Research

Groundbreaking work and published results in peer reviewed journals across disciplines.

Title

Topic

  • ‘Lattice Network for Lightweight Image Restoration’

    “Deep learning has made unprecedented progress in image restoration (IR), where residual block (RB) is popularly used and has a significant effect on promising performance. However, the massive stacked RBs bring about burdensome memory and computation cost. To tackle this issue, we aim to design an economical structure for adaptively connecting pair-wise RBs, thereby enhancing the model representation.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

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  • ‘Going Beyond Binary: Rapid Identification of Protein–Protein Interaction Modulators’

    “Kinetic target-guided synthesis (KTGS) is a powerful screening approach that enables identification of small molecule modulators for biomolecules. While many KTGS variants have emerged, a majority of the examples suffer from limited throughput and a poor signal/noise ratio, hampering reliable hit detection. Herein, we present our optimized multifragment KTGS screening strategy that tackles these limitations.” Read “Going Beyond Binary: Rapid Identification of Protein–Protein Interaction Modulators Using a Multifragment Kinetic Target-Guided Synthesis Approach” and see the full list of authors in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

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  • Breakthrough in early osteoarthritis diagnoses, potentially improving patient outcomes

    “Early [osteoarthritis] diagnosis is critical. … Computed tomography (CT) has been considered for cartilage imaging … by introducing radio-opaque contrast agents like ioxaglate (IOX) into the joint. IOX, however, is anionic and thus repelled by negatively charged cartilage glycosaminoglycans. … Here we engineer optimally charged cationic contrast agents … such that they can penetrate through the full thickness of cartilage.” Read “Cationic Carrier Mediated Delivery of Anionic Contrast Agents in Low Doses Enable Enhanced Computed Tomography Imaging of Cartilage for Early Osteoarthritis Diagnosis” and see the full list of authors in ACS Publications.

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  • From climate denial to climate delay: Fossil fuel companies’ communications strategies

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    This article illuminates how fossil fuel companies’ messaging and communications have shifted “away from outright climate denial to more nuanced discourses of climate delay.” By examining four major companies’ global Twitter accounts (BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies), the authors note their strategies link “renewables to natural gas and promot[e] natural gas as part of their corporate response to climate change” in an attempt “to delay the energy transition and obstruct climate action.” Read “Fossil fuel companies’ climate communication strategies: Industry messaging on renewables and natural gas” and see the full list of authors at Energy Research & Social Science.

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  • ‘Exploring Multilingual Students’ Feedback Literacy in an Asynchronous Online Writing Course’

    “Contributing to the scarce empirical examination of multilingual student writers’ feedback literacy development in ESL contexts, this exploratory qualitative study drew upon five multilingual international students’ feedback interactions, their developing drafts and end-of-unit reflections to empirically examine and extend Yu et al.’s (2022) five-dimension feedback literacy model.”

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  • Magowan publishes short story ‘Litter Box’

    Kim Magowan, adjunct professor of English and Aurelia H. Reinhardt professor of American literature at Mills College at Northeastern University, has published the short story “Litter Box.” “Litter Box” tells the story of one woman’s spur-of-the-moment trip to London and her confusion around how life has brought her there.

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  • ‘Highly-Sensitive Label-Free Deep Profiling of N-glycans Released From Biomedically-Relevant Samples’

    “Alterations of protein glycosylation can serve as sensitive and specific disease biomarkers. Labeling procedures for improved separation and detectability of oligosaccharides have several drawbacks, including incomplete derivatization, side-products, noticeable desialylation/defucosylation, sample loss, and interference with downstream analyses. Here, we develop a label-free workflow based on high sensitivity capillary zone electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CZE-MS) for profiling of native underivatized released N-glycans.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors at Nature Communications.

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  • Building narratives through the interpretation of paintings

    Teaching professor of Arabic Shakir Mustafa, working with independent artist Maysaloun Faraj, has published a new paper arguing that “responses to art—such as commentary on paintings—construct narratives that run parallel to these artistic works.” By selecting specific paintings by Faraj, and reviewing “the commentary on these paintings by Shakir Mustafa… examine[s] ways of narrativizing art to reflect on the urge to create, receive, interpret and circulate cultural products.” Read “Art, Community and Social Media in Maysaloun Faraj’s Contemporary Work” in the Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World.

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  • Patent award for device that classifies wireless signals

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    “Electrical and computer engineering research assistant professor Salvatore D’Oro, William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia, and assistant professor Francesco Restuccia were awarded a patent for ‘Device and Method for Reliable Classification of Wireless Signals.'”

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  • Patent for ‘Real-Time Cognitive Wireless Networking’

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    “Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Francesco Restuccia and William L. Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for ‘Real-Time Cognitive Wireless Networking Through Deep Learning in Transmission and Reception Communication Paths.'”

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  • Using deep neural networks to model complex wave patterns

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    Researchers have “Developed data-driven models to estimate wave parameters and spectra near the” Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. “To estimate wave parameters and energy spectra near the CBBT, novel composite data-driven models were developed using the wind, water level, and offshore wave data” were used in “deep neural networks” to model a complex wave environment with relatively low computational resources. Read “Data-driven modeling of Bay-Ocean wave spectra at bridge-tunnel crossing of Chesapeake Bay, USA” and see the full list of authors in Applied Ocean Research.

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  • ‘Nonspherical Ultrasound Microbubbles’

    “Bioengineering assistant professor Tao Sun recently published his postdoctoral research from the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Brigham and Women’s Hospital on ‘Nonspherical Ultrasound Microbubbles’ in PNAS.”

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  • ‘Mechanical Properties’ paper featured on cover of Advanced Engineering Materials

    Associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering Yaning Li and co-author Siyao Liu have published a new paper titled “Mechanical Properties of Cochiral and Contrachiral Mechanical Metamaterials Under Different Temperatures,” which was featured on the cover of Advanced Engineering Materials, March 2023. From the abstract: “Cochiral and contrachiral mechanical metamaterials are designed by introducing chiral cells with different handedness to the center of the basic chiral cell. Both single-material designs and multimaterial designs are explored. The designs are fabricated via a multimaterial 3D printer, and uniaxial tension experiments are performed in a thermal chamber at two different temperatures.”

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  • ‘Erasing Concepts From Diffusion Models’

    “Motivated by recent advancements in text-to-image diffusion, we study erasure of specific concepts from the model’s weights. While Stable Diffusion has shown promise in producing explicit or realistic artwork, it has raised concerns regarding its potential for misuse. We propose a fine-tuning method that can erase a visual concept from a pre-trained diffusion model, given only the name of the style and using negative guidance as a teacher.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • A bellwether of embeddedness: One professor says that ‘the AI system … keeping me alive is ruining my life’

    Professor Laura Forlano writes how an insulin pump AI system, which promised to “dynamically adjust blood sugar when compared to the previous linear system,” has actually required such frequent human-computer interactions as to make it medically detrimental. “Rather than dismiss this particular system as bad engineering,” she argues, “it’s more useful to think of it as a bellwether for a world in which autonomous systems are likely to be increasingly embedded in everyday life.” Read “When Things Go Beep in the Night: The AI system that is keeping me alive is ruining my life” at Data & Society: Points.

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  • ‘The Paradox of Adaptive Trait Clines With Nonclinal Patterns in the Underlying Genes’

    “Multivariate climate change presents an urgent need to understand how species adapt to complex environments. Population genetic theory predicts that loci under selection will form monotonic allele frequency clines with their selective environment, which has led to the wide use of genotype–environment associations (GEAs). This study used a set of simulations to elucidate the conditions under which allele frequency clines are more or less likely to evolve as multiple quantitative traits adapt to multivariate environments.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in PNAS.

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  • Disability studies research incorporated into robotic sculpture

    Laura Forlano, professor of art and design and communication studies, has had her work featured in a “robotic sculpture” designed by multimedia artist Itziar Barrio. “Some of the sculptures are programmed and inscribed with text that Forlano, a Type 1 diabetic, transcribed from the alert and alarm history from her ‘smart’ insulin pump and then annotated with field notes,” writes Smack Mellon, Barrio’s exhibition space in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibition’s title, “did not feel low, was sleeping,” is sourced from one of the sculptures in Barrio’s collaboration with Forlano. The exhibition ran from March to April, 2023.

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  • ‘Automated Grading of Automata With ACL2s’

    “Almost all Computer Science programs require students to take a course on the Theory of Computation (ToC) which covers various models of computation. … ToC courses tend to give assignments that require paper-and-pencil solutions. Grading such assignments takes time, so students typically receive feedback for their solutions more than a week after they complete them. We present the Automatic Automata Checker (A2C), an open source library that enables one to construct executable automata using definitions that mimic those found in standard textbooks.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • ‘Role of Circular RNA and Its Delivery Strategies to Cancer—An Overview’

    “With the passage of years and the progress of research on ribonucleic acids, the range of forms in which these molecules have been observed grows. One of them, discovered relatively recently, is circular RNA – covalently closed circles (circRNA). In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the interest of researchers in this group of molecules.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in the Journal of Controlled Release.

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  • ‘Autonomous Electrochemical System for Ammonia Oxidation Reaction Measurements at the International Space Station’

    “An autonomous electrochemical system prototype for ammonia oxidation reaction (AOR) measurements was efficiently done inside a 4” x 4” x 8” 2U Nanoracks module at the International Space Station (ISS). This device, the Ammonia Electrooxidation Lab at the ISS (AELISS), included an autonomous electrochemical system that complied with NASA ISS nondisclosure agreements, power, safety, security, size constrain, and material compatibility established for space missions.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in NPJ Microgravity.

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  • Shrivastava receives patent for self-powered computing architecture

    “Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Aatmesh Shrivastava was awarded a patent for ‘Self-powered analog computing architecture with energy monitoring to enable machine-learning vision at the edge.'”

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  • ‘A General Theory of Correct, Incorrect and Extrinsic Equivariance’

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    “Although equivariant machine learning has proven effective at many tasks, success depends heavily on the assumption that the ground truth function is symmetric over the entire domain matching the symmetry in an equivariant neural network. A missing piece in the equivariant learning literature is the analysis of equivariant networks when symmetry exists only partially in the domain. … We propose pointwise definitions of correct, incorrect, and extrinsic equivariance, which allow us to quantify continuously the degree of each type of equivariance a function displays.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • Abrahms suggests the U.S. is ‘Making a Mistake in Ukraine’

    Associate professor of political science Max Abrahms has written an op-ed, titled “I Teach International Relations. I Think We’re Making a Mistake in Ukraine,” arguing for “greater caution in America’s approach to countering Russia.” He refutes the logic that “supplying more weapons to Ukraine [will] spare its citizens more pain” or would deter Putin. Rather, he expects that the sending of weapons to Ukraine will only antagonize Putin further: “punishment may actually elicit worse behavior from an adversary and lead to mutual escalation.”

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  • Black medical research omitted from ‘leading American medical journal’

    Northeastern University PhD. candidate Cherice Escobar Jones, associate professor of English Mya Poe and Emory University assistant professor of English Gwendolynne Reid have published an article detailing the continued oversight of Black research in a leading American medical journal. This journal, “read regularly by doctors of all specialties,” they begin, “systematically ignores an equally reputable and rigorous body of medical research that focuses on Black Americans’ health.” Their article traces the history behind this issue and details how Black medical research remains “invisible.”

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  • How justice in transitional periods affects political perceptions

    Risa Kitagawa, assistant professor of political science and international affairs, has published a new article in International Studies Quarterly exploring how transitional justice efforts weaken or strengthen citizen’s views of their governments. She employs “survey-experimental evidence from post-conflict Guatemala, [to] compare how three commonly deployed justice policies (trials, truth commissions, and reparations) and political rhetoric accompanying them affect citizen attitudes toward government.” Read “From Political Violence to Political Trust? How Transitional Justice Affects Citizen Views of Government” in International Studies Quarterly.

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  • ‘Automatically Summarizing Evidence From Clinical Trials: A Prototype Highlighting Current Challenges’

    “We present TrialsSummarizer, a system that aims to automatically summarize evidence presented in the set of randomized controlled trials most relevant to a given query. Building on prior work, the system retrieves trial publications matching a query specifying a combination of condition, intervention(s), and outcome(s), and ranks these according to sample size and estimated study quality.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • ‘Model Sketching: Centering Concepts in Early-Stage Machine Learning Model Design’

    “Machine learning practitioners often end up tunneling on low-level technical details like model architectures and performance metrics. Could early model development instead focus on high-level questions of which factors a model ought to pay attention to? Inspired by the practice of sketching in design, which distills ideas to their minimal representation, we introduce model sketching: a technical framework for iteratively and rapidly authoring functional approximations of a machine learning model’s decision-making logic.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • ‘Ungrading With Empathy: An Experiment in Ungrading for Intermediate Data Science’

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    “We implemented a model for grading weekly assignments in an intermediate data science course that explicitly gave students useful feedback on their code while not evaluating it on the traditional metrics of correctness or style. … Our ungrading policy was designed to extend empathy towards students and to give them useful, actionable feedback. Our policy reduced the stress that students felt each week, stabilized the amount of time they spent on assignments, and ask them to reflect on their code to request feedback from the teaching team.” Find the paper and the full list of authors in the SIGCSE 2023…

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  • ‘WADER at SemEval-2023 Task 9: A Weak-Labelling Framework for Data Augmentation in Text Regression Tasks’

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    “Intimacy is an essential element of human relationships and language is a crucial means of conveying it. Textual intimacy analysis can reveal social norms in different contexts and serve as a benchmark for testing computational models’ ability to understand social information. In this paper, we propose a novel weak-labeling strategy for data augmentation in text regression tasks called WADER.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in ArXiv.

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  • ‘Online Paging With Heterogeneous Cache Slots’

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    “It is natural to generalize the online k-Server problem by allowing each request to specify not only a point p, but also a subset S of servers that may serve it. … We focus on uniform and star metrics. For uniform metrics, the problem is equivalent to a generalization of Paging in which each request specifies not only a page p, but also a subset S of cache slots, and is satisfied by having a copy of p in some slot in S.” Read the paper and see the full list of authors in the Dagstuhl Research Online Publication Server.

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