Leaders in Engineering
Jackie Isaacs, Deniz Erdogmus, and Kate Ziemer have been invited to speak at the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium.
Professor Isaacs works with the Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) and leads the research thrust on societal implications of nanotechnology. CHN is an NSF funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), a collaborative effort among several university partners (Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, the University of New Hampshire, and Michigan State University) and the Boston Museum of Science. The CHN was awarded one of two team Aspiration Awards at NU in 2005. Collaborations on societal implications have led to the formation of the Nanotechnology and Society Research Group. As the NU Education Coordinator for the CHN, Professor Isaacs helps to organize educational opportunities for students at various levels of education.
Professor Erdogmus directs the Cognitive Systems Laboratory (CSL). The CSL performs research at the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, and their applications to contemporary problems in biological sciences and biomedical engineering. Currently, their research focuses on brain computer interface design for assistive technologies and human machine interaction, image processing and target tracking for radiation therapy, and image segmentation for basic neuroscience research.
Dr. Kate Ziemer's research involves engineering surfaces in order to integrate wide bandgap semiconductors with functional and multi-functional oxides, organic molecules, and/or biomaterials. Dr. Ziemer's group, in the Interface Engineering Laboratory, takes advantage of the ultra-high vacuum environment to study, at the atomic level, the growth and processing of thin films and nanostructures. This "surface engineering" is based on the hypothesis that understanding the atomic-level interactions at a surface will lead to developing processes to create new materials and to effectively interface different materials for new functionalities. The tools used for growth and formation mechanism studies are solid source effusion cells, plasma sources, ion sources, atom sources, and the in-situ analysis tools of reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
The Frontiers of Engineering program brings together through 2-1/2 day meetings a select group of emerging engineering leaders from industry, academe, and government labs to discuss pioneering technical work and leading edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. The goal of the meetings is to introduce these outstanding engineers (ages 30-45) to each other, and through this interaction facilitate collaboration in engineering, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across fields, and establishment of contacts among the next generation of engineering leaders.
Learn about the symposium here.