s part of my life.”

In childhood the condition threatened to limit his future. 

“In the Boston schools, grades one through eight, I was essentially in special education classrooms for visually impaired students,” Silevitch says. “In middle school, I was very lucky to have teachers that allowed me to learn at my own pace. As a result, I was able to pass the entrance exam and enrolled in Boston Technical High School, now the John D. O’Bryant High School for Math and Science. I was the rare case of a kid that could break out of special ed and that may have helped shape me — showing that I could do as well in the mainstream as anyone.”

At Northeastern, Silevitch was on his way to earning three electrical-engineering degrees when he was introduced to the (Richard) Feynman Lectures on Physics, which inspired him to pursue a dual Ph.D. in that discipline. As a result, he would merge the fields to devise breakthroughs in dense plasma dynamics. After completing his Ph.D. he was hired as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Northeastern in 1971.

After a yearlong sabbatical in 1973-74, spent working for the French government in Nice, Silevitch returned home and at 29 became one of Northeastern’s youngest tenured full professors. At that point he decided to shift his focus by pursuing large-scale research opportunities for the university.

“Creating a non-traditional Ph.D. taught me not to be afraid to tackle new problems,” he says of his interdisciplinary approach. “Having a background both in electrical engineering and physics prepared me for what I was able to do in my career.”

Making a stand

Two of Silevitch’s proposals have been made through NSF’s Industry–University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) program, resulting in Northeastern-based centers that have been funded by a coalition of industry partners and the federal government. 

In the early 1980s, he began pursuing large-scale research opportunities in the midst of the computing boom led by Apple and other manufacturers. Instead of following that trend, Silevitch pursued an alternative mission.

“I realized that a lot of the technology that we need for our country’s defense was not computer-based but was electromagnetics-based, including high-powered microwave tubes and phased array antennas for radar,” Silevitch says. 

His initial IUCRC proposal would result in a Center for Electromagnetics Research (CER) at Northeastern. The preparation of the proposal earned backing from the Pentagon as well as from Raytheon, Textron and other companies. But the NSF reviews of his proposal were surprisingly negative. Silevitch says the negative response was based on Northeastern’s lack of experience and reputation as a high-level research university at that time.

“That rejection was a devastating experience for me,” Silevitch recalls. “After recovering from the emotional impact we went back to NSF and said, ‘These reviews are prejudicial. They’re false. They’re making statements that are not based on facts.’”

“As a result, NSF overturned their prior decision. We got funded. And we (Northeastern) never looked back.

“It was a major first step for Northeastern proving that we can compete on a national level,” Silevitch says of the CER. “We created a center that flourished for 10 years. It was a wonderful thing for a lot of students and faculty — we hired 10 faculty members in the area of electromagnetics.” 

Several years later Silevitch proposed another IUCRC idea to NSF that would be funded parallel to the CER. Known as CESAME (Center for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Education), it focused on empowering K-12 teachers to create innovative science and math curricula to engage students. That Center led to more than $15 million in funding and the establishment of Northeastern’s Center for STEM Education, which is now led by Claire Duggan, who was one of the CESAME founders.

Following the success of Northeastern’s initial IUCRC program, Silevitch set his sights on an Engineering Research Center — a flagship NSF program providing $40 million or more in funding for the pursuit of transformative technological initiatives. Silevitch understood that Northeastern’s bid was a longshot. 

“It took two tries but we ultimately did win — and the Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) was the result,” Silevitch says. “The focus of CenSSIS was creating common analysis tools for finding ‘hidden things’ buried beneath a surface.”

The CenSSIS mantra was “diverse problems, similar solutions.”

“The surface could be anything — the human body, a cell, (something) under the ground or under the water,” Silevitch says. “Essentially we created tools so that people looking into the next hidden region would have a jumpstart in exploring it.”

CenSSIS helped pioneer a new method for detecting breast cancer called tomosynthesis, based on 3-D CT technology originally developed by Mass General Hospital (MGH), a CenSSIS partner. 

“We at Northeastern, MGH, Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and other partners refined it so that it had a much higher resolution and computational efficiency capability,” says Silevitch. 

A $20 million gift from engineering innovator Bernard M. Gordon resulted in a transformation of Northeastern’s ERC — now known as Gordon-CenSSIS — while also establishing the Gordon Institute of Engineering Leadership (GIEL), which was led initially by Silevitch. In 2015, Silevitch and his GIEL successor, Simon Pitts, received the Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering for “developing an innovative method to provide graduate engineers with the necessary personal skills to become effective engineering leaders.”

The centers that Silevitch created on Northeastern’s behalf reveal a core strength, says Kristin Hicks, director of operations for Gordon-CenSSIS.

“He is not easily discouraged and will continue to pursue different paths to achieve his goals and objectives,” says Hicks, who also served as partnership and education services coordinator for GIEL. “I have watched him engage with multiple groups of diverse participants to build a program from the ground up while ensuring that all participants are actively included in the discussion and planning, regardless of their position or title within their organization. He understands the importance of investing in meaningful long-term relationships and honoring commitments to build trust with others.”

After developing and directing the IUCRCs and ERC, Silevitch would go on to propose other federal centers drawn from the fundamental CenSSIS strategy of finding hidden threats. 

Those projects would include:

• ALERT, which leveraged the Gordon-CenSSIS theme of developing common tools for diverse applications. “That is to say finding a tumor in the body is very much akin to finding a bomb in a suitcase,” Silevitch says. 
• PROTECT (Puerto Rico Testsite to Eliminate Contaminant Threats). This active center (led by Akram Alshawabkeh, George A. Snell Professor of Engineering and University distinguished professor in civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern) studies exposure to hidden underground contamination in Puerto Rico and its contribution to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Over $40 million in funding has been received to date from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Superfund Research Program. 

“Mike’s vision for CenSSIS inspired and continues to inspire a generation of researchers and professionals,” says Claire Duggan, executive director of the newly renamed Michael B. Silevitch and Claire J. Duggan Center for STEM Education. “He guided and at times prodded his team to think out of the box — to move beyond old comfort zones in order to meet these new challenges.”

‘You are a leader’

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Silevitch to work remotely, he used the time to come up with two more initiatives:

• SENTRY, which is focused on protecting vulnerable public venues such as schools, public transportation systems, stadiums and open air events and retail operations.
• Engineering PLUS. This NSF-funded program aims to broaden participation in engineering with the aim of helping women and people from underrepresented groups earn 100,000 undergraduate degrees and 30,000 graduate degrees in engineering by 2026. Gregory Abowd, Northeastern’s Dean of Engineering, now leads Engineering PLUS as its Principal Investigator, with Silevitch and Duggan serving as Co-PIs.

Engineering PLUS is not the only Silevitch program meant to help pre-college students. CESAME would influence the creation of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System — a series of standardized tests known as MCAS that have helped Massachusetts students rise from middle of the pack to a high ranking nationally in science and math.

Additionally, the Michael B. Silevitch and Claire J. Duggan Center for STEM Education has created and invested in students who are interested in science, technology, engineering and math in Massachusetts and other states.

Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray, Northeastern’s senior vice president for university advancement, credits Silevitch and Duggan with helping countless young people become scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

“Michael quite simply represents the best of Northeastern in his dedication to our community and our mission of impact,” MacGillivray says. “Not only has he led major research centers of excellence at Northeastern, but he has also been instrumental in developing K-12 math and science curricula in Boston and throughout New England.” 

Duggan sums up the depth of Silevitch’s impact with a reference from the United States’ sixth president.

“As John Quincy Adams stated,” says Duggan, “‘If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.’”

Ian Thomsen is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at i.thomsen@northeastern.edu. Follow him on X/Twitter @IanatNU.