Northeastern University College of Engineering

Engineers Week: Info Booth
2020-02-18 09:00 - 11:00 (America/New_York) | Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA, 02115, United States
We are celebrating National Engineers Week! Come learn about the events, activities and distinguished speakers on campus.
Free donuts and COE swag.
Curry Student Center Crossroads

Engineers Week: Cool Women Hot Careers
2020-02-15 09:00 - 15:30 | Raytheon Amphitheater (240 Egan), 360 Huntington Ave, 240 Egan, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Cool Women/Hot Careers, hosted by the College of Engineering and the Society of Women Engineers, is a great way for high school students (especially sophomores & juniors in high school) who love math and science to learn more about the field of engineering and meet some of our women engineering students.
9:00 am – Registration and light breakfast
9:30 am – Keynote Speaker
10:00 am – Introduction and Overview of Engineering
10:30 am – Student Panel
11:45 am – Break
12:00 pm – Lunch at a Northeastern dining hall with women engineering students
1:00 pm – Engineering Activities
3:15 pm – Wrap up & Departure
(Optional ½ hour campus tour at 3:30 pm)
Parents, teachers, and guidance counselors are welcome as well.
Reserve your spot by February 12th
http://bit.ly/CWHC2020

Sewing Machine
2020-02-14 15:30 - 16:00 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the Brother sewing machine. Learn how to operate the sewing machine while sewing your very own pillow
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Team Leadership Step-by-Step: Prepare Your Leadership Style(s)
2020-02-14 13:00 - 13:30 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
20 minute lessons at 1 pm (almost) every Friday, open to all!
Questions? Contact Ted at ted.johnson@northeastern.edu
Visit the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Galante Event: Breaking Down Barriers to Creative Solutions with Dr. Khosrowjerdi
2020-02-13 18:00 - 19:30 | 102 ISEC, 360 Huntington Ave, 102 ISEC, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
The Galante Engineering Business Program is excited to host Breaking Down Barriers to Creative Solutions with Dr. Khosrowjerdi (KJ) on February 13th, 2020 in ISEC 102 from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
In addition to teaching in the Mechanical Engineering department at Western New England University, Dr. KJ has also been designing and building fully automated mechatronic systems and providing consulting services in the area of factory automation, process control, mechanical testing, water, wastewater, and nitrogen monitoring systems, database management and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to local and national companies. In this seminar, you will learn how he has designed, built, and implemented numerous integrated systems for Spalding, Smith and Wesson, Lamb Knitting Machines, FN Manufacturing (South Carolina), Remington, National Guard, United Aerospace, Shaeffler, Barden Bearing, Entwistle, Newall Rubbermaid, Sig Sauer, Stanley Black & Decker and many more. Dr. KJ is honored to share with you his 40 years of experience in teaching and working with over 100 companies in the fields of mechatronics and consulting services.
Please RSVP by Feb. 10th. Feel free to reach out to Galante@northeastern.edu with any questions.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Najme Ebrahimi
2020-02-13 15:00 - 16:00 | 136 ISEC, 360 Huntington Ave, 136 ISEC, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Location: ISEC 136
Next Generation of Smart Wireless World: from High Data-Rate Mm-wave Directional Arrays to Reliable and Secured IoT Connectivity for 5G and Beyond
Abstract:
The next generation of smart wireless world requires massive and reliable connectivity as well as high datarate communication and sensing. Consequently, the immediate response of the wireless world is acquiring the mm-wave (MMW) wireless band (30 GHz–300 GHz) and the development of 5G and beyond. The major challenge of deploying high data-rate communication system at MMW frequency bands is the channel fading and multi-path diffraction effect. Hence, multiple-element transceivers such as scalable “directional” phased array or massive MIMO are required. Moreover, the next generation of wireless world is expected to have over one trillion Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected, requiring secured connectivity such as protection against interference, jammers, and eavesdroppers In this talk, I will present novel techniques to overcome the challenges for future scalable high data-rate MMW transceiver array from silicon circuit toward RFIC system and packaging. This includes parasitic-insensitive, power-efficient, and wideband 2×2 arrays of injection-locked oscillators for efficient local oscillator (LO) distribution and phase shifting (circuit technique), image selection Weaver architecture to significantly reduce the required bandwidth of the LO generation circuitry for the MMW system from conventional 20% to only 4% (RFIC architecture), and compact differential aperture coupled LO distribution feed network for compact and scalable antenna-IC integration (packaging). I will also discuss several future directions toward high-frequency signal generation and modulation based on integrating the circuit and electromagnetics fundamental theories for communication and sensing above 100 GHz, namely, as 6G. On the other hand, employing a “directional” antenna for interference/eavesdropper cancellation for IoTs suffers from side-lobe leakage and requires accurate beam alignment and localization. In this talk, I will present a novel embedded architecture for a distributed IoT network that utilizes a masterslave full-duplex communication using an omnidirectional antenna to exchange a random modulated phase shift as the secret key while canceling out the eavesdropper effect. I will also discuss two future directions for interference cancellation from circuit level to system level; from cooperative and distributed pulse coupled synchronization for dynamically interference canceling towards wideband interference canceller/filter at RF front-end of IoT devices using a single antenna to turn the radio with one-bit ADC into reality
Bio:
Najme Ebrahimi is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan (U-M) since September 2017. At the University of Michigan, she is mainly conducting research on both mm-Wave/THz high data rate communication and sensing in addition to the connectivity of the next generation of distributed Internet-of-Things network. She earned her PhD from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in June 2017, with a thesis emphasize on enabling high data rate and scalable mm-wave phased array for the next generation of smart wireless world. She received her MS degree and BS degree, with highest honors, from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2011 and Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, in 2009, respectively. She is a member of IEEE Solid-State Circuits and IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques societies. She is the recipient of PhD Endowed Graduate Fellowship from UCSD (2012-2013) and U-M Departmental Postdoctoral Fellowship (20172019). She is currently serving as the vice-chair of IEEE Southeastern Michigan for Microwave Theory and Techniques Chapter where she is awarded MTT-s Travel Grant (2019). She is selected as 2019 EECS Rising Star by MIT launched Rising-star program and 2020 ISSCC Rising Star by IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society

3D Printing Form 2
2020-02-13 13:45 - 14:15, 2020-02-12 10:30 - 11:00 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the Form 2 3D printer. Learn how to start, wash, and cure a print job
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

3D Printing Prusa
2020-02-13 13:00 - 13:30, 2020-02-07 15:30 - 16:00 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the Prusa 3D printer. Learn how to load filament, start a print job, and remove prints from the print bed
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Advanced Hand Tools
2020-02-12 13:45 - 14:15, 2020-02-06 11:15 - 11:45 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the arbor press, tap and die kit, and ultrasonic cutter. Learn how to use each tool effectively
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Power Tools
2020-02-12 13:00 - 13:30, 2020-02-06 10:30 - 11:00 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the hand drill, impact driver, and dremel rotary tool. Learn how to drill pilot holes, drive screws, and sand wood
Sign up using this link!
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Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Basak Guler
2020-02-12 11:00 - 12:00
ISEC 138
Coded Computing for Next-Generation Information Processing Systems
Abstract:
Modern networks are designed to facilitate information processing in large-scale, highly distributed environments that connect humans with smart machines. Information collected in such networks is often privacy-sensitive, such as healthcare records, financial transactions, or geolocation data. Moreover, these networks often need to operate in unknown environments using unreliable information sources, which can lead to various interpretations of the received information. This brings three main challenges in designing effective distributed information-processing frameworks: scalability, privacy, and context-awareness. In this talk, I will discuss how to address these challenges through information and coding theory principles. I will first introduce a fast and privacy-preserving framework for distributed machine learning, which can provide an order of magnitude speedup over the existing cryptographic approaches. Next, I will address a major bottleneck for the scalability of large-scale distributed computing frameworks, the interprocessor communication load, in the context of distributed graph processing. To do so, I will introduce a topology-aware graph allocation and communication strategy using coding theory and demonstrate that it can reduce the inter-processor communication load significantly for both real-world and random graph structures. Finally, I will discuss the fundamental performance limits of information transmission in context-aware multiuser communication networks. I will characterize the information-theoretic performance limits for lossy transmission of correlated sources in a multi-user communication channel when the communicating parties have access to context information correlated with the sources.
Bio:
Basak Guler is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California. She received her M.Sc. and PhD from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include information and coding theory, distributed computing, wireless communications, graph signal processing, machine learning, privacy and security, and game theory. She is a recipient of the Dr. Nirmal K. Bose Dissertation Award by the Pennsylvania State University, the Young Scholar Award by the Turkish-American Scientists and Scholars Association, and was named a Rising Star in EECS by MIT.

BMES/AIChE Co-op-Career Fair
2020-02-12 10:00 - 14:30 | Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA, 02115, United States
The BMES/ AIChE Co–op Career fair will be held in the Curry Student Center Ballroom from 10am – 2:30pm on Wednesday, February 12th. This is a great opportunity to meet employers hiring for the Fall 2020 cycle, especially employers you may have already applied to for co-op.

Basic Soldering
2020-02-11 13:00 - 13:30, 2020-02-05 13:00 - 13:30 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to soldering. Learn how to solder two wires together and apply heat-shrink tubing using a Weller soldering station and an SMD Rework station
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Qing Qu
2020-02-11 11:30 - 12:30
Location: ISEC 138
Title: Learning Low-complexity Models from the Data – Geometry, Optimization, and Applications
Abstract:
Today we are collecting a massive amount of data in forms of images and videos, that we want to learn from the data themselves to extract useful information and to make predictions. The data are high-dimensional, but often possess certain low-dimensional structures (e.g., sparsity). However, learning these low-complexity models often results in highly nonconvex optimization problems, where in the past our understandings of solving them were very limited. In the worst case, optimizing a nonconvex problem is NP-hard.
In this talk, we present global nonconvex optimization theory and guaranteed algorithms for efficient learning of low-complexity models from high-dimensional data. For several important problems in imaging science (i.e., sparse blind deconvolution) and representation learning (i.e., convolutional/overcomplete dictionary learning), we show that the underlying symmetry and low-complexity structures avoid the worst-case scenarios, leading to benign global geometric properties of the nonconvex optimization landscapes. In particular, for sparse blind deconvolution that aims to jointly learn the underlying physical model and sparse signals from convolutions, the geometric intuitions lead to efficient nonconvex algorithms, with linear convergence to target solutions. Moreover, we extended our geometric analysis to convolutional dictionary learning based on its similarity with overcomplete dictionary learning, providing the first global algorithmic guarantees for both problems. Finally, we demonstrate our methods on several important applications in scientific discovery and draw connections to learning deep neural networks.
This talk is mainly based on one paper appeared in NeurIPS’19 (spotlight), and two papers accepted by ICLR’20 (one oral).
Bio:
Qing Qu is a Moore-Sloan data science fellow at the Center for Data Science, New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in Electrical Engineering in Oct. 2018. He received his B.Eng. from Tsinghua University in Jul. 2011, and an M.Sc.from the Johns Hopkins University in Dec. 2012, both in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He interned at U.S. Army Research Laboratory in 2012 and Microsoft Research in 2016, respectively. His research interest lies at the intersection of the foundation of data science, machine learning, numerical optimization, and signal/image processing. His research focuses on developing computational methods for learning low-complexity models/structures from high dimensional data, leveraging tools from machine learning, numerical optimization, and high dimensional probability/geometry. He is also interested in applying these data-driven methods to various engineering problems in imaging sciences, scientific discovery, and healthcare. He is the recipient of Best Student Paper Award at SPARS’15 (with Ju Sun and John Wright), and the recipient of Microsoft Ph.D. Fellowship 2016-2018 in machine learning.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Webinar
2020-02-11 10:00 - 11:00
The webinar will feature a talk by Program Director Masoud Salehi, who will present information on the Electrical and Computer Engineering program (ECE) at Northeastern University. Located in the booming technology, medical, and research hub of Boston, Northeastern ‘s Department of ECE provides excellent research and learning opportunities for its students and alumni. The ECE faculty and graduate students conduct world-class research in the field. With over 65 full-time and affiliated faculty members, ECE is home to experts in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to information infrastructure and security, health and biomedical applications of electrical engineering, brain-computer interface, nanotechnology, and nanomaterials.
WEBINAR DETAILS:
Topic: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Date: Tuesday, February 11
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 AM EST
WEBINAR INSTRUCTIONS
RSVP and let us know if you will attend.

Networking @ Night 2020: BU NSBE x SHPE
2020-02-10 19:00 - 21:00
BU’s Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the BU’s National Society of Black Engineers are co-hosting this upcoming Spring: Networking at Night 2020. Recruiters, that include those from Northeastern and students from various industry partners, graduate schools, and research groups, will come together for an encouraging and informative evening for our membership. The event is open to the greater engineering community, and attendees will also have the opportunity to network with a broad talent pool. The event will take place at Boston University’s Howard Thurman Center.
Register Now

Intro to Manufacturing
2020-02-10 19:00 - 20:30 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Design for Manufacturing workshop lead by M4
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Xiaolin Xu
2020-02-10 11:00 - 12:00
Location: ISEC 138
Ensuring Hardware Cybersecurity from a Cross-Layer Perspective
Abstract:
The rapid development of the semiconductor industry has significantly increased the number, complexity, and applicability of commercial electronics over the past few decades. As a result, the security and assurance of hardware are playing a critical role in the cyberscape of modern society, such as national defense, healthcare, transportation, and finances. Hardware has been assumed to be trustworthy and reliable “by default.” However, this assumption is no longer true, with an increasing number of attacks reported on the hardware. In practice, the globalization of semiconductor business poses grave risks from untrusted fabrication and distribution, where Trojans insertion, IP cloning, and counterfeits may happen. In this talk, I will present our research efforts dedicated to the hardware-oriented cybersecurity from a cross-layer perspective. Specifically, I will introduce two frameworks that we built to address these problems in the supply chain and embedded system layers. I will first present an identification technique based on the physical disorder of integrated circuitry that enables the authentication of electronic devices. Then, I will present a hardware IP protection framework based on logic locking and circuit editing, which can effectively mitigate the vulnerabilities from untrusted off-shore foundries and supply chains. At the end of the talk, I will briefly present our scientific achievements in advancing the hardware security in the system and architecture layers, as well as proposing a future research agenda of this emerging area.
Bio:
Dr. Xiaolin Xu is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Prior to joining UIC, he spent two years at Post-doc Fellow at the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) research center at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2016 after he got the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2008 and 2011, respectively. His research interests span hardware security and trust, FPGA, IoT security, VLSI, computer architecture, embedded system, and hardware-software co-design for modern computing systems. He is also interested in developing IoT devices and cloud-computing infrastructures with particular emphasis on security, high-performance, privacy protection.

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Webinar (MIE)
2020-02-10 10:00 - 11:00
The webinar will feature a talk by Program Director Marilyn Minus, who will present information on the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) program at Northeastern University. The MIE Department offers comprehensive research and educational programs for MS and PhD students in traditional mechanical and industrial engineering disciplines, as well as applied programs. Our cutting-edge and vibrant Doctoral Programs (PhD) include Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Interdisciplinary Engineering. Our Masters Programs (MS) consists of Mechanical Engineering with concentrations in Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanics and Design, Mechatronic, and Thermofluids Engineering, Energy Systems, Engineering Management, as well as Industrial Engineering with a concentration in Operations Research. Recently added to the department are Robotics, Energy Systems (including Academic Link), and Engineering Management. We offer a leading professional MS program in Engineering Management. This concentration allows for a degree that meets a wide variety of personal needs and industry goals.
WEBINAR DETAILS
Topic: Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Date: Monday, February 10
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 AM EST
From these 60-minute info sessions, you’ll walk away with an understanding of:

The Mechanical & Industrial Engineering program in general, including electives, core courses, and program options
Specific parameters for admissions
How to pursue a paid 4-8 month industry co-op as part of your degree plan

WEBINAR INSTRUCTIONS: Visit to register and to get oriented to the webinar software, otherwise, login 10 minutes before the session begins.
RSVP and let us know if you will attend.

Team Leadership Step-by-Step: Hire the Right People
2020-02-07 13:00 - 13:30 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
20 minute lessons at 1 pm (almost) every Friday, open to all!
Questions? Contact Ted at ted.johnson@northeastern.edu
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Kris Dorsey
2020-02-07 11:00 - 12:00
Location: ISEC 136
It’s a bit of a stretch: selective, flexible mechanical sensors towards VR, healthcare, and robotics applications
Abstract:
In this talk, Kris Dorsey will discuss work related to mechanically “programming” soft sensors to respond to a particular mechanical deformation. Advances in 3D-printing, soft polymer fabrication, and other rapid fabrication processes have made the vision of conformal and stretchable mechanical sensors for wearable devices and soft robotics possible. One limitation of these sensors is their low selectivity between different modes of mechanical deformation, such as strain, torsion, and bending.
She will present recent work in enhancing the selectivity of stretchable sensors. By using non-planar sensor morphology to bias the sensor towards a particular deformation mode, the selectivity of the sensor can be enhanced. She will discuss projects including designing a sensor with electrically-tunable sensitivity and the fabrication origami-patterned, deformation-selective flexible sensors.

Bio:
Kris Dorsey is an assistant professor of engineering in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College. She was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego. Dr. Dorsey graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and earned her Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Olin College.
She founded The MicroSMITHie Lab at Smith College to investigate micro- and miniature-scale sensor design and to prepare undergraduates for graduate study in engineering. Her current research interests include strain-stable, hyperelastic components, novel morphology soft sensors, and sensors for soft robots and wearable devices.
Dr. Dorsey has co-authored several publications on hyperelastic strain sensors, novel soft lithography processes, and the stability of gas chemical sensors. In 2019, she received the NSF CAREER award.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar: Fan Zhang
2020-02-07 11:00 | 140 ISEC, 360 Huntington Ave, 140 ISEC, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Location: ISEC 140
Persistent Fault Attacks in Practice
Abstract:
Persistent fault analysis (PFA) was proposed at CHES 2018 as a novel fault analysis technique. It was shown to completely defeat standard redundancy based countermeasure against fault analysis. The original PFA was demonstrated with rowhammer-based fault injections. However whether such an analysis can be applied to traditional microcontrollers, together with its attack difficulty in practice, has not been investigated. In this talk, for the first time, a persistent fault attack is conducted on an unprotected AES algorithm implemented on ATmega163L microcontroller. Several critical challenges are coped with our new improvements. This talk will introduce the PFA at both theoretical and practical levels.
Bio:
Dr. Fan Zhang graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, USA. He is currently an associate professor in the College of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, China. He was a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore and currently he is a visiting professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. His major research interest is the general cybersecurity which includes hardware security, system security, network security and more. His special expertise lies in the domain of side-channel attacks (SCA) and countermeasures, fault attacks, cryptography, and computer architecture. He is the Program Chair of PROOFS, TPC member of DAC, AsiaCCS, AsianHOST, ASHES, COSADE, FDTC, Inscrypt, and the Associate Editor of IEEE Access, Cybersecurity. He has more than 60 publications in international conferences and journals such as CHES, DATE, COSADE, FDTC, TIFS, TPDS.

Global Health in a Changing World: People, Planet, and Technology
2020-02-07 07:30 - 2020-02-08 18:30 | East Village, 17th floor, 360 Huntington Ave, East Village 17th floor, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
GHCW: People, Planet, and Technology is a joint venture that spans across the Northeastern University Global Campus. We invite anyone from any campus, organization, age, and discipline to attend the conference for free.
The face of global health is undeniably changing. GHCW is a seamlessly integrated research and experiential learning forum that explores this changing landscape in a nuanced, multifaceted way. Attendees will develop new research and industry relationships, learn how to advocate for change on a local, national, and international level, and ultimately be prepared to take meaningful steps in their own lives.
Join us for plentary pillars, poster sessions, research sessions, tech talks, networking sessions, and workshops. View full schedule and live stream.

Vacuum Degassing Chamber
2020-02-06 13:00 - 13:30 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
This workshop is an introduction to the vacuum degassing chamber. Learn how to operate the vacuum pump and hold the chamber at a particular pressure
Sign up using this link!
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!

SWE Product Development Workshop
2020-02-05 20:00 - 21:00 | 010 Hayden Hall, 010 Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, United States
Lead by Generate members where SWE members will be broken into teams and tasked through the product development cycle. Ending in a discussion.
View the Sherman Center Calendar for more events!
