Northeastern University College of Engineering

Staff Graduate Panel
2021-11-09 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
The COE Professional Development Committee is proud to present our Fall event: Staff Graduate Panel! The event is for staff who are interested in either taking courses or studying for a degree at Northeastern while working full-time. We have a panel of 5 people who work in COE who will talk about their experiences studying their degree program while also working full-time. Our 5 illustrious panel members are Adam Rodrigues, Mariah Nobrega, Marissa Brush, Mike McFadden, and Ted Johnson! The event will take virtually on Zoom and will be held on November 9th from 3-4pm EST. If you are interested in attending, please fill out this EventBrite RSVP page.

International student experience at Northeastern
2021-11-09 08:00 - 09:00
Join the Office of Global Services as they present the International Student Experience at Northeastern.

Big Ten + Graduate School Expo
2021-11-07 - 2021-11-08
Join the Graduate School of Engineering admissions team at the Big Ten + Graduate School Expo hosted by Purdue University on November 7 and 8. More information and a registration link are provided here: https://www.purdue.edu/gradschool/gradexpo/

Bioengineering PhD Student Seminar Series
2021-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | 101 Churchill, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Join us Friday, November 5 at 12:00 PM in Churchill Hall 101 for the Bioengineering PhD Student Seminar Series! Our first presenter will be Bioengineering PhD student Julia Clarin “Biomechanical Assessment of the Tricuspid Valve Following Mitral Valve Annuloplasty and Reasoning for Concomitant Repair”. Our second presenter will be Matthew Eden “Development of a murine model of wildland fire smoke inhalation: Leveraging experimental-computational methods to investigate cardiopulmonary dysfunction”.

MS Robotics Webinar
2021-11-05 08:00 - 09:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing MS Robotics departmental course offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

Data Analytics Engineering Webinar
2021-11-05 08:00 - 09:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the MS in Data Analytics Engineering courses, campus offerings, and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

ECE PhD Proposal Review: Cooper Loughlin
2021-11-04 10:00 - 11:00
PhD Proposal Review: Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches to Sequential Data Analysis
Cooper Loughlin
Location: Remote
Abstract: Analysis of sequential data is central to many fields of science and engineering. Often, sequences are collections of observations made over time and space with little or no contextual information. The goal of analysis may be to evaluate relationships, identify unusual observations, or forecast future behavior based on historical data. Unsupervised modeling of sequences (e.g., time series) can illuminate the underlying structure of the data and enable analysis.
In this proposal, we discuss a statistical model for multivariate time series and an associated inference algorithm. We develop a preliminary model for a particularly challenging class of multivariate time series where the observations are counts (non-negative integers) that are nonuniformly sampled in time. We develop a state space model and inference algorithm based on Monte Carlo integration and Expectation-Maximization. This preliminary work highlights some key challenges still to be addressed. In particular, continuously variable sampling intervals, computational complexity of sampling, and long-term dependencies among observations are properties of real data that are not handled well by the preliminary model. Recent developments in unsupervised sequence modeling using deep learning techniques are introduced including variational auto-encoders, recurrent neural networks, and ordinary differential equation recurrent neural networks. We propose utilizing these deep learning techniques to improve the state of the art in sequential data analysis.

MS Information Systems, MS Software Engineering Systems and MS Data Architecture and Management Webinar
2021-11-04 09:00 - 10:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the MS Information Systems, MS Software Engineering Systems, and the MS Data Architecture and Management course offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

Cyber Physical Systems & Telecommunication Networks
2021-11-04 08:00 - 09:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the MS in Cyber Physical Systems and MS in Telecommunication Networks course offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

ChE Seminar Series: Detection, Prediction, and Visualization of Monolayer Phase Separation on Metallic Nanoparticles
2021-11-03 12:00 - 13:00 | 108 SN
ChE Seminar Series Presents:
Dr. David L. Green
Materials Science, Chemical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering Departments
University of Virginia
Abstract: The goal is to gain fundamental insights into the factors that dictate the synthesis of monolayer-protected nanoparticles and translate them into rational design strategies for novel functional soft materials. He is interested in monolayer self-assembly, polymer grafting, and nanoparticle dispersion. He studies how to exert control over the interface of nanoparticles, which dictates their degree of compatibility with and assembly in soft materials, provides reactive sites for attachment of molecules, such as drug payloads, and tunes detectable properties, such as the surface plasmon to a wavelength of interest. David Green is particularly interested in the development of nanoparticles coated with monolayers from mixtures of organic molecules that may also self-assemble into advantageous patterns. As pattern formation in self-assembled monolayers is inextricably linked to their intermolecular interactions, a key research challenge is the integration of experimental and theoretical techniques to enable de novo design of patterned nanoparticles.
Bio: David Green is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He and his team collaborate with chemists, physicists, pharmacists, and oncologists to develop design principles for monolayer-protected nanoparticles.

BioE Seminar Series Presents: Keyue Shen
2021-11-03 12:00 - 13:00
Keyue Shen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA
“Metabolic and Microenvironmental Regulation of Cancer and Stem Cells”
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST
ABSTRACT:
In vivo, tissue structure and local cell-cell/cell-matrix interactions define the microenvironment and regulate a complex landscape of cellular phenotypes and metabolism in tumors and stem cell niches. Such dynamics and heterogeneity often contribute to treatment failures in cancer and regenerative medicine. Identifying the precise microenvironmental cues that trigger the phenotypic or metabolic changes will thus enable the discovery of new targets for cancer or stem cell therapies. However, it is challenging to pinpoint such cues and track cellular dynamics/heterogeneity in a complex microenvironment in vivo. Our laboratory is focused on creating biologically inspired in vitro platforms to recapitulate the scale of cell signaling in tissue microenvironments from subcellular to tissue levels, and developing single-cell tools to enable dynamic, long-term tracking of metabolic heterogeneity and changes in rare cells. We have built-in vitro hypoxic tumor models to recapitulate the metabolic landscapes in solid tumors, to determine/overcome the key factors that impedes the therapeutic efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. We have also developed micropatterned tumor models to understand the mechano-regulatory mechanisms and mito-nuclear communications in cancer metastasis. Using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, we created a set of non-invasive metabolic optical biomarkers to identify hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from their progenitor counterparts and track their metabolic dynamics during cell division at the single-cell level. With a lipid bilayer model, we have further discovered a unique role of membrane-bound factors on niche stromal cells in determining the morphology and adhesive function of HSCs in the bone marrow. Our long-term goal is to develop novel strategies for cancer immunotherapy and bone marrow transplantation.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Keyue Shen received his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and Master of Science in Biophysics from Tsinghua University of China. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University in 2010. He then pursued postdoctoral training in the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he won an MGH Fund for Medical Discovery Award. Keyue joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California in 2015. He received a Broad Innovation Award from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (2016), a Marni Levine Memorial Research Career Development Award from STOP CANCER (2017), a Trailblazer Award from the NIH NIBIB (2017), and a Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society – Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering SIG (2020). His research has been supported by NIH NIBIB and NCI. His group is focused on creating in vitro tissue models of solid tumors and bone marrow niches. His goals are to understand how tumor microenvironments regulate mitochondrial/metabolic functions of cancer and immune cells in cancer progression and therapy, and how to improve hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and biomanufacturing.
If interested in attending, please email Elizabeth Chesley at e.chesley@northeastern.edu for the Zoom link.

Electrical & Computer Engineering
2021-11-03 10:30 - 11:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Electrical and Computer Engineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

ECE PhD Proposal Review: Jared Miller
2021-11-03 10:00 - 11:00
PhD Proposal Review: Nonlinear and Time-Delay Systems Analysis using Occupation Measures
Jared Miller
Location: Zoom Link
Abstract: Techniques to analyze nonlinear systems include peak and reachable set estimation. The reachable set of a system is the set of states accessible by trajectories of a dynamical system at specified times given initial conditions. The peak estimation problem finds extreme values of a state function along trajectories. Examples of peak estimation include finding the maximum height of a wave, voltage on a power line, speed of a vehicle, and infection rate of an epidemic. These problems may be posed as infinite dimensional linear programs (LP) in occupation measures, where occupation measures are Borel measures that contain all information about trajectories. Under mild assumptions, a sequence of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) in increasing degree will converge from outside to the LP optimum, which is in turn equal to the true optimum of the program in trajectories.
The first part of this thesis expands upon the occupation measure formulation for peak estimation. The safety of trajectories with respect to an unsafe set may be quantified by measuring the constraint violation (safety margins), which is a maximum peak estimation problem. The distance of closest approach between trajectories and an unsafe set may be bounded through a modification of the peak estimation problem. Peak estimation may be applied to dynamics possessing a broad class of uncertainties, which includes the data-driven setting of black-box polynomial dynamics. A modular MATLAB toolbox is developed to solve and interpret these variations on peak estimation problems.
The second part of this thesis introduces an occupation measure framework for analysis and control of time-delay systems. The evolution of time delay systems depends on present and past values of the state. Some instances of time delay systems with their associated delays include epidemic models (incubation period), population dynamics (gestation time), and fluid modeling (transport time of fluid moving in a pipe). An occupation measure framework is developed to define weak solutions over a finite time interval of nonlinear time-delay systems with a finite number of bounded discrete delays. Applications of this time-delay weak solution include optimal control (including dead-time), peak estimation, and reachable set estimation of time delay systems.

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Webinar
2021-11-03 09:00 - 10:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Mechanical Engineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

Chemical Engineering Programs Webinar
2021-11-02 10:00 - 11:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Chemical Engineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

Student conversation: What it means to be a student from India at Northeastern
2021-11-02 08:00 - 09:00
Please join the Office of Global Services for a student conversation on what it means to be a student from India at Northeastern.

NU CommLab Virtual Workshop: Creating a Specific Aims Page
2021-11-01 17:00 - 18:00
Join the NU CommLab for an informative virtual workshop about how to build an effective summary page.
This is the most important part of a proposal or grant because it is often the only thing reviewers read. It introduces a problem, presents a gap in knowledge and proposes a solution. It is intended to demonstrate the credibility of the idea and gain either financial (grant) or committee support. In this workshop, we will break down the details, and give you the knowledge and tools to create your own effective summary. We look forward to working with you!
Zoom

Bioengineering Programs Webinar
2021-11-01 09:00 - 10:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Bioengineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

Civil and Environmental Engineering Webinar
2021-11-01 08:00 - 09:00
Please join faculty and graduate admissions staff at a webinar discussing the Civil and Environmental Engineering departmental program offerings and experiential learning opportunities in the Graduate School of Engineering.

STEM Harvest Fest
2021-10-30 10:00 - 13:00
On Saturday, October 30th, the Center for STEM Education will be hosting a STEM Harvest Fest in the West Village Quad, for K-12 students interested in learning more about STEM topics.
This event, open to our campus community and the general public, will run from 10:00am-1:00pm. During this time, Northeastern STEM-related clubs/organizations will present tabletop activities/demos to visiting elementary and middle school students and their families (the expo is open to K-12 students, but I would target grades 2-8 for your activity based on prior attendance). As the event is the day before Halloween – we encourage you to dress up in Halloween costumes and theme your activities/demos as spooky/Halloween themes.

COE Science on Tap
2021-10-29 15:00 - 16:00 | Raytheon Amphitheater (240 Egan), 360 Huntington Ave, 240 Egan, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
The Graduate School of Engineering is excited to present Science on Tap (SoT) on Friday, October 29, 2021. Doors open at 2:30pm EST. The event will start right at 3pm and run for about an hour. Beer, hard cider, pizza and salad, as well as non-alcoholic beverages will be provided to attendees.
What is Science on Tap? Here at Northeastern University, this event will provide an opportunity for both PhD students and faculty from all COE departments to network, enjoy an afternoon of food and drink, and also listen to a high-level talk science talk.
This October 29th talk will be given by one of our very own MIE Department Associate Professors, Prof. Randy Erb! The title of his talk is: Using Colloidal Physics to Design Material Microstructures for Optimizing Macroscopic Properties.
This event is the first of its kind at Northeastern University, so make sure you RSVP! Here is the link to RSVP. Due to room capacity restrictions, the RSVP is required. The first 20 faculty members who RSVP will be notified and will be able to attend the event.

Building Science for all Audiences - A Panel Discussion of Blind Scientists
2021-10-29 15:00 - 16:00
Join an interesting panel discussion by eminent blind scientists from across the world who will share their journeys in science & talk about how we all can make science more accessible.
The ALLIED (Allies for Leading, Learning, Inclusion and Education of Disabilities) Project is working to open discussions and raise awareness about disabilities on campus. The ALLIED Project is supported by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion through a ‘Faculty Innovations in Diversity and Academic Excellence Grant’.
On Friday, 29 October 2021
3 PM – 4 PM (EST)
655 ISEC, Northeastern University
https://northeastern.zoom.us/j/94787999129

Bioengineering PhD Student Seminar Series
2021-10-29 12:00 - 13:00 | 101 Churchill, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Join us Friday, October 29 at 12:00 PM in Churchill Hall 101 for the Bioengineering PhD Student Seminar Series! Our first presenter will be Bioengineering PhD student Mengdi Yang “Fine Tuning Chemical Modifications towards Highly Specific Inhibitors in Fusobacterium”. Our second presenter will be Narges Yazdani “The Influence of Integrin-mediated Mechanotransduction on Neural Stem Cell Self-renewal and Differentiation”.

ECE PhD Proposal Review: Ramtin Khalili
2021-10-29 11:00 - 12:00
PhD Proposal Review: Efficient State and Parameter Estimation in Three-Phase Power Systems
Ramtin Khalili
Location: Microsoft Link
Abstract: As the number of renewable energy sources, bulk energy storage systems, and non-conventional loads increase and connect to the power grid not only at transmission but also sub-transmission and distribution levels, three-phase unsymmetrical network monitoring becomes necessary for reliable operation and control of the overall power grid. The use of modal decomposition of measurement equations has already been shown to simplify the formulation and resulting computational complexity of three-phase state estimation of systems where all the transmission lines are three-phase and fully transposed. When there are untransposed and/or mixed-phase lines, modal decomposition can no longer fully decouple the three-phase measurement equations. This shortcoming is eliminated by a simple yet practical solution based on the commonly used numerical compensation techniques. Thus, it enables the application of the powerful decoupling approach to any type of three-phase networks which may contain untransposed or mixed-phase lines and are fully observable by PMUs. This implicit restriction is then removed by using a transformation that enables the use of SCADA measurements which are more commonly available in power grids. Furthermore, It has been shown that network parameter errors can bias the state estimation solution. Network parameter errors are common due to aging, changes in the ambient temperature, human data entry error, etc. So, an efficient approach is proposed to detect and correct the network parameter errors in three-phase untransposed transmission lines. Preliminary results to illustrate the performance of the proposed methods and associated algorithms will be presented using different test systems.

ECE PhD Proposal Review: Cesar Antonio Galvez Nunez
2021-10-29 10:00 - 11:00
PhD Proposal Review: Fault Location in Radial and Meshed Networks Containing Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)
Cesar Antonio Galvez Nunez
Location: Microsoft Teams Link
Abstract: Rapidly increasing numbers of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) connected to transmission and distribution networks via Inverter Based Power Sources (IBPSs) introduce new challenges in detecting and locating faults. Distribution networks are historically designed to operate as radial systems with unidirectional power flows, which may no longer hold true due to the presence of large numbers of IBPSs. The commonly used impedance-based fault location methods are no longer reliable due to the limitations imposed by unknown fault resistance, asymmetry of lines, and presence of IBPSs, which need to comply with the new grid codes for Fault Ride Through (FRT) requirements. In this proposal, a new fault location method that can be used for radial and meshed networks containing DERs and addresses the limitations of conventional methods mentioned above will be introduced. The approach requires a limited number of digital fault recorders (DFR) to be placed in the network and uses the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to compute the first arrival times of fault-generated traveling waves. The proposal first presents a new two-terminal fault location technique used strictly for radial distribution networks, and then extends this to the general case of combined transmission and distribution networks with radial or meshed configurations. The method is further extended to be applied to hybrid AC/DC complex transmission grids containing DERs and High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) lines. Preliminary results will be presented illustrating these methods on typical power grids and fault scenarios.

Insights into the Deferred MBA Program
2021-10-28 18:30 - 19:30
Please join the Galante Engineering Business Program and our Professional Development Coordinator Isabella Cardona Barber along with Professional Development Assistant Marissa Westerbeke in hosting three Galante Alumni as they share their success as Deferred MBA admits at top schools in the U.S., as well as valuable lessons they learned along the way. They will also dive into relevant resources, review the application process, and answer any questions you may have regarding this unique opportunity.
The event will be hosted in-person in Egan Research Center 440 and online via Zoom.
Please RSVP.

Virtual Field Trip Series: Dialogue of Civilizations - India and Nepal: Climate Change Science and Policy
2021-10-28 12:00 - 13:00
Learn about the impact climate change has on The Indian subcontinent’s diverse geography, culture, and economy, and the policies being pursued to mitigate the damage.
https://eventregistration.northeastern.edu/event/a2d5623e-cd58-481a-807f-89872942a82c/summary?RefId=COLLEGE

ECE PhD Dissertation Defense: Hongjia Li
2021-10-28 10:00 - 11:00
PhD Dissertation Defense: Automation Design and DNN Acceleration Frameworks: from software implementation to hardware physical design
Hongjia Li
Location: Northeastern Zoom Link
Abstract: With the breakthrough of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) in the past decade, neural network-based computer vision has made huge progress, achieving exceptional performance. Tasks such as object detection, activity detection, and medical diagnosis are deployed in a wide range of applications, including autonomous driving, robot vision and training, human-computer interaction, and augmented reality. To increase the demand of application accuracy, DNN models are tuned to large scales by adding more parameters and layers. Meanwhile, mobile devices are rapidly becoming the central computer and carrier for deep learning tasks. However, real-time execution has been limited due to the computation/storage resource constraints on mobile devices.
The first part of this dissertation, I will present our unified real-time mobile acceleration of DNNs framework, seamlessly integrating hardware-friendly, structured model compression with mobile-targeted compiler optimization. The goal of our framework is to provide an unprecedented, real-time performance of such large-scale neural network inference using simply off-the-shelf mobile devices. Our proposed fine-grained block-based pruning scheme can be universally applicable to all types of DNN layers, such as CONV layers with different kernel sizes and fully connected layers. Different weight pruning schemes, such as unstructured pruning, filter/column pruning, and our block-based pruning, are analyzed and compared given the specific deep learning problems. To validate our framework, various applications are implemented and demonstrated, object detection, medical diagnosis. All applications can achieve real-time inference on mobile devices, outperforming the current mobile acceleration framework by up to 6.7X in speed.
For the second part of this dissertation, I will dive into an efficient automate framework for Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron (AQFP) technology, meeting the unique features and constraints. Superconductive electronics (SCE) based on the Josephson junction (JJ) single flux quantum (SFQ) logic cells have evolved into a within-reach “beyond-CMOS” technology. Placement is the primary step in physical design of the electronic systems as it directly affects the maximum frequency and routability of circuits. Algorithms for global placement, the core step in the placement process, typically minimize the total wirelength of a design as the main objective as it indirectly affects the routability and timing of circuits. Although minimizing the total wirelength improves the timing of the circuit in general, it does not directly target optimizing the delay of timing critical paths. Timing and routability driving placement methods are therefore needed. The currently mature design automation tools for CMOS cannot be directly applied to the design of superconducting electronics. In this dissertation, I will present our proposed timing-aware AQFP-specific placement and routing framework, given a path balanced AQFP netlist with clock phases. The proposed framework will reduce the solution complexity by making effective use of the row-wise placement/routing opportunity as each AQFP cell is assigned to a specific row (clock phase).

Annual oSTEM Conference
2021-10-28 - 2021-10-31
Join the Graduate School of Engineering Admissions Team as they represent the graduate school programs at the annual oSTEM virtual conference held from October 28-31. oSTEM (out in science technology, engineering, and mathematics) is non profit professional organization for LGBTQ+ people in the STEM fields.

UMASS Dartmouth Graduate School Fair
2021-10-27 14:00 - 16:00
Join the Graduate School of Engineering admissions team at the UMASS Dartmouth Graduate School Fair. This event is open to all UMASS Dartmouth students. An Admissions representative and a Graduate Student Ambassador will be available in person to answer your graduate school questions.
