Northeastern University College of Engineering

Introducing NUBridge: Accelerating Your Career Readiness
2020-09-01 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
In this Info Session, we will take one hour to walk through about our new program NUBridge which is an agile, market-driven development program hosted at our Silicon Valley regional campus.
Designed and delivered by Silicon Valley leaders from companies including Google & Salesforce, NUBridge is a 12-week non-academic, non-credit program to help you take charge of your job search and market yourself effectively. Our goal is to foster a community and support structure for job-seekers and recent graduates who are looking to bring certainty back into their careers, adapt to changing markets, and take control of their future.
Join us on September 1st from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.PDT for an online info session with Naeem Zafar, Faculty Director, to learn about NUBridge and how it can help you become employer-ready in just a few months.
Learn more and Register Here

SPARC (Seminars to Promote ALERT Research and Collaboration) Webinar Series
2020-09-02 11:30 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
The ALERT (Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats) Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence at Northeastern University is launching a free online summer series titled, SPARC (Seminars to Promote ALERT Research and Collaboration). SPARC will give attendees a preview of ALERT’s work with industry and government stakeholders. More details can be viewed on the ALERT webpage: http://www.northeastern.edu/alert/sparc
The sixth webinar of the SPARC series will be held on September 2nd from 11:30am – 12:00pm EDT. The presentation titled, “Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS): One Stop Shopping For All Detection Needs” will be presented by Professor Jimmie Oxley of the University of Rhode Island and Dr. Miriam Fico of Smiths Detection. This webinar features the work and collaboration of Professor Jimmie Oxley and Dr. Miriam Fico as they discuss a solution suitable for the detection of both organic explosives and inorganic explosives.
If you are interested in attending this webinar, please reach out to Tiffany Lam at t.lam@northeastern.edu for registration information.

Bioengineering Works in Progress Student Seminar Series
2020-09-11 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
This virtual seminar series is an opportunity for Bioengineering graduate students to present their work. Presenters are listed below:
Frederick Sebastian from the Amini lab
Title: “Computational Approaches to Assess Irides in Glaucomatous Eyes”
Chia-Ming Wang from the Carrier lab
Title: “Development of a gut-microbiome mesofluidic device allowing facile visualization of intestinal mucosal barrier interface”
Please email Danielle at d.freshnock@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

Galante Engineering Business Program - Virtual Event
2020-09-17 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
To start up or not? And if not, what?
Join the Galante Engineering Business Program on Thursday, September 17th from 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM for a presentation by Dr. George Zavaliagkos, current VP of Technology at Sense and former Speech Platform Senior Manager at Amazon. George earned his Ph.D. in Speech Recognition at Northeastern University and now works on using machine learning for energy disaggregation and home monitoring at Sense. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A. This is a virtual event and it will be held over Zoom. Please RSVP.

COE Clubs/Organizations Fair
2020-09-17 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
The College of Engineering Clubs/Organizations Fair takes place on Thursday, September 17, 2020, from 6:30pm-7:30pm. Find out what student groups are all about & meet some of the student leaders involved! Learn more about the groups participating and how to join!

Bioengineering Works in Progress Student Seminar Series
2020-09-18 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
This virtual seminar series is an opportunity for Bioengineering graduate students to present their research. The first presenter is Nathaniel Silvia from the Dai lab. Title: “Characterizing glioblastoma pathology by in vitro modeling”. The second presenter is Tengfei He from the Bajpayee lab. Title: “Multi-arm Avidin Nano-construct for Intra-cartilage Delivery of Small Molecule Drugs”. Please email Danielle at d.freshnock@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

Introduction to Citation Management Tools
2020-09-22 12:00 - 12:45 (America/New_York)
Start your fall 2020 research off on the right foot with Snell Library’s series of online workshops about citation management! Learn the basics of tools to help you manage citations for yourself or your research group.
Register here: bit.ly/citationmgmtworkshops

BioE Seminar: The Journey of a Serial Entrepreneur by Dr. Amar Sawhney
2020-09-22 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York)
Entering startups and entrepreneurship can be intimidating as a fresh graduate, hear from accomplished Dr. Amar Sawhney about success in start-ups and biotech. Currently, President and CEO of Instylla Inc., his resume includes Founder and CEO of Confluent Surgical (acquired by Covidien), Chairman of MarketRx (acquired by Cognizant), Technology Founder of Focal Inc. (acquired by Genzyme), Chairman of Augmenix, and much more. Dr. Sawhney has founded nine companies and was among those named a Champion of Change by the Obama Administration. Learn from the stories and advice of a notable “Immigrant Innovator” on being a serial entrepreneur.

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 992 9731 3601

Passcode: [REDACTED]

BioE Seminar Series Presents: Ryan Koppes
2020-09-23 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Ryan Koppes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
“Engineering Innervated Organ Systems”
ABSTRACT:
Microphysiological systems (MPS) hold the potential to provide benchtop models to investigate fundamental biology and disease while reducing the need for animal models. However, many conventional in vitro models fail to fully capture the complex cell-cell interactions, 3D microenvironments, structural organization, or vascularization of multicellular organ systems. A key criterion for replicating physiologically relevant architectures in a dish is the ability to compartmentalize discrete cell populations, extracellular matrix compositions, and/or mechanical properties, without meaningfully restricting auto- and paracrine signaling. Traditionally, compartmentalization within MPS has relied on the use of posts or microtunnels fabricated in silicon-based materials, often requiring expensive lithographic capabilities. Further, these methods are commonly limited to confining discrete tissues in the x-y plane. Towards overcoming these limitations, we have developed a new ‘cut & assemble’ manufacturing technique. We have utilized these new tools to establish a number of MPS platforms to model the cardiovascular system. As part of this talk, I will highlight the potential of this new technology and how we have applied it to model the heart and the adrenal medulla at the benchtop. Further, through our work, I will demonstrate how important the inclusion of neuron populations are for recapitulating organ function.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Ryan Koppes has been an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University since 2015, where he has founded the Laboratory for Neuromodulation and Neuromuscular Repair (LNNR). Ryan received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York in 2013. His doctoral research with Dr. David Corr focused on soft musculoskeletal biomechanics and tissue engineering. In 2013, Dr. Koppes joined the Bioelectronics Laboratory with Dr. Polina Anikeeva in Material Science and Engineering at MIT, where he worked as a Translational Fellow on neural interface technology utilizing a multimaterial thermal drawing process and optogenetics. He was the recipient of the NIH R21 Trailblazer in 2017, is a co-investigator on a 2019 AHA Innovative Project Award, an NSF I-Corps, and is a co-investigator on a 2020 NIH BRAIN Initiative R01 between Northeastern, UCLA, and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Koppes also enjoys teaching Chemical Engineering Experimental Design Lab II (Unit Operations II) for senior engineers, as well as mentoring undergraduates in the laboratory.
Please email Elizabeth Chesley at e.chesley@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL DAY: Cornell University
2020-09-23 16:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
The Graduate School of Engineering is happy to announce their participation in Cornell University’s Graduate and Professional School Day. During this virtual event, students will have the opportunity to meet representatives and speak about their graduate programs of interest.

6th Annual Energy Conference
2020-09-24 - 2020-09-25
Northeastern University – Energy Systems Society is happy to announce it’s 6th Annual Energy Conference 2020. This year, the conference will be completely virtual and will take place on 24th and 25th September 2020.
In today’s uncertain environment and challenged conditions, the process of information and education exchange should not stop. We at the Energy Systems Society, believe that every pandemic, every calamity is an opportunity for innovation. With the ultimate aim of educational enrichment, we bring you the 6th Annual Northeastern University Energy Conference 2020.
The Conference will consist of 2 Key-note Speakers, 6-panel discussions comprising a Technology, Business, and Policy track, one-panel discussion focused on Career Development, and one completely virtual expo-area.
Visit our website and register for the conference.

Bioengineering Works in Progress Student Seminar Series
2020-09-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
This virtual seminar series is an opportunity for Bioengineering graduate students to present their research. The first presenter is Fernando Ivich from the Niedre & Clark lab. Title: “Development of an Optical Instrument for Diffuse Sensing of Fluorescence-Based Circulating Sensors for Human in vivo Drug Monitoring”. The second presenter is Suzanne Stasiak from the Parameswaran lab. Title: “Elucidating force transfer pathways in smooth muscle cell ensembles”. Please email Danielle at d.freshnock@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

ChE Seminar: "Engineering the Production of Medicinal Natural Products from Plant Cell Cultures"
2020-09-30 12:00 - 12:30 (America/New_York)
ChE Seminar Series Presents:

Carolyn W.T. Lee-Parsons, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering Department; Chemistry & Chemical Biology Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
“Engineering the Production of Medicinal Natural Products from Plant Cell Cultures”
Abstract:
Many plant-derived pharmaceuticals are currently supplied by extracting the plant material. Due to the slow growth rates or low product concentrations in plants, finding an alternative route for supplying these critical drugs is necessary. The overall vision of this research is to enhance the production of critical plant-derived pharmaceutical compounds through genetically engineered plant cell cultures, specifically using the production of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) from cultures of Catharanthus roseus as a model system. The C. roseus plant produces several highly valued pharmaceuticals, including the anti-cancer drugs vincristine and vinblastine. The high cost and need for these pharmaceuticals motivate our research to better understand their biosynthesis and ultimately overproduce these compounds using C. roseus cultures. In this talk, I will present our research in exploring how TIA biosynthesis is regulated and how this knowledge leads to developing synthetic biology strategies for manipulating TIA production.
Biography:
Carolyn W.T. Lee-Parsons is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University. She earned her B.S. from the University of Kansas and her Ph.D. from Cornell University, both in Chemical Engineering. As an undergraduate, she modeled reaction networks with Prof. Bala Subramaniam and investigated oil and gas recovery strategies at ARCO Oil and Gas. Growing up in the midst of wheat fields in Kansas, she was always intrigued by plants and specifically medicines from plants. As a doctoral student, she investigated bioprocess strategies for increasing the production of medicines from plant cell cultures with Prof. Michael L. Shuler.
Her current research area is in plant metabolic engineering and plant synthetic biology. Her team of graduate and undergraduate students focus on understanding how plants regulate the production of specialized metabolites and on developing and applying tools for engineering the production of pharmaceutical compounds and biofuels from plant tissue cultures and microalgae cultures. Carolyn seeks to engage majors across disciplines in understanding the fundamentals underlying life in living organisms and translating this understanding to developing solutions to society’s grand challenges. She contributed to the revision of the widely used textbook for bioprocess engineering (Bioprocess Engineering: Basic Concepts by M.L. Shuler, F. Kargi, and M. DeLisa). For her teaching and research mentoring, she was awarded the Martin Essigmann Outstanding Teaching Award and the University Excellence in Teaching Award at Northeastern University.
Please email Alyssa Ramsey at a.ramsey@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

Effectively Navigating Challenging Conversations
2020-09-30 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Would you like to gain respect, achieve your goals, and improve your professional relationships? What if this were possible by adjusting the way you communicate?
Click here to register for this virtual workshop!
Challenging conversations are high-risk, sometimes emotional discussions between individuals with differing opinions. This workshop will help graduate students recognize when challenging conversations are happening, or need to happen, and prepare them with strategies to navigate them productively. This includes being able to give both positive and negative feedback as well as receive it from colleagues and advisors, in order to effectively meet personal, academic, and professional goals.
This interactive workshop, facilitated by COE CommLab Fellows, will offer background on navigating challenging conversations, and provide time for participants to work together in smaller groups to analyze, assess, process, and practice frequently encountered scenarios. There will also be time for participants to discuss their own challenging conversations and make new strategies.
This workshop is designed and facilitated by the COE CommLab and co-sponsored by the Office of the Graduate Obudsperson, Employer Engagement and Career Design, and the PhD Network.

BioE Seminar Series Presents: Tara Deans
2020-09-30 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Tara Deans, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
“Using synthetic biology to engineer therapeutic devices”
ABSTRACT:
Synthetic biology has transformed how cells can be reprogrammed, providing a means to reliably and predictably control cell behavior with the assembly of genetic parts into more complex gene circuits. Using these approaches, we are programming stem cells with novel genetic tools to control genes and pathways that result in changes in stem cell fate decisions, in addition to reprogramming terminally differentiated cells to function as unique therapeutic diagnostic and delivery vehicles.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Tara Deans received her PhD from Boston University in Biomedical Engineering. Following her postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, she became an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah. Currently, Dr. Deans runs an applied mammalian synthetic biology laboratory where her lab focuses on building novel genetic tools to study the mechanisms of stem cell differentiation for the purpose of directing cell fate decisions. Recently, Dr. Deans received four prestigious awards to support this area of research: the NSF CAREER Award, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, the NIH Trailblazer Award, and an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. In addition to her research, Dr. Deans was named a STEM Ambassador in the STEM Ambassador Program (STEMAP) at the University of Utah to engage underrepresented groups in STEM fields.
Please email Elizabeth Chesley at e.chesley@northeastern.edu for the seminar link.

ChE Seminar: "Engineering Innervated Organ Systems"
2020-09-30 12:30 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
ChE Seminar Series Presents:
Ryan Koppes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
“Engineering Innervated Organ Systems”
Abstract:
Microphysiological systems (MPS) hold the potential to provide benchtop models to investigate fundamental biology and disease while reducing the need for animal models. However, many conventional in vitro models fail to fully capture the complex cell-cell interactions, 3D microenvironments, structural organization, or vascularization of multicellular organ systems. A key criterion for replicating physiologically relevant architectures in a dish is the ability to compartmentalize discrete cell populations, extracellular matrix compositions, and/or mechanical properties, without meaningfully restricting auto- and paracrine signaling. Traditionally, compartmentalization within MPS has relied on the use of posts or microtunnels fabricated in silicon-based materials, often requiring expensive lithographic capabilities. Further, these methods are commonly limited to confining discrete tissues in the x-y plane. Towards overcoming these limitations, we have developed a new ‘cut & assemble’ manufacturing technique. We have utilized these new tools to establish a number of MPS platforms to model the cardiovascular system. As part of this talk, I will highlight the potential of this new technology and how we have applied it to model the heart and the adrenal medulla at the benchtop. Further, through our work, I will demonstrate how important the inclusion of neuron populations are for recapitulating organ function.
Biography:
Dr. Ryan Koppes has been an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University since 2015, where he has founded the Laboratory for Neuromodulation and Neuromuscular Repair (LNNR). Ryan received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York in 2013. His doctoral research with Dr. David Corr focused on soft musculoskeletal biomechanics and tissue engineering. In 2013, Dr. Koppes joined the Bioelectronics Laboratory with Dr. Polina Anikeeva in Material Science and Engineering at MIT, where he worked as a Translational Fellow on neural interface technology utilizing a multimaterial thermal drawing process and optogenetics. He was the recipient of the NIH R21 Trailblazer in 2017, is a co-investigator on a 2019 AHA Innovative Project Award, an NSF I-Corps, and is a co-investigator on a 2020 NIH BRAIN Initiative R01 between Northeastern, UCLA, and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Koppes also enjoys teaching Chemical Engineering Experimental Design Lab II (Unit Operations II) for senior engineers, as well as mentoring undergraduates in the laboratory.
Please email Alyssa Ramsey at a.ramsey@northeastern.edu for the link to the seminar.

Cornell University Graduate and Professional School Fair
2020-09-30 16:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
Join the Graduate Admissions team at the Cornell Graduate Professional School Day. They will be available to answer your admissions and program questions. This event will take place on September 30, 2020 from 4pm-7pm virtually.
