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Topic
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Trailblazer award to engineer our way to smarter gut health
“Researchers at the College of Engineering have won a Trailblazer Award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) for their interdisciplinary work to cure or improve diseases by modulating microbial metabolism in the gut. The funding provides $628,000 for the team’s research over three years.”
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‘Leveraging Structure for Improved Classification of Grouped Biased Data’
“We consider semi-supervised binary classification for applications in which data points are naturally grouped (e.g., survey responses grouped by state) and the labeled data is biased (e.g., survey respondents are not representative of the population). The groups overlap in the feature space and consequently the input-output patterns are related across the groups. To model the inherent structure in such data, we assume the partition-projected class-conditional invariance across groups, defined in terms of the group-agnostic feature space.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at ArXiv.
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Yanzhi Wang receives Distinguished Industrial Leader Award
“Associate Professor Yanzhi Wang received the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) Distinguished Industrial Leader award at the APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference 2022 held in November 2022.”
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Purnima Ratilal-Makris wins $1.28 million NSF grant for hydrophone array
“Professor Purnima Ratilal-Makris was awarded a $1.28M National Science Foundation grant for “Large-aperture 160-element coherent hydrophone array system upgrades and operational readiness testing for real-time continental-shelf scale ocean acoustic monitoring.” Research on the array system will be conducted in her Laboratory for Ocean Acoustics and Ecosystem Sensing.”
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Professor Yi Zheng receives Massachusetts recognition for sustainability and clean technology
“Professor Yi Zheng was recognized by the Massachusetts House of Representatives for his ‘Outstanding Contributions to Sustainability and Clean Technology.’ Zheng is devoted to clean energy education, research and business, to provide climate-friendly, energy-saving solutions and reduce carbon emissions globally.”
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Adaptable, reusable tooling for lightweight automotive components
“Associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering Hongli (Julie) Zhu was awarded a $220,000 Department of Energy grant, in collaboration with the University of Delaware, for the manufacturing of lightweight automotive components. The Zhu Lab will synthesize functional thermal conductive material as filler in the composite. In her lab, thermally conductive material will be prepared and added to thermoset resin to increase thermal conductivity and improve curing kinetics of resin during tool manufacturing.”
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Wearable gas sensor for disease detection
“Associate Professor Hongli (Julie) Zhu, in collaboration with Vox Biomedical, LLC, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was awarded a $154,000 grant for biosensors. Zhu ‘seek[s] to translate detection of… [volatile organic compound] signatures to a more robust and standardized platform, readily adaptable for the identification of a variety of human diseases with distinct pathophysiologies.'”
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Karim elected to board of Strategic Management Society
Professor of entrepreneurship and innovation, Samina Karim, in Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, has been elected to a director-at-large position in the Strategic Management Society. The society publishes three academic journals, hosts several conferences each year, and funds “projects to advance the field of strategic management,” according to their website. Karim will serve a three-year term, from 2023-2025.
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‘Calibration of Computational Tools for Missense Variant Pathogenicity Classification’
“Recommendations from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the Association for Molecular Pathology for interpreting sequence variants specify the use of computational predictors as ‘supporting’ level of evidence for pathogenicity. … Previously, we described a probabilistic framework that quantified the strengths of evidence … within ACMG/AMP recommendations. We have extended this framework to computational predictors and introduce a new standard that converts a tool’s scores to PP3 and BP4 evidence strengths.” Read “Calibration of computational tools for missense variant pathogenicity classification and ClinGen recommendations for PP3/BP4 criteria” and see the full list of authors in AJHG.
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‘The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black Hole’
This highly collaborative, multi-institutional effort models black holes when they become relativistic jets “after… tidally disrupt[ing] a star.” These events, when they point toward Earth, “have the potential to unveil cosmological… quiescent black holes and are ideal test beds.” The results of their modeling “implies a beamed, highly relativistic jet akin to blazars… and challenges our theoretical understanding of jets.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at Nature Astronomy.
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Why fishers distrust what the science says when it comes to protecting fish stocks
In collaboration with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, this paper looks at why “Fishers commonly disagree with stock assessment results, particularly when a stock declines and strict harvest controls become necessary.” This counterintuitive effect, which leads to “distrust in scientific advice,” was explored through “a scientific-industry cooperative trawl survey and a telephone survey of fisher perceptions.” Read “Lost in Translation: Understanding Divergent Perspectives on a Depleted Fish Stock” and see the full list of authors in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
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Sock puppets recite Russian bots in performance piece
“Northeastern Art + Design professors Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki have been selected as one of five artist groups to participate in the MediaFutures support program,” writes the College of Arts, Media and Design, “part of the European Commisssion’s S+T+ARTS (Science +Technology + Arts) program for social and technical innovation. The program provides €25,000 for the initial build phase and more for a final exhibition. …Curry and Gradecki’s project, Sock Puppet Theater, is a performance of animatronic sock puppets speaking the words of social media posts by accounts known to be fake and engaging in disinformation campaigns.”
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Story map demonstrates how to rebuild Massachusetts cod stocks
Professor of marine and environmental science Jon Grabowski, along with recent Northeastern PhD. Micah Dean, have had their research featured in an interactive story map from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MADMF). The MADMF coordinated surveys and studies across the fisheries, employing both scientists and commercial fishermen. Their work is “already being applied at multiple levels to improve fishery management and stock assessments.”
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Laura Lewis elevated to IEEE Fellow for ‘magneto-functional materials’ research
“Distinguished University and Cabot Professor Laura Lewis was elevated to an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow for contributions to the design of magneto-functional materials. IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation and is awarded to less than 0.1% of voting members annually.”
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Maheswaran appointed director of Engineering and Architectural Division, Athens Institute for Education and Research
“Teaching Professor Bala Maheswaran was appointed as the Director of the Engineering and Architectural Division (EAD) of the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER). The EAD includes Architecture, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Transportation Engineering Units, with leaders from various international institutes leading each unit. The division organizes multiple conferences in Athens, Greece, each year in multiple fields.”
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Michele Polese receives 2022 ISSNAF Young Investigator Award for Computer Science
“Principal Research Scientist Michele Polese received the Mario Gerla award for research in computer science at the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) Young Investigators Award ceremony. Polese designs and optimizes next-generation wireless spectrum systems.”
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Emerging countries and the global legal economic order
“Emerging countries have been able to make use of the liberal trade and investment regime to support their development strategies without having to adopt the full gamut of neoliberal prescriptions… Recent research explores how different emerging countries are positioned in regards to trade and investment law, how tensions develop between development policies and the demands of trade and investment legal frameworks, and how alternative visions will be driven by pragmatism and strategic self-interest rather than neoliberal orthodoxy.” Read “Reshaping the Global Legal Economic Order” in the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.
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Arthur Coury wins ACS Bioelastomer Award
“University Distinguished Professor Art Coury has won the American Chemical Society Rubber Division’s Bioelastomer Award for 2023, which honors significant contributions to the advancement of biomaterials in the field of rubber science and technology.”
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Ruobing Bai receives 2022 EML Young Investigator Award
“Assistant Professor Ruobing Bai is a recipient of the 2022 Extreme Mechanics Letters (EML) Young Investigator Award for his paper ‘Temperature-modulated photomechanical actuation of photoactive liquid crystal elastomers.’ The EML Young Investigator Award honors the best young researchers who have published their highly impactful papers in the EML journal.”
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Professor Yun Raymond Fu awarded patent for ‘Multi-Person Pose Estimation Using Skeleton Prediction’
The patent offers “Embodiments [that] provide functionality for identifying joints and limbs in images.”
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Topology, symmetry and quantum band theory
In this review, “Topology and Symmetry in Quantum Materials,” the authors present an overview of “band theory,” and “presents a cross section through the recent work on understanding the role of geometry and topology in generating topological states and their responses to external stimuli, and as a basis for connecting theory and experiment within the band theory framework.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at Advanced Materials.
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Modeling floodplain lakes after extreme flooding
This study of floodplain lakes—which accumulate “sediments, organic matter, and pollutants”—adds to our understanding of their evolution, especially after flooding events. While pre-existing models of floodplain lake evolution exist, they are “not well suited to guide the interpretation of individual flood events in sedimentary records.” This paper “combine[s] sediment samples collected in and around a floodplain lake with hydraulic modelling simulations to examine inundation, flow velocity, and sedimentation patterns,” especially helpful after “extreme” flood events. Read “A Hydraulic Modelling Approach to Study Flood Sediment Deposition in Floodplain Lakes” and find the full list of authors in Earth Surface Processes and…