Fall 2026 AJC Merit Research Scholars
Several engineering and science students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of Northeastern’s AJC Merit Research Scholarship, which will fund a co-op in the laboratory of a Northeastern University STEM faculty member.
AJC Merit Research Scholar: Rosalyn Beckwith, COE’27, Mechanical Engineering/Physics
Mentor: Toyoko Orimoto, COS, Physics
Rosalyn Beckwith is a Mechanical Engineering and Physics student who will work with Professor Toyoko Orimoto, contributing to experimental research in particle physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Rosalyn’s work will focus on muon collider R&D, including studies of proton bunch compression and muon production for a proposed test facility at Brookhaven’s Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. Then this fall at CERN, she will contribute to Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector upgrade efforts for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, with work involving detector electronics and timing systems for future high-energy physics experiments.
Rosalyn developed her interest in particle physics through two co-op experiences at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where she supported cryogenic systems for accelerator systems and magnet technology research. She further explored this interest during a study abroad program in South Korea, studying quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. Building on these experiences, Rosalyn hopes to contribute to future accelerator technologies while preparing to pursue a PhD in particle physics after graduation. Outside of academics, she enjoys practicing yoga and attending live music events.
AJC Merit Research Scholar: Megan Farrington, COE’27, Electrical Engineering/Physics
Mentor: Kin Chung Fong, COS, Physics
Megan Farrington is a fourth-year Electrical Engineering and Physics student who will work in the lab of Dr. Kin Chung Fong, investigating new operating regimes of SQUID magnetometers. These devices utilize the unique electrical properties of superconductors to measure extremely small magnetic fields. Altering their bias conditions could yield order-of-magnitude improvements in applications such as dark matter detection.
Megan’s interest in the intersection of superconductivity and magnetics began from her first lab experience in the X-platform Magnonics Laboratory. She has since engaged in a multitude of research projects ranging from quantum confinement in nanoparticles to the electronic effects of chirality. Most recently, she earned a PEAK Summit fellowship to design a superconducting parametric isolator, a part necessary for scalable quantum computing. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering focused on superconducting device design.
Outside of her research, Megan is an active member of the Northeastern University Mars Rover Team, where she writes and tests high-level software to control the prototype rover at international competitions. When not on campus, you can usually find her curled up with a good book.
AJC Merit Research Scholar: Jay Frohwirth, Khoury’28, Computer Science/Linguistics
Mentor: Megan Hofmann, Khoury, Computer Science
Jay Frohwirth is a third-year Computer Science and Linguistics major who will be working at the Accessible Creative Technologies (ACT) Lab under Professor Megan Hofmann at Khoury College. Here, Jay will design and develop programming languages for automatic knitting machines. Jay has been interested in the design of programming languages since his exposure to the Racket language, which was formerly taught in Northeastern’s introductory computer science courses. Before beginning his development work with the ACT Lab, Jay spent a semester researching various programming languages and implementing his own as part of Northeastern’s Programming Languages course.
Over the course of his co-op, Jay hopes to gain more hands-on experience implementing interpreters and compilers, and to contribute to the growing body of work related to knitting software. After this co-op, Jay wants to seek out more work related to programming language research and development.
Outside of class and research, Jay is a member of Northeastern’s origami club and enjoys playing Go with his friends.
AJC Merit Research Scholar: Vignan Kamarthi, Khoury’27, Computer Science/Business Administration
Mentor: Raymond Fu, COE, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vignan Kamarthi will spend this summer and fall as an AJC Merit Research Scholar co-op in the SMILE Lab of Prof. Yun Raymond Fu, working in the AI computer vision and machine learning space. Here, he is developing his own line of research at the intersection of video understanding, foundation models, and embodied intelligence. A third-year combined major in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, concurrently pursuing a Master’s in Finance at Northeastern, Vignan‘s interest in this work grew out of a long-standing fascination with how machines can build internal models of the world, the same question that drives modern research on world models, foundation model development, and embodied agents.
Prior to this co-op, he co-authored two peer-reviewed publications, ICMI 2025 on multimodal physiological signal classification and ASEE 2026 on multi-agent intelligence systems, and works as an Embedded Systems Engineer at Boston Engineering on satellite communications subsystems. Vignan hopes this co-op will sharpen his trajectory toward a PhD in the AI/CV/ML space, where he intends to continue building toward general, embodied machine intelligence. Outside the lab, Vignan is an avid home cook, a history and economics buff, and a former personal trainer.