News
May 16, 2013
How nanotechnology could keep your heart healthy
Since the heart is such a delicate and critical organ, clinicians usually opt not to intervene with the dead cells that remain after a heart attack or cardiac disease. “But we think that all heart attacks deserve some kind of treatment because it puts so much stress on the rest of the heart,” said Thomas Webster, […]
May 15, 2013
Matthias Ruth sounds a wake-up call for cities
Matthias Ruth, professor of public policy and civil and environmental engineering Ruth, a leader in the emerging field of ecological economics, has shown that adopting proactive “green” policies is the most cost-effective way to sustain coastal cities against the long-term impact of climate change. In a seminal study, “Climate’s Long-term Impacts on Metro Boston,” Ruth […]
May 15, 2013
April Gu pioneers new water testing technology
April Gu, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering April Gu is pioneering new technologies to quickly and effectively identify toxic substances in drinking water in both developed and developing nations. Scientists suspect there are hundreds or even thousands of chemicals in a single glass of water. But existing water-quality tests—even in first-world countries—are often […]
May 15, 2013
Ming Wang sees smoother roads ahead
Ming Wang, professor of civil and environmental engineering Wang and his team are integrating patented sensing technology and Big Data analytics in a breakthrough project that could transform any delivery fleet, such as the U.S. Postal Service’s, into a fully automated, real-time road inspection system. Under Wang’s lead, the federally funded VOTERS (Versatile Onboard Traffic […]
May 15, 2013
Jerome Hajjar reimagines yesterdays structures
Jerome Hajjar, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering Hurricane Sandy destroyed hundreds of buildings throughout New York and New Jersey. But hundreds more that withstood collapse were so severely damaged they had to be demolished. What if there were a way to design buildings to minimize the impact of such damage? At Northeastern’s […]
May 15, 2013
Auroop Ganguly pursues extreme weather trends
Auroop Ganguly, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering In the past, engineers were able to design electrical and water systems to handle weather extremes—heat waves, cold snaps, storms, and drought—simply by understanding and accounting for normal climate fluctuations. But climate change has made extreme events far less predictable in severity and frequency, making it […]
May 15, 2013
Ali Abur creates a more efficient grid
Ali Abur, professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering In the next decade, power generation from renewable energy is expected to grow significantly in the U.S. But those resources—solar and wind—are concentrated in the Southwest and the Great Plains, while most of the country’s electricity is consumed across time zones on the coasts. Matching […]
May 10, 2013
A silky spin on protective armor
At seven times the toughness of Kevlar, a silk produced by the Caerostris darwini spider of Madagascar is more robust than any other material—synthetic or natural. Most spider silks are about two times tougher than Kevlar, and have long been considered an intriguing alternative for bulletproof vests and other protective gear. There’s only one problem: producing spider […]