Fall 2021 ENGineer magazine by Boston University College of Engineering

FALL 2021 THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

FIELDS OF VIEW ENG FACULTY FROM ACROSS DISCIPLINES COLLABORATE TO SEE HOW CELLS WORK

INSIDE MACHINE LEARNING CONCENTRATION, GREEN WINDOWS

contents

ENG BY THE NUMBERS

FELLOWS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

RANK IN RESEARCH EXPENDITURES PER FACULTY MEMBER ($843,000)

COVER STORY

AN INSIDE LOOK

(U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT)

RANK AMONG ALL 210 ENGINEERING GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN THE US

RANK AMONG PRIVATE GRADUATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMS IN THE US

(U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT)

125

TENURED & TENURE-TRACK FACULTY MEMBERS

RESEARCH CENTERS AND INSTITUTES

20,277 LIVING ALUMNI

2 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CIARA CROCKER; COURTESY OF JOHN LOFTUS; COURTESY OF FIREFLY AEROSPACE; COURTESY OF RAO MULPURI

RESEARCHERS COMBINE THEIR EXPERTISE TO VISUALIZE CELLS AT WORK

PHOTOGRAPH BUILDING BY ICONS FROM NOUN PROJECT. LEFT: SHASHANK SINGH; RIGHT: BAYU WIBOWO

ENGINEER MAGAZINE FALL 2021

DEPARTMENTS 3 Upfront 23 Research

20 SEEING GREEN

ALUM HELPS BUILDINGS REACH NET ZERO

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY CIARA CROCKER

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contents

ENG BY THE NUMBERS

FELLOWS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

RANK IN RESEARCH EXPENDITURES PER FACULTY MEMBER ($843,000)

COVER STORY

AN INSIDE LOOK

(U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT)

RANK AMONG ALL 210 ENGINEERING GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN THE US

RANK AMONG PRIVATE GRADUATE ENGINEERING PROGRAMS IN THE US

(U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT)

125

TENURED & TENURE-TRACK FACULTY MEMBERS

RESEARCH CENTERS AND INSTITUTES

20,277 LIVING ALUMNI

2 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CIARA CROCKER; COURTESY OF JOHN LOFTUS; COURTESY OF FIREFLY AEROSPACE; COURTESY OF RAO MULPURI

RESEARCHERS COMBINE THEIR EXPERTISE TO VISUALIZE CELLS AT WORK

PHOTOGRAPH BUILDING BY ICONS FROM NOUN PROJECT. LEFT: SHASHANK SINGH; RIGHT: BAYU WIBOWO

ENGINEER MAGAZINE FALL 2021

DEPARTMENTS 3 Upfront 23 Research

20 SEEING GREEN

ALUM HELPS BUILDINGS REACH NET ZERO

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY CIARA CROCKER

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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upfront

message from the dean

A year and a half ago, as the COVID-19 pandemic came crashing down and universities everywhere transformed themselves overnight to teaching remotely, the popular press made a bold prediction: higher education would forever embrace this more remote learning format. Most students would not need—or want—to go back to traditional and expensive residential education. Higher education’s cost to students would drop precipitously. It was the end of higher education as we know it. Given the option to return to campus and attend classes—in person or remotely— from their dorms or apartments that fall, many, but not all, students did. Our freshman class, typically around 400 students, enrolled just 340 last year. Graduate enrollments were down as well, partly because many foreign students were unable to travel to the United States. But, then something strange began to happen. As the prospect of effective vaccines emerged, applications started to come in. A few months later, as the vaccines

2 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

College Launches Machine Learning Concentration SEQUENCE WILL PREPARE STUDENTS FOR A RAPIDLY GROWING MARKET

ILLUSTRATION BY METAMORWORKS/iSTOCK

BY DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

putational analysis coming together to make significant advances in understanding how the brain works so we can address major healthcare issues, especially those related to degenerative brain disease and mental health. The power of this convergent approach is obvious. I believe that our college of engineering is uniquely positioned to pursue this strategy. Most engineering schools, regardless of their size, have numerous, siloed departments that effectively inhibit, if not actively discourage, faculty from collaborating across disciplines for both research and education. But our long-standing culture of cross-disciplinary collaboration well positions us to take it to the next level. For example, as part of our annual faculty searches this year, we established three positions that are not tied to any single academic department, but rather to the six convergent research areas identified in our plan—in this case, two of them: intelligent, autonomous, and secure systems; and synthetic biology. There was no shortage of amazing candidates eager to collaborate with researchers in disciplines outside their own to solve difficult, important problems that really matter to society. One candidate explicitly said that she selected BU out of several options because it conveyed an environment that truly embraced, encouraged and rewarded collaborations that amplify research impact on societally critical challenges. About a third of all future faculty searches will be conducted along these lines. The experience of the last year and a half is proof that making collaboration the cornerstone of our college is, indeed, the way to create a new kind of engineer for the future. By aspiring to become a place where great minds do not think alike, we embrace the power of diversity of discipline, creativity, interests, expertise and people to accelerate convergent and lasting solutions to the most important technical challenges we face. Solving society’s pressing problems demands it.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CONOR DOHERTY

Together Again

began rolling out, the question was whether interest in on-campus education would return to prepandemic levels or stay low. The misguided predictions seemed prescient at the time, but we found out they could not have been more wrong. Interest in a residential educational experience did not just return to prepandemic levels, it blew right past them! By mid-spring of 2021, we started to see that vaccine rollouts were going to be successful and that anyone who wanted the shots could get them before the school year began. We could see also that we would most likely return to—almost—business as usual. By May 1, even though we had targeted a usual freshman class size, we had 575 deposits for the fall, by far the largest in the college’s history and clear evidence that the dire predictions were, indeed, wrong. Applications to our doctoral program also saw a large increase. The talk that students would not want an in-person, residential experience was over in an instant. In the months before the pandemic, we had been developing a new strategic plan to guide the college’s course for the next 10 years. It envisions creating a new kind of engineer, one who works collaboratively with people of different backgrounds to solve some of society’s most pressing challenges. Once we saw that students and faculty were ready to return to normal, we refocused on developing the plan. It quickly became clear that our approach was the right one. Applicants want to become Societal Engineers, and they realize they cannot accomplish this via remote courses; they need the full residential educational experience. People were coming back to be with each other because no individual—or Zoom meeting—can change society. We need the creative spark that comes from combining expertise to move society forward. This issue’s cover story illustrates one example of that: researchers from neuro-engineering, artificial intelligence, photonics and optical systems, and com-

ot long ago, speech-processing software was pretty much limited to a phone robot asking a caller to speak the number “1,” says Professor and ECE Department Chair W. Clem Karl. “Now, we routinely ask Alexa questions or tell Google Maps where we want to go just by speaking.” That’s the result of an explosion in machine learning, says Karl, and “we are just starting to mine its capabilities.” To prepare students to design datadriven learning and decision-making

BORN GLOBAL

algorithms across a rapidly growing range of fields, the College of Engineering is offering a concentration in machine learning. Available to all ENG undergraduates, the concentration will equip students with the theory, algorithms, and software and hardware skills and tools they’ll need to create and optimize machine learning algorithms and to curate, visualize and analyze data in a variety of industries. “In my conversations with industry leaders of all sectors who hire engineers, they identify machine learning as perhaps the most desirable and ubiquitous skill they need in their incoming workforce, especially the intersection of machine learning with technological systems,” says College of Engineering Dean Kenneth Lutchen. “With this new concentration, our graduates will have an instant advantage as they enter the workforce.” Like other ENG concentrations, machine learning will be noted on students’ official transcripts. But it is not a minor, which consists of at least 20 credits. The concentration is a sequence of three courses, for a total of 12 credits, plus an experiential component. Students across all

BME LEADER

departments can take these courses from their electives without needing additional courses to graduate. This should allow as many students as possible to gain exposure to machine learning concepts. And that accessibility is intentional, say the faculty involved. Producing a greater cohort of AI-savvy ENG graduates anticipates the enormous market for data scientists in the coming years. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projections, the demand for computer and information research scientists will grow by 15 percent by the end of this decade. The BLS says that rate is “much faster than the average for all occupations. Job prospects are expected to be excellent.” “As engineers, we take a complex physical world and abstract it away,” says Karl. “In other words, we model it, and use those models as the basis to create things. That, to me, is what engineering is. Before the age of computers, modeling was limited to what you could do with the human head and a pad of paper.” Now, with greater computing power and the collection of colossal amounts of data, says Karl, “We’re able to bring a new E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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upfront

message from the dean

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College Launches Machine Learning Concentration SEQUENCE WILL PREPARE STUDENTS FOR A RAPIDLY GROWING MARKET

ILLUSTRATION BY METAMORWORKS/iSTOCK

BY DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

PHOTOGRAPH BY CONOR DOHERTY

Together Again

BORN GLOBAL

BME LEADER

BU.EDU/ENG

upfront

Careers can also be made in audio and visual analysis, imaging, and speech recognition...among other areas. “If you think that is something that will play an important role in your career trajectory, you should consider this concentration,” says Ishwar. kind of tool into the engineering toolbox, to do more complex models in those applications where the analytic models aren’t well understood or are not simple. These data-driven methods are a huge boon.” Graduates capable of integrating data science methods like machine learning with high-impact products will be in demand in all manner of fields. “There’s a vast set of applications,” says Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE). Ishwar’s efforts in coordinating the creation of the machine learning concentration earned him an ENG 4 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Faculty Service Award, announced during Commencement proceedings. For example, “Medical analytics is a huge domain where machine learning is beginning to play an important role,” says Ishwar. “You have tons of data from advances in wearables about people with different medical conditions—demographic information, age, preexisting conditions, vital signs, symptoms—and then the question is: Can we diagnose a disease or predict with some confidence whether a patient is likely to improve with a certain treatment? Can we guide, in real time, optimal therapies or dosing based on these data? With machine learning, you can train algorithms to discover patterns that could predict success of treatments.” Careers can also be made of machine learning in audio and visual analysis, imaging, speech recognition, natural language processing, recommendation systems, autonomous vehicles, animation and gaming, and city functioning, among other areas. “Basically, any application that has a lot of data with complex relationships between many variables,” says Ishwar. “If you think that is something that will play an important role in your career trajectory, you should consider this concentration.” “Machine learning is so cross-cutting, all engineers can benefit from learning it,” says Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs Solomon Eisenberg (BME, ECE). The concentration, then, fits with ENG’s approach to undergraduate education. “We don’t have a lot of small silos. Today’s problems require much fewer silos and much more cross-disciplinary exposure and integration.” The concentration consists of one required course—either Introduction to Machine Learning or Learning from Data— followed by two courses drawn from three pillars: Models, Learning, and Inference; Optimization, Algorithms, and Programming; or Applications. “We structured the concentration this way so that you get an overview in the required course, and then can dig deeper in the pillar courses,” explains Ishwar. Models, Learning, and Inference allows students to “get into the nuts and bolts of the mathematics of how the algorithms work,” says Ishwar. Optimization, Algorithms, and Programming delves into

software and hardware methods to make training and decision-making efficient—to make learning algorithms run faster on large data sets with less power, memory or data transfer. The Applications pillar covers a variety of industry applications such as image/video processing and computational vision, robotics, software radios, and computational and systems biology. “Artificial intelligence, machine learning—these are going to be core competencies for all engineers who want to be impactful moving forward,” says Karl. “It’s just the common language we’re going to need if we want to move beyond last-generation solutions to problems.”

Beetle-Inspired “BioTower” Takes First Prize in Born Global Competition

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY

ECE Department Chair W. Clem Karl

STUDENTS APPLY BIOMIMICRY TO THE WORLD’S SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES

W “Artificial intelligence, machine learning— these are going to be core competencies for all engineers who want to be impactful moving forward,” says Karl.

PHOTOGRAPH IMAGE COURTESY BY OF JOHN LOFTUS

Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE)

hether harvesting fog for potable water, modeling electrolysis after photosynthesis or harnessing a river’s flow for electricity in a process called “flumenergy,” all three winning student teams in the second annual Born Global “Coopetition” for Innovation in Sustainability took inspiration from nature as they designed solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing challenges. Cosponsored by the College of Engineering and the BU Institute for Sustainable Energy, the interdisciplinary competition (hence, “coopetition”) was funded by Born Global, a foundation on a mission to dismantle the global economy’s “take, make and dispose” model and replace it with “a circular economy that is restorative and regenerative by design.” Kimberly Samaha (ENG’89) is CEO of Born Global. The student teams aimed to propose a technically efficacious, economically feasible device or system designed to meet one of the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals, such as ending hunger or ensuring equitable access to clean water. To promote cross-disciplinary collaboration, teams had to include at least one ENG student and at least one student from another BU school or college, and they were encouraged to craft solutions that relied on biomimicry. The $5,000 first prize went to a project that drew upon spider webs, fungi and the Namibian desert beetle in its design of a “Bio-Tower” that would collect water from the air for rural villages in Morocco. “Fog Harvesting for Sustainable Water Manage-

ment in Low-Resource Communities” was the proposal of John Loftus (ENG’21), Kairav Maniar (ENG’21) and Jessica Schueler (Sargent’21). Water insecurity threatens 884 million people around the world, especially in developing countries. “The western portion of Morocco is very arid, with very low rainfall,” says Maniar. “People in rural villages—and it tends to be women who are tasked with this—have to walk miles to get water.” But Morocco does have the Atlantic Ocean on its western shores. “The winds carry over suspended water molecules,” notes Maniar. If those molecules could be captured early in the morning, the water collected would not need to be desalinated or otherwise treated. As it happens, the beetle native to the Namib Desert, farther down the coast in southern Africa, takes advantage of those very winds, capturing water with hydrophilic bumps on its back. Fog-harvesting mesh inspired by the beetle has been designed, but in demonstration projects so far, large sheets of the mesh have been set up miles from any town, failing to truly solve the problem. The BU team’s innovation is to wrap sheets of the mesh around a tower six meters tall, using hydrophobic nylon rope to guide the condensation droplets down into a collection tank. In a network inspired by underground fungi, several of the towers would be placed in and around a community for easier collection. The project would empower women by engaging them in constructing the towers and by freeing up the time they normally spend hiking to faraway taps. The second-place team won $2,500 for their proposal, “The Artificial Leaf.” The team included Julia Hua (ENG’24), Sunni Lin (ENG’24) and Miku Makino (CAS’24). Third prize, $1,500, went to Michelle Lin (ENG’21), Charles McGinn (ENG’23) and Anastasiia Sviridenko (Questrom’21). Their proposal, “Flumenergy,” imagined an underwater renewable generator that uses the constant flow of a river to provide electricity. “It was very generous of Dr. Samaha to give of her money and time to be involved in this event,” says Professor Emily Ryan (ME, MSE), who sat on the judging panel with Samaha. “It’s a great opportunity for students to learn about something new that’s going to have an impact.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

The BU team’s innovation is to wrap sheets of the mesh around a tower six meters tall, using hydrophobic nylon rope to guide the condensation droplets down into a collection tank.

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Beetle-Inspired “BioTower” Takes First Prize in Born Global Competition

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY

ECE Department Chair W. Clem Karl

STUDENTS APPLY BIOMIMICRY TO THE WORLD’S SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES

W “Artificial intelligence, machine learning— these are going to be core competencies for all engineers who want to be impactful moving forward,” says Karl.

PHOTOGRAPH IMAGE COURTESY BY OF JOHN LOFTUS

Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE)

The BU team’s innovation is to wrap sheets of the mesh around a tower six meters tall, using hydrophobic nylon rope to guide the condensation droplets down into a collection tank.

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upfront Doug Densmore (ECE, BME)

Joyce Wong (BME, MSE)

From 2016 to 2018, Wong was cochair of AIMBE Women, in which capacity she brought together federal science officials for conversations on fighting bias and harassment in academia.

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PHOTOGRAPHY, TOP: JACKIE RICCIARDI; MIDDLE: MIKE PECCI

rofessor Joyce Wong (BME, MSE) has been named president-elect of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), one of the foremost biomedical engineering societies in the country. AIMBE boasts a strong track record of advocacy, says Wong. She hopes to steer the organization to greater emphasis on equality and diversity. Her twin goals are to leverage the power of biomedical engineering to address underfunded areas of research, such as sickle cell and kidney diseases, which disproportionately affect African Americans; and to open up the biomedical field itself to a range of perspectives and ideas. “I feel very passionate about addressing systemic racism, unconscious bias and sexual harassment in the academy,” says

interfaces modulate fundamental cellular processes. She is also a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she recently earned the Society for Biomaterials’ Clemson Award for Basic Research. Serendipitously, one of Wong’s first acts as president-elect was to announce the induction of three BU colleagues into the College of Fellows (see opposite page). Wong is not the first AIMBE president with a BU connection. College of Engineering Dean and BME Professor Kenneth Lutchen served from 2011 to 2012; late BME chair Herb Voigt served from 2006 to 2007; and Wong will succeed current president Tejal Desai, a former BME associate professor. “This election shows the high esteem in which members of our community hold the BU BME department,” says White, who currently serves as president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, which represents the profession as a whole. “Joyce and I are honored that our community trusts us to lead these two critical organizations during this challenging but exciting time for biomedical engineers throughout North America and the world.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVE GREEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Joyce Wong Named President-Elect of AIMBE

Wong. “These are all things that prevent people from entering our field, when we need everyone on deck—all talent—to be able to solve the big problems. So if there are any institutional barriers to entry, then we all suffer.” Professor John White, chair of the BME department, says, “Joyce is the new president-elect of AIMBE because the best of the best within our profession recognize her as a world-class leader and visionary. It is an immense honor and a great responsibility. The fact that Joyce was willing to TK take on this challenging volunteer effort says a great deal about her dedication to our profession. I think she will be particularly effective in efforts related to social justice and representation.” From 2016 to 2018, Wong was cochair of AIMBE Women, in which capacity she brought together federal science officials for conversations on fighting bias and harassment in academia. And recently, as chair of AIMBE’s prestigious College of Fellows, she organized a virtual panel on how to combat racial health disparities. Wong was elected to the AIMBE College of Fellows in 2009 on the basis of her innovative development of biomaterials to probe how structure, material properties and composition of cell-biomaterial

Three ENG Faculty Named AIMBE Fellows hree ENG faculty members have been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Associate Professor Doug Densmore (ECE, BME), Associate Professor Mo Khalil (BME) and Professor Katherine Zhang (ME, BME, MSE) were formally inducted into the prestigious body in March. The institute’s College of Fellows represents the top two percent of engineers in those fields. Densmore was selected for outstanding contributions to bio-design automation in synthetic biology. From his background in electrical engineering, he brings an expertise in computer-aided design to the development of synthetic biological parts, for example, turning cells into circuits, or automating liquid-handling robots to assemble DNA. For one of his recent grants, from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Densmore is engineering living systems as smart biosensors. Densmore is a principal investigator and founding member of BU’s Biological Design Center. “It is an honor particularly for someone with a PhD in electrical engineering,” Densmore says of his selection as an AIMBE fellow. “Really shows how diverse and interdisciplinary biomedical research has become.” The AIMBE College of Fellows elected Mo Khalil for outstanding contributions to our understanding and engineering of genetic circuits that control cellular behaviors. Like Densmore, Khalil works in synthetic biology and is a founding member of the Biological Design Center. Khalil creates living colonies—for example, of bacterial cells and yeast—that can be programmed to perform complex tasks. In one of his projects, supported by the US Department of Defense’s prestigious

Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, Khalil is researching epigenetic memory, the process by which cells pass on information to the next generation of cells. His findings will inform how he programs synthetic cells. “It’s truly an honor—and frankly a surprise—to be selected to join this illustrious fellowship of medical and biological engineers,” says Khalil. “I am delighted that there is increasing excitement and recognition in the field of synthetic biology, and in the tremendous potential synthetic biology holds to address grand challenges in human health.”

Mo Khalil (BME)

The institute’s College of Fellows represents the top two percent of engineers in those fields. Katherine Zhang was selected for outstanding contributions to the understanding of how multiscale extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics and mechanobiology drive vascular physiology and pathophysiology. The ECM is the network of composite material in the space outside cells. In particular, Zhang studies the ECM in blood vessels. Combining imaging experiments and computer modeling, she sheds light on the complex interplay at work in the structure and mechanics of arteries, gaining insights into cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Zhang is also associate chair for graduate programs and a past Clare Boothe Luce Professor. She has received the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Young Faculty Award and the NSF CAREER Award, and is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. On becoming an AIMBE fellow, Zhang says, “I feel honored to be among the most accomplished and distinguished medical and biological engineers.”

Katherine Zhang (ME, BME, MSE)

—COLBI EDMONDS, PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

upfront Doug Densmore (ECE, BME)

Joyce Wong (BME, MSE)

From 2016 to 2018, Wong was cochair of AIMBE Women, in which capacity she brought together federal science officials for conversations on fighting bias and harassment in academia.

6 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

PHOTOGRAPHY, TOP: JACKIE RICCIARDI; MIDDLE: MIKE PECCI

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVE GREEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Joyce Wong Named President-Elect of AIMBE

Mo Khalil (BME)

Katherine Zhang (ME, BME, MSE)

—COLBI EDMONDS, PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

upfront

Paschalidis Shares Health Data Findings in DeLisi Lecture

Paschalidis makes the case that data-driven reasoning is “the backbone of engineering systems.”

A Science Trifecta for Laura Lewis SLOAN, PEW, MCKNIGHT: SLEEP RESEARCHER EARNS THREE MAJOR RESEARCH AWARDS IN FIVE MONTHS

SAYS DATA-DRIVEN REASONING OCCURS EVEN AT THE CELLULAR LEVEL

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The study shows quantitatively that these variables are strong predictors of a COVID-positive patient’s likelihood of being hospitalized, admitted to intensive care and placed on a mechanical ventilator. It also shows their chances of dying are higher. “The mortality model is extremely accurate,” said Paschalidis. Paschalidis, the director of the Center Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE) for Information & Systems Engineering, has authored more than 220 peer-reviewed Building on his previous work on diastudies. He is an Institute of Electrical betes and other chronic diseases, Paschaand Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow, lidis in the past year has collaborated on founding editor in chief of IEEE Transseveral studies around the globe predictactions on Control of Network Systems, ing outcomes for COVID-19 patients. One and a past National Science Foundation of them hits quite close to home: a study CAREER Award winner. of all 7,102 patients who tested positive The DeLisi Award is named for Dean for the disease at Boston Medical Center Emeritus and Metcalf Professor of (BMC), the teaching hospital for the BU Science and Engineering Charles DeLisi School of Medicine, in 2020. (BME). A pioneer in theoretical and “What’s interesting about this data set mathematical immunology, DeLisi led the is that it includes a lot of information about Human Genome Project and founded and social determinants of health,” Paschalidis chaired BU’s Bioinformatics Program, said. “BMC patients are screened for their the first such program in the nation. need for housing, need for food, for transHe currently directs the Biomolecular portation, education, their ability to pay for Systems Laboratory. — PATRICK L. KENNEDY utilities and other social needs.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT NOBLES

Charles DeLisi (BME)

PHOTOGRAPH BY PHOTOGRAPH, LEFT: CYDNEY SCOTT; RIGHT, VERNON DOUCETTE

rofessor Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, BME, SE) discussed data-driven reasoning—which he calls “the backbone of engineering systems”—and predictive health analytics as he delivered the Charles DeLisi Distinguished Lecture in May to an online audience of about 100 members of the Boston University community. The DeLisi Award and Lecture honors a senior faculty member engaged in outstanding scholarship. Paschalidis has used data to improve efficiency in transportation systems, supply chains and other areas for a quarter of a century, and in recent years, he has applied his expertise to the healthcare system. In his DeLisi lecture, titled “Data Science and Optimization Adventures in Computational Biology and Medicine,” he shared highlights of his wide-ranging, high-impact research, including a new study on developing models to predict hospitalizations for COVID-19. Paschalidis explained that a kind of data-driven reasoning occurs even at the cellular level. “We can think of the cell as a chemical factory,” he said. “Within the cell, many chemical reactions take place, and these reactions produce all the molecules needed to sustain life—so, for the cell to multiply and thrive.” As that tiny factory, “the cell has to make decisions about what items and the quantities of those items that need to be produced,” said Paschalidis, who with colleagues has managed to reverse-engineer that production process in order to predict metabolic activity. Insights gained thereby “may be interesting if we want to change this chemical factory for our own purposes,” Paschalidis said, “and today we have that ability.”

ssistant Professor Laura Lewis (BME) has earned a slew of major research awards in 2021 for her groundbreaking research into the complex neural circuits that govern sleep. “It’s incredible to have this kind of foundation support that lets you do new and sometimes pretty risky science,” says Lewis. “It also points to the importance of sleep as a topic. Sleep is so fundamental to brain health and the functioning of our brains, yet it’s still a mysterious topic.” In February, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selected Lewis for a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for early-career scientists. In June, the Pew Charitable Trusts—a nongovernmental organization that promotes the power of knowledge in order to solve today’s most challenging problems— named Lewis one of 22 early-career researchers to join the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. “This is a big deal,” says BME Chair Professor John White. “It’s a high-prestige foundation looking to support unusually high-impact research. They’re not looking for incremental work; they’re looking for difference-making work.” Moreover, Lewis and four other members of this year’s Pew Biomedical Scholars class were chosen to form a subset of the group, the Kathryn W. Davis Aging Brain Scholars. The initiative is aimed at increasing our understanding of how the brain changes as we age, which is closely tied to how sleep patterns change over the course of one’s life. “That special status is a sign of how impactful Laura’s work is going to be, and how readily it’s going to apply to the science on aging,” says White.

Also in June, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience selected Lewis as one of seven neuroscientists to receive the 2021 McKnight Scholar Award, granted to young scientists who are in the early stages of establishing their own independent laboratories and research careers and who have demonstrated a commitment to neuroscience. Lewis will receive $75,000 per year for three years. Through her research, Lewis hopes to gain a deeper understanding of how sleep promotes brain health and why sleep is disrupted in neurological and psychiatric disorders. One revolutionary aspect to Lewis’ research is how she has improved upon common brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). “She’s been pushing these techniques to get remarkable data that everybody thought was impossible to get,” says White. Previously, fMRI imaging was considered too slow to pick up on second-tosecond neural activity, says White. “But

Laura has figured out how to double or triple the speed at which she can measure these signals. It’s hard to do technically, but it really makes a difference. I think that’s why she’s getting all these awards.” In addition to the Sloan, Pew and McKnight honors, Lewis has also been recognized with the inaugural 1907 Trailblazer Award and a Searle Scholars Program grant— and she’s only been at Boston University for two years. “It’s amazing, she’s absolutely a star,” says White. “I feel very lucky,” says Lewis. “It reflects that this is the perfect time to delve into all the complexities of what’s happening in your brain during sleep.” So, does Lewis herself make it a point to catch sufficient Zs? “Ironically,” says Lewis, “sleep researchers often don’t get great sleep because we do so many experiments at night.” The foundation funding, she adds, will help Lewis and her students share that workload. — PATRICK L. KENNEDY

Laura Lewis (BME)

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Paschalidis Shares Health Data Findings in DeLisi Lecture

Paschalidis makes the case that data-driven reasoning is “the backbone of engineering systems.”

A Science Trifecta for Laura Lewis SLOAN, PEW, MCKNIGHT: SLEEP RESEARCHER EARNS THREE MAJOR RESEARCH AWARDS IN FIVE MONTHS

SAYS DATA-DRIVEN REASONING OCCURS EVEN AT THE CELLULAR LEVEL

8 BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT NOBLES

Charles DeLisi (BME)

PHOTOGRAPH BY PHOTOGRAPH, LEFT: CYDNEY SCOTT; RIGHT, VERNON DOUCETTE

Laura Lewis (BME)

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10 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Anna Thornton Thornton (ME) (ME)

ack in the thick of the pandemic, face mask suppliers were caught flat-footed. Professor Andre Sharon (MSE, ME) asked himself, “Who’s in the best position to solve this shortage? Engineers!” Sharon, director of the Fraunhofer USA Center for Manufacturing Innovation at Boston University, got to work building a machine that could produce 2,000 masks an hour. The professor boxed up and delivered thousands of the masks to homeless shelters around town. How did the machine turn out so many masks so quickly? Sharon explains how his invention—which he is using as a case study in his classes this fall—differs from other systems. Big factories use intermittent motion, or indexing, machines, meaning stops and starts between steps; and they require different machines to attach the ear loops. The Fraunhofer apparatus, by contrast, is an all-in-one, continuous motion machine. “We’re able to do that ear loop

Do you have a good sense of how much this thing is going to cost? “Often, if you look at a failed product, it was a fine product but it couldn’t be produced at a price point that the customer was willing to pay. So, have you thought through the true cost? Teams need to estimate their cost of goods early and often to make sure they are on the right track.” Thornton’s book is attracting interest from the hardware start-up community and academic programs, and she’s received a slew of invitations to speak at accelerators across the country. “It’s giving me an opportunity to advocate for this kind of class, and also to get some visibility for BU’s Product Design and Manufacturing master’s program,” Thornton says. “BU’s a really great hub for hardware development, with the BUild Lab and EPIC. We’ve got these incredible resources, where you can design a really cool product—and then you actually have to make it.”—PATRICK L. KENNEDY

Tinker Contest Tackles COVID Pet Peeves

A PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

t last, after all the long, painful hours of toil and trial—the ideation, the research, the design, the assembly, the testing—you have in your hands a prototype of your product. And it works! Now it’s a simple matter of finding a factory to replicate this gizmo, and then tallying the sales. Not so fast, says Professor of the Practice Anna Thornton (ME). After 20 years of consulting for companies large and small, Thornton can tell you that product development teams at the prototype stage consistently imagine they’re within sight of the finish line, when in fact they’re in the eighth mile of a marathon. Thornton, who has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in manufacturing and product realization at ENG for four years, could never find a textbook that collated all the lessons she’s learned about bringing a product to market. So, she wrote one. Product Realization: Going from One to a Million (Wiley, February 2021) is a readable, no-nonsense guide to every step of the product launch process, peppered with cautionary tales and success stories from the real world. “There’s a real gap in the way students are trained,” says Thornton. “Most courses in product design are focused on the exciting front end. Design thinking, concept into a prototype—all important, but in my experience, most of the really hard problems companies face are in that transition from prototype to market, in getting to where you can produce it reliably and repeatedly.” Hardware entrepreneurs must be ready to wade through a morass of specification documents, quality plans, bills of materials, cash flow analysis and legal and regulatory requirements.

Engineers to the Rescue

PRODUCT REALIZATION COVER: COURTESY OF WILEY

Launching a Product? She Wrote the Book on It.

Product developers at all experience levels can benefit from reading Product Realization, but Thornton shares a few key points here, in the form of questions that teams should be able to answer. Is your technology actually ready? “I think people overestimate how ready they are,” says Thornton. “I get a lot of questions about outsourcing production from students, and my response is, ‘Lean back a little; you’re over the tips of your skis. Let’s make sure your product is ready for production.’ I always think of that quote from Scotty in Star Trek: ‘I can’t change the laws of physics!’” Do you have a comprehensive specification document? “Not just how the product is going to function, but have you thought through how it’s going to be used? I often use the example of a wireless mouse. This thing is going to bounce around in my briefcase. It sits in a cold car, it sits in a hot car, it gets coffee spilled on it. We often focus on the core function; however, we need to define what it means for the product to work for thousands of people in a thousand different ways.” Have you designed for manufacturability? “Can your designs be built? Have you thought through the manufacturing process? CAD (computer-aided design) and additive manufacturing give teams a false sense of security about manufacturing. Just because you can CAD it and print it doesn’t mean that you can make it on mass production equipment.”

re you six feet away from that person? For much of the pandemic, that question was more than academic, but few of us can tell without a tape measure. One ENG student created a kind of laser pointer that answers that question, and it took top honors in the spring 2021 COVID-19 Solution Design Competition—followed by a hat that emits a shrill beep when you try to touch your face, and a doorway device that checks for proper mask usage. The competition was sponsored by the

Professor Andre Sharon’s machine churned out 2,000 masks in an hour.

feeding and ultrasonic welding on the fly in a continuous fashion, and before the material is even separated into blanks, while it’s still just coming off the rolls as pleated materials,” says Sharon. “The whole welding assembly moves at the same speed as the mask material—there’s no relative motion between the mask and the welder.”

That’s how the Societal Engineer rises to meet a challenge, Sharon says. “Whenever there’s any real problem in the world, whether it’s a pandemic or a lack of clean water after a hurricane, in the end it’s engineers and scientists that need to step up and come up with solutions.”

Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Laboratory (a.k.a. “Tinker Lab”), a makerspace where students are free to pursue self-guided, extracurricular engineering projects. The Tinker Lab holds a variety of design competitions; the focus of last semester’s contest was “trying to solve one of your COVID-induced pet peeves.” Submissions were judged on their creativity, design, usefulness, documentation and build quality. PhD student Joseph Hall earned first prize ($300) with the Isolaser, a modified laser pointer that can be attached to a smartphone. Its double-barreled red diode lasers intersect six feet away: if you see two red dots on someone, back away until the dots converge. Second prize ($200) went to Mikayla Crowley (ENG’23) and Rebecca Janes (ENG’23) for the COVID-19 Contact Alert Hat, intended to break our ingrained

face-touching habits. The hat uses an Ultrasonic Distance Sensor and a piezo capsule to flash and beep at the approach of an errant finger or hand. Axel S. Toro (ENG’24) and Jose Batlle (ENG’24) finished third ($100) with Maskon. With a Raspberry Pi, recycled materials such as plywood, and “some AI magic,” the pair built a device to check that users are wearing masks correctly. The Maskon could be posted at the entrance to a building or room. Flashing red lights mean you need to adjust your mask or put one on (an attached box holds a supply of freebies). Flashing green, you’re good to go. Importantly, even the winning submissions included frank self-assessments and outlined ways to improve the product. The exercise, like the competition as a whole, can only make them better engineers.

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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upfront

10 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Anna Thornton Thornton (ME) (ME)

Tinker Contest Tackles COVID Pet Peeves

A PHOTOGRAPH BY CYDNEY SCOTT

Engineers to the Rescue

PRODUCT REALIZATION COVER: COURTESY OF WILEY

Launching a Product? She Wrote the Book on It.

Professor Andre Sharon’s machine churned out 2,000 masks in an hour.

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY

— PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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A live feed of the view through an ENG-built, laser-aided microscope shows a cell membrane in a sample designed to mimic skin tissue.

The latest iteration of David Boas’ wearable brain imaging system (shown here on research fellow Parya Farzam) is mobile and can be worn outdoors.

ENG RESEARCHERS FROM ACROSS DISCIPLINES ARE JOINING FORCES TO PRODUCE IMAGES AND INSIGHTS INTO HOW NEURONS AND OTHER CELLS WORK.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY

AN INSIDE

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BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY PHOTOGRAPHS BY CIARA CROCKER

LOOK E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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A live feed of the view through an ENG-built, laser-aided microscope shows a cell membrane in a sample designed to mimic skin tissue.

The latest iteration of David Boas’ wearable brain imaging system (shown here on research fellow Parya Farzam) is mobile and can be worn outdoors.

ENG RESEARCHERS FROM ACROSS DISCIPLINES ARE JOINING FORCES TO PRODUCE IMAGES AND INSIGHTS INTO HOW NEURONS AND OTHER CELLS WORK.

12 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

PHOTOGRAPH BY

AN INSIDE

PHOTOGRAPH BY

BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY PHOTOGRAPHS BY CIARA CROCKER

LOOK E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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From left, grad students Sudiksha Sridhar and Rebecca Mount, Associate Professor Xue Han (BME) and Associate Professor Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE) collaborated on a neuron imaging project with implications for PTSD sufferers.

LEARNING TO FORGET A few rusty nails littered a path near the home of Midnight. A smart black Labrador, she knew the way was dangerous, and she avoided it. Then the path was cleared. Still, it took Midnight six months before she could bring herself to set paw on the path. “There was nothing I could do to convince her,” says Associate Professor Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE), the dog’s owner. “She just remembered, ‘not safe.’” In a way, military veterans and others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) struggle with the same problem: it can be hard to dissociate certain settings PHOTOGRAPH BY

n electrical engineer, a biomedical engineer and a physicist walk into a lab. Wait—make that an electrical engineer, two biomedical engineers, a materials science engineer and a physicist. And, so far, that’s just two people—Michelle Sander (ECE, BME, MSE) and Allyson Sgro (BME, CAS Physics). They’re followed by colleagues from the Photonics Center, the Biological Design Center and even Australia’s Swinburne University. This team has assembled to develop a custom-built microscope that can image a cell membrane in its natural environment, without extensively preparing (and often compromising) the sample as many other methods do. “We have experts in optics, electrical engineering, cell engineering,” says Sander. “The project spans disciplines while it spans continents. And it’s been very enriching for the PhD students involved, as they’ve each learned a lot about the other fields.” This is how it’s done at Boston University College of Engineering. Its departments and divisions—Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Systems Engineering—don’t exist in silos. In one particularly fruitful area—imaging— researchers across the college are bringing together expertise in biomedicine, optics and data science to see what’s going on inside our bodies. Whether they’re imaging cells, lighting up groups of neurons, or measuring the blood flow in regions of the brain, they are advancing our understanding about our inner workings. Professor David Boas (BME, ECE) could be describing any number of projects when he says, of his own work on a wearable brain imaging cap, “BU is really strong in photonics and neuroscience and the data sciences, and this project draws on all three.” Moreover, Boas says, the devices he and colleagues are developing will deepen our knowledge of how humans interact. “And society is social interaction,” he says. “So if we can better understand how the brain functions in real-life settings, hopefully we will understand how to make society a better place.”

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or sounds—say, a large, wide-open space or fireworks—from certain dangers they’ve experienced—say, sniper fire. Nazer is one of several ENG researchers collaborating on studies of the hippocampus, the region of the brain that is critical for learning and memory in both animals and humans. Their work has implications not only for PTSD, but also dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, which are associated with hippocampal atrophy. In recent years, Associate Professor Xue Han (BME) has made a name for herself as a pioneer in optogenetics and optical imaging. Using pulses of light to control and observe the behavior of different neurons, she has discovered new types of brain signals. “We image hundreds and hundreds of neurons simultaneously,” says Han, “and that actually creates a huge problem on the data analysis front.” That problem led Han to link up with Nazer, an expert in data science and high-dimensional statistics.

“ I’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO SAY, ‘I PERSONALLY HELPED THIS ALZHEIMER’S PATIENT,’” SAYS NAZER, “BUT I FEEL I’M HELPING XUE’S LAB DEVELOP TOOLS TOWARD SOMEDAY MAKING THAT IMPACT.”

“For me,” says Nazer, “dealing with information and data processing, what’s interesting is trying to ground a mathematical problem in some kind of useful engineering scenario.” Along with Professor Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE), the pair earned a Dean’s Catalyst Award, and two National Science Foundation grants aimed at leveraging strides in biomedicine and machine learning to advance knowledge of how the brain works. This year, Han and Nazer and ENG colleagues published a study that documents mice learning and unlearning a behavior. First, the E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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“ I’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO SAY, ‘I PERSONALLY HELPED THIS ALZHEIMER’S PATIENT,’” SAYS NAZER, “BUT I FEEL I’M HELPING XUE’S LAB DEVELOP TOOLS TOWARD SOMEDAY MAKING THAT IMPACT.”

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TAKING IMAGING OUTSIDE THE LAB Boas has been pioneering wearable brain imaging systems for more than 20 years. He is the director of the Neurophotonics Center, the first facility of its kind in the US. The center assembles researchers across disciplines—from psychology and biology to health and rehabilitation sciences to electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering—to study the workings of the brain. With a $5.9 million National Institutes of Health grant, Boas and his team are developing a portable, wearable brain imaging cap. Resembling a swim cap studded with light-emitting sources and detectors, the device uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to track blood flow in the brain, thereby learning what neurons are activated during different activities. “When you shine a flashlight on your hand, you see red,” says Boas. “That’s because the light is being absorbed by hemoglobin. Light scatters through the scalp and skull in exactly the same way.” Light scatters, and it can also be absorbed, Boas explains. The probability of absorption is much lower than for scattering, and if the light used is near infrared, the probability for absorption is lower still. “As such, light scatters hundreds of times before it is absorbed,” says Boas. “This means light can scatter all the way through the scalp and skull into the brain and back and thus report to us the amount of hemoglobin in that part of the brain.” Boas combines fNIRS readings with EEG (electrical) signals to gain the richest possible data on the brain and how it changes moment to moment. Boas points out that a variety of BU faculty will use the system for their own studies—for example, Swathi Kiran at Sargent College, who normally uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to gauge the effectiveness of treatment on stroke survivors learning to speak again. This is the standard way to measure blood flow in the 16 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

brain, but it must be performed while the subject is lying very still in a big, noisy machine. “She’s excited about using the wearable system instead, because she’ll actually be able to measure the brain activity during the treatment regimen and see the impact on the brain on a day-to-day basis, in real-world settings,” Boas says. At the College of Arts & Sciences, David Somers will use the system in a study of how attention and perception work in the brains of people who are walking while looking at their phones. Assistant Professor Laura Lewis (BME) will be using it in her sleep studies. “She’s been looking at sleep with EEG and fMRI, but one thing she hasn’t been able to do is get her subjects to go into REM sleep in the fMRI machine,” says Boas. “So we’re starting to work with her to modify the technology and engineer a different cap that will be more comfortable on subjects, so they can sleep through the night.” “fMRI has taught us a lot about the functioning human brain,” says Boas, but it hasn’t taught us about the socially interacting human brain, and what really makes us human is that social interaction. The devices we’re now developing will allow us to better understand what makes us human.” NOT JUST A PRETTY PICTURE Not all ENG imaging pioneers study the brain, per se. Assistant Professor Lei Tian (ECE) has teamed up with several BU collaborators, bringing together expertise in machine learning, optics and biomedicine to develop a novel microscope technology that produces a richer set of cell data with the help of deep learning. “The ultimate goal is to understand cell functions and behaviors,” says Tian, who leads the Computational Imaging Systems Lab. “This is a building block of biology.” To see what’s going on inside a cell, researchers commonly tag it with fluorescent stains or dyes to identify subcellular structures. But the cell preparation is tedious, and most methods only allow researchers to view—at most—three colors at a time, limiting their picture of the cell’s components. Tian and his colleagues use digital labeling that can apply six virtual fluorescent labels, thereby viewing six aspects of a cell at the same time, such as its DNA, components, and stage in its life cycle. The group is among the first in cytometry (cell analysis) to use reflectance microscopy: Their custom-built microscope captures back-scattering signals that provide “exquisite sensitivity in detecting nanoscale structural changes,” Tian and coauthors write. And they are the first to apply deep learning to analyze the reflectance images. “Once you have these beautiful virtual images,

In her sleep studies, Associate Professor Laura Lewis (BME) will be using a wearable brain imaging system pioneered by Professor David Boas (BME, ECE).

IMPORTANTLY, SOME OF THE PARAMETERS THAT THE TIAN LAB’S METHOD CAN PICK UP ON WITH GREAT ACCURACY INCLUDE MARKERS FOR CANCER AND OTHER DISEASES THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO DETECT WITH CURRENT METHODS.

IMAGE COURTESY OF DAVID BOAS

mice heard a tone that was soon followed by an annoying puff of air in the eye. Using a technique called calcium imaging, the researchers identified the group of neurons in the hippocampus that was involved in learning to associate the tone with the puff. After several days of this training, the mice spent one additional day listening to the tone followed by nothing—no more puff. At first, the mice continued to blink, bracing themselves for the air puff. But, fairly quickly, they got used to the tone having no particular meaning. “They learned to forget,” says Han. “And that involved a different population of cells.” The study was the first to visualize a large-scale neural network to provide detailed, real-time evidence that two distinct populations of neurons are activated when the brain learns something, then learns to disregard it. A greater understanding of how that process works might eventually benefit patients with PTSD and anxiety disorders, as well as those with diseases related to memory loss and cognitive decline. “I’ll never be able to say, ‘I personally helped this Alzheimer’s patient,’” says Nazer, “but I feel I’m helping Xue’s lab develop tools toward someday making that impact.” “What I like the most about the neuroscience we do in our lab is that we’re using new techniques and new ways to collect data, and that means we need new ways to extract information from the data,” says BME PhD student Rebecca Mount, the lead author of the paper. “That lends itself really imperatively to collaboration across different types of science. We get to collaborate with data scientists and mathematicians. It was just really fun to all work together and absolutely necessary to have all of us on the team.”

David Boas’ wearable brain imaging system scatters near-infrared light into the brain and collects the light that bounces back as a way to determine where in the brain the blood is flowing—and, therefore, what neurons are firing.

In her sleep studies, Associate Professor Laura Lewis (BME) will be using a wearable brain imaging system pioneered by Professor David Boas (BME, ECE).

IMPORTANTLY, SOME OF THE PARAMETERS THAT THE TIAN LAB’S METHOD CAN PICK UP ON WITH GREAT ACCURACY INCLUDE MARKERS FOR CANCER AND OTHER DISEASES THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO DETECT WITH CURRENT METHODS.

IMAGE COURTESY OF DAVID BOAS

From left, Professor Shyamsunder Erramilli (CAS Physics, MSE, BME), Associate Professor Michelle Sander (ECE, BME, MSE) and Assistant Professor Allyson Sgro (BME, CAS Physics) developed a novel cell imaging technology.

SEEING ACROSS BOUNDARIES Like the Tian group’s work, the custom-built microscope of Sander, Sgro and their colleagues seeks to avoid the drawbacks of labeling cells with dyes, which can affect the cell’s health and behavior. As an alternative, Sander, Sgro, Shyamsunder Erramilli (CAS Physics, MSE, BME) and Australian biomedical engineer Sally McArthur have demonstrated the capabilities of a novel technology they call vibrational infrared photothermal amplitude and phase signal (VIPPS) imaging. Essentially, their method can detect the chemical composition as well as thermal barriers in and around cells—for example, the membranes of a cell and its nucleus—as a way to gain a clearer picture of the cells and their subcellular structures in tissue models mimicking a mouse or a human cell. “We have shown that if the cells are grown in an environment that is designed to copy the structure of our tissue—in this case, skin—then we can see these cells within that environment,” says McArthur. “This is really important as it shows that we can use this 18 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

“ IN MY OPINION, THE VALUE OF A TECHNOLOGY IS MEASURED MOSTLY BY THE IMPACT OF ITS DIRECT APPLICATION FOR ADVANCING SOCIETY AND HUMAN LIFE,” SAYS SAMOLIS.

technique to look at cells in their native environments and not just when they are isolated and attached to plastic in the lab.” Panagis Samolis (ENG’21), who worked on VIPPS as an ECE PhD student, offers a sentiment common to many such collaborative projects at ENG. “I have personally benefited significantly from these interdisciplinary and international collaborations,” says Samolis. “It is a unique and exciting opportunity for a student to have multiple

Researcher Panagis Samolis (ENG’21) operates the Sander group’s vibrational infrared photothermal amplitude and phase signal (VIPPS) imaging system.

IMAGE COURTESY OF LEI TIAN

to the untrained eye, it’s very difficult to assess whether they’re just beautiful or they’re actually biologically correct,” says Tian. “We showed that this new data-driven imaging cytometry technique is fairly accurate.” Importantly, some of the parameters that the Tian lab’s method can pick up on with great accuracy include markers for cancer and other diseases that are difficult to detect with current methods. The culture of collaboration at ENG has been critical to the project, says Tian, who earned ENG’s Early Career Excellence in Research Award in 2021. “It’s multidisciplinary,” says Tian of his team’s work. His collaborators include researchers not only in ENG’s ECE and BME departments but also the College of Arts & Sciences’ Biology, Philosophy and Neuroscience departments, and the School of Medicine. “I consider myself an instrument builder slash data science developer in the field of biomedical science and bioengineering,” he adds. “Deep learning is a big field, but you need domain expertise—in this case, biomedical microscopy—in order to accurately interpret the data. That has been the major contribution from my lab.”

In generating images of cell populations, Lei Tian’s team has devised a method for multiplexed digital staining, which means they can apply six different virtual fluorescent labels, thereby viewing six aspects of the cells at the same time—DNA, as well as endosome, actin, Golgi apparatus (“these are just names for the cell’s compartments,” says Tian), and proliferation and apoptosis, which means whether the cell is growing or multiplying, or dying.

experts to consult, work closely with other students beyond one’s cohort and learn from them. In addition, it allows you to broaden your perspective by getting glimpses into other cultures and education systems.” And, always, says Samolis, ENG researchers—whether or not they work in imaging—keep the bigger picture in mind. “In my opinion, the value of a technology is measured mostly by the impact of its direct application for advancing society and human life,” says Samolis. “Thus, having a better understanding of the societal needs can help guide new technologies in a targeted and beneficial way. Overall, the sharing of knowledge and resources is a vital aspect of scientific progress.” E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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“ IN MY OPINION, THE VALUE OF A TECHNOLOGY IS MEASURED MOSTLY BY THE IMPACT OF ITS DIRECT APPLICATION FOR ADVANCING SOCIETY AND HUMAN LIFE,” SAYS SAMOLIS.

Researcher Panagis Samolis (ENG’21) operates the Sander group’s vibrational infrared photothermal amplitude and phase signal (VIPPS) imaging system.

IMAGE COURTESY OF LEI TIAN

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CLEARLY SEEING A GREEN F UTURE

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A HIGH-TECH SMART WINDOWS COMPANY LED BY RAO MULPURI (ENG’92,’96) IS HELPING BUILDINGS REACH NET ZERO BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY

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View’s energy-saving smart windows have been installed in more than

500 75 million buildings, totaling

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF RAO MULPURI

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYDNEY SCOTT

square feet.

Right: Rao Mulpuri (ENG’92,’96), CEO of View, the leading maker of smart windows. Left: A Manhattan office tower clad in View’s smart windows.

e couldn’t live without the sun, but we don’t like it shining directly into our eyes. That’s why the Venetians invented blinds, and for centuries that had to be good enough. But in this, the 21st century, the technology exists to make windows themselves solve the glare problem—without blinds, drapes or any other clutter blocking sunlight and collecting dust. And it’s an ENG alum, Rao Mulpuri (MS’92, PhD’96), who is leading that charge, as CEO of View, the nation’s largest maker of just such high-tech smart windows. The company went public this year, inviting investors to help grow a 12-year-old business whose product—windows that automatically tint in response to the sun’s movement—is already reducing glare and lowering energy costs in more than 500 office towers, apartment buildings, hospitals and airports. “It’s very much an engineered product,” says Mulpuri, “but it doesn’t begin and end with the devices. It starts with a deep understanding of the human body.” In today’s sleek office and condo buildings, big windows let in lots of sunlight, which we need for our mental and physical health. But on their own, those windows act as giant magnifying glasses, baking the occupants. That leads not only to visual and thermal discomfort, but also to a heavy reliance on airconditioning, and use of blinds and shades that block the view and natural light. View’s electrochromic windows use nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to adjust the tint to meet the sun’s glare as it travels across the glass. The windows are coated with layers of high-tech, thin film about one-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. “The technology is incredibly complex,” says Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE), who has done some consulting work for View. “It’s a challenging materials problem. Essentially, you’re electrochemically driving ions back and forth—when you drive them in one direction, it gets tinted; when you drive them back in the opposite direction, it becomes transparent again.” The shading level can be programmed in advance, or it can be adjusted any time with a smartphone app. As a result, inhabitants keep the practical and psychological benefits of daylight, while lowering energy costs—and environmental impact—by up to 20 percent.

View’s electrochromic windows use nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to adjust the tint to meet the sun’s glare as it travels across the glass.

“We’re finding ways to advance the quality of life while reducing energy consumption,” says Mulpuri. “And that leads to better outcomes for business. That’s the powerful combination we deliver—better for people, better for the planet and better for profits.” View hopes to increase those energy savings as it continues to hone its product. Adding to the more than $1 billion the company has already raised from investors, Mulpuri says the IPO will help View add manufacturing capacity and invest in research and development. Even as a grad student learning how to deposit complex coatings, Mulpuri “saw the big picture,” recalls Basu, who worked closely with Mulpuri on his thesis. “He asked the important questions relating to the big picture. ‘OK, so I can grow these coatings,

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

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CLEARLY SEEING A GREEN F UTURE

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A HIGH-TECH SMART WINDOWS COMPANY LED BY RAO MULPURI (ENG’92,’96) IS HELPING BUILDINGS REACH NET ZERO BY PATRICK L. KENNEDY

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View’s energy-saving smart windows have been installed in more than

500 75 million buildings, totaling

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF RAO MULPURI

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CYDNEY SCOTT

square feet.

Right: Rao Mulpuri (ENG’92,’96), CEO of View, the leading maker of smart windows. Left: A Manhattan office tower clad in View’s smart windows.

View’s electrochromic windows use nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to adjust the tint to meet the sun’s glare as it travels across the glass.

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research

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View’s windows adjust their tint in response to the sun’s glare.

but then what? Is it commercially viable? Can this knowledge be translated to other applications?’” For his part, Mulpuri remembers, “I learned how to manipulate atoms and molecules and use chemical vapor deposition to do some original work, but what BU really taught me was learning how to learn. That means you look at a new problem in any field and start to ask basic questions, to break things down into first principles, and start to make connections in unlikely ways.” Thus, Mulpuri’s insistence on learning about human evolution, circadian rhythm, and the muscles around the eyes in order to make a better window. “Who says an engineer shouldn’t be curious? Shouldn’t go learn about biology? It makes you a better engineer. It’s when people silo themselves that they miss those opportunities.” After earning his PhD and working in the semiconductor industry driving Moore’s Law for a dozen years, Mulpuri was inspired to develop technology to combat the effects of climate change, and joined an early-stage start-up. He renamed it View, moved it to a new location in Silicon Valley and began developing the window technology from scratch. “It was daunting,” Mulpuri recalls, and success was far from assured. Today, View has 500 employees and 1,000 patent filings. Its smart windows are designed into 75 mil-

lion square feet of buildings across the country, from Netflix’s headquarters in Silicon Valley to an upcoming Google building in Manhattan. In Boston, View windows are featured at Logan Airport, and were recently installed in a new apartment building just across the Mass Pike from ENG. Meanwhile, Ernst & Young named Mulpuri a finalist for 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. In the latest iteration of View’s technology, the window can even turn into a computer screen, enabling users to hold a videoconference or create their own scenery. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is among the first to install the transparent screens at its “Gate of the Future” expansion. Still, Mulpuri carves out time to be an active alumnus and member of Dean Kenneth Lutchen’s Leadership Advisory Board. “I’m very excited about what Ken is doing, and BU and the College of Engineering’s progress,” Mulpuri says. “It’s an upward spiral, and part of that is this idea of interdisciplinary engineering fields and thinking about ways to create value in the world.” Mulpuri hopes current students and more recent alumni will draw some lessons from his story of tackling risks and connecting the dots across disciplines. “I’m at a stage of my life where I want to give back,” he says. “I want to inspire young engineers to want to work on solving difficult problems.”

SMART CELLS

Albro’s novel Raman arthroscope probes articular cartilage.

Spotting Osteoarthritis When It Starts ALBRO AND TEAM DEVELOP RAMAN SPECTROSCOPE TO DIAGNOSE A DEGENERATIVE DISEASE

IMAGE COURTESY OF MICHAEL ALBRO

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ith a potentially game-changing application of laser technology to a disease that affects more than 30 million Americans, Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) and colleagues have garnered a research grant from the Arthritis Foundation. The team’s new kind of Raman spectroscope—a device better known for dating fossils and detecting art forgeries—might someday be used to assess the cartilage in your joints, picking up on signs of osteoarthritis (OA) before it sets in. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis as well as the most common cause of disability in adults, young and old. It afflicts 32.5 million adults in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The disease occurs when

articular cartilage—the load-bearing connective tissue that covers the ends of bones where they meet to form joints— starts to wear away. “It leaves your joint with this bone-onbone grinding contact when you walk,” says Albro, using the common example of the knees. “It’s incredibly painful and debilitating. People suffer enormously, and it takes a toll on society,” given the prevalence of the disease and the costs of treating it. There is yet no cure for osteoarthritis; one’s best hope is to get metal joint replacements, but they often wear out within two decades—and many of the people afflicted are still in their 40s or younger. Indeed, says Albro, the early stages of the disease bring the best chance to halt or reverse the deterioration, once drugs that can do such a thing are developed (more on that below). So, it would be a boon if clinicians could take a peek inside the joint, looking for the subtle signs—like disruption of collagen fibers—that signal trouble ahead. Unfortunately, current methods of examining the joints—MRI and radiography—aren’t great at visualizing soft tissue. The procedures end up functioning more like autopsies, revealing what went wrong. “They can only assess whether your car-

GUT HEALTH

tilage has already worn away,” says Albro. “At that stage, it’s too late to intervene.” What Albro and team have developed is the first-ever Raman arthroscope. “It’s a probe that can be inserted into a patient’s knee joint to diagnose the state of their cartilage health,” Albro says. The scope works by picking up on Raman scattering. “The concept is, when you shine a light on a specimen, a very small number of light particles, about one in a million, will undergo a shift in wavelength,” explains Albro. “When you count these shifted photons, it gives you a remarkably precise assessment of the chemical composition of that specimen.” In the case of Albro’s arthroscope, he says, “We can detect the earliest stages of cartilage degeneration with terrific accuracy compared to prior technology.” Albro’s interdisciplinary team includes Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED). The Arthritis Foundation grant gives them $300,000 over three years. They’ve already tested the scope on sheep’s knees, and will soon test it on donated human cartilage, with the aim of moving on to clinical studies with live human patients. If the Raman arthroscope becomes widely available, it could be used to screen people at high risk for OA, like athletes, military veterans and workers in strenuous occupations, among others. As for treatment, Albro says the early diagnostic platform could enable the development of a cure, because it can be used to test the efficacy of drug candidates. Moreover, as Albro and colleagues continue growing cartilage in his lab, the Raman arthroscope can also be used to assess the quality of such lab-grown cartilage meant for placement in late-stage OA patients. The Arthritis Foundation award is the second grant Albro has received within six months (the first was from the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation), which points to momentum in his field, he says. “It shows that the field of orthopedics is ripe for these new approaches.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

research

ALUMNI PROFILE

View’s windows adjust their tint in response to the sun’s glare.

SMART CELLS

Albro’s novel Raman arthroscope probes articular cartilage.

Spotting Osteoarthritis When It Starts ALBRO AND TEAM DEVELOP RAMAN SPECTROSCOPE TO DIAGNOSE A DEGENERATIVE DISEASE

IMAGE COURTESY OF MICHAEL ALBRO

22 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

GUT HEALTH

BU.EDU/ENG

research Left: Images from BU’s Fluid Lab show the moment droplets break from a thread.

To the Moon, to Learn About Disruption from the Sun

Right: ME postdoc Oliver McRae (CAS’12, ENG’16,’19)

From a vantage point on the moon, LEXI will take X-ray images of Earth’s magnetic field.

Can Droplets Be Used to Stop, Instead of Spread, Disease?

24 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Brian Walsh (ME, ECE)

predict the response of the space environment to a solar storm.” The BU-built telescope is novel in a couple of ways. It’s a wide-field-of-view X-ray detector, using a curved plate that picks up X-ray light from multiple angles. Moreover, the state-of-the-art sensor is specially coated to be super-sensitive, with the ability to count individual photon strikes. Even in low light, it will pick up the soft X-rays emitted when the sun’s heavy ions hit our upper atmosphere. As for the journey to the moon, LEXI and the nine other scientific projects will be bolted to a lunar lander built by Firefly Aerospace. A rocket will carry the Firefly lander into the sky. The lander will then detach from the rocket and land on Mare Crisium at sunrise. “Once the dust settles, we open the door,” says Walsh of the scope’s protective dust door, another of his team’s innovations. “Then we’ll point at the Earth’s magnetic field, steering it [remotely] from our operations center.” By the time the sun sets on the Sea of Crises eight days later, LEXI will have collected indispensable data that will be posted to a public NASA website for the use of physicists and astronomers around the globe. “Ultimately,” Walsh says, “it will give us the measurements we need to make better models of space weather, the same way we can predict the path of hurricanes, with modeling.”— PATRICK L. KENNEDY

PHOTOGRAPH AND IMAGE COURTESY OF OLIVER MCRAE

Fortunately, humans can take measures to minimize the damage. For example, we can shut off satellite systems temporarily, to avoid permanent shutdowns. But we need to learn a lot more about how the sun’s flares interact with the magnetosphere. That’s where space scientists and engineers such as Walsh come in. “It’s not really clear how the energy breaks through the shield,” says Walsh. “Is it lots of small holes, or one big hole that gets torn in the shield? Does it happen in bursts, or does it slowly erode inward? These are the types of questions we’re going to answer with LEXI. It will provide great insights to allow us to better model and

ENG, CDC RESEARCHERS QUANTIFY HOW DROPLET FORMATION MIGHT DAMAGE MICROBES, REDUCING DISEASE TRANSMISSION

PHOTOGRAPH IMAGE COURTESY BY OF FIREFLY AEROSPACE

n 2023, a device developed at ENG will ride a rocket into space and land on the moon, where it will snap the first-ever X-ray images of solar wind slamming into the Earth’s magnetosphere. The experiment just might help prevent a civilization-crippling communications blackout someday. The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) will be one of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations attached to a NASAsponsored mission to Mare Crisium, the “Sea of Crises,” on the lunar surface. Associate Professor Brian Walsh (ME, ECE) is the principal investigator for LEXI, coordinating the project and collaborating with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as well as Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Walsh’s students designed and assembled the X-ray telescope, with parts machined in the BU Scientific Instrument Facility. “It’s almost like a weather buoy,” says Walsh of LEXI. “It will help us understand the weather for our space traffic.” That traffic includes the 3,000-plus operational satellites orbiting the Earth. They’re the engines of our modern society, enabling the technologies relied upon by truckers, banks, farmers, airlines, militaries and utilities as well as television and the internet. And the sun could fry them. The star at the center of our solar system gives us the energy we need to sustain life, but it also throws some plasma particles at our planet that would be harmful if we didn’t have a magnetic field, which acts as a shield. Once in a while, a particularly large solar flare can give off millions of atomic bombs’ worth of energy, which can break through that shield and disable satellites.

t happens in a flash. As you cough up a thread of the fluid that lines your respiratory tract, it breaks into tiny droplets, as small as a micrometer in diameter. Some of those droplets, or aerosols, might hang in the air for minutes or even hours. And some of them might contain pathogenic microbes—bacteria or viruses that cause disease. What if you could slow down that moment when the droplets are formed? That’s what researchers from ENG and the CDC did in a study, published in Physical Review Fluids, on the violent, unseen forces unleashed during aerosol formation. Their findings have bearing on the transmission of respiratory diseases such as COVID-19. “These droplets do contain biological life,” explains lead author Oliver McRae, an ME postdoc. To spread disease, “that life must be able to survive this whole churning and agitation process.” The agitation occurs as droplets break off from a liquid thread to go spinning into the air, where someone might inhale them. But paradoxically, the same churning process that gives the aerosol-borne microbes a chance to spread can also stress and kill them before they get that chance.

The same churning process that gives aerosol-borne microbes a chance to spread can also stress and kill them before they get that chance. “Imagine you have a fish in a bucket of water,” says McRae (CAS’12, ENG’16,’19). “And now you’re stirring that water faster and faster. At some point, that fish is not likely to survive. That’s kind of what we have in the droplet, albeit on a much smaller scale.” McRae and Associate Professor James C. Bird (ME, MSE) studied the droplet formation process in BU Fluid Lab. They shot extremely fine threads of water through the air and recorded the motion with a high-speed camera capturing up to 350,000 frames per second.

When they played back the microsecond-by-microsecond images, McRae and Bird could see the “pinch-off,” when the droplets break from the thread. The droplets’ movements confirmed the stressors calculated by the researchers’ computer simulations of the churning action that might wreak havoc on microbes. The computer simulations showed the stressors to be highly sensitive to the droplet size: the smaller the droplet size, the greater the stressors. “The stressors increase two and a half orders of magnitude for every order of magnitude decrease in droplet size,” says McRae. Previous studies touched on hydrodynamic agitation as a factor in microbial transmission, but the BU-CDC study is the first to quantify it. While agitation does not kill all microbes, the research advances the possibility that it could be wielded deliberately to tamp down their spread, perhaps with saline spray, which increases surface tension on droplets. “If you can lower the number of viable pathogens in aerosols, then you can lower the infectious load and reduce the likelihood of transmission,” says McRae. — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

research Left: Images from BU’s Fluid Lab show the moment droplets break from a thread.

To the Moon, to Learn About Disruption from the Sun

Right: ME postdoc Oliver McRae (CAS’12, ENG’16,’19)

From a vantage point on the moon, LEXI will take X-ray images of Earth’s magnetic field.

Can Droplets Be Used to Stop, Instead of Spread, Disease?

24 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Brian Walsh (ME, ECE)

PHOTOGRAPH AND IMAGE COURTESY OF OLIVER MCRAE

ENG, CDC RESEARCHERS QUANTIFY HOW DROPLET FORMATION MIGHT DAMAGE MICROBES, REDUCING DISEASE TRANSMISSION

PHOTOGRAPH IMAGE COURTESY BY OF FIREFLY AEROSPACE

BU.EDU/ENG

research Wilson Wong (BME)

mart building technology is a hot trend in commercial real estate. Aimed at automating processes, reducing costs, boosting energy efficiency and improving the comfort of business tenants and their employees, it’s only expected to rise in popularity after COVID-19, as safety and HVAC efficiency top the list of tenant concerns. But lacking room-specific occupancy data, current HVAC systems are programmed to ventilate spaces assuming maximum occupancy. That leads to over-ventilation, occupant discomfort and wasted dollars and energy. BU researchers have designed a new technology, Computational Occupancy Sensing System (COSSY), to help commercial buildings save energy through real-time, occupancy-based HVAC control.

26 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

COSSY uses door and ceiling sensors, as well as occupancy estimation algorithms, to monitor different room shapes and sizes for the number of people using them.

MAUREEN STANTON

A SYSTEM OF AUTOIMMUNE CELLS THAT COMMUNICATE, TARGETING AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES TOO

PHOTOGRAPH BY KELLY DAVIDSON

BU ENGINEERS HAVE DEVELOPED A SYSTEM USING THERMAL SENSORS AND CAMERAS TO MONITOR OCCUPANCY IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS AND AUTOMATE COOLING, HEATING AND VENTILATION

Wong Lab Develops Smarter Cancer-Killing Cells

PHOTOGRAPH BY HXDBZXY/iSTOCK

As Office Work Returns, This Smart HVAC System Could Save Energy, Money and Even Lives

“The system has demonstrated excellent performance during initial testing in University buildings,” says research team leader Professor Janusz Konrad (ECE). Based at BU’s Center for Information & Systems Engineering, the team was funded by a $1 million Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) grant. Konrad joined forces with Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE) to devise the system’s occupancy estimation technology. Professor Thomas Little (ECE) helped design COSSY’s components to communicate with each other in real time, while keeping the overall costs of running the system low. Associate Professor Michael Gevelber (ME) guided the team on how to optimize commercial HVAC systems and measure energy efficiency to meet energy savings goals. COSSY uses door and ceiling sensors, as well as occupancy estimation algorithms, to monitor different room shapes and sizes for the number of people using them. As an occupant enters or exits a room, thermal door sensors detect body heat. The sensors capture a coarse heat silhouette of the human body without disclosing an occupant’s identity. For larger spaces, ceiling-mounted fish-eye cameras with a wide field of view can monitor broad floor plans for the presence of people. Information from sensors and cameras is then fed in real time to COSSY’s algorithms, which calculate occupancy levels in rooms in both transient states—when occupancy numbers rapidly change—and steady states. Those calculations then determine real-time ventilation and airflow, ensuring high air quality and improving occupant comfort, while reducing HVAC energy costs by 25 percent or more. The modular design minimizes installation and wiring requirements. COSSY’s precise people-counting algorithms could also prove invaluable for emergency response situations to ensure everyone in the building is accounted for. “We see this as a viable solution to help building owners as they prepare for the post–COVID-19 workplace,” says Konrad, “and we’re eager to make this technology available to the public.” — MAYA BHAT AND

ew research out of ENG could enable doctors to program a patient’s immune system with a more versatile tool kit than ever before in the fight against cancer, as well as autoimmune diseases. Associate Professor Wilson Wong (BME) and colleagues published their study in Nature Communications. Wong’s team approaches the immune system as a computing circuit. They are reprogramming the circuit to identify and eliminate tumor cells that it’s not catching automatically. Existing immunotherapies do this, but not with the same simultaneous level of specificity and broadness as Wong’s system. This latest development in synthetic biology is part of Wong’s ongoing work to improve upon chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell treatments. In conventional CAR-T therapy, T-cells are extracted from a patient’s blood sample and then modified to attack specific antigens (receptor molecules) on the patient’s tumor cells. But the treatment can backfire by triggering a massive release of cell-killing substances called cytokines, which can be life-threatening. What Wong’s lab has developed in recent years is a CAR-T system that is split, universal, and programmable (SUPRA). That means it can target two types of antigens, making it effective against a wider variety of cancers, and it can be deactivated to prevent cytokine-induced side effects. In their new study, Wong’s team further tweaked their CAR-T cells by adding a third

target antigen, meaning the engineered immune cells can operate with a higher degree of specificity. To explain the advantages of being more specific, Wong poses the analogy of a detective searching for a crime suspect. If all he has to go on is that the suspect “wears glasses,” that doesn’t narrow the field much. If he learns he’s looking for someone with glasses and a beard, he might be getting somewhere. Now, if the suspect has glasses, a beard and a purple beret, then the detective has a clear idea of who he’s looking for. Wong’s cancer-killing T-cells, similarly, are more effective because they know what characteristics (in their case, antigens) they’re really looking for. Moreover, Wong’s team showed that their SUPRA system works not just in T-cells but in multiple immune cell types.

That should pave the way for safer therapies for cancer as well as autoimmune disorders such as arthritis and multiple sclerosis. The system can also suppress the immune response that leads to organ transplant rejection. Wong’s lab accomplished these advances by applying distributed computing principles to the engineered immune cells as a system. The cells are directed to target specific antigens by way of a new synthetic intracellular communication channel that Wong and colleagues have engineered. “Each cell type is tasked with sensing and producing a specific subset of inputs and outputs,” the coauthors write in the paper. “Immune cells can directly communicate with each other to attain temporally choreographed responses.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

research Wilson Wong (BME)

26 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

COSSY uses door and ceiling sensors, as well as occupancy estimation algorithms, to monitor different room shapes and sizes for the number of people using them.

MAUREEN STANTON

A SYSTEM OF AUTOIMMUNE CELLS THAT COMMUNICATE, TARGETING AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES TOO

PHOTOGRAPH BY KELLY DAVIDSON

BU ENGINEERS HAVE DEVELOPED A SYSTEM USING THERMAL SENSORS AND CAMERAS TO MONITOR OCCUPANCY IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS AND AUTOMATE COOLING, HEATING AND VENTILATION

Wong Lab Develops Smarter Cancer-Killing Cells

PHOTOGRAPH BY HXDBZXY/iSTOCK

As Office Work Returns, This Smart HVAC System Could Save Energy, Money and Even Lives

BU.EDU/ENG

research

28 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

“ We found yield depends on the total number of carbon sources, but not on the variety of those sources,” Segrè says. “Microbes affect us as humans through their own metabolic processes, they affect our planet through what they consume and secrete, they help create the oxygen we breathe,” says Segrè. Segrè is interested in how to direct the behavior of a microbiome by tweaking the environmental conditions it lives within—an approach he describes as “synthetic ecology.” “The more traditional synthetic biology approach would be to manipulate the

The Sensor You Swallow

Rabia Yazicigil (ECE)

A BU LAB HAS TEAMED UP WITH MIT SCIENTISTS TO BRING AN INGESTIBLE GUT HEALTH MONITOR ONE STEP CLOSER TO REALITY

T COIN AND MONITOR PHOTO COURTESY OF RABIA YAZICIGIL

here’s a lot of interest right now in how different microbiomes—like the one made up of all the bacteria in our guts—could be harnessed to boost human health and cure disease. But Professor Daniel Segrè (BME) has set his sights on a much more ambitious vision for how the microbiome could be manipulated for good: “To help sustain our planet, not just our own health.” Segrè, director of the Boston University Microbiome Initiative, says he and other scientists in his field of synthetic and systems biology are studying microbiomes— microscopic communities of bacteria, fungi or a combination of those that exert influence over each other and the surrounding environment. They want to know how microbiomes might be directed to carry out important tasks like absorbing more atmospheric carbon, protecting coral reefs from ocean acidification, improving the fertility and yield of agricultural lands and supporting the growth of forests and other plants despite changing environmental conditions.

genomes of the microbes,” Segrè says. “But we’re trying to manipulate microbial ecosystems using environmental molecules.” “We know that microbial interactions with the environment are important,” says Alan Pacheco, who earned his PhD in bioinformatics working in Segrè’s lab. “But there’s still so much we don’t know about why these interactions happen the way that they do.” In a study published in Nature Communications, Segrè, Pacheco and their collaborator Melisa Osborne, a research scientist in Segrè’s lab, explored how the presence of 32 different environmental molecules or nutrients, alone or in combination with others, would influence the growth rate of microbial communities and the mix of diverse species making up a given microbiome. “We had this idea of diet, framed by studies that have looked at differences in the gut microbiome based on Western vs hunter-gatherer diets,” says Pacheco. Hunter-gatherer diets are much more diverse and are thought to cultivate a healthier gut. But the experimental results surprised the team. They expected to see growth and diversity of microbiomes increase as the “bugs” had more access to a range of carbons. Instead, competition for food between different species of microbes hampered diversification. The researchers did find that more food fueled more microbial growth. “We found yield depends on the total number of carbon sources, but not on the variety of those sources,” Segrè says. Pacheco adds that if somebody can consume something, somebody else can outcompete them for it. “Our experiments showed that the crucial modulator in microbial diversity is how much these different organisms compete with one another for resources,” he says. “The more organisms compete, the less diverse that community is going to be.” The team plans to investigate additional environmental factors and metabolic processes. Further unlocking and eventually harnessing all these environmental “dials and knobs” could open doors to using microbiomes to influence human metabolisms and health or disease states in people and in natural ecosystems. — KAT J. MCALPINE

IMAGE COURTESY OF ALAN PACHECO AND DANIEL SEGRÈ

Moving Beyond Synthetic Biology, “Synthetic Ecology” Seeks to Boost Health by Engineering the Environment

The ingestible monitor is about the size of a chickpea.

hanks to the work of Assistant Professor Rabia Yazicigil (ECE) and her colleagues at MIT, Crohn’s and other bowel disease sufferers might someday skip the arduous annual endoscopy and instead swallow a pill-sized device that would literally shed light on what’s going on inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. MIT researchers previously developed a 1.5-inch capsule that contained a computer chip, a wireless transmitter and genetically engineered bacteria that light up when they come in contact with blood. The capsule could detect bleeding in the GI tract and send an alert to a smartphone. In collaboration with MIT, Yazicigil and her students at BU Wireless Integrated Systems and Extreme Circuits (WISE-Circuits) Laboratory shrunk the capsule to about the size of a chickpea by

To conserve power, they designed a chip that switches on every 10 minutes for 16 seconds to take measurements, and for a mere 12 milliseconds to transmit the data.

designing an ultrasensitive, nanowatt-level power, integrated photodetector and readout system on a chip. This transformative size reduction makes this smart pill much safer as it passes through the digestive system. About three million adults in the US suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis. These conditions can cause severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition, and they increase the risk of colon cancer. Doctors can search the GI tract for warning signs with a colonoscopy, but that only happens every year or two, and the preparation is not pleasant. Moreover, says Yazicigil, “an endoscopy is an image-based system—it doesn’t really measure the molecular disease biomarkers.” A stool sample does measure biomarkers, or it should—but some of the most important biomarkers have degraded or have been absorbed by the time they exit the system, so the test fails to pick up on them. The ingestible monitors are noninvasive—the application would be as simple as swallowing a pill—and they monitor the gut in real time. The bacterial sensors light up when they sense their target biomarkers; a chip converts this bioluminescence into electrical signals; and the data is sent to a nearby smartphone or tablet. “Think of this gadget as a wearable, but for inside the body,” says Yazicigil. The primary challenge confronting BU’s WISE-Circuits Lab was the device’s power consumption. To conserve power, they designed a chip that switches on every 10 minutes for 16 seconds to take measurements, and for a mere 12 milliseconds to transmit the data. “Previous attempts with off-the-shelf components and large batteries made devices too large to be safe,” says Miguel Jimenez, a research scientist at MIT. “The Yazicigil group’s custom, low-power design is an elegant solution to this challenge.” — PATRICK L. KENNEDY E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

research

28 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

The Sensor You Swallow

Rabia Yazicigil (ECE)

A BU LAB HAS TEAMED UP WITH MIT SCIENTISTS TO BRING AN INGESTIBLE GUT HEALTH MONITOR ONE STEP CLOSER TO REALITY

T COIN AND MONITOR PHOTO COURTESY OF RABIA YAZICIGIL

IMAGE COURTESY OF ALAN PACHECO AND DANIEL SEGRÈ

Moving Beyond Synthetic Biology, “Synthetic Ecology” Seeks to Boost Health by Engineering the Environment

The ingestible monitor is about the size of a chickpea.

To conserve power, they designed a chip that switches on every 10 minutes for 16 seconds to take measurements, and for a mere 12 milliseconds to transmit the data.

BU.EDU/ENG

Year-End Achievements Dear Friends,

Fundraising achievements are one important measure of the health and progress of a college. But what I believe truly reveals the success and impact of an institution is the student experience, as expressed by the students themselves. The following quotes are from letters to individual donors, written by students expressing their gratitude for being able to participate in ENG’s Distinguished Summer Research Fellows (DSRF) program, one of the college’s signature experiential learning opportunities. Undergraduates selected for the program spend a summer engaged in research projects under the mentorship of a faculty member. Supported by a stipend provided through the philanthropy of generous alumni, parents and friends, these students gained an invaluable education, which is evident here. The positive impact is forever. From a senior majoring in BME: “I am truly grateful for your generosity. As a soon-to-be medical student, I am facing significant financial expenses. Your gift made it so I did not have to choose between pursuing the research I was interested in and earning money for my education. This opportunity allowed me to grow—both as an engineer and as an aspiring doctor.” From a junior majoring in ECE: “DSRF gave me an inside look on the workings of research; my main takeaway was to learn what works and what doesn’t.” And from a senior majoring in ME: “DSRF provided me the opportunity to extend my skills beyond coursework and express my passion for academic research in engineering.” The world needs engineers of the kind that BU College of Engineering produces; the kind that academia, industry and the scientific community have come to expect from us. Our faculty is considered among the best in the world in terms of both teaching and research. The college’s faculty, students and staff are deeply grateful for the support we received this past year from our alumni, parents and friends, allowing us to focus on our mission: to develop Societal Engineers and continue to build the college’s upward trajectory. As the details in the figures at right demonstrate, your participation—past, present and future—makes our achievements possible. Thank you all. We look forward to the possibility of seeing you in person once again as we return to a more normal schedule of University events and travel. Best regards,

Lisa Drake Assistant Dean, Development & Alumni Relations

30 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Honor Roll of Supporters $50,000+

Anonymous Hing Wah Cheung and Yee Wah Lun ■ ■ ■ Vanessa C. Feliberti (ENG’93) and Jesus Bautista ■ ■ Joseph P. Healey (ENG’88) ■ ■ The Estate of Eugene B. Jackson ■ Reshma Kewalramani (MED’98, CAS’98) and Abhijit R. Kulkarni (ENG’93,’97) ■ ■ Shaun P. McManimon (ENG’83) ■ Mary L. O’Neil ■ ■ Haidong Pan (ENG’04)■ Richard D. Reidy (Questrom’82) and Minda G. Reidy (Questrom’82,’84) ■ ■ ■ Binoy K. Singh (ENG’89) ■ ■ John Tegan III (ENG’88) and Becky Tegan ■ ■ Lanore H. Wadsworth and Bill H. Wadsworth ■ ■ ■

$25,000–$49,999

Mary S. Abele (CAS’60) and John E. Abele ■ Edward S. W. Boesel (ENG’70) ■ ■ Mark E. Deem (ENG’88) and Laura Deem ■ ■ Peter C. Fang (ENG’75) and Josephine T. Fang ■ ■ Maurice R. Ferre (MED’92, CGS’81, SPH’92) and Maria D. Ferre ■ ■ ■ David E. Hollowell (ENG’69,’72, Questrom’74) and Kathleen A. Hollowell (GRS’71, Wheelock’77) ■ ■ David F. Kiersznowski (ENG’85) ■ ■ Antoinette R. Leatherberry (ENG’85) ■ ■ John A. Maccarone (ENG’66) and Young O. Maccarone ■ ■ Girish M. Navani (ENG’91) and Radhi G. Navani■ ■ ■

$10,000–$24,999

Anonymous Cassandra M. Belmarsh (Wheelock’94,’95) and Michael D. Belmarsh (ENG’95, MET’00) ■ ■ Saad N. Buisier (ENG’03) and Rita M. Buisier ■ ■ Deborah H. Caplan (ENG’90) ■ ■ Peter K. (ENG’64) and Lorraine P. Cocolis (Sargent’63) ■ ■ ■ Brian J. Dunkin (ENG’85) and Annie Dunkin ■ ■ Hanna G. Evans ■ ■ Gerald J. Fine and L. Victoria LeFevre ■ ■ ■ Jenny Gruber (ENG’99,’99) and Ron Sostaric ■ ■ Luciana R. Haddad and Carlos A. Hakim ■ ■ ■ Kenneth E. Hancock (ENG’92,’01) and Hsi-Pin Chen (MED’96,’96, CAS’89, SPH’91) ■ ■ ■ Ruth A. MacFarlane Hunter (ENG’64, Questrom’86) ■ ■ Paul Karger (ENG’00) and Melissa Karger ■ ■ Anand Krishnamurthy (ENG’92,’96) and Ruth Lievano (Sargent’95) ■ Justine Laugharn (ENG’83) and James A. Laugharn, Jr. ■ ■ Peter J. Levine (ENG’83) ■ ■ Nicholas J. Lippis III (ENG’84,’89) and Lillian A. Lippis ■ ■ ■ Drs. Daniel C. Maneval (ENG’82) ■ ■ Kathleen L. McLaughlin (ENG’87) and Timothy J. Costigan ■ ■ Eric J. Meltzer (ENG’82) and Brooke Meltzer (MET’82, CGS’80) ■ Theodore D. Moustakas and Elena Moustakas ■ ■ ■

College of Engineering Total Revenue FY18-FY21 $7,500,000

IMPACT FROM ENG LEADERSHIP GIVING FY20/21:

$7,000,000 $6,500,000 $6,000,000 $5,500,000 $5,000,000 $4,500,000 $4,000,000

FY18

FY19

FY20

FY21

• E stablished and increased the Student Design Projects Endowed Fund toward its $1,000,000 goal • Soft opening of the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center • Awarded a named, endowed professorship in engineering • Continuation of ENG’s signature experiential learning opportunities, including Technology Innovation Scholars Program, Summer Term Alumni Research Scholars, and Distinguished Summer Research Fellows • Introduced Student Tool Kits for course lab work that can be done from anywhere • EPIC and Singh Imagineering Labs remained staffed and open to students by appointment • Annual Design Competition held in the Singh Imagineering Lab • Kept vibrant student clubs active and funded, including the Rocket Club and affinity groups

Samuel G. Oliva (CGS’89, Questrom’91, ENG’97) and T. Michelle Oliva (Questrom’91) ■ ■ Kimberly E. Samaha (ENG’89) and Fahim Samaha ■ ■ ■ Denise M. Schier (ENG’81) and Karl A. Schier ■ ■ Patrick D. Spearman (ENG’96) and Jane Oldfield-Spearman (SSW’92) ■ ■ William W. Weiss (ENG’83,’97) and Maria E. Weiss ■ ■

$5,000–$9,999

Alexander Adam (ENG’92,’95,’03) and Davina D. Wong (Questrom’02) ■ ■ Omar Ali (ENG’96) ■ ■ Adel B. Al-Saleh (ENG’87) and Gladys Al-Saleh■ ■ Christopher H. Brousseau (ENG’91) and Marylou K. Cronin■ ■ Claudia A. Dunsby (ENG’92) and Martin B. Dunsby ■ ■ Solomon R. Eisenberg and Terri B. Eisenberg ■ ■ ■ Mark G. Hilderbrand (ENG’87) and Rebecca J. Hilderbrand ■ ■ Michele J. Iacovone (ENG’89, CGS’86) and Lisa Hu (CGS’86, COM’88) ■ ■ Dean L. Kamen (Hon.’06) ■ ■ Ezra D. Kucharz (ENG’90) and Jennifer M. Kucharz ■ ■ Manuel O. Mendez (ENG’91) ■ Siu-Fai S. Wong (ENG’90) ■ ■ Robert P. Wotiz (ENG’99,’05,’06) ■

$2,500–$4,999

Peter Bernard (ENG’88) and Anita Bernard ■ ■ Bettina Briz-Himes (ENG’86) and Peter G. Himes ■ ■ Wesley R. Chedister (ENG’00) ■ ■ Jason P. Colacchio (ENG’90) and Tracy L. Colacchio ■ ■ Ralph G. Ganick (MED’67, CAS’67) and Lois B. Ganick ■ ■ ■ John M. Garvey (ENG’86) and Kimberly J. Garvey ■ ■ Lisa W. Gill ■ ■ ■ Warren M. Grill (ENG’89) and Julie Grill ■ ■ Himansh Khanna (ENG’89) and Malti Raisinghani (ENG’93) ■ ■ Nikesh Kotecha (ENG’99) and Masumi P. Patel (Questrom’99, MET’02) ■ ■ Larry Leszczynski (ENG’85) and Anne E. Hines (ENG’87) ■ ■ Sydney R. Lillard (ENG’96) ■ ■ Gayle W. Lutchen (Wheelock’93) and Kenneth R. Lutchen ■ ■ ■ ■ Andrew J. Marsh (ENG’83) and Heather J. Marsh (CAS’83) ■ ■ Luis A. Pagan-Carlo (ENG’85) ■ ■ Andrew P. Quick (ENG’92,’95) and Tracy M. Quick (Wheelock’93) ■ ■ George M. Savage (ENG’81) and Nancy Krakora Savage (COM’80) ■ ■ Nimis S. Sheth (ENG’87, Questrom’87) and Geeta S. Thorat ■ ■ Lisa H. Theobald (MET’95) and Carl E. Theobald ■ ■ ■ Gordon R. Walsh (ENG’67,’68, Questrom’71) and Irene S. Walsh ■ ■ Eric A. Williams (ENG’89) and Lisa Pompeii ■ ■

$1,000–$2,499

Sunil D. Ahuja (ENG’03) ■ ■

Husain Mahmoud Al-Bustan (ENG’89,’91) ■ ■ Stormy Attaway ■ ■ ■ Bryan H. Benesch (ENG’78) and Nancy S. Goldberg ■ ■ David J. Brand (ENG’83) and Deborah P. Brand ■ ■ Sarah H. Brukilacchio (ENG’89) and Thomas J. Brukilacchio ■ Keith P. Buday (MET’85) and Teresa H. Buday (ENG’86) ■ ■ ■ Ignatius D. Calalang (ENG’88,’99) ■ James H. Caplan (Questrom’83, ENG’79) and Heather C. Caplan (Questrom’94) ■ ■ Regina G. Carolan (ENG’97,’03) ■ ■ Brant A. Cheikes (ENG’84) and Janine Papesh ■ ■ Joseph E. Coffey, Jr. (ENG’72) and Sharon R. Coffey ■ ■ Gregory S. Cordrey (ENG’88) and Stephanie K. Cordrey ■ ■ Adam D. Crescenzi (ENG’64) and Linda C. Crescenzi ■ ■ ■ Edward R. Damiano and Toby M. Milgrome ■ ■ ■ ■ Abdulrasul A. Damji (ENG’85,’90) and Amina Damji ■ ■ ■ Ted de Winter ■ ■ ■ David Dean (ENG’73) and Deborah Portyrata ■ ■ Roger A. Dorf (ENG’70) and Sandra M. Dorf ■ ■ Lawrence S. Drasner (ENG’89) and Dawn M. Drasner ■ Matthew Emsley (ENG’00,’03) and Rachel Emsley (ENG’01) ■ Paul M. Faustin (ENG’85,’88) and Myriam Faustin ■ ■ Earl B. Finney, Jr. (ENG’94) and Rosalind Finney (ENG’93) ■ ■ Edwin J. Fitzpatrick, Jr. (CGS’70, CAS’72) ■ ■ ■ Patrick J. Foley (ENG’91,’94) and Kerry C. Foley (ENG’91) ■ ■ Howard N. Forbes (ENG’81) and Digna M. Forbes (CAS’82) ■ ■ Carl H. Ford (ENG’93) ■ ■ Christopher A. Frail (ENG’97) and Melissa W. Frail (ENG’97) ■ ■ Richard A. Fuller (ENG’88) and Tiffany Fuller ■ ■ Timothy Ganley (ENG’91) ■ Mary A. Garrett (ENG’80) ■ ■ Reza K. Gharavi (ENG’87) ■ Catherine E. Gueli (ENG’88) ■ ■ Daniel S. Hagg (ENG’95) and Jennifer Watters ■ ■ Lisa M. Halm (Questrom’83,’00) and Richard Levey ■ Nael Hannan (ENG’94) and Eima Malik ■ William T. Hathaway IV (ENG’65) and Joan L. Hathaway ■ ■ Bader M. Hawary (ENG’01,’02) ■ ■ Brian B. Hermosura (SHA’98) and Elizabeth L. Rogus (ENG’98) ■ ■ Robert H. Howland (ENG’82) and Michele H. Howland ■ ■ Kent W. Hughes (ENG’79) and Debra S. Hughes ■ ■ Ronald Hunter (ENG’80, Questrom’82) ■ ■ William I. Huyett and Lauren M. Huyett ■ ■ Micah A. Jacobs (ENG’99) and Beth Jacobs ■ ■ David H. Johnson (ENG’65,’66) and Rebecca G. Thompson ■ Cynthia L. Keim Girouard (Sargent’89) and Steven D. Girouard (ENG’89) ■ ■

Tyler D. Kohn (ENG’98) ■ ■ Karen E. Kullas (ENG’77) and Bruce Newcomb ■ ■ Min-Chang Lee and Ai-Muh Lee ■ ■ ■ Robert B. Leonard (ENG’84) and Ilene H. Leonard ■ ■ Thomas P. Lisowski (ENG’95) ■ ■ Huajun Liu (ENG’98,’99,’04) and Zhe Ren ■ ■ ■ Jeffrey M. Melzak (CAS’84) and Julie S. Melzak (ENG’87) ■ ■ Richard J. Mendes (ENG’86) and Catherine Mendes ■ Beatriz A. Mendez Lora (ENG’88) ■ ■ Matthew F. Murphy (ENG’85) and Teresa Weathersby-Murphy ■ ■ William E. Neifert (ENG’90,’92) ■ ■ John M. Niedzwecki (ENG’70,’70,’73) and Mary T. Niedzwecki ■ ■ Eogan C. O’Donnell (ENG’90) and Kellie M. O’Donnell (Pardee’89) ■ ■ ■ Anton T. Papp (ENG’90) and Susan Papp ■ Devang K. Parikh (ENG’99) and Poonam Doshi ■ ■ Kevin K. Parker (ENG’89) ■ ■ Sanjay Patel (ENG’87) and Falguni S. Patel ■ ■ ■ Sandip A. Patidar (ENG’90) and Malini Patidar ■ ■ James S. Paulsen (ENG’69,’72) and Susan C. Paulsen ■ ■ Joseph A. Pellegrino (LAW’78) and Kathleen B. Pellegrino (ENG’62) ■ ■ Xu Liang Qin and Hong Ying Cao ■ ■ ■ James D. Quinty (ENG’86) and Elizabeth Quinty ■ ■ Sharad Rastogi (ENG’91) and Alka Gupta ■ ■ Geoffrey Rowland (ENG’05,’05) and Erin Rowland (CAS’05) ■ ■ Frank N. Salamone (ENG’94) and Elizabeth S. Salamone ■ ■ John A. Scaramuzzo, Jr. (ENG’87) and Lena Scaramuzzo ■ ■ Maria Scardera (ENG’84) and Michael P. Scardera ■ ■ Maria Simbirsky (ENG’19) ■ ■ ■ ■ Monica L. Slegar (ENG’02, Questrom’05) ■ ■ Mu-En Steeg (CAS’94) and Dylan P. Steeg (ENG’95) ■ ■ Frederic J. Syrjala (ENG’58,’60) and Mary E. Syrjala ■ Teera Teeraphantuvat (ENG’96) ■ ■ Francis A. Tiernan (ENG’70) and Barbara H. Tiernan ■ ■ Ramarathnam Venkatesan (GRS’91) ■ ■ Chengjian Weng (ENG’99) and Jia Zeng ■ ■ Thomas G. Westbrook (ENG’91) and Mary D. Gibbs-Westbrook ■ ■ Alvin F. Widitora (ENG’99,’03, Questrom’02,’03) ■ Berl P. Winston (ENG’64) and Alice J. Winston (Wheelock’65) ■ ■ Chi-Hua P. Wu (ENG’93) ■ ■ Tianming Wu (ENG’07) ■ ■ Matthew A. Zahn (ENG’94) ■ ■ Xianfeng Zhao (ENG’04) and Yanyan Wang ■ ■

$1–$999

Abdurrahman O. Addokhi (ENG’19,’24) ■ Mufutau M. Agboola and Sandra Agboola ■ Angela M. Ahern (ENG’21) ■ Raja M. Ahmed and Nuzhat Mansoor ■ ■ Maria J. Albinana and Matias F. Sanchez ■ William T. Alex (ENG’89) ■ Akbar Ali (ENG’92) and Raisa Ali ■ Mark A. Allen (ENG’87) and Phyllis J. Allen

James D. Alman (ENG’87) ■ Christos Alogoskoufis (ENG’16) Mark T. Andersen (ENG’06) Susan J. Angell (ENG’86) and Jeffrey P. Blais ■ Leen R. Arnaout (ENG’21) John James K. Arteche (ENG’18) and Chayanan Arteche ■ Gregory T. Arzoomanian (ENG’84) Michael O. Ashenuga (ENG’92) and Elizabeth M. Vondrak ■ Trevor T. Ashley (ENG’16,’16) Miguel A. Asmal and Rosa E. Asmal ■ ■ Ben Athanasiou (ENG’67,’69) and Linda M. Athanasiou Kevin A. Atkinson (CAS’18) ■ Jeffrey M. Atwood (ENG’95) and Nancy L. Atwood (CAS’95) ■ Su Myat Aung (ENG’21) ■ Phyllis C. Austin (ENG’83) and Nader N. Rizq Robert M. Avjian (ENG’78) and Susan I. Avjian ■ Michael W. Axelrod (ENG’82) Edwin V. Babbitt (ENG’21) Alexander Backus (ENG’17) ■ Karen T. Bain (ENG’87) and Harold R. Bain ■ Jeffrey G. Baker II (ENG’15) Stanley N. Baker, Jr. (ENG’69) and Marilyn L. Baker ■ Raymond F. Ball (ENG’72) ■ Justin D. Ballou and Christine M. Blair ■ ■ Jared M. Bancroft (ENG’06, MET’14) ■ ■ Michelle M. Baquie (ENG’03) ■ Tristan Barako ■ ■ Joseph M. Basile (ENG’82) ■ Soumendra N. Basu and Alokparna S. Basu ■ ■ Rebecca A. Bates (ENG’90,’96) ■ Alexa M. Beach (ENG’17) ■ Mark S. Beauregard (ENG’96) ■ Jenette M. Begley (ENG’85) and Adrian Begley ■ Amir H. Behnia (ENG’92,’93) ■ Jesse V. Belanger (ENG’16) ■ ■ ■ Samuel Bello (ENG’18) Peter H. Belmonte (ENG’10, BUA’06) ■ Santiago Beltran Miranda (ENG’17) Seth I. Bensussen (ENG’19,’19) Samuel E. Bentson (ENG’09) Frederick W. Berenbroick (ENG’87) and Clair J. Berenbroick ■ William Bergersen and Gail L. Bergersen ■ ■ Thomas Berroa (ENG’17) ■ Genevieve M. Betro (ENG’07) Camilla Bezerra (CAS’13, MED’15, SDM’19) and Egem Eraslan (ENG’14) ■ ■ ■ Tanapat Bhakyapaibul (ENG’18,’19) Shashwath S. Bharadwaj (ENG’25,’25) ■ Laura J. Bickmeier (ENG’98) and Jeffrey A. Bickmeier ■ Paul A. Bierden (ENG’92,’94) and Sheryl C. Bierden (Sargent’95,’97) Michael K. Blackstock (ENG’94) Kim L. Blackwell (ENG’81) and Mont M. Blackwell ■ Gregory E. Blanchard (ENG’96) and Melissa L. Jendzejec-Blanchard ■ John Bland and Betsy Bland ■ Caliope K. Bletsis (ENG’98) ■ Daniel L. Blum (ENG’95, Questrom’95) and Anne Krisel ■ John D. Bogle (ENG’90) Roman Bokhenik (ENG’10) ■ Mark E. Bonadies (ENG’95) and Marybeth R. Bonadies Emily A. Bonazelli (ENG’13) ■ Brett R. Bonthron and Jane Bonthron ■ ■

BU.EDU/ENG

Year-End Achievements Dear Friends,

Lisa Drake Assistant Dean, Development & Alumni Relations

30 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Honor Roll of Supporters $50,000+

$25,000–$49,999

$10,000–$24,999

College of Engineering Total Revenue FY18-FY21 $7,500,000

IMPACT FROM ENG LEADERSHIP GIVING FY20/21:

$7,000,000 $6,500,000 $6,000,000 $5,500,000 $5,000,000 $4,500,000 $4,000,000

FY18

FY19

FY20

FY21

$5,000–$9,999

$2,500–$4,999

$1,000–$2,499

Sunil D. Ahuja (ENG’03) ■ ■

$1–$999

BU.EDU/ENG

Honor Roll of Supporters David E. Borchardt (ENG’83, CGS’80) and Priscillla W. Borchardt ■ Davis M. Borucki (ENG’16, CAS’16) Shaher Boustany (ENG’17) ■ Delilah E. Bowman (ENG’87) ■ Matthew Boyd (ENG’21,’26) ■ Washingon Bravo and Jahaira Bravo ■ ■ Kathryn E. Briggs (ENG’11) John C. Broderick (ENG’70,’77) ■ Alfred S. Brothers, Jr. (ENG’64) and Sandra J. Brothers ■ ■ Kara A. Brotman (ENG’00) ■ William W. Brown (ENG’65) ■ Elena B. Buckley (ENG’10) ■ Lawrence L. Bui (ENG’00) ■ Adam Bulakowski (ENG’99) and Lauren Bulakowski ■ Kevin H. Burek (ENG’08) ■ Andrea Burns (CAS’83, ENG’83,’88) and Kenneth Burns ■ Samantha K. Busk (ENG’16) ■ Ana G. Bustin and Denis C. Bustin ■ ■ Christopher L. Butler (ENG’00) ■ James J. Byrne (ENG’93) and Sarah M. Byrne (Sargent’93) ■ Pamela C. Cabahug-Zuckerman (ENG’96) Zhongyuan Cai (ENG’20) ■ Nicholas J. Cammarata (ENG’02) and Enid F. Cammarata (ENG’02) Stephen M. Campbell (ENG’97) ■ Cara T. Cantwell (ENG’04, CAS’04) and Patrick R. Cantwell ■ Kun Cao (ENG’18) Paul A. Caouette (ENG’70) and Honoria Niehaus ■ Ezra B. Caplan (ENG’04) Francis J. Capone (ENG’59) ■ Rafael A. Cappuccio (ENG’85) Rogelio Careaga and Rebecca Westwood ■ ■ Lindsay E. Carlson (ENG’11) ■ Frederic D. Carter III (ENG’97) Sierra M. Carter (ENG’21) ■ Audrey B. Casavant (ENG’79) and Richard B. Casavant ■ Brian Cassell (ENG’04,’05) Marco M. Castelli (ENG’82) and Elvira S. Perez James R. Cavanaugh, Jr. (ENG’88) and Lisa Cavanaugh ■ Victor Cervantes, Jr. (ENG’14) ■ Lisa D. Cervia (ENG’12) ■ Srinvasan Chakravarthi (ENG’01) and Rashmi Chakravarthi ■ Thomas E. Chamberlain (ENG’61) and Mary A. Chamberlain ■ Alex Chan (ENG’12) William L. Chan (ENG’79,’85) and Pearl C. Chan ■ ■ Wei-Hsiang Chang (ENG’12) and Jessie C. Chang (ENG’10) ■ Jimmy C. Chau (ENG’09,’11,’16) ■ Aileen M. Chavez (Questrom’21) ■ Chasity G. Chavez (ENG’21) ■ Justin E. Chavez (ENG’03,’05) ■ Rafael Chavez and Monserrat Adame ■ ■ Alexander Chelminsky (ENG’90) and Daphne Romanoff ■ ■ Chuwei Chen (ENG’21) Geguo George Chen (ENG’88) and Lihua Zhang-Chen ■ Kenneth T. Cheng (ENG’84) ■ Ming Cheng (ENG’18) ■ Stephen D. Cheng (ENG’12) ■ Jerry Chew (ENG’70) ■ Edmond W. Chin (ENG’74, Questrom’75) and Susan Y. Chin (Wheelock’75) ■ Robert Chin (ENG’70) and Diana H. Chin ■ Kyoung-Won S. Cho (ENG’88) and Joseph I. Song ■

Kengyeh K. Chu (ENG’11) ■ Howard T. Chun (ENG’83) ■ Anthony H. Chyn (ENG’05) ■ Peter M. Cirak (ENG’01,’07) and Erika N. Cirak ■ Sarah M. Clark (ENG’14) Richard H. Coco (ENG’62) ■ David E. Cohen (ENG’90) ■ Alan J. Colburn (ENG’79) Nat J. Collins (ENG’91,’91) ■ Elizabeth G. Condliffe (ENG’04) Charlene E. Conlin Cain (SON’68) and Michael P. Cain ■ Joseph D. Connelly (ENG’99) Robert G. Connors (ENG’60) ■ Stephen P. Conrad (ENG’19) Kendra L. Cook (ENG’04) and Justin J. Cook Robert B. Cooper (ENG’65) and Joan C. Cooper ■ Braden A. Corbin (ENG’18) ■ Louise R. Corman ■ ■ Manuel J. Costa (ENG’84) ■ ■ Paul Couto (ENG’94) and Kim W. Fusaris ■ Carleton W. Crockett (ENG’80) and Maureen Crockett ■ Kelly B. Cronley (ENG’05) and Joe Cronley ■ Sarah L. Cropper (MET’87) and Paul W. Cropper, Jr. ■ Brian J. Cruise (ENG’97) and Kimberly Vuong ■ Ryan Cruz (ENG’13) Hengdong Cui (ENG’06,’07) ■ Michael P. Cutillo (ENG’01) ■ Wei Dai (ENG’99) and Sau Sim Lee ■ Thyagaraju Damarla (GRS’87, ENG’93) and Bai K. Damarla ■ William R. D’Angelo (ENG’92) H. Alan Daniels (ENG’59) and Barbara J. Daniels ■ Susan C. Daniels (ENG’81) and Mark S. Daniels ■ Dennis J. D’Antona (ENG’73) and Janet M. D’Antona ■ Michael J. Datta (ENG’05,’07) Hemang D. Dave and Theresa Dave ■ ■ Benjamin C. Davenny (ENG’00) ■ Latoya S. Davis (ENG’02) Jeremy C. de Jong (ENG’00) and Lisa Domanowski Gregory C. DeAngelis (ENG’87) and Karen J. DeAngelis ■ J. Evan Deardorff (ENG’93) ■ Benjamin D. DeFrancesco (ENG’88) and Andria Tejada-DeFrancesco ■ Vincent A. DeGenova (ENG’14) Foster J. DeGiacomo (Questrom’51, ENG’61) and Nancy C. DeGiacomo ■ Jacqueline A. DeMartini (ENG’83) ■ Travis DeMent (ENG’06) ■ Andre DeNardo (ENG’08) Yuqi Deng (ENG’19,’19) ■ Marc P. Denner and Catherine E. Denner ■ ■ Richard P. Denton (ENG’66) and Susan R. Denton ■ In memory of: Ted Trainor (ENG’66) Urban Cloran (ENG’66) Al Moulton (ENG’66) Robert J. D’Entremont (ENG’62) and Ruth M. D’Entremont ■ Douglas K. DePiero (ENG’92) and Tina G. DePiero (ENG’88) ■ Darash Desai (ENG’12,’14) ■ ■ Mohit Deshpande (MET’18) ■ Robert L. DesRosiers (ENG’84) and Julieta A. DesRosiers ■ Gerard M. Devlin (ENG’20) ■ Samit Dhangwattanotai (ENG’18) ■ Ali-Zain Dhukka (ENG’12) ■

Raymond Diaz (ENG’84) and Virginia C. Diaz Thomas M. DiCicco, Jr. (ENG’01) and Andrea DiCicco ■ Thomas M. DiCicco, Sr. (Questrom’80) and Janice T. DiCicco ■ Gabriel V. DiFilippo (ENG’58) and Mary E. DiFilippo ■ Joseph J. DiLorenzo (ENG’84) ■ Richard H. Dimmock, Jr. (ENG’86) and Amy Dimmock ■ Anthony L. DiPietro (ENG’66) and Janice E. DiPietro ■ Allan J. Dolinski and Claudette C. Dolinski ■ ■ Anthony Donnaruma (ENG’84) ■ Sheila J. Dooley (ENG’91) ■ Weina F. Dorsky (ENG’03) and Jason M. Dorsky ■ Danielle R. Dougherty (ENG’17, Questrom’21) Paul J. Dougherty (ENG’01,’02) ■ Lisa F. Drake ■ ■ Craig G. DuBois and Susan S. DuBois ■ ■ James A. Duda (ENG’84, MET’11) and Sharon P. Duda ■ Andrew E. Dudek (ENG’03) and Mona Dudek Deborah L. Dunklee (ENG’87, Questrom’98) and Jason R. Dunklee (ENG’05) ■ ■ Kenneth J. Dunn (ENG’67) and Debra L. Dunn Benjamin F. Duong (ENG’12,’13) Allison Z. Durkan (ENG’17) ■ ■ Wayne W. Duso (ENG’91) Carol L. Dutra ■ ■ ■ John A. Duval (ENG’89) and Kathleen R. Duval ■ Nicholas C. Eberhard (ENG’20) ■ David M. Ehrmann (CGS’71) and Barbara N. Ehrmann Gerald R. Eisler (ENG’72) and Rosemarie Eisler ■ Yasemin Eken and Kevin Maher ■ ■ Sara Ekhlas (ENG’16) Ziad S. El Jamous (ENG’08) ■ Monica L. Eng (ENG’11) ■ Sheldon J. Epstein (ENG’59) ■ Aune E. Erickson ■ ■ Timothy A. Erney (ENG’95) Juanita D. Ervin (ENG’78) Gustavo P. Espinosa (ENG’91) Bayard A. Eton (CAS’21, ENG’21) ■ Charles F. Evans (ENG’84) ■ Mary E. Evilsizer (ENG’98,’00) and Christopher G. Evilsizer Jennifer Falciglia (Questrom’19) ■ Anthony Faller (ENG’22) ■ Yuguang Fang (ENG’97) and Jennifer Y. Lu ■ Elizabeth K. Farber (Wheelock’19) ■ Caleb H. Farny (ENG’04,’07) and Natalie G. Farny ■ David L. Feldman (ENG’66) and Patricia A. Feldman ■ Rosanne E. Felicello (UNI’99, LAW’02) and Marc J. Albanese (ENG’99,’03) ■ James Ferguson, Jr. (ENG’61) and Patricia Ferguson ■ Martha E. Ferris (ENG’82) ■ Talal Fida (ENG’94) ■ Sharon Kaiser Fincher (ENG’82) and Thomas G. Fincher ■ John G. Finck (ENG’61) ■ Yevgeniy Finegold (ENG’04, MET’10) ■ Justin E. Fischer and Kathy Fischer ■ ■ Michael P. Fitzpatrick (ENG’19, Wheelock’20) ■ Roland W. Fitzroy (ENG’68) ■ Timothy Flanigan (ENG’83) and Lisa C. Flanigan (ENG’83) James P. Flanigon (ENG’09, GRS’09) and Michelene Flanigon ■ Leslie M. Flores Burgos (ENG’19) ■ Erik Fogelberg ■

James Y. Fong (ENG’71,’74) and Margaret Y. Fong Man K. Fong (ENG’90) ■ Stephen P. Foraste (ENG’91,’94) and Alyssa Duffy ■ Mark R. Ford, Jr. (ENG’77,’83) and Priscilla W. Ford ■ Elijah J. Forstadt (ENG’21) ■ Donald A. Foster (ENG’92) and Carole C. Foster ■ Justin M. Foster (ENG’11,’12) and Corrine Foster ■ Robert F. Frechette (ENG’93) and Claire K. Frechette (CAS’93) ■ Patricia K. Freitag (CAS’84, Wheelock’91) and David W. Freitag (ENG’91) ■ John F. French, Jr. (ENG’96) Helaine R. Friedlander (Wheelock’75) ■ ■ ■ Richard Fu (ENG’18) ■ Brian C. Fuchs (ENG’87) ■ Raymond M. Gabriel (ENG’02) ■ Roger J. Gagnon (ENG’68) and Christine C. Gagnon ■ Kathryn S. Gainey (ENG’92) and Stephen Roquemore ■ Xinwei Gao (Questrom’14) and Ying Liang ■ Savanah G. Garcia (ENG’21) Sharon I. Garde (ENG’86) and Cesar A. Garde ■ Timothy S. Gardner (ENG’00) and Wendy C. Gardner (CGS’95, Sargent’97) ■ Manoj K. Garg (ENG’99) ■ Matthew M. Geary (ENG’81, Questrom’84) and Dawn M. Sinnigen Gregory M. Genecin (ENG’16) ■ Timothy A. Geraghty (ENG’16) ■ ■ ■ George L. Getchell (ENG’54) and Veronica G. Getchell ■ Nicholas P. Ghareeb (ENG’95) ■ R. Scott Gibble and Laura A. Gibble ■ ■ Irving S. Giller (ENG’07) Heather L. Gillis (ENG’98,’98) ■ Karan Giri (ENG’11,’16) ■ Mary Ann Givens (ENG’92) ■ Steven J. Goldman (ENG’91) Daniel G. Goncalves (CAS’05, Wheelock’10) ■ ■ Miguel Angel Goni Rodrigo (ENG’18) ■ ■ ■ Stephen P. Gonzales and Catherine B. Gonzales ■ ■ Srikanth Gopalan and Sowmini Sampath ■ ■ ■ Michael W. Gor (ENG’79,’80) ■ Richard G. Gould (ENG’90, CGS’85) and Diana Stilwell ■ Raymond M. Govotski (ENG’95) ■ Carl I. Graham (ENG’87) ■ Alison Graves-Calhoun (ENG’91) and W. Byron Calhoun ■ Michael J. Greaney (Wheelock’98) and Katherine J. Greaney (ENG’00) ■ Salvatore Greco, Jr. (ENG’68) ■ Charles J. Green (ENG’79) and Kerin L. Green ■ Michael J. Green (ENG’09) and Stephanie L. Teale ■ Francis A. Greene, Jr. (ENG’83) ■ Linda Greene ■ Richard J. Gregson (ENG’83) and Susan G. Gregson ■ Meghan R. Griffin (ENG’21) ■ ■ Gregory G. Grozdits (ENG’99, MET’09) ■ Tianyu Gu (ENG’18) ■ George C. Guerra (ENG’84) ■ Katarina Gullotta (ENG’18) ■ Rui Guo (ENG’07) ■ Song Guo (ENG’07,’11) and Chunxia Fan (ENG’07) ■ Aman Gupta (ENG’21) ■

Berke E. Guzelsu (ENG’14,’15, Questrom’20) ■ ■ Nejat Guzelsu and Isil Guzelsu ■ ■ Quang-Thinh Ha (ENG’21,’23) ■ Ann A. Hablanian (GRS’73) ■ Marie Haggerty (ENG’84) and Guy A. Perrault ■ Varshith Hakkithimmanahalli Anilkumar (ENG’17) ■ Ronald J. Halaby (ENG’62) and Elaine T. Halaby ■ Joseph E. Hale (ENG’83) ■ Roswell G. Hall III (ENG’72) and Gretchen O. Hall ■ Thomas R. Hall (ENG’12) ■ Chien-Jih Han and Patricia S. Han ■ ■ Elisabeth Y. Han (ENG’18,’19) ■ Aslam T. Handy (ENG’90) and Joyce E. Hatch Letian Hao (ENG’21, CAS’21) ■ Jean-Christophe P. Harmange and Michelle E. Harmange ■ ■ Robert C. Harrington (ENG’00) Kazi A. Hasan (ENG’72, Questrom’73) Cory W. Haselmayer (ENG’13) Wenbo He (ENG’15,’16) ■ Edwin P. Heaney, Jr. (ENG’86) and Carol A. Heaney Sarah M. Heck (ENG’04) ■ Calvin S. Heiling (ENG’15) ■ Diane M. Heislein and David E. Heislein ■ ■ Martin C. Herbordt and Ellen B. Herbordt ■ William Heres (ENG’92,’97) and Kristin A. Heres Esteban A. Hernandez (ENG’21) ■ Olivia A. Herrera (ENG’13) ■ Veronica C. Herzog (ENG’18) James V. Hickey (ENG’57) and Jean C. Hickey Robert F. Hight, Jr. (ENG’94) and Tomoko T. Hight Ryan M. Hill (ENG’07,’10) ■ Stephen A. Hilton (ENG’97) Yue-shun E. Ho (ENG’89) and Carrie Lo ■ Tu Timmy Hoang (ENG’18,’21) ■ Mark F. Hodge (ENG’99, Questrom’99) ■ Joseph Hoerner (ENG’17) ■ Mark J. Hoffman and Nancy A. Hoffmann ■ ■ Peter H. Hoffman (ENG’74, Questrom’01) and Pam W. Hoffman ■ Samuel M. Hoffman (ENG’12) ■ Arthur G. Holden (ENG’66) and Laurie C. Holden ■ Alonso P. Holmes (ENG’12) Carly Holstein (ENG’08) and Tyler Holstein Paul M. Holway (ENG’96) Norman S. Hom and Susan T. Nonaka-Hom ■ ■ Scott A. Hom (ENG’20) ■ Jody L. Hoppe (ENG’82) Betty Horna (Questrom’07) ■ Bing Hou (ENG’95) and Gui-Hua Zhang ■ Peter T. Houston (ENG’58) and Ann B. Houston ■ Chelsea Hua ■ Hui Huang (ENG’98) ■ Tianlun Huang (ENG’21) ■ Annemarie G. Hudak (ENG’90) ■ Anna B. Hughes (ENG’17) ■ C. Arthur Hughes (ENG’62) ■ Ethan P. Hung (ENG’21) ■ David M. Huselid (ENG’01) and Alison L. Huselid (ENG’01) Nabeel H. Hussain (ENG’16, CGS’13) Tanvir Hussain and Aysha Hussain ■ Tony Huynh (MET’12) ■ Syed A. Hyat (UNI’08) ■ Robert J. Iacovone (ENG’69) and Carolyn M. Iacovone ■

Hany N. Ibrahim (ENG’93) ■ Majid M. Ikhwan (ENG’03) and Larisa Epshteyn (Questrom’06, COM’06) ■ Jose A. Imery and Valeria Imery ■ ■ Esther U. Imogu and Moses A. Imogu ■ ■ Michelle C. Imogu (ENG’22) ■ Antonio T. Infante, Jr. and Victoria Infante ■ ■ Anastasios S. Ioannidis (ENG’87) and Margarita Zega ■ Gerard D. Irmer (ENG’64, CGS’63) and Lois J. Irmer ■ Scott K. Isabelle (ENG’88,’95) and Karen H. Isabelle Brandon D. Itkowitz (ENG’99,’08) Monica Jain (MED’12, ENG’08) Ruchita A. Jain (ENG’21) ■ Kedar R. Jalihal and Aarati K. Jalihal ■ ■ Leslie M. James (ENG’86) and Gerald A. Rush Richard S. Jamieson (ENG’62) and Jeanine M. Jamieson ■ ■ Theresa R. Jay (ENG’87) and John H. Jay, Jr. ■ Di Jin and Zhen Wu ■ Rubing Jin (ENG’14) ■ John B. Johnsen ■ Alfred S. Johnson (ENG’64) and Rafaele M. Johnson ■ Larison W. Johnson (ENG’89) Ronald H. Johnson (ENG’59) and Mary J. Johnson ■ Katja P. Johnson-Schmidt (MET’21) ■ Michael R. Jones (ENG’98) and Gwendellyn Jones Natalie L. Jordan (ENG’14) Virginia Joudeh and Rami Joudeh ■ ■ David Jung (ENG’96) ■ Hyun J. Jung (ENG’93) ■ Edwin J. Juralewicz, Jr. and Danielle O’Leary ■ Michael H. Kagan (ENG’83) and Karen A. Kagan Steffen K. Kaldor (ENG’96) and Lu Ann S. Kaldor Daniel R. Kallman (ENG’94) ■ Ernest S. Kan (ENG’85) Khaled T. Kanaan (ENG’85) Brian T. Kane (ENG’13) ■ Timothy Kane and Nancy Kane ■ Ashvin Kannan (ENG’92,’97) and Madhuri Ramanathan (ENG’94) ■ Iris Kao (ENG’13) Elaine R. Kasparian ■ ■ Michael P. Kasparian (ENG’12,’14) Nicholas K. Katzenberger (ENG’94) and Gretchen B. Katzenberger (COM’92) Edward A. Kazanjian, Jr. (ENG’68) and Mary A. Kazanjian ■ Michael P. Kazenel (ENG’80) and Susan P. Caplan (BUTI’80) ■ Bonnie A. Kee-Bowling (ENG’86) and Dwight Bowling Michael N. Keefe (ENG’89) and Ana C. Keefe ■ Thomas D. Keegan (ENG’94) and Beth A. Keegan ■ ■ Laura M. Kegelmeyer (ENG’86,’88) ■ Patrick L. Kennedy (COM’04) and Andrea B. Kennedy (COM’05) ■ ■ Traci M. Kent (ENG’14) ■ Khalil R. Khouri (CGS’10, ENG’14) ■ Debra G. Kiger (ENG’82) and John I. Kiger Myungchan Kim (ENG’99,’01) and Kyoungeun Bae ■ ■ Sooyoung K. Kim (ENG’06) Kenneth M. Kirkwood (ENG’13) ■ Jeffrey P. Kittredge (ENG’15) ■ Ronald W. Knepper and Helen A. Knepper ■ Michael Koan (ENG’09)

Paul B. Kocincki (ENG’66) and Lindsey A. Kocincki ■ Kevin R. Kolodziejski ■ ■ Leah R. Kornstein (ENG’19) ■ ■ Georgi Korobanov (ENG’06) ■ Natalya Kotlyar (ENG’09) ■ Roy A. Kraus and Nancy E. Kraus ■ ■ Scott R. Kreamer (ENG’01) and Jennifer L. Kreamer (ENG’00) ■ Matthew D. Krill (ENG’08) Rajesh Krishnan (ENG’96,’04) and Srividya Shankar Ashish S. Krupadanam (ENG’96) and Sireesha Krupadanam ■ Kayla R. Kruper (ENG’12) John A. Kuffner (ENG’92) ■ ■ Subi Kulla and Olimpiada Kulla ■ ■ Meghan E. Kupratis (ENG’18) ■ Cathy M. Kurata (ENG’06) ■ William C. Kurtz (ENG’60) and Ruth M. Kurtz ■ Abena N. Kwakyi (ENG’11) ■ ■ Boissevain Kwan (ENG’83) ■ Rebecca M. LaCroix (ENG’13) Ting W. Lai (ENG’95,’97) Michael L. Laiman (ENG’86) ■ Susan E. Laird (ENG’87) Regina M. Lally (Wheelock’09) and Richard W. Lally (ENG’21) ■ ■ ■ Francine Lalooses (ENG’02,’03) ■ Stephen P. Lalooses (ENG’99) ■ Xiaodong Lan (ENG’15,’15) ■ ■ Yueying Lao (ENG’21) ■ Jesadang Laohaprasit (ENG’97) ■ Aaron J. Larocque (ENG’11) Cesar I. Lastra (ENG’08) Abbas A. Lawal (ENG’20) ■ Ian A. Leatherman (ENG’11) ■ Arthur D. LeBlanc (ENG’63) and Sylma E. LeBlanc ■ Chung Y. Lee and Hyun S. Kim ■ ■ Nathanael S. Lee (ENG’15) ■ Patrick Lee (ENG’08) Vincent D. Lee (ENG’17) ■ Zheng X. Lee (ENG’84) ■ Thomas A. Lentz (ENG’83) and Cynthia A. Lentz ■ Daniel J. Leonardis (ENG’04) ■ Max J. Lerman (ENG’12) and Paulina A. Lerman (COM’11) ■ Sara R. Leski (ENG’18) Robert C. Levin (ENG’87,’87) Kathleen M. Lewis (ENG’17) Ava Li ■ Jiang Li (GRS’17) ■ Peter Li (MET’21) ■ Chao-Yu Liang (ENG’86) and Hsiu-Ling Liang ■ Mary C. Liau (ENG’88) Bosheng Lin (ENG’98) ■ David B. Lindquist (ENG’82) and Therese Lindquist ■ Kyle W. Liskow (ENG’98) and Heather H. Liskow ■ Ronald J. Listro (ENG’78) ■ Linda Liu and Yuechao Zhao ■ ■ Spencer W. Liu (ENG’19) ■ Victor Liu (ENG’10) ■ Yong Liu (ENG’02) and Jinou Xie ■ Benjamin R. Livney (ENG’21) ■ Jennifer C. Logan (ENG’79,’80) ■ Jeannie J. Lu (ENG’95,’96, MET’00) ■ Li Y. Lu ■ ■ Shuiyu Lu and Hongfang Jin ■ ■ Yang Lu (ENG’14,’14) ■ Prashant Luitel (ENG’14) ■ Margaret Lundin (ENG’73) ■

Mary Lundquist (ENG’89) David L. Mabius (ENG’07,’09) ■ Lawrence E. Mabius and Kathy L. Mabius ■ ■ Heather N. Macken (ENG’10) ■ Sarah C. Maggipinto (ENG’20) ■ Henry A. Magnuson III (ENG’78) and Ann M. Magnuson ■ Kenneth S. Maguire (ENG’68) ■ Gopi N. Maguluri (ENG’04) ■ Michael J. Mahnken (ENG’84) and Sheryl M. Mahnken ■ James M. Mahoney ■ ■ Vineeth V. Malikayil and Geetha Prabha ■ ■ Steven J. Maloney (ENG’19) ■ Rajiv K. Manchanda (ENG’89) ■ Edward S. Mansfield (ENG’64,’68) and Dolores L. Mansfield ■ Fahim Manzur (ENG’08) ■ Ning Mao (ENG’18,’18) Maria Marca and Segundo Avila ■ ■ Samantha M. Marfoglio (ENG’18) ■ Kyle T. Martin (ENG’07) ■ Peter F. Martin (ENG’70) and Irene Y. Martin ■ Garth H. Mashmann (ENG’06) ■ Peter F. Masucci (ENG’70) and Kathy E. Masucci (CAS’71) ■ Michael Matatia (ENG’82) and Susan D. Matatia ■ George P. Matisse (ENG’89, Questrom’91) ■ ■ Harriet H. Matsushima (ENG’90,’93) Kenneth R. Maxwell (ENG’66) and Donna C. Maxwell ■ Ronald S. Maxwell (ENG’78) and Starr J. Maxwell ■ Lawrence N. McCarthy, Jr. (ENG’69) ■ Lester McCoy, Jr. (ENG’06,’11) ■ Jerome W. McDonald (ENG’01) ■ Timothy W. McGinn and Marilyn McGinn ■ ■ Michael W. McGlincy (ENG’05) Alycia A. McGoldrick (ENG’86,’94) and Michael F. McGoldrick Michael McGovern and Tonya McGovern ■ Tammie L. McGrath (ENG’97) ■ Loretta C. McHugh (ENG’00) and Evan McHugh ■ Robert C. McKinstry III (ENG’84) ■ ■ John J. McLaughlin (ENG’92) and Anna Hundt ■ Jody E. McLean (ENG’04, SPH’08) ■ Neil P. McManus (ENG’59) and Judith A. McManus ■ James McMorrow, Jr. and Lisa McMorrow ■ ■ Michael D. McMullen (ENG’90) and Michelle D. Search (Questrom’89) ■ Lexyne L. McNealy Jackson (ENG’02) ■ John A. McNeill (ENG’94) and Kristina Wile ■ Matthew J. McQuade (ENG’19, CGS’19) Alice D. McWade ■ ■ Armando Medeiros (ENG’85) ■ Nancy J. Medeiros (ENG’89) ■ Teddy I. Medina Padro (ENG’19,’20) Noushin Mehdipour (ENG’21) ■ Hemal P. Mehta (ENG’04) and Parikha S. Mehta (ENG’02,’03) ■ Eugene Y. Mei and Grace Y. Gao ■ John W. Meinig (ENG’65) and Mary M. Meinig Philip J. Melchiorre (ENG’84) ■ Susan Y. Melville and Brian K. Melville ■ ■ Nicholas A. Memme (ENG’16) ■ ■ ■ Lynn Mendenhall (ENG’85) Lingmin Meng (ENG’01) and Chenhao Yuan ■ Scott E. Meninger (ENG’96) Kevin J. Mercer (ENG’15) ■ Janine R. Mereb (GRS’84, ENG’84) ■

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

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Honor Roll of Supporters David M. Merer (ENG’86) and Michelle S. Merer Carolina Mesa (ENG’15) ■ Pamela L. Metz (ENG’81) ■ Michael J. Meurer and Miyuki Yamaguchi ■ ■ Brett J. Meyer (ENG’10) Ihwa Miao (ENG’93) ■ David S. Miller (ENG’91,’94) and Barbara Miller ■ Deborah Miller (ENG’86, MET’92) ■ Debra Miller ■ ■ James G. Miller (ENG’84) Arthur R. Milley (ENG’60) Cheryl J. Mills (STH’92) and Carey G. Spain ■ Regan N. Mills (ENG’99) and Isabel B. Mills ■ Stuart H. Minshull (ENG’14) Kristina K. Mistry (ENG’95) and Nicholas N. Mistry Macie A. Monborne (ENG’21) ■ John Erik Moore (ENG’89,’92) and Deborah J. Moore (ENG’89) ■ Jonathan R. Mooty (ENG’90) ■ Carlos Moreira (ENG’99, MET’03) ■ ■ Mark S. Moreira (ENG’84) and Gina M. Moreira Christopher Morgan-McGregor (ENG’82) ■ Yosuke Mori (ENG’87) and Chiharu Mori ■ Fred Morrison (ENG’62) and Barbara M. Morrison (CAS’64) ■ Ronald P. Morrissey (ENG’92,’01) ■ Robert A. Morse, Sr. (ENG’63) ■ John L. Mosley (ENG’13) ■ Alexander Z. Moyse (ENG’18) King F. Mui (ENG’15) ■ Vivek J. Mukhatyar (ENG’05) Debangshu Mukherjee (ENG’13) ■ John P. Mullen (ENG’85) and Carole K. Mullen (CGS’75, Wheelock’77) ■ Christine S. Mulvey (ENG’11) ■ Sarah K. Murray (ENG’10) ■ William R. Murray, Jr. (ENG’06) Huntley B. Myrie (ENG’95) and Carolyn R. Collins-Myrie (ENG’94,’00) ■ Adam M. Nadeau (ENG’08) ■ Gail A. Nagle (ENG’84) and Richard J. Nagle ■ Lance S. Nakano (ENG’17,’18) ■ Vincent A. Naldoza and Sylvia B. Naldoza ■ Dharma D. Narayana and Ravi K. Meruva ■ ■ Ashok Narayanan (ENG’98) ■ Akshay Navaladi (ENG’09) and Pallavi Rebbapragada Tammra C. Nelson (ENG’84) and James Hendrix Charles J. Newfell, Jr. (ENG’79,’82) and Christine S. Newfell Hai T. Nguyen and Thanh Huong T. Nguyen ■ ■ Kenneth K. Nguyen (ENG’89) ■ Tai H. Nguyen (ENG’13) Yuchen Nie (ENG’19) ■ Stephen J. Niemi (ENG’68,’80,’82) and Susan Niemi Rebecca Nitzan and William Quick ■ ■ Michael J. Norris (ENG’07) ■ Brian Nowicki (ENG’08) ■ Elli Ntakou (ENG’17,’17) ■ ■ ■ Walter P. Obrochta (ENG’18) Alexander J. O’Donovan (ENG’16) and Codie L. Smith (ENG’16, Wheelock’17) ■ Stephen O’Keefe (ENG’93) Mark A. Oliphant (ENG’86) and Colleen L. Oliphant ■ Luis M. Olivarez (ENG’21) ■ Pamela A. Oliver (ENG’84) and Mark R. Whittaker ■ Craig S. Olson (ENG’90) and Dayna L. Olson ■ Alexandra M. Osman (ENG’18)

34 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Rodrigo Ospina, Jr. (ENG’19) ■ Susan M. O’Sullivan (ENG’03) ■ Vivek Pachaury and Madhurima Pachaury ■ Robert W. Paglierani (ENG’66) and Susan D. Paglierani ■ David S. Pak and Pia H. Pak ■ ■ Constante J. Palad, Jr. (ENG’19) Sushrut A. Palatkar (ENG’16) ■ Mark E. Paley (ENG’91) Joseph L. Palladino (ENG’82) and Diane Wilan ■ ■ Cristina M. Palumbo (ENG’95, MED’99) and Michael H. Palumbo (COM’95) ■ Laura Y. Pan (ENG’89) and Victor T. Pan ■ Maria L. Panteleos (ENG’97) and Nicholas Panteleos (ENG’97) ■ George T. Papadopoulos (ENG’01) and Ashley A. Papadopoulos (CGS’99, Wheelock’01) ■ John Papadopoulos (ENG’60) and Mahi A. Papadopoulos Gerasimos Papathanasiou (ENG’95) ■ Michael D. Paquette (ENG’84) and Mary T. Paquette ■ ■ Michael J. Paradie (ENG’86,’90) and Dalia M. Paradie (COM’87) ■ Joon B. Park (ENG’67) and Hyonsook Y. Park Jes F. Pascua (ENG’88) and Pamela Pascua ■ ■ Joseph H. Passarelli (ENG’88) Jangliw S. Passavant (ENG’89) and James Passavant Mark Pastarnack and Michele Pastarnack ■ ■ Ajan B. Patel (ENG’06) Robins N. Patel (ENG’13) John H. Paul (CAS’90) and Chrysanthea K. Paul (ENG’90) ■ Kirsten H. Paulson (ENG’82) and Mark A. Paulson ■ Leonard H. Pauze, Jr. (ENG’57) and Joan C. Pauze ■ Anthony F. Pecore (ENG’95) and Rebecca B. Pecore ■ Paul O. Pederson (ENG’90) and Martha C. Pederson Jay B. Penafiel (ENG’90) and Elise G. Penafiel ■ Eric D. Peterson (ENG’89) Rachel E. Petherbridge (ENG’19) ■ Jacqueline M. Petit (ENG’83) and Alan N. Petit ■ Michael T. Pettit (ENG’14) and Nicole L. Black-Pettit (ENG’14) ■ Sarah Pham (ENG’21) ■ Yen Pham (ENG’19, CAS’19) Khai T. Phan (ENG’18) Molly Phillips-Hungerford (ENG’05) John L. Piantedosi (ENG’61) Steven L. Picciano (ENG’97) ■ Kirk G. Pierce and Shamarie Pierce ■ ■ Leah H. Pillsbury (ENG’19) ■ Amy E. Pinto-Quintanilla (ENG’21) Anthony C. Pippo, Jr. (ENG’67) Anthony N. Pirri (ENG’64) and Catherine H. Pirri Herbert S. Plovnick (MED’71, CAS’67) and Kathleen R. Plovnick (ENG’89, CAS’68) ■ Dennis S. Poe and Milja R. Poe ■ ■ Edward A. Pohl (ENG’84) and Letitia M. Pohl ■ Michael J. Poling (ENG’13) Samuel R. Polio (ENG’09,’12,’14) ■ Miguel A. Portillo (ENG’21) ■ Ashish Prakash and Rasna K. Prakash Sanjay Prasad (ENG’86,’87) and Suman V. Prasad (Questrom’89) George W. Pratt IV (ENG’17,’17) Peter I. Presel (ENG’61) ■ Cheryl L. Pritchard (ENG’86) and Scott Pritchard

Nuwapa Promchotichai (CAS’21, ENG’21) Michael J. Pulliam (ENG’83) and Jacquett Pulliam Jing Qian (ENG’14) ■ Bowen Qin (ENG’21) ■ Thomas W. Quinn (ENG’21) ■ William G. Quirk (ENG’62) ■ Savitha Raghunath (ENG’07) and Harish Ramamurthy Sowmya Ramakrishnan and Rajaram Radhakrishnan ■ ■ Carlos V. Ramirez, Jr. and Donna J. Brister ■ ■ Ghazal Randhawa (ENG’19) ■ Elena Rantou and Demetrios P. Margaronis ■ ■ Gregory A. Rath (ENG’90) Christopher J. Reaney (ENG’87) and Susan K. Reaney ■ Bridget A. Reardon (ENG’09) ■ Herbert P. Redman (ENG’63) and Joan E. Redman ■ ■ ■ James L. Reed (ENG’88, CGS’85) ■ Robin K. Reimer and Christopher A. Reimer ■ ■ G. Anthony Reina (ENG’93) and Bryn J. Reina (Sargent’92) ■ Donald C. Reny, Jr. (ENG’88) and Jennifer R. Reny ■ ■ Dorie A. Resnik (ENG’92) and Carl S. Resnik Linda A. Reynolds (ENG’89) ■ Joo S. Rhee (ENG’06) and Eunice R. Rhee (CAS’08) ■ Kenneth B. Rice (MET’96, ENG’84) and Diane Tarr ■ W. Gregory Richardson (ENG’92) and Julie S. Richardson ■ ■ Adam S. Riley (ENG’07) Nae Gyune Rim (ENG’18) Christopher R. Ring (ENG’95) and Jessica E. Ring (CAS’97) ■ Anthony J. Rivera (ENG’89) and Pamela M. Rivera (CAS’89) Beth P. Robert (ENG’89,’04, Questrom’04) Roberta Roberts (ENG’87) Michael Robichaud (ENG’11) and Natalie A. Robichaud (ENG’11) ■ Henry A. Robinson (ENG’57) and Carol M. Robinson Lisa Robinson Schoeller (ENG’82, Questrom’98) and Richard J. Schoeller ■ Ashley L. Rodriguez (ENG’21) ■ Christina Rodriguez (ENG’06) Nickholas L. Rodriguez (ENG’18, STH’21) ■ Paul C. Rohr and Rita T. Rohr ■ ■ Joseph K. Rollin (ENG’05) ■ Lisa A. Rooker (ENG’13) ■ Alexander A. Rosales (ENG’06) ■ Kenneth N. Ross (ENG’95) Barron L. Roth Michael C. Rothko (ENG’18) ■ Marvin B. Roxas (ENG’13) Jeffrey T. Roy (ENG’95) and Whitney J. Roy Joshua D. Rubin (ENG’20) ■ Logan D. Rubio (ENG’19) Bradley G. Rufleth (ENG’04) and Lindsey M. Cimochowski (MET’13) ■ Michael P. Runci (ENG’68,’74, Questrom’74) and Janet L. Runci ■ Derek M. Russell (ENG’88) and Elizabeth G. Russell ■ George R. Sachs (ENG’62) and Judith A. Sachs Avanish Sahai (ENG’89) Jenna D. Saiontz (ENG’20) ■ Sunami Sajjanam Morrison (ENG’16) Jeffrey H. Sakai (ENG’11) Edgardo S. Salcedo (ENG’00) Arvind K. Salgam and Manjula Salgam ■ ■ Sivaramakrishnan Sankarapandian (ENG’18) ■ Dawn Marie D. Sanok (ENG’83) Ellen M. Sapp ■ ■

Modur L. Sathyendra and Leelavathy Sathyendra ■ ■ Arpan P. Savla (ENG’05) David A. Scaduto (ENG’09) ■ Perry M. Schein (ENG’12) ■ Thomas G. Schlatter (ENG’94) and Tania A. Schlatter (CFA’90) ■ Eric C. Schmitt (ENG’11) ■ Bertram J. Schmitz, Jr. (ENG’62) ■ Robert E. Schneider (ENG’79) and Diane M. Schneider ■ ■ Jeffrie F. Schreier (ENG’08) ■ Brian L. Schulz (ENG’82) ■ Frank J. Schwamborn (ENG’16) ■ Daniel C. Schwartz (ENG’16) Stephanie R. Sczylvian Mills (ENG’07) Nicole E. Seaman (ENG’13) Adil M. Seddiq (ENG’02) ■ Albert R. Seeley (MET’95, ENG’85) and Lauren M. Seeley ■ Gregory D. Seiden (ENG’80) and Robin K. Seiden ■ Joanne J. Senders (CAS’81) and Kevin Senders ■ ■ Senem Sezgi (ENG’13) Olubukola S. Shabiolegbe (ENG’93) ■ Mitchell S. Shack (ENG’91) ■ Masoud Shafa and Manijeh Shafa Nirmit K. Shah (ENG’16) ■ Pooja D. Shah (ENG’14) Sandra D. Shanaberger (ENG’82) and William T. Warner ■ Paul Shao (ENG’01) and Jody Chai (ENG’01) Saurabh Sharma (ENG’15) Thomas P. Shea (ENG’20) ■ Ananth Shenoy (ENG’01) and Raksha Shenoy Eric J. Sheppard (ENG’83) and Veronica M. Sheppard ■ Robert J. Shimkus (ENG’68) and Linda R. Shimkus ■ Ayush A. Shirsat (ENG’20) ■ Gordon A. Shogren (ENG’59) and Frances K. Shogren ■ Koreen J. Shoham (ENG’14) Nir Shukrun (ENG’21) Mahmud A. Siddiqi and Rehana I. Siddiqi ■ ■ Michael George Sidhom Farag (ENG’17,’17) Vera M. Siegel and Richard M. Siegel ■ ■ Mark P. Sika (ENG’01) ■ Philippe Sikias (ENG’99,’00) and Sima Sikias ■ Rhonda S. Silva (CAS’15, ENG’15) Peter C. Simko (ENG’94) and Jeanne M. Simko ■ James D. Simpson (ENG’21) ■ Shivani Singh (ENG’19) ■ Vikas Singh (Questrom’19, ENG’19) ■ Tracy M. Sioussat and Mark F. Cardono (ENG’91) ■ Elly A. Sirotta (ENG’01, Questrom’08) and Stacey L. Sirotta (Sargent’01,’03,’08) ■ ■ Harold K. Sit (ENG’76) ■ Theodore J. Smigelski (ENG’14) ■ Blake W. Smith (ENG’85,’86) and Karen B. Smith David M. Smith (ENG’85) ■ John F. Smith (ENG’63) ■ Andrew J. Smolenski (UNI’09, Questrom’09) and Anna A. Smolenski (ENG’09) ■ Tatiana Sokolinski (ENG’15) ■ Mengting Song ■ Juliet E. Sonkoly (ENG’00) ■ Adam H. Sonnenberg (ENG’15,’20,’20) James H. Soutar, Jr. (ENG’64) and Marcia O. Soutar ■ Megan E. Spangler (ENG’95) Joshua L. Spaulding (ENG’08) Frank A. Spinelli (ENG’02) ■ Mark D. Spoto (ENG’90) and Elizabeth M. Spoto ■

Dream big, be kind AMAZON ROBOTICS’ CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST ON WHY HE STAYS INVOLVED AT ENG

ye Brady (ENG’90) taught himself coding as a youngster, then earned his bachelor’s in aerospace engineering from ENG and a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from MIT. He served in technical and leadership roles at Draper Laboratory for 15 years. Now as chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, Brady leads advanced technology and research efforts for a company with 100,000 robots deployed at warehouses across the US. As an active BU alum, Brady helped secure corporate support for the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) and the ENG Student Design Projects Endowed Fund. Here, Brady shares his thoughts on engineering and education. What ENG class do you best recall? Engineering Design with Professor Theo de Winter. He taught us, first, to understand what problem we were trying to solve, and secondly, to embrace curiosity when solving that problem. Professor de Winter made engineering fun, and he gave me the confidence to try new things. Confidence and curiosity couple nicely, in that before you realize it, one learns that everything in engineering is connected—including mechanical, electrical and software systems—all in a single design problem.

be more creative, more capable and even more intelligent. If properly designed, robotics should give us the convenience to try new things, the courtesy to explore new boundaries and the capabilities to give back to others, including Mother Earth. Engineering makes all of this possible, and I stand with all of those who embrace positive change by studying and applying engineering to some of today’s hardest problems we face as a society. Why do you feel it was important to advise Dean Lutchen on the new MS in Robotics and Autonomous Systems? It is crucial that we prepare our next-generation employees for the real world of robotics, a rapidly changing field. By serving on Dean Lutchen’s advisory board, I can share real-world applications and needs during a period of unprecedented growth in industry. With our advice, Dean Lutchen can ensure that the curriculum is relevant and suited to the challenges ahead. For example, the new Machine Learning concentration (see p. 3) was a result of this interaction, and I am happy to have helped shape it. Your wife, Christine Brady (Wheelock’91), earned a master’s in elementary education from BU. Does she share your passion for supporting education? We both believe in the power of education, love and kindness. Anything and everything are possible when you embrace all three in your daily life.

What do you most enjoy about working in robotics? The people. I have always been a dreamer and have found that it is best to think big with small, deliberate acts. The people in my robotics circle do this exceedingly well—they think big and deliver results with daily doses of achievements. They embrace failure as a learning experience, and they motivate others even when times are tough. Kindness matters to this crowd, and I believe kindness is a parachute for failure and a force multiplier for success. What motivates you to support ENG? Science and technology, when done right, allow us humans to

Tye Brady (ENG’90)

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34 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Dream big, be kind AMAZON ROBOTICS’ CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST ON WHY HE STAYS INVOLVED AT ENG

Tye Brady (ENG’90)

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Honor Roll of Supporters

36 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Ibrahim Turkman and Gul Turkman ■ ■ Jason M. Ulberg (ENG’98) and Jaime Ulberg (Questrom’98) ■ Stephen R. Uriarte (ENG’88) ■ Isioma C. Utomi (ENG’07) ■ Ned Utzig (ENG’86) ■ Ted R. Van Daalen Wetters and Lisa G. Sandles ■ Guy Vandevoordt and Mady F. Vandevoordt ■ ■ Richard A. Vanetzian (ENG’60) and Eleanor V. Vanetzian ■ Rosalinda Vargas and Ricardo Leon ■ ■ Henry X. Varona (ENG’19) Cristian-Ioan Vasile (ENG’16) ■ ■ ■ Dinesh Venkatesh (ENG’92,’98) and Sowmya Manjanatha ■ ■ Glenda A. Ventura (ENG’90) and Vicente A. Ventura Ellen A. Verdile ■ ■ Adarsh M. Verghese (ENG’17) ■ German J. Viana (ENG’82) Boris T. Virnik (ENG’12) Paul J. Vizzio (ENG’10,’15) ■ Gui Von Zuben (ENG’13) and Sydney F. Von Zuben (CAS’13) ■ Andrew A. Wagner (ENG’94) and Priya T. Wagner (CAS’94) ■ Gregory J. Wagner (ENG’96) and Lisa D. Wilsbacher ■ Lisa Wall (ENG’81) ■ Baxter K. Walsh (ENG’61) and P. A. Walsh ■ Edmund J. Walsh, Jr. (ENG’83,’83) and Jane M. Walsh ■ Gary F. Walsh (ENG’11,’13) and Carolyn Walsh ■ Thomas D. Walsh (ENG’86) Bonnie L. Walton (ENG’19) Wendy Wan (ENG’89) ■ Chenyu Wang (ENG’19) ■ Haoyang Wang (ENG’21) ■ Jing Conan Wang (ENG’14,’14) ■ Qi Wang (ENG’13) ■ Richard Wang (ENG’07) ■ Jon-Michael Washington (ENG’19) ■ Mary Anne Wassenberg (ENG’90) and Michael W. Wassenberg ■ Michael T. Watson (ENG’96) Suhas M. Watturkar and Seehma S. Watturkar ■ Nicolas B. Webster (ENG’21) ■ Jia Wei (ENG’14) and Shaohui Wang ■ Jason A. Weiner (ENG’02) ■ Victor A. Weiss (ENG’17) Sarah E. Welch (ENG’15) Conrad E. Weledji (ENG’84,’84) Jeannette L. Wellman (ENG’87) ■ Hanqing Wen (ENG’16,’16) and Cheng Zhang (ENG’16) ■ Joel F. West (ENG’57) and Elizabeth S. West ■ Nathan S. White (ENG’99) ■ Ronald D. White and Susan Schweitzer ■ ■ Norman L. Whitley (ENG’75) ■ Mary Ellen Wickum (MED’14) Derek Wiebenson (ENG’95) and Sarah K. Wiebenson Robert A. Wilkinson (MET’08) and Michelle T. Sonia ■ Adrian D. Williams (ENG’01,’07) ■ Dwight Williams (ENG’80) and Rochelle A. Buford-Williams ■ Preston S. Wilson (ENG’02) Cameron J. Winslow (ENG’20) ■ Philip T. Winterson (ENG’62) and Barbara A. Winterson ■ Barbara M. Wojtlowski (ENG’08) ■ Michael D. Wolfe (MET’13) ■ Alex D. Wong (ENG’16) John W. Wright ■ ■ Barry Q. Wu (ENG’86,’92) ■ I-Hsien Wu (ENG’05) ■

Yaqun Xia (ENG’21) ■ Xinyu Xing (ENG’00) ■ Tao Xu (ENG’07) ■ Scott Yamashita (ENG’93,’96) ■ Yui Ham Yan (ENG’16) Holson Yap (ENG’05,’06) and Marissa Scipione ■ Siavash Yazdanfar (ENG’96) ■ Guosheng Ye (ENG’04) and Zhen Yuan ■ ■ Patrick H. Yen (ENG’08) ■ William W. Yen (ENG’17) ■ ■ Jamie Yieh (ENG’96) ■ Kin K. Yim (ENG’87,’88) and Iwey Y. Wang Robert B. Yohannan Christopher A. Young (ENG’92) and Nancy Young ■ Joseph R. Young (ENG’95) ■ Susan M. Young ■ ■ Haining Yu (ENG’05) Jeeyuen Yu (ENG’95, MET’00,’01) and Michelle L. Yu ■ Xi Yu (ENG’18,’18) and Mo Jiang ■ Xinke Yu (ENG’14) Xunjie Yu (ENG’19,’19) ■ Tyler P. Zamjahn (ENG’17) Diane F. Zanca (ENG’85) ■ Guylherme T. Zaniratto (ENG’98) ■ Andrew M. Zaso (ENG’90) Joshua S. Zeisel (ENG’07) ■ Telma M. Zelaya (ENG’21) ■ Qingtai Zhai (ENG’04,’07) ■ Guangzhi Zhang and Hong Gao ■ Qian Zhang (ENG’99) ■ Runzhe Zhang (ENG’16) Yuyao Zhang (ENG’21) ■ Jiahao Zhao (ENG’19) Jonathan Z. Zhao (ENG’18) ■ Qi Zhao (ENG’12,’16) and Yiwen Ding ■ Jiefu Zheng (ENG’13) ■ Yuhao Zhou (ENG’21) ■ Chenhui Zhu (ENG’21) ■ Jingjing Zhu (ENG’17) Todd E. Zive (ENG’98) and Mindy C. Zive ■ Jeffrey R. Zuccaro (ENG’05) and Rebecca K. Zuccaro (COM’05) ■ Zamir Zulkefli (ENG’05,’05) ■ Steven H. Zysman (ENG’85) ■

CORPORATIONS & FOUNDATIONS $50,000+

Anonymous 1907 Research Foundation Amazon Robotics LLC ■ ■ American Endowment Foundation ■ ■ American Heart Association ■ ■ Analog Devices Inc. ■ ■ ARM Inc. ■ ■ Beckman Coulter Foundation ■ Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ■ ■ Brain & Behavior Research Foundation ■ ■ Burroughs Wellcome Fund ■ ■ Catalyst Foundation ■ ■ Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. ■ ■ Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Inc. ■ ■ Facebook, Inc. ■ ■ General Electric Company ■ ■ Honda Motor Co., Ltd ■ ■ Hong Kong Foundation for Charities Limited ■ Howard Hughes Medical Institute ■ ■ IBM Corporation ■ Johnson & Johnson ■ Lam Research Corporation ■ ■ Leducq Foundation ■ Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust ■ Merck KGaA ■ ■

Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, Inc. ■ Nissan North America Inc. ■ ■ Northrop Grumman Corporation ■ Novartis Institutes For BioMedical Research, Inc. ■ ■ One Mind Foundation ■ ■ Pfizer, Inc. ■ ■ PTC, Inc. ■ ■ Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation ■ Royal Philips Electronics Saudi Aramco Searle Foundation ■ Senti Biosciences ■ ■ Simons Foundation ■ ■ Society For Laboratory Automation And Screening ■ ■ Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited Tegan Holdings, LLC ■ The Benevity Community Impact Fund ■ ■ Thermo Fisher Scientific ■ U. S. Pharmacopeial Convention ■ Vanguard Charitable ■ Verizon Communications Inc. Wellcome Trust ■ ■ Whitehall Foundation, Inc. ■ ■ Yobe Inc. ■

STAY CONNECTED TO THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

dean’s leadership advisory board John Abele Founder & Director, Boston Scientific Jill Albertelli ’91 Senior Vice President, Transformation & Strategy, Pratt & Whitney Omar Ali ’96 Director of Operations, Petra Engineering Industries Co.

Anand Krishnamurthy ’92,’96 President and CEO, Affirmed Networks

Deborah Caplan ’90 Executive VP, Human Resources & Corporate Services, NextEra Energy

Ezra Kucharz ’90 Chief Business Officer, DraftKings Inc.

Joseph Frassica, MED’88 Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research, the Americas, Philips Healthcare Ron Garriques ’86 CEO and Chairman, Gee Holdings LLC

$10,000–$24,999

Ametek Foundation ■ ■ Arthritis Foundation ■ Born Global LLC ■ Diamond Foundry, Inc. ■ ■ MTF Biologics ■ ■ Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund ■ Robert M. & Mary Haythornthwaite Foundation ■ ■ The U.S. Charitable Gift Trust ■ Versetal Information Systems ■

William Huyett CFO, Cyclerion

Tye Brady ’90 Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics

Vanessa Feliberti ’93 Distinguished Engineer, Substrate Platform, Microsoft

Cami Foundation Inc. ■ eClinicalWorks Hearing Industry Research Consortium Medtronic, Inc. ■ US Israel Binational Science Foundation ■ ■

Jon Hirshtick General Manager, Onshape and Atlas Parametric Technology Corporation

Dean Kamen, Hon.’06 President & Founder, DEKA Research & Development Corp.

Brian Dunkin ’85 Chief Medical Officer, Boston Scientific Endoscopy Global

$25,000–$49,999

Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Adel Al-Saleh ’87 CEO, T-Systems Board Member, Deutsch Telekom

Roger Dorf ’70 Former VP and GM, Wireless Group, Cisco Systems

Abhijit Kulkarni ’93,’97 Vice President, Research and Technology, Medtronic, Inc. Antoinette Leatherberry ’85 Principal (Retired), Deloitte Consulting Trustee, Boston University Nick Lippis ’84,’89 President, Lippis Enterprises Inc. Andy Marsh ’83 Chief Operating Officer, Dynavac Kathleen McLaughlin ’87 Chief Sustainability Officer, Walmart Inc. President, Walmart Foundation Manuel Mendez ’91 CEO, Quotient Limited

Rao Mulpuri ’92,’96 CEO, View Inc. Girish Navani ’91 Co-Founder and CEO, eClinicalWorks Anton Papp ’90 Vice President & Head of Corporate Development, Ping Identity Liam Quinn ’90 Senior Vice President, Senior Fellow Dell Technologies Sharad Rastogi ’91 Chief Product Officer, JLL Kimberly Samaha ’89 CEO, Born Global LLC George M. Savage, MD ’81 Former Chief Medical Officer & Co-Founder, Proteus Digital Health Inc. Binoy K. Singh, MD ’89 Associate Chief of Cardiology, Northwell Health

$5,000–$9,999

BNY Mellon Charitable Gift Fund ■ Deloitte & Touche, LLP Total E&P Technology USA ■ ■

Claudia Arango Dunsby ’92 Vice President, Operations, Hybridge IT

Michele Iacovone ’89 Vice President, Chief Architect, Intuit

Bettina Briz-Himes ’86 Senior Director, Strategic Alliances, GoPro Inc.

Tyler Kohn ’98 Co-Founder & CTO, Continual

Chris Brousseau ’91 Partner, IBM Cognitive Process Services

Yitao Liao ’10,’11 Former Chief Technology Officer, RayVio Corp.

Gregory Cordrey ’88 Partner, Jeffer Mangles Butler & Mitchell, LLP

Martin Lynch ’82 Chief Operating Officer, FreeWire

Richard Fuller, PhD ‘88 Senior Principal Engineer-Systems, Semtech Corporation

Daniel Maneval ’82 Consultant, Selva Therapeutics

Tim Gardner ’00 Founder/CEO, Riffyn Inc.

$2,500–$4,999

Mark Hilderbrand ’87 Managing Director, Housatonic Partners

George & Nancy Savage Living Trust

Kent Hughes ’79 Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Verizon

$1,000–$2,499

Ensign-Bickford Industries ■ ■ Lando & Anastasi, LLP ■ ■ Riffyn ■ ■ Roney-Fitzpatrick Foundation ■

Beatriz Mendez-Lora ’88 President, M-P Consultants Xu Ning ’08,’09 Engineering Manager, Uber, Inc.

senior associate dean for finance and administration

AT&T Inc. Bertram and Lizabeth Schmitz Trust Crockett and Associates Data Network Associates ■ Graduway ■ John F French Jr., DMD, F.A.G.D. ■ The Thompson Family Trust The William T. Warner 2006 Rev. Trust

Wynter Duncanson

John Tegan ’88 President, CEO, Communication Technology Services Francis Troise ’87 Co-CEO, Pico Quantitative William Weiss ’83,’97 Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics, General Dynamics Mission Systems

Anthony “Tony” Pecore ’95 Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Franklin Templeton Investments

youtube.com/ BUCollegeofENG

Greg Seiden ’80 Former Vice President, Oracle Corporation Dylan Steeg ’95 Vice President of Business Development, Aible Francis “Frank” Tiernan ’70 Former President, Anritsu Company

Phone: 617-353-2800 Michael Seele

editor

assistant dean for outreach & diversity

Patrick L. Kennedy

Solomon R. Eisenberg

Lisa Drake

Maya Bhat, Colbi Edmonds, Kat J. McAlpine, Maureen Stanton

senior associate dean for academic programs

assistant dean for development & alumni relations

Elise Morgan

ENGINEER is produced for the alumni and friends of the Boston University College of Engineering. Please direct any questions or comments to Michael Seele, Boston University College of Engineering, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215.

associate dean for educational initiatives

@BUCollegeofENG

John Scaramuzzo ’87 Chief Operating Officer, Nyriad Limited

dean

Thomas D. C. Little

facebook.com/ BUCollegeofENG

Sanjay Prasad ’86,’87 Principal, Prasad IP, PC

Kenneth R. Lutchen

associate dean for research and faculty development

Post, tag, tweet, ask questions, reconnect with alumni and learn about networking opportunities, job fairs, seminars and other news and events.

Sandip “Sonny” Patidar, MD ‘90 Founder and Managing Partner, Titanium Capital Partners

Richard Lally

$1–$999

Join the ENG online community!

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan ’00 Senior Director, Product, LinkedIn Former CEO & Founder, Drawbridge

west coast alumni leadership council

PHOTOGRAPH BY

Arun Srinivasan (ENG’97,’98) Maureen L. Stanton (MET’16) and Brian J. Stanton ■ ■ Laura M. Stefanski ■ ■ Nicholas W. Steinke (ENG’00) and Diane K. Steinke Jane D. Stepak (ENG’78, CAS’78) ■ Tamara Stephen (ENG’92) ■ Mark Stesney (ENG’91) ■ Jan F. Stevens (Questrom’75) and Christine Boddez ■ Jerome C. Stidham (ENG’84) Olivia P. Stoddard (ENG’18, Questrom’19) Norman Stolack (ENG’62) and Patricia Stolack ■ ■ Patrick R. Stone (ENG’03,’03) and Jennifer Stone ■ David H. Stull and Jessica R. Downs ■ ■ Eric R. Stutman (ENG’93) and Andrea L. Stutman ■ Timothy F. Styslinger (ENG’90,’92) ■ Jorge A. Suarez (ENG’21) ■ Bharat Sukhwani (ENG’11) Soumya N. Suman (ENG’21) ■ Yingjie Sun (ENG’13) Karin P. Sung (ENG’12) Jason V. Sustersic (CAS’98) and Jennifer Sustersic Michelle E. Sutton (Pardee’10) and Michael R. Sutton (ENG’11) ■ ■ Patrick J. Sweeney (ENG’85) and Sherri C. Sweeney ■ Charles M. Sweet (ENG’91) and Julia P. Sweet ■ Edward L. Symonds (ENG’87) and Cathy J. Symonds ■ John Szczypien, Jr. (ENG’66) and Diane Szczypien ■ Samuel Tian Hong Sze (ENG’21) ■ Marcos Szydlo (ENG’88) and Faith B. Szydlo (MET’84) Joseph Taggart (ENG’19) ■ Jianyang Tai (ENG’99) ■ Zafar Takhirov (ENG’12,’18) and Alice T. Takhirov (ENG’12) ■ Chinh Tan (ENG’86,’88) and Yue Zhang ■ Victor K. Tan (ENG’85) and Toreh Wong ■ Darrell J. Tanno (ENG’80) and Deborah Tanno (Questrom’81) ■ Koonlawat Tantiponganant (ENG’88) ■ Stefano J. Tasso (ENG’13) Kenneth R. Taylor, Jr. (ENG’98) ■ Raymond S. Taylor (ENG’08) ■ Ann L. Tedford (ENG’78) ■ Lawrence B. Tena (ENG’88) Paulo E. Tenreiro (ENG’95,’00) ■ Stephanie T. Tercyak-Morgan (ENG’79) Jeray A. Thelwell (ENG’15) Charles Thomas (ENG’03,’04) and Jennifer W. Thomas ■ Herbert D. Thompson, Jr. (ENG’66) and Barbara B. Thompson Alexander W. Thomson (ENG’85) and Veronica Corpuz ■ Mark R. Thorley (ENG’09) Kate E. Thurmer (ENG’14) ■ Chuan Tian (ENG’13) ■ Bruce P. Tis (ENG’95) and Marjorie R. Tis ■ ■ Christian P. Tjia (ENG’15) ■ Tania W. To (ENG’17) Tszhang K. To (ENG’08,’13) ■ Richard W. Tong (ENG’06) ■ Nicholas A. Tortora (ENG’20) ■ ■ ■ Randolph B. Tow (ENG’66) and Susan P. Tow ■ Heather J. Tracey (ENG’91) ■ Hieu M. Tran (ENG’17) ■ Peter J. Tranoris (ENG’16) Fernando M. Trindade (ENG’06) ■ Tibor Trunk (ENG’99,’00) Rebekah M. Tsang (ENG’21) ■ Kevin R. Tseng (ENG’91) ■ Nicole M. Tunick (ENG’16)

managing editor

contributing writers

Boston University Creative Services

design & production

College of Engineering, except where indicated

photography Please recycle

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THE MAGAZINE OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Honor Roll of Supporters

36 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

CORPORATIONS & FOUNDATIONS $50,000+

STAY CONNECTED TO THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Anand Krishnamurthy ’92,’96 President and CEO, Affirmed Networks

Deborah Caplan ’90 Executive VP, Human Resources & Corporate Services, NextEra Energy

Ezra Kucharz ’90 Chief Business Officer, DraftKings Inc.

Joseph Frassica, MED’88 Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research, the Americas, Philips Healthcare Ron Garriques ’86 CEO and Chairman, Gee Holdings LLC

$10,000–$24,999

William Huyett CFO, Cyclerion

Tye Brady ’90 Chief Technologist, Amazon Robotics

Vanessa Feliberti ’93 Distinguished Engineer, Substrate Platform, Microsoft

Cami Foundation Inc. ■ eClinicalWorks Hearing Industry Research Consortium Medtronic, Inc. ■ US Israel Binational Science Foundation ■ ■

Jon Hirshtick General Manager, Onshape and Atlas Parametric Technology Corporation

Dean Kamen, Hon.’06 President & Founder, DEKA Research & Development Corp.

Brian Dunkin ’85 Chief Medical Officer, Boston Scientific Endoscopy Global

$25,000–$49,999

Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Adel Al-Saleh ’87 CEO, T-Systems Board Member, Deutsch Telekom

Roger Dorf ’70 Former VP and GM, Wireless Group, Cisco Systems

$5,000–$9,999

BNY Mellon Charitable Gift Fund ■ Deloitte & Touche, LLP Total E&P Technology USA ■ ■

Claudia Arango Dunsby ’92 Vice President, Operations, Hybridge IT

Michele Iacovone ’89 Vice President, Chief Architect, Intuit

Bettina Briz-Himes ’86 Senior Director, Strategic Alliances, GoPro Inc.

Tyler Kohn ’98 Co-Founder & CTO, Continual

Chris Brousseau ’91 Partner, IBM Cognitive Process Services

Yitao Liao ’10,’11 Former Chief Technology Officer, RayVio Corp.

Gregory Cordrey ’88 Partner, Jeffer Mangles Butler & Mitchell, LLP

Martin Lynch ’82 Chief Operating Officer, FreeWire

Richard Fuller, PhD ‘88 Senior Principal Engineer-Systems, Semtech Corporation

Daniel Maneval ’82 Consultant, Selva Therapeutics

Tim Gardner ’00 Founder/CEO, Riffyn Inc.

$2,500–$4,999

Mark Hilderbrand ’87 Managing Director, Housatonic Partners

George & Nancy Savage Living Trust

Kent Hughes ’79 Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Verizon

$1,000–$2,499

Ensign-Bickford Industries ■ ■ Lando & Anastasi, LLP ■ ■ Riffyn ■ ■ Roney-Fitzpatrick Foundation ■

Beatriz Mendez-Lora ’88 President, M-P Consultants Xu Ning ’08,’09 Engineering Manager, Uber, Inc.

senior associate dean for finance and administration

Wynter Duncanson

Anthony “Tony” Pecore ’95 Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Franklin Templeton Investments

youtube.com/ BUCollegeofENG

Greg Seiden ’80 Former Vice President, Oracle Corporation Dylan Steeg ’95 Vice President of Business Development, Aible Francis “Frank” Tiernan ’70 Former President, Anritsu Company

Phone: 617-353-2800 Michael Seele

editor

assistant dean for outreach & diversity

Patrick L. Kennedy

Solomon R. Eisenberg

Lisa Drake

Maya Bhat, Colbi Edmonds, Kat J. McAlpine, Maureen Stanton

senior associate dean for academic programs

assistant dean for development & alumni relations

Elise Morgan

associate dean for educational initiatives

@BUCollegeofENG

John Scaramuzzo ’87 Chief Operating Officer, Nyriad Limited

dean

Thomas D. C. Little

facebook.com/ BUCollegeofENG

Sanjay Prasad ’86,’87 Principal, Prasad IP, PC

Kenneth R. Lutchen

associate dean for research and faculty development

Post, tag, tweet, ask questions, reconnect with alumni and learn about networking opportunities, job fairs, seminars and other news and events.

Sandip “Sonny” Patidar, MD ‘90 Founder and Managing Partner, Titanium Capital Partners

Richard Lally

$1–$999

Join the ENG online community!

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan ’00 Senior Director, Product, LinkedIn Former CEO & Founder, Drawbridge

west coast alumni leadership council

PHOTOGRAPH BY

managing editor

contributing writers

Boston University Creative Services

design & production

College of Engineering, except where indicated

photography Please recycle

E N G I N E E R FA L L 2 0 2 1

BU.EDU/ENG

Boston University College of Engineering

College of Engineering

Support our Summer Term Alumni Research Scholars (STARS) with a gift to the College of Engineering Fund. Visit bu.edu/eng/alumni/give to make your gift.

The STARS program provides housing stipends for outstanding engineering undergraduates doing research with faculty mentors on campus.

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