Honors & Awards

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

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  • Carrier receives honorable mention for macular degeneration research

    From the College of Engineering: Chemical engineering professor Rebecca Carrier received an honorable mention during the National Eye Institute 3-D Retina Organoid Challenge. Carrier’s team created an organoid-microvessel co-culture system that proposes to add vasculature embedded in a biomimetic hydrogel to organoids to increase oxygen and nutrient flow and mimic the chemical and physical cues present in developing eye tissue. The system also includes retinal pigmented epithelium and can be used to model and study age-related macular degeneration. Read more about the associated research below.

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  • Hashmi receives NSF CAREER Award

    From the College of Engineering: Chemical engineering assistant professor Sara Hashmi was awarded a $550,000 NSF CAREER award for “in situ Polymer Gelation in Confined Flows.” Read more about Hashmi’s research and the award below.

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  • Melodia inducted into Air Force Honorary Commander and Director Program

    From the College of Engineering: Electrical and computer engineering William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia is one of ten local directors to be inducted into the Hanscom Air Force Base Honorary Commander and Director program, which “pairs military-connected commanders and directors with civic counterparts to foster relationships, collaborate and share ideas, and build rapport between key community members and senior leaders at Hanscom” Air Force Base, the base wrote in a press release.

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  • Maheswaran elected to ASEE Board of Directors

    From the College of Engineering: First Year Engineering Program teaching professor Bala Maheswaran was elected as the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Zone 1 Chair and to the ASEE Board of Directors in a nationwide vote in the 2023 ASEE election. … He begins his term at the end of June 2023 and will continue for three years. Read more about Maheswaran’s research and appointment at the College of Engineering below.

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  • Zhang-Wu wins multiple awards at Conference on College Composition and Communication

    From the College of Social Sciences and Humanities: Qianqian Zhang-Wu, assistant professor of English and director of multilingual writing, received multiple awards at the 2023 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), as well as a 2023 CCCC Research Initiative Grant. 2023 CCCC Outstanding Teaching Award 2023 CCCC Research Impact Award for Languaging Myths and Realities: Journeys of Chinese International Students

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  • Wang receives additional funding for Young Investigator Award

    From the College of Engineering: Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Yanzhi Wang has received $450,000 in additional funding for his Young Investigator Award from Army Research Office. The project title is “Generalized Optimization Engine (GOE) for Deep Neural Networks”.

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  • Xie wins major award for mRNA vaccine potency research

    From the College of Engineering: Wei Xie, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, has received an award with a total value of $851,000 from the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, for the project “Advanced FISH Assay and Mechanism Hybrid Surrogate to Improve mRNA Vaccine Potency Assessment and Prediction.” Read more about the award and Xie’s research below.

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  • Kane recieves US Department of Energy award for vocational high school programs

    From the College of Engineering: Michael Kane, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, received a $750,000 award from the US Department of Energy to develop a training program for vocational technology high schools and community colleges that improves entry-level building operators’ literacy in grid-interactive efficient buildings.  Read more about Kane’s research and the award below.

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  • Patent awarded for “beam management” system in RF transmissions

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    From the College of Engineering: Electrical and computer engineering principal research scientist Michele Polese, assistant professor Francesco Restuccia, and professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for “Coordination-free mmWave beam management with deep waveform learning.” Read more about their patent below.

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  • How to say ‘Homosaurus’ in Spanish: A renowned LGBTQ+ resource gets a new edition

    Professor K.J. Rawson poses for a portrait.

    The Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ+ Linked Data Vocabulary recently received a three-year grant to fund the development of a Spanish-language version of this valuable research resource.

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  • Jornet receives Best Demo Award at ACM HotMobile 2023

    From the College of Engineering: Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Josep Jornet received the Best Demo Award at the 24th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile) for the work titled “Adversarial Aerial Metasurfaces,” with electrical engineering student Sherif Badran, PhD’26, and collaborators at Rice and Brown Universities. Find out more about the award below.

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  • Landherr receives American Institute of Chemical Engineers grant to create instructional comic for high schoolers

    From the College on Engineering: “Chemical engineering distinguished teaching professor Lucas Landherr has received a $3,500 grant from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Foundation to create a comic that details the work of chemical engineering for high school seniors and first-year college engineering students.” Find out more about Landherr’s work and this award at the College of Engineering.

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  • Hofmann wins Outstanding Dissertation Award for work in disability studies and human-computer interaction

    “[Megan] Hofmann, a senior research fellow at Khoury College who will begin as an assistant professor this fall,” Matty Wasserman writes for the Khoury College of Computer Science, had been awarded with the SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award for her work “within the fields of human–computer interaction (HCI) and digital fabrication.” Read more about Hofmann’s award-winning work below.

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  • Tadigadapa joins 2023 National Academy of Inventors as Senior Member

    Professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering Srinivas Tadigadapa has been named as a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. The National Academy of Inventors “was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate, and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society,” they write in their mission statement. See the full list of 95 new Senior Members here.

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  • Riley receives Black Heritage Award for ‘dedicated service to Northeastern’

    From the College of Engineering: “Civil and environmental engineering lecturer and operations manager Rozanna Riley was selected to receive the Black Heritage Award, which is given to those Northeastern staff and administrators in recognition of their dedicated service to Northeastern, to the students, and/or to the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute.” Read more about the award at the College of Engineering.

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  • Hajjar receives $3.1 million grant for carbon-neutral construction research

    From the College of Engineering: “In a new $3.1 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Northeastern department of civil and environmental engineering chair and CDM Smith Professor Jerome Hajjar will lead a multi-institution team of researchers developing a new carbon sequestration technique using cross-laminated timber composite floor systems in bolted steel construction for building structures. The new structural method aims to decrease the use of steel while increasing the use of carbon-storing timber and design for deconstruction methods.” Read more about the grant and Hajjar’s research at the College of Engineering.

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  • Byron Wallace named Sy and Laurie Sternberg Interdisciplinary Associate Professor for work on machine learning

    From the Khoury College of Computer Science: “Professor Byron Wallace ‘has been awarded Northeastern’s Sy and Laurie Sternberg Interdisciplinary Associate Professorship for his work’ on applying machine learning and natural language processing to healthcare.” In an interview, Wallace gave one example of these applications: “the evolution of NLP systems [means they] can now spit out very plausible text, which medical practitioners can use to synthesize medical evidence and make better decisions for patient treatment.” Read the interview with Wallace, and learn more about his research, at the Khoury College of Computer Science.

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  • DeSteno podcast ‘How God Works’ is Ambie finalist

    Professor of psychology David DeSteno’s podcast “How God Works” was a finalist for “Best Personal Growth/Spirituality Podcast” in the Ambies, the top awards show in the podcast industry. “How God Works” interrogates why, despite the fact that “religion and science often seem at odds, there’s one thing they can agree on: people who take part in spiritual practices tend to live longer, healthier, and happier lives.” The Ambies award show took place on March 7. Read more about—and listen to—”How God Works” here.

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  • Northeastern professors win 2023 Acorn Innovation Awards, helping bring research to market

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    From the College of Engineering: Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Sarah Ostadabbas, professor Deniz Erdogmus and mechanical and industrial engineering associate professor Yi Zheng received MassVentures Acorn Innovation Awards to assist them in testing the viability of their technologies and potentially bringing their research to market. Follow read more about each professors’ work at the College of Engineering.

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  • Morales new Rising Star in Association for Psychological Science, for innovations while ‘in the earliest stages’ of career

    According to the Association for Psychological Science, “The APS Rising Star designation is presented to outstanding APS Members in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD…. this designation recognizes researchers whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.” Professor of psychology and philosophy Jorge Morales was named an APS Rising Star in February, 2023.

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  • Sharifkhani receives Riesman Professorship to study ‘macroeconomic risks’ on local labor markets

    Assistant professor of finance Ali Sharifkhani has received the Riesman Professorship in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business. Sharifkhani will use the professorship to “study the effects of a firm’s local labor market on its exposure to macroeconomic risks and the expected return on its equity.” Read more about the award and Sharifkhani’s work here.

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  • Liu receives Walsh Professorship to study ‘diversity faultlines’ in business leadership

    Associate professor of accounting Kelvin Liu has received the Walsh Professorship from the D’Amore-McKim School of Business. He will use the professorship to “study the effect of diversity faultlines among senior executives on internal governance and corporate destabilization.” Read more about the award and Liu’s work here.

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  • Bart receives 2022 Amazon Research Award for video advertising research

    Yakov Bart, associate professor of marketing and Joseph G. Riesman Research Professor at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, has received a 2022 Amazon Research Award for a project titled “Using video summarization for generating effective short video ads.” This award “provides unrestricted funds and AWS Promotional Credits to academic researchers investigating various research topics in multiple disciplines,” according to Amazon Science.

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  • Saksono and Hoffman win Google Health Equity Research Initiative award

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    Assistant professor of health sciences Herman Saksono and professor of applied psychology Jessica Hoffman have won a Google Health Equity Research Initiative award. Their proposal, “Augmenting fitness tracking data with community storytelling to advance the impact of wearables in promoting health equity,” hopes to interrogate “how to amplify social support in marginalized communities by augmenting fitness data with first-person storytelling,” they wrote. They plan to leverage fitness tracking devices to “facilitate social support within marginalized communities.” Crucially, this study is a product of a close community partnership with the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition, which was established in 2017.

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  • Ocean Genome Legacy Center partners with 1% for the Planet

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    A researcher works at the Ocean Genome Legacy Center.

    Northeastern’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center has become an Environmental Partner with 1% for the Planet, which brings together companies and individuals to support environmental nonprofits.

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  • SMART Center receives $4 million DARPA grant for thermal imaging program

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    The SMART Center at Northeastern University, whose mission statement “aims to conceive and pilot disruptive technological innovation in smart devices and systems,” has received a $4 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), under their Optomechanical Thermal Imaging program. The SMART Center proposed the development of “Nano-opto-mechanical Piezoelectric Resonant Infrared-sensitive Metamaterials for Quantum-Limited Photodetection,” which would work to develop an exceptionally small detector of infrared light. Learn more about the SMART Center at Northeastern University below.

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  • Lehman elected President of IEEE Power Electronics Society

    Professor of electrical and computer engineering Bradley Lehman has been elected president of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. The Power Electronics Society studies “technology [that] encompasses the effective use of electronic components, the application of circuit theory and design techniques, and the development of analytical tools for efficient conversion, control, and condition of electric power,” they write on their website.

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  • Fu named ACM Fellow for contributions to computer security

    From the College of Engineering: “Professor Kevin Fu was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions to computer security, and especially to the secure engineering of medical devices.” Read more about Fu’s research and the fellowship at the College of Engineering.

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  • Spring 2023 Spark Fund Awardees announced for Northeastern innovators

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    From the College of Engineering: “Four professors in the College of Engineering—Carolyn Lee-Parsons, Edmund Yeh, Ryan Koppes, and Yaning Li—are recipients of the Spring 2023 Spark Fund Awards. The awards provide support to commercially valuable inventions (from any field) from university researchers in earlier stages of development. The goal of the award is to advance a technology or suite of technologies from academia towards commercialization.” Read more about the professors and their research here.

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