Engineer Spring 2014

SPRING 2014

IN SIDE EPIC LAUNCH LED MEETS GPS

SMARTER CITIES THAT SAVE TIME, MONEY AND ENERGY

IN THE LAST 50 YEARS

HOW HAVE WE

CHANGED

YOUR WORLD? BIO-INSPIRED FLIGHT CONTROL ALGORITHMS FOR COMPLEX UAV MISSIONS

HIGH-QUALITY BLUE LEDS FOR SMARTPHONE DISPLAYS

AN ARTIFICIAL PANCREAS EASING TYPE 1 DIABETES CARE

ANTIBIOTICS THAT OVERCOME DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA

PRECISION AIRPORT SCREENING FOR FASTER,, SAFER CHECK-IN

MORE INTERNET BANDWIDTH AT LOW COST

VACCINES FROM TOBACCO PLANTS ENGINEERED TO COMBAT DEADLY VIRUSES

MORE INSIDE

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

Transforming Engineering Education for a New Era of Product Innovation

BY DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

T

his year, the College of Engineering marks its 50th anniversary, having been created as a small undergraduate engineering college in 1964. In 1992 we expanded, adding graduate PhD programs in every discipline. I’ve had a front row seat for the past 30 years, having joined the faculty when we were focused on quality undergraduate education. I watched as we complemented that with world-class research and graduate programs aimed at addressing society’s problems and improving our quality of life. Indeed, after only 22 years, our graduate research programs attract over $70 million per year in extramural research

and are ranked among the top 40 of all US engineering schools.

In January 2014, we came full circle when we opened an extraordinary facility that invokes our undergraduate roots. The Engineering Product Innovation Center—EPIC—promises to transform undergraduate engineering education and prepare students for a changing design and manufacturing landscape.

Just a few years ago—while we were discussing updating our undergraduate laboratory facilities—new technologies began to emerge that would radically advance the innovation and manufacturing of products in a way that could greatly advance the economy of the United States and the world.

The extraordinary capabilities of this new hardware and software ranged from computer-aided design, 3D printing and so-called additive manufacturing, to the use of lasers for product fabrication and assessment, and even to supply chain management and product recycling for sustainability.

In short, product innovation and manufacturing now requires the integration of multiple engineering disciplines, as well as other fields such as business. Since the College had already been reorganized

C E L E B R AT I N G

50 YEARS of Moving Society Forward S ep tember 1 9, 201 4 Join fellow alumni, current students and your favorite professors for a day of celebration and activities marking the College of Engineering’s 50th anniversary!

to lower the barriers to interdisciplinary education, and since we had already committed to creating Societal Engineers ready to impact our quality of life, we saw an extraordinary opportunity to train our students for the advanced manufacturing environment.

The idea for EPIC was born.

Through EPIC, we can transform our engineering curriculum so that all of our students will learn the entire innovation-to-productdeployment process. They will put their ideas through the design process and understand how products need to be manufactured economically in order to be viable in the marketplace and add value to society. Our students will graduate not only with a solid foundation in their chosen major, but also an understanding of other disciplines and of the modern manufacturing process.

We are already piloting a sophomore course, Introduction to Engineering Design, which is centered in EPIC and gives student teams of blended majors a basic understanding of how products are developed from concept to design to manufacturing to market deployment.

I believe EPIC adds unique value to the engineering degree

and makes our students highly attractive to employers. Many of those employers agree. Since the early planning stages, we have reached out and engaged industry with EPIC, and companies have responded enthusiastically.

Several have not only made significant financial commitments to EPIC, but have agreed to serve on the EPIC Industrial Advisory Board to help us ensure that our graduates have the skills the modern workplace demands.

In many ways, EPIC epitomizes 50 years of excellence.

Its highly visible location on Commonwealth Avenue—the College’s first address on the University’s main thoroughfare—helps brand us as a major amplifier of excellence for the whole institution. Moreover, I see EPIC being used not just across engineering disciplines, but by a wider swath of the University community. Already students from the College of Fine Arts and the School of Management have inquired about access, and we embrace their interest in design.

As we look forward to the College’s 50th anniversary celebration in a few months, EPIC is a shining example of how engineering adds value to society.

• Alumni Lunch Panel and Networking: Alumni Successes & Lessons Learned • Relive Your Favorite Courses with Your Favorite Professors • Tour the College’s Newest Labs and Facilities • Student-Alumni Team Design Challenge • Faculty Panel: Engineering and the World—Using Technology to Advance Society PLUS • All-day Refreshments, Demos and Swag on the New Cummington Mall • Celebration Dinner at Hotel Commonwealth More details to be announced at bu.edu/eng/50th

2

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

< ENG INNOVATION IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN TOP 10

> MAJOR GIFTS BOLSTER ENG FACULTY

CONTENTS • SPRING 2014

5

30

1983

1969

10

ENG: 50 YEARS OF CHANGE & INNOVATION

3

EPIC Opening

20

Novel Ideas

24

LED Meets GPS

New Facility Enables Design Through Manufacturing

The Storied Career of ENG’s First Valedictorian

ENG Alum Advances Indoor Location Technology

3 | inENG

BU PHOTOGRAPHY, 2003: VERNON DOUCETTE, 2010: KALMAN ZABARSKY

2010

2003

30 | Faculty News 34 | Alumni News

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

1

Richard Lally

Michael Seele

associate dean for administration

editor

Gretchen Fougere

Mark Dwortzan

associate dean for outreach & diversity

managing editor

Kathrin Havrilla Bruce Jordan

staff writer

dean

assistant dean for development & alumni relations

contributors

Solomon R. Eisenberg

ENGineer is produced for the alumni

Rich Barlow, BU Global Programs, Rachel Harrington, Cheryl Stewart

senior associate dean for academic programs

and friends of the Boston University College of Engineering.

design & production

David Bishop

Please direct any questions or comments to Michael Seele, Boston University College of Engineering, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215.

Phone: 617-353-2800 Email: engalum@bu.edu Website: www.bu.edu/eng

Kenneth R. Lutchen

associate dean for research & graduate programs AD INTERIM

Thomas D. C. Little associate dean for educational initiatives

Stay Connected to the College of Engineering Join the ENG online community!

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

Boston University Creative Services photography

College of Engineering, except where indicated 0414 Please recycle

www.facebook.com/BUCollegeofENG www.twitter.com/BUCollegeofENG www.youtube.com/BUCollegeofENG

Engineering Leadership Advisory Board John E. Abele Founder & Director, Boston Scientific Gregg Adkin ’86 Vice President, EMC Ventures Adel Al-Saleh ’87 Group Chief Executive, Northgate Information Solutions Alan Auerbach ’91 CEO, President and Chairman, Puma Biotechnology, Inc. Adam Crescenzi ’64 Founding Partner/Owner, TELOS Partners

Roger A. Dorf ’70 Former Vice President, Wireless Group, Cisco Systems

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

Stephen N. Oesterle, MD Senior Vice President—Medicine & Technology, Medtronic, Inc.

Ronald G. Garriques ’86 CEO and Chairman, Gee Holdings LLC

Peter Levine General Partner, Andreesen Horowitz

Joseph Healey ’88 Senior Managing Director, HealthCor Management LP

Nick Lippis ’84, ’89 President, Lippis Enterprises

Anton Papp ’90 Vice President, Corporate Development, Teradata Inc.

Jon K. Hirschtick Founder & Board Member, Solid Works Corporation

Venkatesh Narayanamurti Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology & Public Policy; Former Dean, School of Eng. & Appl. Sciences, Harvard University

William I. Huyett Director, McKinsey & Company, Inc.

Girish Navani CEO, eClinicalWorks

Amit Jain ’85, ’88 President and CEO, Prysm Inc.

Richard D. Reidy, SMG’82 President and CEO, Progress Software Corp.

Binoy K. Singh ’89 Associate Chief of Cardiology, Lenox Hill Hospital, North Shore LIJ John Tegan ’88 President and CEO, Communication Technology Services

ENG West Coast Alumni Leadership Council Bettina Briz Himes ’86 Principal, ValuQuest International Christopher Brousseau ’91 Global Commercial Director, Accenture Inc.— Spend Management Services Gregory Cordrey ’88 Partner, Jeffer Mangles Butler & Mitchell, LLP Gregory Courand ’79 President, Founder and Chief Methodologist, Synergia LLC Mark Deem ’88 Partner, The Foundry Inc. Richard Fuller ’88 Associate Business Development Director, Broadcom Corp.

2

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Timothy Gardner ’00 Director, Research Programs & Operations, Amyris Biotechnologies Roger Hajjar ’88 Chief Technical Officer, Prysm Inc. Kent Hughes ’79 Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Verizon Wireless Michele Iacovone ’89, CGS ’86 Vice President, Chief Architect, Intuit Inc. Martin Lynch ’82 Vice President, Operations, Overland Storage Daniel Maneval ’82 Vice President, Pharmacology & Safety Assessment, Halozyme Therapeutics

Rao Mulpuri ’92, ’96 Chief Executive Officer, Soladigm, Inc. Sandip Patidar ’90 Managing Partner, Titanium Capital Partners Sanjay Prasad ’86, ’87 Head of Acquisitions & Strategy, Software and Communications Business Unit, Intellectual Ventures

Dylan Steeg ’95 Director and Kauffman Fellow, Intel Capital Francis Tiernan ’70 President, Anritsu Company Joseph Winograd ’95, ’97 Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Verance Corp

Sharad Rastogi ’91 Vice President, Strategy and Marketing, Cisco Systems

Jamshaud Zovein ’95, GSM ’99 Managing Director, Nuveen Investments

George Savage ’81 Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Proteus Biomedical

Ex-officio, from Dean’s Advisory Board:

Gregory Seiden ’80 Vice President, Applications Integration, Oracle Systems

Amit Jain, President, CEO, Prysm Inc. Anton Papp, Vice President, Corporate Development, Teradata Inc.

A NEW WRINKLE IN WATERPROOFING

BME SOFTWARE HELPS HS JUNIOR WIN GOOGLE PRIZE

7

9 WRITTEN + EDITED BY MARK DWORTZAN

The Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) will train BU engineers “for the future manufacturing economy in this country,” said EPIC Director Gerry Fine.

MICHAEL D. SPENCER

Engineering Product Innovation Center Opens NEW FACILITY TO EQUIP STUDENTS WITH DESIGNTHROUGH-MANUFACTURING EXPERTISE

W

ith the flip of a rather large switch, the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC)—a 15,000-square-foot, $9 million facility that will enable students to develop the knowledge and skills that will be needed in tomorrow’s manufacturing enterprises—opened with a ceremony, reception and guided tours on January 23.

The event drew a packed audience consisting of Boston University leaders; ENG alumni, faculty and students; state and local government officials; and corporate partners, including representatives from principal industry sponsors GE Aviation, Procter & Gamble, PTC and Schlumberger. Several gathered around and pulled a large purpose-built switch that turned on many of the machines in the center and activated their start-up lights and sounds.

Featuring $18.8 million in state-of-art design software donated by PTC, as well as advanced machining tools, laser processing equipment, rapid 3-D printers and intelligent robotics, EPIC will give students the opportunity to learn how to create innovative new products in an integrated, holistic way encompassing design, prototyping, fabrication, E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

3

manufacturing and lifecycle management. The glass-fronted facility, housed in the former Guitar Center building at 750 Commonwealth Avenue, includes a flexible, computer-aided design (CAD) studio, demonstration areas, laboratories and a machining and fabrication center, all in a reconfigurable layout that will easily adapt to future technologies and needs.

EPIC will serve as a resource to significantly increase the amount of design work in the undergraduate curriculum through stand-alone courses, enhancements to existing courses and opportunities to collaborate with fellow students, faculty and global leaders in innovation and manufacturing.

“EPIC has a vision of transforming engineering education nationally, so that every engineer, regardless of major, learns the process and excitement of going from design to computer-aided design to prototype to massproducing something that could be a product

Timothy Jackman (ENG’15) with one of EPIC’s 3-D printers, which he used to create a miniature car from a digital model.

With the flip of a switch, the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) opened with a ceremony, reception and guided tours on January 23.

to impact society and add economic value,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen in his opening remarks at the event. “We want this to be a hub of design and innovation.”

Noting the critical role that manufacturing plays in today’s economy, BU President Robert A. Brown envisioned EPIC as an important element in reinvigorating manufacturing in the US and empowering ENG students to lead the way.

“Today, more than ever, competitive product development is about the entire integration of product creation, design and manufacturing,” said Brown. “Engineers who can do those things will be highly valued in the marketplace going forward. EPIC is about

giving all our engineering students experiences to prepare them for this challenge.”

Jim Heppleman, CEO of PTC, underscored EPIC’s potential to equip ENG students with the practical knowledge and skills necessary to meet that challenge by providing them with a “real-world environment to solve real-world challenges using real-world tools.”

EPIC was funded through the University, ENG alumni and friends, and industrial partners. EPIC’s Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) members, all representatives of the facility’s principal industry sponsors, will offer ongoing suggestions on ways to develop the ENG undergraduate curriculum to better reflect the evolving needs of US industry.

In late September, a conference hosted by the Division of Materials Science & Engineering brought 60 of the world’s leading materials scientists to the BU campus to discuss the future of the rapidly emerging field.

“Digital Design of Materials: The Way Forward for Materials Science?” included presentations and discussions on solid-state chemistry in materials design and discovery, the search for materials such as superconductors, recent theoretical work underlying digital materials design, specific materials design techniques, and novel materials and their potential impact. Presentations focused on 4

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

how advanced materials can be designed in silico, or via computer simulation.

“We were delighted that all the speakers took very seriously the need to reach out across the different disciplines, presenting the key ideas in their fields in ways that led to robust discussions and interactions. We are very hopeful that this meeting will help nucleate an ongoing dialogue on the prospects of designing materials in silico,” said Physics Professor David Campbell, the former ENG dean and chair of the conference organizing committee.

Researchers are moving beyond the explanation of complex materials’ properties and toward the prediction of how new materials

will behave, a much harder task. Harnessing the power of advanced computational capabilities to develop novel devices and technologies in silico will be key to their success. While computers have not yet reached the level required for this work, conference participants discussed the extent to which new materials’ properties can be predicted using existing advanced computational tools combined with researchers’ experience.

Conference sponsors included Boston University, the Division of Materials Science & Engineering, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter and the National Science Foundation.

— Cheryl Stewart

TOP: JACKIE RICCIARDI; LEFT: MICHAEL D. SPENCER

Workshop Draws 60 of World’s Leading Materials Scientists

Four Generous Gifts Bolster ENG Faculty Three College of Engineering alumni and a professor emeritus have committed large gifts to continue building the strength of the faculty.

Presented by longtime friends and leaders of the College, these four gifts are expected to greatly benefit research and teaching programs by supporting the recruitment, retention and development of exceptional faculty.

David E. Hollowell (ENG’69, ‘72, GSM’74) and Professor Emeritus Charles Cantor (BME, MED) have committed planned gifts that will establish professorships in their names. Peter Levine (ENG’83) and Roger Dorf (MS, MFG’70) have made major gifts that will establish a career development professorship fund and a distinguished faculty fellow award, respectively.

“The College’s future will depend on the strength of its faculty and these four very generous individuals are helping to ensure that we will be able to attract and retain excellent faculty for many years to come,” said Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen. “These gifts from people who know the College well represent a strong commitment to its future and its ability to impact society.”

David E. Hollowell Professorship of Engineering Through Boston University’s Planned Giving Office, David E. Hollowell (ENG’69, ’72, GSM’74), an expert in higher education finance, administrative management and executive leadership, has established a charitable remainder trust that will eventually create the David E. Hollowell Professorship of Engineering.

“Endowed professorships are a very powerful mechanism for attracting and recognizing the most outstanding teacher-scholars,” said Hollowell. “I hope that this endowment will assist the College in its continuing quest for excellence in teaching and research.”

Hollowell is a member of Boston University’s Board of Overseers; co-chair of the BU Annual Fund with his wife, Kathleen (GRS’71, SED’77); a member of the College of Engineering’s Campaign Steering Committee; past president of the BU Alumni Association and past president and member of the ENG alumni board from 1971 to 1987.

He served as senior vice president and subsequently as executive vice president and

David E. Hollowell (ENG’69, ’72, GSM’74)

Professor Emeritus Charles Cantor (BME, MED)

treasurer at the University of Delaware from 1988 to 2008, where he took a leading role in streamlining administrative procedures and oversaw a significant campus renewal and expansion program. Hollowell worked for BU from 1969 to 1987, overseeing a wide range of University operations in his ultimate role as vice president for administration. His work in expanding the BU and UD campuses earned him honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects. He is a past president of the Society for College and University Planning and served as a director of WSFS Financial Corporation for 13 years.

The recipient of many honors from professional and community organizations recognizing his service, Hollowell earned a bachelor’s degree in Information Engineering, a master’s in Manufacturing Engineering and an MBA, all at BU. Charles Cantor Professorship of Engineering Professor Emeritus Charles Cantor (BME, MED), a pioneer in systems and synthetic biology who once directed the Human Genome Project, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recently named Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (see p.

31), has included in his estate plan the Charles Cantor Professorship of Engineering in cell or molecular bio-engineering.

“Endowed professorships are essential if universities are to remain effective in attracting and retaining world-class academic talent,” said Cantor, who chaired the Biomedical Engineering Department in the 1990s, “and I am happy to be able to help BU achieve these aims.”

Peter Levine (ENG’83)

Roger Dorf (MS, MFG’70)

In a career spanning more than five decades, he has co-authored a seminal three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry and the first genomics textbook; published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles; generated 54 US patents; developed several biotech companies; and received many prestigious awards and honors, from membership in the National Academy of Sciences to induction as a Guggenheim Fellow and as an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow.

Prior to joining the BU faculty in 1992, he held positions at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Cantor’s research focuses on identifying biological problems that are resistant to conventional analytical approaches and then developing new methodologies or techniques for solving those problems.

As director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University, Cantor has developed methods for separating large DNA molecules, for studying structural relationships in complex assemblies of proteins and nucleic acids and for sensitive detection of proteins and nucleic acids in a variety of settings. His current interests include the development of improved methods for noninvasive prenatal diagnostics, cancer diagnostics, early noninvasive detection of other clinical conditions, mass spectrometry of nucleic acids, improvement of methods for detection of specific RNA sequences in living cells and organisms, methods for protection of organisms and materials from oxidative damage and new uses for nucleic acid analysis, including DNA-based array detectors.

Continued on page 8 E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

5

BU TO BE COMPENSATED FOR TECHNOLOGY IN POPULAR ELECTRONICS PRODUCTS Technology giants Apple, Amazon and Sony are among 25 companies that have settled lawsuits filed by BU alleging infringement of a professor’s patented technology for producing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

The settlement was negotiated with RPX, a San Francisco firm that acquires patent rights for corporate clients to help them avoid lawsuits. RPX will pay BU a licensing fee for the patents, which will be available to all RPX members.

About a dozen firms that aren’t RPX members remain in litigation with the University.

Shining Light on the Problem NEW LASER TECHNIQUE BOOSTS ACCURACY OF DNA SEQUENCING METHOD Low-cost, ultra-fast DNA sequencing would revolutionize health care and biomedical research, sparking major advances in drug development, preventative medicine and personalized medicine. A physician could determine the probability that you’ll develop a specific genetic disease or tolerate selected medications by gaining access to the entire sequence of your genome.

In pursuit of that goal, Associate Professor Amit Meller (BME, MSE) has spent much of the past decade spearheading a method that uses solid state nanopores—two-to-five-nanometer-wide holes in silicon chips that read DNA strands as they pass through—to optically sequence the four nucleotides encoding each DNA molecule.

Now Meller and a team of researchers at Boston University—Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) and research assistants Nicolas Di Fiori (Physics, PhD’13) and Allison 6

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) inspecting the growth of nitride-based semiconductor materials.

The suits, filed last year, involved the use of gallium nitride thin films, patented in the 1990s

by Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE).

The films facilitate the production of high-quality blue LEDs, which are used in electronics products ranging from flat-panel displays on handheld devices to televisions and general lighting. Many popular consumer products incorporate the technology, the University says, including the iPhone 5, the iPad and the Kindle Paperwhite 6.

Squires (BME, PhD’14)—and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have discovered a simple way to improve the sensitivity, accuracy and speed of the method, making it an even more viable option for DNA sequencing or characterization of small proteins.

In the November 3 online edition of Nature Nanotechnology, the team demonstrated that focusing a low-power, commercially available green laser on a nanopore increases the current near walls of the pore, which is immersed in salt water. As the current increases, it sweeps the salt water along with it in the opposite direction of incoming samples. The onrushing water, in turn, acts as a brake, slowing down the passage of DNA through the pore. As a result, nanoscale sensors in the pore can get a higher-resolution read of each nucleotide as it crosses the pore and identify small proteins in their native state that could not previously be detected.

“The light-induced phenomenon that we describe in this paper can be used to switch on and off the ‘brakes’ acting on individual biopolymers, such as DNA or proteins sliding through the nanopores, in real time,” Meller explained.

“This critically enhances the sensing resolution

“This settlement, as well as the licensing of the patents previously by other blue LED manufacturers, is recognition of the importance of my work in the development of this novel technology,” said Moustakas.

Vinit Nijhawan, managing director of BU Technology Development, said the settlement “acknowledges Ted’s patent as being a key part of the blue LED industry, which is estimated at about $11 billion annually.

“This is really a victory for him,” said Nijhawan. “It acknowledges him as one of the key inventors behind the blue LED.” BU said it sued the companies to safeguard the research and invention of one of its faculty members. “We’re protecting our intellectual property,” Provost Jean Morrison said when the suits were announced last year. “The creation of new knowledge is fundamental to our mission. Ted Moustakas created a process that significantly improves the performance of these products.”

— Rich Barlow, BU Today

Shining a green laser beam on a solid-state nanopore immersed in a salt water solution increases electrical surface charge and current at the pore surface. The current, in turn, sweeps the salt water in the opposite direction of incoming DNA molecules, slowing them down enough for nanoscale sensors to identify each DNA nucleotide with greater sensitivity.

of solid-state nanopores, and can be easily integrated in future nanopore-based DNA sequencing and protein detection technologies.”

The research is funded by a $4.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Revolutionary Genome Sequencing Technologies—The $1,000 Genome program, which seeks to reduce the cost of sequencing a human genome to $1,000.

TOP: KALMAN ZABARSKY

Companies to Pay Licensing Fees to Settle ENG Patent Infringement Suit

A New Wrinkle in Waterproofing BU, MIT TEAM ENGINEERS SURFACES THAT REPEL FLUIDS FASTER Boston University Assistant Professor James C. Bird (ME, MSE) and collaborators in the Varanasi Group at MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering found that when they augmented micro- or nanostructured surfaces with periodic, wrinkle-like features, liquid drops bounced off at faster rates than previously thought possible. The engineers reported their findings in the cover story of the November 21 issue of Nature.

Prior to adding ridge-like features to a micro- or nanostructured surface, a water drop would spread out to a maximum diameter, retract until the edges of the drop met its stationary center point, and bounce off the surface. With the introduction of the ridges, the center point moved to meet the edges as the drop recoiled, heading it off at the pass. The drop then split in two before jumping off the surface.

“We’ve demonstrated that we can use surface texture to reshape a drop as it recoils in such a way that the overall contact time is significantly reduced,” said Bird, the paper’s lead author, who directs the Interfacial Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at BU. “The upshot is that the

surface stays drier longer if this contact time is reduced, which has the potential to be useful for a variety of applications.”

Such surfaces may improve the performance of systems that operate better under dry conditions, such as steam turbines or aircraft wings, and enable cold surfaces, such as rooftops, to resist icing by shedding liquid drops before the drops freeze.

Introducing the ridges to micro- and nanostructured surfaces reduced contact time from 12.4 to 7.8 milliseconds, or by about 37 percent.

Based on peer-reviewed studies going back to the 1960s, the experiment produced the shortest contact time achieved in the lab under comparable conditions.

The researchers drew upon funds from the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency. Bird and his MIT collaborators—senior author Kripa Varanasi, Rajeev Dhiman and Hyuk-Min Kwon—have filed patents on the methods described in the Nature paper.

A

0 ms

2.7 ms

4.7 ms

7.8 ms

12.4 ms

B

C

0 ms

2.7 ms

4.7 ms

7.8 ms

Water drop bouncing off surface without (A) and with (B and C) ridge-like features.

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

7

Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship Fund Peter Levine (ENG’83) has pledged $300,000 to establish the Peter J. Levine Career Development Professorship Fund, which will attract and support promising junior faculty to the College of Engineering.

The fund will support two consecutive faculty members over a six-year period. They will receive support for their first three years as newly recruited members of the Engineering faculty.

“I am proud to support Dean Lutchen in his efforts to attract, recruit and develop top-notch junior faculty who will not only advance their fields but also impact the world beyond the lab,” said Levine.

A newly appointed member of the Boston University Board of Trustees and ENG Dean’s Leadership Advisory Board, Levine is a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, a leading Silicon Valley high-tech venture capital firm.

Levine has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry in engineering, sales, marketing and executive management in startup and corporate environments. He has served in

many executive positions at software companies, including Citrix Systems, Inc., Xensource Inc., and Veritas Software Corp. In addition to earning his bachelor’s degree in engineering at BU, Levine attended MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

He is a management lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a former entrepreneurship lecturer at the Sloan School.

Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Faculty Fellow Award Roger Dorf (MS, MFG’70) has pledged $500,000 to establish the Dorf-Ebner Distinguished Faculty Fellow Award, which will support a mid-career College of Engineering faculty member who has demonstrated exceptional excellence, innovation and impact in both research and teaching, and who is clearly on track to become a senior leader in his or her field.

Named in memory of Professor Merrill Ebner (MFG), Dorf’s mentor and pioneer of the field of manufacturing engineering, the award will fund each recipient for five years of discretionary initiatives in research and/or education.

The first recipient will be named by the end of the 2013–2014 academic year.

“Merrill Ebner was a pioneer in manufacturing engineering education, establishing the

Sealing Wounds, Repairing Bones GRINSTAFF’S LATEST INNOVATIONS Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE) published two papers in Europe’s leading chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie on highly promising biomedical engineering breakthroughs.

Reversible Hydrogel Seals Wounds Researchers at Grinstaff’s lab and Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have developed a highly absorbent hydrogel that not only seals wounds, but can later be dissolved and gently removed. Intended for wounds that must be quickly closed to stem blood loss and prevent infection but later reopened for more extensive treatment, the biocompatible gel is particularly suitable for injuries sustained in combat or remote areas and may well end up in the toolkits of first responders and emergency room medical personnel.

8

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

This research-microscope image shows the increasing density at the bone-crack site during a 40-minute test of particles that can carry the bone-healing medication.

The particles were treated with a red-glowing fluorescent dye.

Reopening a wound can cause damage to injured tissue, particularly when bloodclotting agents or dressings were initially applied. The BU-BIDMC team’s wound closure system is the first that not only stops bleeding for several hours, adheres to the wound site and is easy to apply, but also is easy to remove in a controlled manner before surgery or other procedures.

College of Engineering as a leader in the US in the late ‘60s,” said Dorf. “ENG has continued to show great foresight and leadership over the years in establishing meaningful and timely programs, from the establishment of the Biomedical Engineering Department to the implementation of Societal Engineer initiatives and the Engineering Product Innovation Center.

This award is meant to support some of the very talented faculty members who will be key to that continued leadership.”

A member of the College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Advisory Board, chair of the ENG Campaign Steering Committee, and co-chair of the BU Texas Regional Campaign Committee, Dorf has received both the ENG and BU Distinguished Alumni Awards. He served for more than 40 years in executive and engineering leadership roles before retiring from his position as vice president of Cisco Systems in 2009. He previously served as president and CEO of Navini Networks and in leadership positions at Celite Systems, Nortel Networks, Synch Research, AT&T, Cullinet Software and IBM. Based in Dallas, Texas, Dorf is active in several civic and academic organizations.

“Today’s trauma wound closure materials, once applied, must later be cut out,” said Grinstaff. “We’ve introduced a mild process for removing a hydrogel sealant from a wound where there’s no cutting or scraping involved.”

Self-Propelled Nanoparticles Deliver Osteoporosis Drug Directly to Bone Cracks A novel method for detecting and delivering healing drugs to newly formed micro-cracks in bones has been invented by a team of chemists and bioengineers at Boston University and Penn State University co-led by Grinstaff.

The method uses tiny, self-powered nanoparticles, or nanomotors, to deliver the drugs directly to the cracks. The energy that revs the motors of the nanoparticles and sends them rushing toward the crack comes from an unlikely source—the crack itself. As a crack emerges in a bone, minerals leach out as positively charged particles, or ions, which pull the negatively charged nanoparticles toward the crack.

SEN LABORATORY, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY

Four Generous Gifts continued from page 5

BME Software Helps High School Junior Win Google Science Fair Grand Prize

2013 Google Science Fair winners Viney Kumar (Australia, 13–14 age category), Ann Makosinski (Canada, 15–16), Elif Bilgin (Turkey, Voter’s Choice) and Grand Prize winner Eric Chen (USA, 17–18).

Chen used BME-based computational modeling tools to advance discovery of anti-flu drugs.

PROJECT APPLIES SOFTWARE TO IDENTIFY FLU DRUG CANDIDATES When 17-year-old Eric Chen was preparing his entry for the 2013 Google Science Fair— an online competition for teens with ideas to change the world—he set his sights on finding a systematic way to discover novel compounds for a new kind of anti-flu medicine effective against all influenza viruses, including pandemic strains. While pursuing his research at the National Biomedical Computation Resource at the University of California, San Diego, the high school junior came across just the right software for the job: a computational modeling tool, FTMap, developed by Professor Sandor Vajda (BME, Chemistry) and Research Assistant Professor Dima Kozakov (BME), that was designed to facilitate drug discovery. Applying FTMap to the problem, he was able to pinpoint several candidate compounds.

ENG Team Takes Gold in Biomolecular Design Competition

PHOTO COURTESY OF GOOGLE SCIENCE FAIR

STUDENTS DEVELOP NANOSCALE STRUCTURES TO PROBE NEURONS A team consisting of five undergraduates has become the first from the University to participate in BIOMOD, an international student biomolecular design competition from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering focused on the systematic assembly of biological molecules into complex nanoscale machines that can perform useful tasks.

Having designed and implemented their project over the summer, the team presented it to a panel of judges at BIOMOD’s annual Jamboree at Harvard University in November—and emerged as one of 13 gold winners.

Impressed with the project and its potential, in September an international panel of scientists named Chen winner of the 2013 Google Science Fair Grand Prize and also the winner in his age group. Chen beat out 89 other semifinalists (whittled down to 15 finalists in July) from across the globe who submitted projects on everything from cancer detection to environmental protection. At the awards ceremony at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, Chen received $50,000 in scholarship funding and a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands.

FTMap searches the surfaces of proteins for areas that can bind to candidate drug mol-

ecules. Chen used the software to search for novel compounds that could shut down endonuclease, a critical viral protein that enables flu viruses to survive and thrive. Combining FTMap results with biological studies, he identified a number of novel, potent endonuclease inhibitors.

“Chen’s success demonstrates that the FTMap server provides insightful analysis of protein binding sites and thus facilitates drug discovery,” said Kozakov. “Introduced in 2011, FTMap already has more than 1,000 regular users worldwide, and it is easy enough to use that even a talented high school student can generate spectacular results.”

Competitors included many top-tier colleges and universities across the globe, from Columbia University to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, advancing biomolecular devices capable of everything from fighting cancer to detecting the presence of pathogens.

The BU team, Terriergami, sought to design a novel approach to fabricate DNA origami, or nanoscale objects made of folded DNA, to reach brain cells in an efficient manner. To achieve their goal, the students systematically folded DNA into barrel-shaped structures, attaching a peptide to the surface of the barrel to improve brain cell targeting capability. Terriergami’s nanoscale objects could be developed to sense a neuron’s cellular environment or deliver drugs directly to it, and ultimately enable clinicians to diagnose or treat brain disorders.

“To my knowledge, this is one of the first proof-of-principle demonstrations of deliver-

ing DNA origami to neurons,” said Assistant Professor Xue Han (BME), who worked with the BU team in her lab.

Supervised by Han and BME postdoctoral fellow Richie Kohman, the team includes three BME seniors, Prakash Iyer (also majoring in Neuroscience), Aditya Sengupta and Harvin Vallabhaneni; one junior, Steve Man (Computer Science); and one BME sophomore, Sangeeta Satish. The undergraduates joined the team eager to explore DNA origami and its applications and came away with new skills and insights.

“Over the summer we used DNA as building blocks and self-assembly methods to create tiny delivery ‘cages’ out of the DNA,” said Vallabhaneni. “These were all concepts I studied in introductory courses. Through BIOMOD, I was expected not only to understand these concepts, but also to apply them to solve problems.”

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

9

TARGETED CHEMOTHERAPY THAT PROTECTS HEALTHY TISSUE

VACCINES CCINES FROM M TOBACCO PLANTS ENGINEERED TO COMBAT DEADLY VIRUSES

SMARTER CITIES THAT SAVE TIME, MONEY AND ENERGY

BIO BIO-INSPIRED FLIGHT CONTROL FLIG ALGORITHMS FOR COMPLEX UAV MISSIONS

POWERFUL MIRRORS USED IN LEADINGEDGE TELESCOPES AND MICROSCOPES

MORE INTERNET BANDWIDTH AT LOW COST

ALGORITHMS FOR SMART GRIDS THAT REDUCE ELECTRICITY COSTS AND CO2

DIAGNOSIS OF EARLY STAGE CANCER WITHOUT INVASIVE PROCEDURES AN ARTIFICIAL PANCREAS EASING TYPE 1 DIABETES CARE

HIGH-QUALITY BLUE LEDS FOR SMARTPHONE DISPLAYS

10

DETECTING SUBSTANDARD DRUGS TO KEEP MEDICINE SAFE

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

ANTIBIOTICS THAT OVERCOME DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA

PRECISION AIRPORT SCREENING FOR FASTER, SAFER CHECK-IN

THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING HAS BEEN MAKING YOUR WORLD

SAFER EASIER & HEALTHIER. How a Once-Tiny Aviation School Became a Hotbed of Innovation

BY MARK DWORTZAN

II

N JUST 50 YEARS, Boston University’s College of Engineering has grown into one of the world’s finest training grounds for future engineers and a wellspring of leading-edge technology. The College has seen dramatic increases not only in the size of its on-campus community, but also in the quality and societal impact of its educational and research programs. Decade by decade, the College has risen to become a national leader in experiential engineering education and diverse fields ranging from synthetic biology to nanotechnology to photonics, resulting in record levels of student applications, research funding and philanthropic support.

12

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

WHAT’S CHANGED IN HALF A CENTURY? 1,416 undergrad enrollment 394 master’s enrollment 349 PhD enrollment 52 million annual sponsored research dollars

Top 20 percent ranking U.S. News & World Report

On numbers alone, the College’s success is indisputable. Between 1964 and 2013, the number of degrees conferred annually has increased from zero to 281 bachelor’s, 184 master’s and 53 PhDs; enrollment from about 100 to 1,416 undergraduate, zero to 394 master’s and zero to 349 PhDs; faculty from 10 to more than 120; advanced degree programs offered from zero to nine master’s and six PhDs; and annual sponsored research dollars from zero to $52 million. Meanwhile, the College’s position in U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey of engineering graduate programs nationwide has surged from unranked to the top 20 percent nationally.

As impressive as they are, the numbers only tell part of the story. In the past five decades, the College has become an innovation platform for faculty, students and alumni, who have leveraged the skills of the engineer to significantly advance their fields and impact the world. They have conceived, developed and deployed technologies that have upgraded the quality of health care, energy production and distribution, communication and computation, homeland and global security, and many other essential and life-enhancing services.

College of Engineering students, faculty and alumni have made their mark as Societal Engineers, improving the quality of life around the globe while giving the ENG community much to celebrate in its first half-century. If its rich history of high-impact innovation is any guide, the College can look forward to many more achievements in the next 50 years.

ENG AT 50: FROM 1964 TO “WHAT’S NEXT?”

Left: ENG traces its roots to a vacant American Airlines building at Logan Airport.

Right: Opening of the College of Engineering Building at 110 Cummington Street in February 1964. Left to right are Merritt A. Williamson, dean of the College of

TOP RIGHT PHOTO BY BU PHOTOGRAPHY

IN THE BEGINNING . . .

The College of Engineering can trace its roots to a vacant American Airlines building at Logan Airport, where BU professor Hilding Carlson began teaching aeronautical engineering in 1928. In 1940, he launched the New England Aircraft School, which offered an associate’s degree. Boston University acquired the school in 1951, renamed it the College of Industrial Technology (CIT) and began adding bachelor’s degree programs. By 1963, when Arthur T. Thompson was appointed dean, the school had moved to the BU campus.

Thompson had big plans for the tiny school. His mission was to transform the budding institution into an accredited engineering program and to develop qualified engineers with “the capacity for responsible and effective action as members of our society.” Following a joint decision by Thompson and BU President Harold C. Case, CIT was renamed the College of Engineering on February 27, 1964.

Facilities in the College’s four-story building were modest, but the new dean was bullish about the future. “The soil was rich for this little technical school to grow,” recalls Thompson.

1964–1974: BUILDING ENG FROM THE GROUND UP To carry out his mission of building a solid, accredited academic program, Thompson began a vigorous effort to broaden and deepen the College’s technical scope. His first goal was to transition undergraduate degree programs in technology, aeronautics and management to new programs in systems, aeronautical and manufacturing engineering, and to hire new faculty to deliver them.

By transferring administration of core liberal arts courses in the new BS programs to BU’s College of Liberal Arts and streamlining required engineering courses, Thompson freed up funds to expand the faculty. Starting with an average of three faculty members per department, he increased total full-time faculty to 12 by the end of his term. In those years, faculty focused largely on teaching,

Engineering and Architecture at Penn State, BU President Harold C. Case and BU College of Engineering Dean Arthur T. Thompson. Williamson gave the Convocation Address at the inaugural ceremony of the College.

Professor Merrill Ebner, chair of the Manufacturing Engineering Department (MFG), in 1970. The MFG Department was the first in the US to grant undergraduate and graduate degrees in the field, and for many years the nation’s most prominent.

spending one day a week on “creative activities” that could develop into research.

Around 100 students enrolled in the College of Engineering’s first full academic year in 1964, a figure that rose to approximately 250 by 1975. During Thompson’s term, the College instituted the first BS degree program in the nation in Bioengineering and new BS programs in Mechanical and Computer Engineering; MS programs in Aerospace Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering and Systems Engineering; and a joint MS program in Manufacturing Engineering and Business Administration.

A notable success was the Manufacturing Engineering Department, which taught best practices in manufacturing engineering to students and industry professionals. The department was the first in E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

13

Dean Louis Padulo (right) increased the student body nearly tenfold in as many years.

1975–1989: A TIME OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH Despite a successful first decade, the College’s future looked murky as its second dean, Louis Padulo, took the helm.

“Johns Hopkins, Yale, NYU and other universities had dropped undergraduate engineering programs due to low enrollments,” Padulo recalls. “The College of Engineering was considered fragile at the time.”

But during his tenure as dean from 1975 to 1985, Padulo managed to transform the small College into a much more robust, visible and respected institution. Attacking the problem of low enrollments relentlessly with marketing savvy and charm, he grew the student body nearly tenfold, from 250 to 2,481, in as many years.

Through recruitment efforts and initiatives such as launching a Society of Women Engineers chapter, Padulo increased the quality and diversity of College of Engineering students. By 1986, ENG freshmen had the highest average SAT score at BU, and math SAT scores 91 points above the national average of prospective engineering freshmen. That same year, ENG had one of the highest pro14

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

portions of female (25 percent) and minority (20 percent) students in the country.

To meet the needs of a larger, more competitive student body, the College expanded and diversified its degree programs, going from five BS and three MS programs in five fields in 1975 to 24 BS, MS and PhD programs in eight fields. Padulo introduced several creative initiatives that transformed campus life and expanded the College’s footprint, including the Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP), which continues to offer master’s degrees in engineering for nonengineers; the Cooperative Education Program, which still provides industry internships; Corporate Classroom, a part-time graduate and continuing education program in which ENG courses were broadcast live to 35 high-tech companies; and a freshman advising system that continues to this day.

Padulo also grew the faculty from 12 to 67 full-time professors, paving the way for the College to become more research oriented. By 1986, nearly all full-time faculty members held PhDs, and sponsored research exceeded $3 million.

“I wanted people who were driven to do research but also thought it would be cool to teach young students,” says Padulo.

To give professors more time to pursue their research interests, Padulo reduced their teaching loads by enlisting engineers and business people as adjunct faculty members. The College also expanded research facilities in the 1980s with the opening of the Metcalf Center for Science & Engineering, new CAD and CAM labs, a wind tunnel, the Neuromuscular Research Center and the Engineering Research Building, setting the stage for a more robust research effort.

1990–2005: BECOMING A LEADING RESEARCH INSTITUTION When Professor Charles DeLisi (BME), a leading biomedical researcher in mapping the human genome, became the new dean in 1990, he began recruiting several top-notch researchers and developing a research infrastructure that ultimately propelled the College to its ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 engineering graduate schools (realized in 2003).

DeLisi began by turning the Biomedical Engineering Department into the world’s foremost biomolecular engineering research hub. He founded the Biomolecular Engineering Research Laboratory, the first lab at an engineering college to apply the mathematical methods of engineering to biomedical problems, and recruited several eminent scholars in molecular biology, including Charles Cantor, a pioneer in synthetic biology who once directed the Human Genome Project. DeLisi also hired leading cellular biology experts and tenured Professor James J. Collins (BME, MSE, SE), also a pioneer in synthetic as well as systems biology. As a result, DeLisi’s successor, Professor David K. Campbell (Physics, ECE), oversaw the department’s receipt in 2001 of a $14 million Whitaker Foundation Leadership Award and launched discussions resulting in major funding from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation.

DeLisi also upgraded the Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering Department through world-class recruits, and the Manufacturing Engineering Department through the 1994 launch of the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation. Meanwhile, DeLisi established a

PHOTO BY BU PHOTOGRAPHY

the US to grant undergraduate and graduate degrees in the field, and for many years was the nation’s most prominent.

By 1971, Thompson had not only broadened the College’s offerings but also accomplished his core mission: the three initial BS programs in Aerospace, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering were awarded accreditation, with the Manufacturing Engineering program the first to be accredited in the US. “I felt I had completed my job because the school had taken off, we were accredited and applications were coming in,” says Thompson.

“When we started ENG and began building and expanding our departments, the realization was there from the top down that we should not try to emulate or beat the MITs and instead concentrate on doing certain things very well,” says Associate Professor Theodore de Winter (ME), one of the College’s original faculty members. “We’ve since carved out niches from underwater acoustics to nanotechnology.”

LEFT PHOTO BY JULIE CHEN, RIGHT PHOTO BY VERNON DOUCETTE

ENG AT 50: FROM 1964 TO “WHAT’S NEXT?”

Professor Charles Cantor (BME) (left), ENG Dean Charles DeLisi (second from right) and two researchers in the Dean’s Office, 1993. A pioneer in synthetic biology, Cantor was among several eminent scholars DeLisi recruited as he transformed the BME Department into a biomolecular engineering research hub.

Professor Malvin Teich (ECE) in the BU Photonics Center, 1997. DeLisi’s recruitment of Teich and other leading photonics researchers made the College of Engineering a “brand name” in the field.

solid core of photonics research, bringing in leading US researchers. The 1997 opening of the Photonics Center, a 235,000-square-foot facility dedicated to the development of advanced photonic device prototypes, coupled with major faculty achievements such as Professor Theodore Moustakas’s (ECE, MSE) co-development of the blue LED, solidified the College’s position as a leader in photonics.

“When I arrived in 1990, we were a very good teaching college, but we had very few research-active, tenured faculty members, and almost no research infrastructure,” says DeLisi. “We didn’t even have a laser, whereas now we are a brand name in photonics.”

Under the deanships of DeLisi and Campbell, between 1990 and 2005 the number of full-time faculty rose to 120, and external research funding surpassed $26 million. By 2005, the College had eight primary research centers addressing critical problems in photonics, manufacturing, information and systems engineering, biotechnology, molecular biology, hearing and other areas. It had also expanded along Cummington Street, providing every department with a dedicated building.

Meanwhile, graduate education expanded considerably. In the early 1990s, the PhD in Engineering, administered by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, morphed into seven distinct degrees administered by the College. In addition, admissions standards rose sharply, along with many new fellowships and training grants.

On the undergraduate front, Campbell set an ambitious goal—1,320 undergraduate enrollment/1320 combined SAT scores—which the College achieved, and started what became the ENG Annual Fund to provide scholarships and research support to students. In 2001, when Professor Solomon Eisenberg (BME) served as interim dean, the College launched a new Study Abroad program, one of a select few that enabled students to study engineering for a semester in a foreign country without prolonging their degree

program. Study Abroad participants developed greater awareness of how engineering could enhance the quality of life across the globe—a sensibility that would loom large at the College in the years ahead.

2006–PRESENT: CREATING THE SOCIETAL ENGINEER When Kenneth R. Lutchen took over as dean, he became more acutely aware of undergraduates’ growing interest in making a positive difference in the world.

“They want a purpose in life,” he observes. “It’s not just about financial success, although that is also important—it’s a powerful enabler. They want to know how their undergraduate experience will prepare them to have an impact on society.”

So Lutchen redefined the educational mission of the College to create Societal Engineers who “use the grounded and creative skills of an engineer to improve the quality of life for one person or for an entire population,” and identified a set of attributes that Societal Engineers should have. By 2010 he rolled out a series of experiential opportunities to enable undergraduates to cultivate those attributes.

These include the Technology Innovation Scholars program, which sends ENG students to K–12 schools to show how engineering impacts society; Engineers in the Real World, which brings working engineers into the sophomore classroom to explore career options; the Lutchen Fellows program, which engages selected upperclassmen in high-impact, faculty-supervised research projects; the BU Chapter of Engineers Without Borders; and the Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Lab, where students address societal challenges through self-directed projects.

Several faculty members responded to the new Societal Engineer vision, shifting from frontal lecture to project-based, team-oriented, active learning. They facilitated dynamic educational experiences ranging from the “flipped lecture,” in which students view lectures Continued on page 19 E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

15

ENG AT 50: FROM 1964 TO “WHAT’S NEXT?” 1964

1968

College of Industrial Technology renamed the BU College of Engineering/BS program in Engineering Management renamed Manufacturing Engineering (MFG)

College creates joint master’s program in MFG and Business Administration/College receives first external agency award

Mechanics and Computer Systems Engineering initiated/Department of Electrical, Computer & Systems Engineering (ECS) started

1969

1977

1965 BS programs in Systems Engineering (SE) and Information Engineering started/ Aeronautical Engineering renamed Aerospace Engineering, and MS program initiated

Bioengineering renamed Biomedical Engineering (BME)

College initiates MS program in EE

1971

1981

College initiates Cooperative Education Program/MS degree in BME initiated/First BME Senior Design Project Conference

Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP) founded

BS program in Bioengineering initiated, the first in the nation

1973

1967

BS programs initiated in Mechanical and Computer Engineering

First corporate classroom engineering television course offered/Overseas MS program in ME initiated in Germany/College creates MS program in BME

MS programs in MFG and SE initiated

ROTC unit returns to campus at ENG faculty request

1974

MBTA GREEN LINE 1966

1976 BS program in Electrical Engineering (EE) initiated/ MS programs in Applied

16

1982

College establishes Neuromuscular Research Center (NMRC)

1985

BS programs in Aerospace, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering accredited; MFG is first of its kind to be accredited in US

1966

1984

1987 Engineering Research Building opens/First BU student graduates with engineering PhD LEAP

1983 PhD degree in Engineering initiated and offered through the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

1990 Dean Charles DeLisi begins to significantly increase College research infrastructure/BU Trustees approve change from single PhD in Engineering to PhDs in Aerospace, Biomedical, Computer, Electrical, Manufacturing, Mechanical and Systems Engineering

1991 First students graduate with PhDs in EE, ME, BME

1960s

1970s

1980s

Top: ENG students in a typical lab setting, 1964. Bottom: Constructing a “hovercraft” in aerodynamics lab, 1969 (BU Photo)

Top: Professor Richard F. Vidale, head of the College’s Systems Engineering Department, 1977. Bottom: ENG students studying airplanes at Hanscom Air Force Base, 1972 (BU Photo)

Top: ENG students in typical lab setting, 1983.

Bottom: Robot arm, 1982 (BU Photo)

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

1993 Centers for Advanced Biotechnology and Photonics Research initiated/ENG begins administering own PhD programs

1994

Photonics and Global Manufacturing added/College launches Study Abroad program

2002 Center for Information & Systems Engineering started

Biomolecular Engineering Research ch Center and Center for Hearing Research initiated

2003

1995

2005

MFG facilities integrated with Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation; Metcalf Center for Science & Engineering opens

1997 BU Photonics Center opens

2001 BU receives $14 million Whitaker Foundation Leadership Award to expand biomedical engineering programs/MS programs in

College breaks into top 50 engineering graduate programs in U.S. News & World Report

BU opens Life Sciences & Engineering Building

2006 Ingalls Engineering Resource Center opens/ BU Chapter of Engineers Without Borders formed

ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS

1990s

Top: 1990s ENG Dean Charles DeLisi receives Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House (Photo courtesy of the White House). Bottom: BU Photonics Center opening, 1997 (Photo by Vernon Doucette)

2007

2011

College initiates Dean’s Catalyst Awards to spark promising, interdisciplinary research collaborations

College introduces six new MEng programs in CE, EE, MFG, ME, MSE and Photonics/Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Lab opens/Certificate programs in Engineering Innovation, Energy & Sustainability, MEMS and Product Design launched/College trademarks “Boston University Creating the Societal Engineer”

2008 New MS and PhD programs in Materials Science & Engineering, MEng program in BME, and MS and MEng programs in SE initiated/SE and MSE Divisions launched/College establishes new ME concentrations in MFG and Aerospace Engineering/ ENG Leadership Advisory Board launched

2009

2012 ENG adds Technology Innovation concentration; first Imagineering Competition

2013

ENG starts concentrations in energy technologies and nanotechnology, minors in MSE and SE

ENG opens Center of Synthetic Biology (CoSBi)/College initiates STEM Educator-Engineer Program (STEEP)

2010

2014

College initiates Lutchen Fellowship Program, Innovative Engineering Education Faculty Fellowship Program and Technology Innovation Scholars Program

Engineering Product Innovation Center opens

2000s

2010s

Top: Professor James J. Collins (BME, MSE, SE) wins Metcalf Cup and Prize, 2000 (Photo by Fred Sway). Bottom: Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME, BME) and students, 2007 (Photo by Kalman Zabarsky)

Top: ENG Inspiration Ambassador Eni Adedokun advises fifth grader, 2011 (Photo by Melody Komyerov). Bottom: Engineering Product Innovation Center, 2014 (Photo by Mike Spencer)

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

17

ENG @ 50: Research Shaping Tomorrow C G

A

B

E F

D

College of Engineering faculty are pioneering new fields and advancing groundbreaking innovations to improve the quality of our lives today and for many years to come. Here’s a sampling of technologies emerging from ENG labs and the principal investigators behind them: HEALTH CARE • (A) An artificial pancreas—the first fully automated system for regulating blood glucose levels in people with type I diabetes—is being developed by Professor Edward Damiano (BME).

• Professor James Collins (BME, MSE, SE)—one of the founders of the field of synthetic and systems biology—is leading efforts to “turn off” bacteria’s resistance to antibiotics.

• (B) A device advanced by Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) detects counterfeit or substandard drugs, potentially saving countless lives, particularly in resource-limited countries.

• Engineered by Professor Andre Sharon (ME), the first fully automated, scalable “factory” using nongenetically modified green plants can mass-produce vaccines and therapeutics within weeks, addressing pandemics and other time-critical public health needs.

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

• (C) Led by Professor Thomas Little (ECE, SE), the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center is developing LED technology that can both illuminate and enable high-speed, optical wireless communication.

• (D) A technology infrastructure for sensor network18

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

H

enabled, data-driven “Smart Cities” that makes it easier to get around, save energy, communicate, and stay healthy and safe is being developed by a team led

by Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE), a pioneer in the field of discrete event dynamic systems.

• Professor Irving J. Bigio devised a noninvasive optical method that shows great promise as a low-cost, lowmaintenance, user-friendly clinical tool for diagnosing early stage cancers in hollow organs, from the colon to the esophagus.

SECURITY & DEFENSE • (E) Faster, more accurate explosives detection technologies for screening checked luggage, carry-on items and passengers, based on machine learning, optimization and image processing are being developed by Professor David Castañón (ECE, SE).

• Professor John Baillieul (ME, SE) is applying lessons learned from bats, birds and insects to create flight control algorithms that could enable unmanned aerial vehicles to navigate more effectively in cluttered environments for military, disaster recovery and other missions.

NANOTECHNOLOGY • (G) Associate Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE) is working with the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation at BU to develop microfluidic systems for portable, user-friendly, lowcost point-of-care diagnostics of influenza and other infectious diseases.

• Associate Professor Tyrone Porter (ME, BME) is developing techniques that combine nanotechnology and focused ultrasound to kill solid cancer tumors with surgical precision and deliver targeted chemotherapy without damaging surrounding tissue.

PHOTONICS

ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT • (H) Professor Michael Caramanis (ME, SE) is advancing algorithms designed to enable smart grids to reduce the nation’s electricity costs and carbon footprint while encouraging renewable energy generation.

• An electrolysis method developed by Professor Uday Pal (ME, MSE) and Associate Professor Srikanth Gopalan (ME, MSE) can produce pure metals from their oxides with zero carbon emissions at a fraction of the cost of conventional metals production, thereby enhancing US energy security, air quality and economic growth.

• (F) Professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE) has advanced a new fiber-optic technology that could boost internet bandwidth considerably at very low cost.

• After creating the technology that made production of the now-ubiquitous blue LED possible, Professor Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) is using highly efficient, deep ultraviolet LEDs for air and water purification.

• Used in state-of-the-art telescopes and microscopes, Professor Thomas Bifano’s (ME, MSE) MEMS-based, deformable micro-mirrors are capable of detecting everything from extrasolar planets to the progression of retinal diabetes.

ENG AT 50: FROM 1964 TO “WHAT’S NEXT?”

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen (bottom left) spearheaded several experiential learning initiatives designed to turn ENG undergraduates into Societal Engineers, including the Binoy K. Singh Imagineering Lab (right) and the Lutchen Fellows Program (top left).

PHOTOS BY VERNON DOUCETTE, CYDNEY SCOTT AND KALMAN ZABARSKY

continued from page 15 online at home and implement what they learned in a computer lab, to real-world “challenge problems” posed to students during a lecture as a way to immediately apply new concepts.

Meanwhile, the College initiated the Systems Engineering (SE) and Materials Science & Engineering (MSE) divisions, encouraging multidisciplinary research collaboration; and new minors (MSE and SE) and concentrations (aerospace engineering, manufacturing engineering, energy technologies, nanotechnology, and technology innovation). Professional education opportunities surged on campus with the introduction of eight new MEng programs and four new certificate programs.

In keeping with his Societal Engineer focus, Lutchen recruited many new faculty members and oversaw or initiated several new research collaborations aimed at addressing critical challenges in health care, energy and the environment, communications and security. Examples range from an effort to develop Smart Cities that exploit sensor network data to improve the quality of urban life, to a new Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care to develop pointof-care cancer diagnostic and treatment technologies.

COMING ATTRACTIONS Energized by the success of its Societal Engineer programs, the College of Engineering has an ambitious education and research agenda for the years ahead. For example, the newly opened Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC), a unique, hands-on facility, will educate all students on product design-to-deployment-to-sustainability (see story on p. 3).

The fall 2013 opening of the Center of Synthetic Biology (CoSBi) represents another major transformation for the College. CoSBi unites BU engineering and biology researchers to design and construct biomolecular components and synthetic gene networks to reprogram cells, endowing them with novel functions ranging from new fuels to medical treatments.

Other upcoming educational initiatives include increased integration of digital technologies to enhance courses; new programs with the Schools of Management, Education and Public Health; continued efforts to build the engineering pipeline through outreach to K–12 students; and the Summer Institute for Innovation & Technology Leadership, which recruits companies to host teams of ENG and SMG students to tackle targeted problems.

Looking deeper into the future, BU has proposed to construct the Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering Building—a sevenstory, 150,000-square-foot facility that will include interdisciplinary research space for faculty and students in systems and synthetic biology—within the next 10 years. BU is also proposing a 165,000-squarefoot science and engineering research building. By 2016, ENG is expected to add about 61,500 square feet of new lab and classroom space.

Even as the College continues to leverage its strengths in photonics; bioengineering; information science and systems engineering; advanced materials; micro- and nanosystems; and other fields to move society forward, it also aims to explore new frontiers, from big data to urban resilience engineering. Driven by a top-tier faculty and student body, its rich legacy of innovation is sure to keep growing.

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

19

RUTH HUNTER ’64 A TRUE STORY OF NOVEL IDEAS

by mark dwortzan 20

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

I

n the coming decades, long-distance travelers may have the opportunity to board a new kind of aircraft that soars to and from low-earth orbit, dramatically reducing flight times—and potentially cutting a six-hour trip between New York and London to an hour and fifteen minutes. In

a report to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation published in 2010, Ruth A. MacFarlane Hunter (Aero’64, GSM’86) explored how to integrate such aircraft into rapidly evolving US and international air traffic control systems, laying the groundwork for this novel form of air travel to operate as safely and nondisruptively as possible.

The report is but one of dozens of groundbreaking, comprehensive analyses that she has prepared over the past 39 years as an engineer at the US Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, which aims to improve the nation’s transportation infrastructure by anticipating and solving a wide range of emerging challenges and advancing innovations across all transportation modes, while maintaining safety standards.

E n g i n ee r S P ring 2 0 1 4 w w w. bu . e d u / eng

21

Bec B ecoming ng ENG NG G’s ’s First Valedictorian Hunter began learning how to anticipate and solve engineering challenges in 1960 as a student at Boston University’s College of Industrial Technology (CIT), where she was the only woman undergraduate in her aeronautical engineering class. Inspired to explore engineering as a career by her technologically savvy father, and disinterested in the typical jobs available to women at the time—teacher, secretary, nurse—she encountered a few speed bumps her freshman year.

“That year we had to take machine shop, mechanical drawing and kinematics,” Hunter recalls. “I was at a big disadvantage because in high school women weren’t allowed in shop or mechanical drafting classes.” Despite the handicaps, she made the Dean’s List for four years and went on to become the class valedictorian when she graduated summa cum laude in 1964.

By that time, CIT’s name had changed to the College of Engineering, making Hunter the new College’s first valedictorian. She went on to earn a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Michigan, where she received a NASA fellowship and was the only American Amelia Earhart Fellowship recipient. Later she returned to BU’s Graduate School of Management to earn an MBA. Taking T a g on Multiple Societal Ch C allenges Hunter began her career working on aerodynamic design and software development for an Air Force contractor. She moved on to a Cambridge-based NASA research center, where she developed software for applications ranging from pattern recognition of moonscapes and clouds in support of potential unmanned planetary missions to the tracking of aircraft departures and arrivals.

She also conducted automotive energy efficiency analyses.

Hunter’s Volpe Center office is cluttered with the contents of nearly 40 years of pioneering work.

22

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

“I remember developing software in assembly language, machine language and FORTRAN on batch processing computers,” says Hunter. “One early IBM microcomputer required that software be loaded via paper tape through a huge console. If you got one job control language comma wrong, you had to submit a new run and wait overnight for the corrected output.”

Hunter outside the Volpe Center building in Cambridge.

ERIC LEVIN

In 1975 she joined the Volpe Center as a multidisciplinary engineer and began taking on some of the nation’s most prominent technological challenges.

In her first five years, Hunter provided technical leadership and software development for a project aimed at measuring and improving automotive, heavy truck and bus fuel efficiency in the wake of the mid-70s energy crisis.

For much of the next 25 years, she supported numerous military logistics analyses and software development efforts—some quite high-profile. Hunter personally planned the urban searchand-rescue teams and emergency response equipment transport in the wake of the September 11 attacks. She worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on software for tracking the spread of infectious diseases through international air travel, and with the Department of Energy on an analysis of a system tracking nuclear waste shipments. She subsequently served as acting chief of what’s now called the Aviation Safety Management Systems Division, where she is a principal technical advisor.

Stil Stil ill Goin i g St in Strong Decade after decade, Hunter has relished the opportunity to help solve a wide range of transportation-related societal problems.

“I’ve always believed in being multidisciplinary,” she explains in her office, which is cluttered with the contents of nearly 40 years of Volpe institutional memory. “You can apply the underlying precepts that you learn in one area to other areas to avoid starting from scratch.”

In the past five years, Hunter has indeed transferred lessons learned to address a number of critical aviation challenges. In addition to her analyses of commercial space transportation systems, she is leading a project to develop data-driven criteria for aviation hazardous materials inspections and is working as part of an FAA team to assess the safety impacts of air traffic control systems, set to be deployed between now and 2025, to reduce airborne and airport congestion.

“We’re the only ones comprehensively examining the future safety of next-generation air traffic control innovations,” she says.

“Based on projected fleet composition and schedule forecasts, as well as human factors issues, we’re studying the likely impacts on pilots, controllers, passenger risk and departure-arrival delays under various weather and traffic conditions.”

Over the course of her career, Hunter has succeeded not only in applying her knowledge to solve complex new challenges, but also in passing on that knowledge to the next generation of engineers, observes George Hebert, a project manager at the Volpe Center who has long known Hunter as a supervisor, coworker and friend. “Ruth expends a tremendous amount of energy guiding and supporting less experienced coworkers, and she does so in the most productive and enjoyable way that you almost don’t realize she is actively mentoring you,” says Hebert.

“It’s as if she were the best college professor you ever had and at the same time a trusted friend. Her insight and advice are always spot on.”

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

23

24

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

PHOTO BY DAN WATKINS

ByteLight CEO Daniel Ryan (ECE’10)

HOW MANY ENGINEERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB ?

SEE WHERE LED MEETS GPS. AND HOW A BU GRAD IS BECOMING A MARKET LEADER.

BY MARK DWORTZAN

I

magine you’re strolling through the aisles of a supermarket and just as you approach your favorite pasta sauce, a virtual “buy one, get one free” coupon for the product, redeemable at checkout, appears on your smartphone.

Rather than having you page through a weekly compilation of in-store offers—that’s so 20th century—the store has delivered the coupon directly to your phone based on your current location and shopping history.

Making this possible are standard overhead LED lights that not only illuminate the room but also function as an indoor GPS. Enhanced with microchips, the bulbs contain sophisticated software that causes them to flicker fast enough to transmit a distinctive, information-rich signal that a smartphone camera can detect and a retailer’s mobile app can decode.

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

25

I

n just three years, the Boston-based startup that developed the software ByteLight has become a market leader in indoor location solutions, a burgeoning industry enabling mobile device users to access discounts, directions and other highly targeted services at precise locations within buildings. Energized by a recent investor influx of $3 million, ByteLight is piloting its technology at several global retailers, including three of the top 10 big box stores, as well as at 100 stores in China.

Spearheading this success story is ByteLight’s CEO, Daniel Ryan (ECE’10), who cofounded the company with classmate Aaron Ganick

BYTELIGHT SOFTWARE PROMISES TO BOOST CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND SALES BY DELIVERING PERSONALIZED SAVINGS FROM STORE SHELF TO CHECKOUT.

(ECE’10) in 2011 based on concepts they studied and implemented as research assistants in Professor Thomas Little’s (ECE, MSE, SE) Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center. Both inspired by childhood visits to Boston’s Museum of Science to pursue careers in electrical engineering, Ryan and Ganick devised ByteLight’s core technology in the lab, developed a prototype and business plan in technology incubator space at the BU Photonics Center and Highland Capital Partners’ Summer Program, and then raised sufficient capital to launch the company. While Ganick moved on last year to pursue other endeavors, Ryan continues to grow ByteLight to meet a surging demand for its unique indoor location solution.

26

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

It’s a demand driven partly by the rapid adoption of LEDs, and partly by the product’s market-leading accuracy, responsiveness and reliability. LED lights equipped with ByteLight software can pinpoint a mobile device user’s location to within one meter in less than a second—far outpacing the performance of other indoor positioning systems developed by industry giants, including Apple and Google, that triangulate distances between hotpots and handsets on wireless networks.

“Sub-meter accuracy has long been the holy grail for retailers experimenting with indoor location,” says Ryan. “With ByteLight, retailers finally have the opportunity to install a wall-to-wall solution that just works.”

Also lifting ByteLight above its competitors are its low infrastructure cost and compatibility with all mobile devices. Unlike other solutions that require additional hardware such as WiFi hotspots or Bluetooth beacons, ByteLight software exploits an existing and ubiquitous infrastructure: overhead lighting. ByteLight not only uses light waves to transmit useful information to smartphone-toting customers at specific locations, but also to quickly and securely verify their presence for loyalty programs, mobile payments and more at “tap-and-go” check-in and check-out locations equipped with the company’s Light Field Communication readers. Compatible with all smartphones, the ByteLight readers cost five percent as much as the Near Field Communication (NFC) readers, which use radio signals to process such transactions and work only with a limited set of mobile devices.

Once integrated into a retailer’s app and LED lights, ByteLight software promises to boost customer loyalty and sales by delivering personalized savings from store shelf to checkout. Since ByteLight technology was introduced in 100 stores in China, the stores have seen a 30 percent increase in loyalty reward redemptions.

“Brick-and-mortar retailers are demanding new solutions that can leverage digital assets within physical store locations to engage and retain customers,” says Don Dodge, developer advocate at Google and an industry leader in indoor location technology.

“ByteLight’s indoor location solutions assist retailers with delivering hyper-targeted information and content to customers on mobile

IMAGE COURTESY OF BYTELIGHT

As a smartphone-toting customer approaches a product in a department store, the ByteLight app displays discount information.

PHOTOS BY DAN WATKINS

LEFT: Daniel Ryan (ECE’10) and Manny Malandrakis (EE’10). RIGHT: ByteLight software exploits an existing and ubiquitous infrastructure: overhead lighting.

devices within their stores based on the device’s precise location.

More importantly, these solutions fully integrate physical commerce with eCommerce to give retailers an omni-channel offering.”

ByteLight’s primary focus is on the retail industry, but the company’s technology could also be deployed in venues ranging from museums—including Boston’s Museum of Science, where ByteLight is used in one exhibit to display location-sensitive content—to factories to airplanes. To expand the company’s repertoire, ByteLight provides its customers with a software development kit they can use to invent new applications for the software-enhanced lights. In the coming years, as the use of LED lighting and mobile devices continues to grow, Ryan envisions integrating ByteLight technology into stadiums, conference centers, schools, office buildings, hospitals and other domains.

Professor Little, an advisor to the company and mentor to Ryan during his undergraduate years, is optimistic about his former student’s prospects. “Dan is an exceptional individual who epitomizes what engineering school is all about—learning to solve problems. Any problem,” said Little. “And to be adaptable and agile in a continuously changing technological world. He has demonstrated the ability to deliver a product coupled with software integration and analytics that support a complex supply and distribution chain with diverse market stakeholders.”

In his role as ByteLight’s CEO, Ryan draws on engineering, entrepreneurial and interpersonal skills that he cultivated at the College of Engineering, where he helped launch a small satellite while participating in the BU Student-satellite for Applications and Training (BUSAT) program, took an ENG/SMG course in entrepreneurship and served as Class of 2010 Commencement speaker. Today, as he steers ByteLight toward a 2014 rollout in US stores from a new office in Boston’s Fort Point Channel, Ryan finds himself applying these skills to solve a full spectrum of problems.

“Each day brings a new problem, ranging from product development to technology to new competition,” he says. “The key to responding effectively and moving forward through the chaos is your team. It’s that simple. At ByteLight, we’ve been fortunate to build an incredibly talented core of technologists to take our vision and turn it into reality.”

Manny Malandrakis (EE’10), one of the first ENG alumni to become a ByteLight employee, focuses on digital signal processing and communications systems, two courses he took as an undergraduate.

“These classes were the foundation of this company,” says Ryan.

“We’re leveraging the core theories and techniques we learned in these courses every day.”

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

27

It was great because “it was so close to the stadium . . . and they were very friendly and helpful!

”

EASY “INCONVENIENT! AND EASY OUT! ” We were greeted with a “smile and instructed to a

“

Well organized, with friendly attendants who gave us helpful directions when we were leaving.

great parking spot. Thank you. We will use you again!

”

”

ECE ALUM’S APP RESERVES SPOTS IN LOTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY

BY RACHEL HARRINGTON

28

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

CUSTOMER QUOTES COURTESY OF PARKWHIZ

(YOUR CAR HERE)

F

enway Park is a popular place. More than three million people visit the ballpark each year and for many of them it’s very tough finding a place to park. This situation compelled Jon Thornton (ECE’06) to co-develop ParkWhiz.com, the nation’s first and leading online parking spot reservation service with access to more than 2,000 parking lots and garages in 80 cities and 35 states.

The user-friendly ParkWhiz app allows customers to compare the prices, location and amenities of parking lots close to their destination on a map displayed on their smartphone or computer; reserve a parking spot by selecting a location and paying by credit card; follow on-screen directions to that location; and access the spot by showing the parking attendant an online or printed parking pass.

Either manually or through an automated system, parking attendants monitor inventory to ensure enough spots are available when ParkWhiz customers arrive.

Founded in 2006, ParkWhiz stemmed from Thornton’s senior design project, which he worked on with Professor Thomas Little (ECE, SE). He designed a parking system that would allow drivers to locate a parking space in a garage or at a meter and make a reservation.

PHOTO OF THORNTON COURTESY OF PARKWHIZ

PARKWHIZ ENABLES CUSTOMERS TO COMPARE PARKING PRICES, LOCATIONS AND AMENITIES ACROSS THE US VIA THEIR SMARTPHONES OR OVER THE INTERNET AND LOCK IN A SPOT WITH THE CLICK OF A MOUSE. PARKWHIZ THEN PRODUCES AN ELECTRONIC PARKING PASS THAT CUSTOMERS MAY PRINT AT THEIR CONVENIENCE OR DISPLAY ON THEIR SMARTPHONE.

“Jon had a key role in developing the software,” says Little. “It moved sensor data into the cloud by enabling parking spot vacancy sensors to communicate occupancy data to wireless gateways that collected information on parking availability.”

Serendipitously, a research paper Little wrote about designing a parking system based on sensor networks had attracted a query from Aashish Dalal, an entrepreneur working on a business plan for a parking technology company. Little put Dalal in touch with Thornton. In the fall of 2006, the pair started work on ParkWhiz, with Thornton overseeing technology and product development.

For the first five years, Dalal and Thornton were the company, both supporting themselves with other jobs. By their third year working on ParkWhiz, they were able to take a small salary and

by the fourth year the company had really taken off. Today the company’s 22-person team serves more than 1 million drivers.

Based in Chicago, ParkWhiz can support parking requests at more than 125 venues and has booked more than $10 million in parking revenue. Orchestrating Super Bowl parking since 2010, the company handles requests near a number of high-profile locations, including Madison Square Garden, Jon Thornton (ECE’06) Wrigley Field and Los Angeles International Airport, and has begun to provide access to downtown parking structures in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Buoyed by $2 million in venture capital, ParkWhiz is expanding its reach to more locations and eventually hopes to integrate its app into GPS or Internet-enabled dashboards.

“It’s incredibly gratifying to work on something that hundreds of thousands of people use to make their lives easier,” says Thornton, who as a teenager spent much of his free time simply trying to make his family’s computer work better. Inspired by a standout physics teacher in high school, he initially majored in physics at BU, but his love for tinkering with technology led him to switch to engineering in his sophomore year. The following year, Little’s course on sensor networks impressed on him the many ways technology can be used— from monitoring bird populations to reserving parking spots— setting the stage for ParkWhiz.

The College of Engineering made it possible for Thornton not only to meet his cofounder but also to master engineering challenges. Professors Little and Min-Chang Lee (ECE) were among those who pushed him to become a better student and excel in more difficult subjects, such as Introduction to Electronics and Electrodynamics.

“What impressed me was not only his intelligence and diligence but also his attitude toward his studies,” Lee recalls. “He was very enthusiastic about learning these courses.”

“The biggest thing I got from my time at the College of Engineering was a strong sense of process, of taking a series of steps that lead you to a solution,” Thornton recalls. “I learned how to keep myself organized and methodically work toward a goal.”

Another benefit Thornton drew from his time at BU was ongoing exposure to people pursuing studies in a wide range of disciplines.

“This helped prepare me for the business world, where things don’t fit into neat buckets,” he says, “and gave me a large network to call on when I needed help.”

Now Thornton has given drivers an even larger network that they can call on when they need help landing parking spots at the ballpark and other attractions.

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

29

faculty

WILSON WONG RECEIVES NEW INNOVATOR AWARD

JAMES BIRD’S RESEARCH FEATURED IN THE NY TIMES

32

33

Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE)

Zaman’s PharmaCheck Named One of Scientific American’s Ten World-Changing Ideas An estimated 20 to 50 percent of medicines distributed in developing countries are either counterfeit or significantly substandard, resulting in thousands of preventable medical complications and deaths. To address this problem, Associate Professor Muhammad Zaman (BME, MSE) has spent the past two years developing PharmaCheck, a fast, portable, user-friendly detector for screening counterfeit and substandard antimalarials, antibiotics and other essential medicines.

Scientific American was so impressed with PharmaCheck and its potential to improve people’s lives that the magazine featured the concept behind it—a new approach to preventing the spread and use of substandard medicine—as one of “Ten World-Changing Ideas” in its annual roundup article on proven, scalable innovations that could dramatically 30

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

impact society in the near future. Appearing in the December issue, the article—which also features innovations ranging from planes that snap together to smartphones as thin as credit cards—lauds PharmaCheck as an outstanding example of microfluidic, lab-ona-chip technology.

“I am really honored and excited by this recognition,” said Zaman. “Our funding partners have been amazingly supportive of our high-risk approach, and we hope that this recognition and their ongoing support will enable our team to help make the world a better and a safer place for all those who battle deadly diseases.”

PharmaCheck—developed by Zaman and graduate students Darash Desai (BME), Nga Ho (BME), Andrea Fernandes (SMG, SPH) and research scientist Atena Shemiran (BME)—is simple to operate. The user places a pill into

a small testing box that instantly reports the amount of an active ingredient found in the pill.

The team’s ultimate goal is to enable users from pharmacists to regulatory authorities to effectively and easily control the quality of medicine delivered to patients. Toward that end, Zaman and his collaborators are now pursuing a series of field studies to test PharmaCheck’s performance on antimalarials, antibiotics, uterotonics (used to induce labor) and medications targeting tuberculosis and HIV. Zaman was also recognized for developing tools to improve the quality of life, education and the practice of medicine in the developing world by Peace Islands Institute (PII), a northeastern-US-based think tank promoting education, friendship and harmony among peoples of diverse backgrounds. PII named Zaman as the recipient of its 2013 Global Education Award.

KALMAN ZABARSKY

ADVANCES NEW APPROACH TO PREVENTING SPREAD AND USE OF SUBSTANDARD MEDICINES

Han Receives Presidential Early Career Award President Obama named Assistant Professor Xue Han (BME) as one of 102 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor the US government bestows on science and engineering researchers who are in the early stages of their careers.

Selected for their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and their commitment to community service, awardees receive a research grant lasting up to five years and an invitation to attend a White House ceremony with the President .

Han was recognized for her innovative research on developing novel neurotechnologies using light-sensitive nanoparticles to sense neurons’ cellular environment and to deliver drugs directly to the brain.

“The PECASE adds another prestigious award to Dr. Han’s already glowing CV, and is a clear indication that her research continues to be

recognized at the highest levels,” said Professor Sol Eisenberg (BME), who heads the BME Department. “Her work holds the promise of significant medical breakthroughs in the treatment of neurological diseases.”

“I am thrilled to have been selected to receive this award, which will accelerate our efforts on neurotechnology development to better understand and treat brain disorders,” said Han, whose research in recent years has garnered a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award and recognition as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, Sloan Research Fellow and Peter Paul Fellow.

Han develops and applies high-precision genetic, molecular, optical and electrical tools and other nanotechnologies to study neural circuits in the brain. By using these novel neurotechnologies to control and monitor a selected population of brain cells, she and her research team seek to identify connections between neural circuit dynamics and behavioral pathologies. Establishing such connections could improve our understanding of neurological and psychiatric diseases and lead to new treatments.

Assistant Professor Xue Han (BME)

Previous Boston University recipients of the PECASE award include former Associate Professor Hatice Altug (ECE, MSE, 2010), Associate Professor Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE, 2004) and former Assistant Professors Paul Barber (Biology, 2005) and Joan Walker (Geography & Environment, 2007).

BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF INVENTORS.

Cantor Named as National Academy of Inventors Charter Fellow Professor Emeritus Charles Cantor (BME, MED), a pioneer in synthetic biology who once directed the Human Genome Project and chaired the College’s Biomedical Engineering Department, has been named a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a high professional distinction that recognizes academic innovators who have created or facilitated outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on society.

The 143 innovators who received the honor this year represent 94 universities, government institutions and nonprofit research organizations and more than 5,600 US patents. The new Fellows include nine Nobel Laureates, 69 members of the National Academies, five inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six recipients of the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation, two recipients of the US National Medal of Science and 26 presidents and senior leadership of research universities and nonprofit research institutes.

“I have always considered innovation to be the most exciting part of my career,” said Cantor, who is currently developing biotechnology companies including Sequenom, Inc. and Retrotope.

“It is thrilling that an institution has been established to honor inventive scientists and engineers, and I am very pleased to be among the first people to be elected to the NAI.” Cantor joins Professors James J. Collins (BME, MSE, SE), Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE) and Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE), who were inducted as NAI Fellows in 2012, the inaugural year of the Fellowship.

In a career spanning more than five decades, Cantor has co-authored a seminal three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry and the first genomics textbook, published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, generated 54 US patents, and received many prestigious awards and honors, from membership in the National Academy of Sciences to induction as a Guggenheim Fellow and American Institute for

Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow. Prior to joining the BU faculty in 1992, he held positions at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley. More information about Cantor’s research can be found on p. 5.

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

31

faculty

Three ECE Profs Named as IEEE Fellows KARL, MOUSTAKAS AND PASCHALIDIS RECOGNIZED FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS In December, Professors W. Clem Karl (ECE, BME, SE), Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) and Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE) were named as 2014 IEEE Fellows, the highest grade of membership in the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for the benefit of society.

The IEEE confers the grade of Fellow upon individuals with outstanding records of accomplishment in any of the organization’s fields of interest, which range from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Less than 0.1 percent of voting members—the IEEE currently has 400,000 members in 160 countries—are selected annually for this grade elevation, considered a major career achievement and prestigious honor across the technical community.

Karl was recognized for his contributions to “statistical signal processing and image reconstruction.” He has developed several statistical models for the extraction of information from diverse data sources in the presence of uncertainty, and applied them in projects that include

(left to right) Professors W. Clem Karl (ECE, BME, SE), Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE) and Yannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE)

automatic target detection and recognition for synthetic aperture radar; locating oil deposits and analyzing the earth’s atmosphere; and monitoring medical conditions using tomography and MRI. Moustakas was recognized for his contributions to “the epitaxial growth of nitride semiconductors.” He is a trailblazer in molecular beam epitaxy, a versatile and advanced thin-film growth technique used to make highprecision, nitride (nitrogen compound-based) semiconductor materials used in fiber-optic, cellular, satellite and other applications.

Paschalidis was recognized for his contributions to “the control and optimization of communication and sensor networks, manufacturing systems and biological systems.” Since joining

the College of Engineering faculty in 1996, he has developed sophisticated algorithms for everything from a homeland security early warning sensor network to a next-generation electronic health care management system.

Vivek Goyal, who became an assistant professor in the ECE Department in January, was also named an IEEE Fellow.

Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The association also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 400 international technical conferences a year.

Wilson Wong Receives NIH Director’s New Innovator Award Assistant Professor Wilson W. Wong (BME) has received a 2013 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award, which supports exceptionally creative,

Assistant Professor Wilson W. Wong (BME)

32

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

early-career researchers pursuing highly innovative projects with the potential to transform their field of endeavor and bring about improved health outcomes. Chosen from hundreds of applicants from across the US, Wong and other award recipients will be announced at the High Risk-High Reward Research Symposium to be held November 18–20 in Bethesda, Maryland.

The award, which provides up to $1.5 million in funding for five years, will support Wong’s efforts to develop the next generation of personalized smart cancer therapy. His goal is to take a cancer patient’s immune system cells and install novel genetic programs to control when, where and how strongly the engineered cells should respond to cancer cells.

“I am ecstatic to receive the award,” said Wong. “This grant will give me the resources

that I need to hire more people, conduct more studies and complete this project.”

Wong applies synthetic biology to rapidly and predictably engineer desired properties in human immune cells to treat diseases.

He is particularly interested in engineering genetic circuits to improve the efficacy and safety of adoptive T-cell therapy, a treatment for leukemia and related blood cancers—and potentially other tumors—in which a patient’s immune system is reprogrammed. The treatment entails removing millions of a patient’s T-cells (a kind of white blood cell) and inserting new genes that make it possible for the T-cells to kill cancer cells. When the modified T-cells are returned to the patient’s veins, they ideally replicate and kill the cancer.

Wong joins Assistant Professor Xue Han (BME), who received the award in 2012.

MOUSTAKAS PHOTO BY KALMAN ZABARSKY

UP TO $1.5M RESEARCH FUNDING FOR FIVE YEARS

NEWS BYTES › The National Science Foundation

list based on his research advancing genomics methods to analyze the behavior of cells and re-engineer them to perform useful tasks.

awarded the College of Engineering and School of Education $1.2 million to establish the Bringing Engineers into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Teaching (BEST) Project. The grant expands participation in the newly launched STEM Educator Engineer Program (STEEP), one of the first programs in the US enabling undergrads to obtain both an accredited BS degree in engineering and an MA degree in teaching in just five years.

› Assistant Professor Jonathan Klamkin (ECE, MSE) was elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior Member. › A team of ECE researchers

› ENG was named a partner with 100Kin10, a multi-sector network addressing the national imperative to train 100,000 STEM teachers by 2021.

› Last summer, the Center for English Language & Orientation Programs (CELOP) partnered with the College of Engineering to offer a Global Engineering Career Readiness Program, a customized, four-week English language and cultural immersion program designed for international Master of Engineering students.

James C. Bird (ME, MSE)

› The New York Times featured an article on research by Assistant Professor James C. Bird (ME, MSE) and collaborators at MIT showing that one can engineer textured surfaces to reshape a drop as it recoils so that overall contact time between drop and surface is significantly reduced. (See article on p. 7.)

› Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate Matt Adams received a Whitaker International Fellowship at the University of Oxford’s Biomedical Ultrasonics, Biotherapy and Biopharmaceuticals Laboratory (BUBBL). The program sends emerging US leaders in biomedical engineering to the BUBBL to pursue an independent research project.

Ahmad “Mo” Khalil (BME) (left) and Ramesh Jasti (CAS, MSE) have won Innovation Career Development Professorships. (Photos by Kalman Zabarsky)

› Assistant Professors Ramesh Jasti (Chemistry, MSE) and Ahmad “Mo” Khalil (BME) received BU Technology Development’s two appointments this year as Innovation Career Development Professor, which will support their work in carbon nanotubes and synthetic biology, respectively.

Matt Adams (ME, PhD candidate) received a Whitaker International Fellowship.

Adams will develop a novel focused ultrasound system for minimally invasive thermal ablation of tumors.

Khalil was also named as one of the world’s 20 most promising early career genomics researchers by GenomeWeb, a leading publication in the field. He made GenomeWeb’s eighth annual Young Investigators

including Professor Lev Levitin (also SE), Mark Karpovsky and alum Ye Wu (MEng’13) received the Best Technical Paper award at OPNETWORK 2013, a conference focused on advancing the state of application and network performance management.

› Professor Thomas Little’s (ECE, SE) research on indoor solid-state lighting was featured in Optics & Photonics News, the Optical Society of America’s monthly news magazine.

› Jarrod Milshtein (MSE, MS’13) and co-authors Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE), Associate Professor Srikanth Gopalan (ME, MSE) and Professor Uday Pal (ME, MSE) received the 2013 TMS Light Metals Division— Energy Best Student Paper Award.

Their paper, “A Thermochemical Study of the W/WO3 System: A Solar to Fuel Converter for Syngas Production,” was published in Energy Technology 2013.

Symposium on Information Theory in Istanbul, Turkey. Their paper explores exploiting the algebraic structure of interference to achieve higher data rates in wireless communication.

› Professor Nathan Phillips (CAS, SE) was featured on an episode of the local Boston TV news magazine show Chronicle on Channel 5, WCVB. Phillips explained how roof space can be utilized to measure carbon dioxide and promote sustainability.

› The National Science Foundation awarded Professor Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE), Professor David Castañón (ECE, SE) and Assistant Professor Mac Schwager (ME, SE) nearly $1 million for a project that aims to improve sensors that collect data in transportation, security and manufacturing applications. Saligrama also received a $900,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research for a separate project to develop a Google-like search system for surveillance videos.

› DiscoverE (formerly the National Engineers Week Foundation) selected Reno (Tao) Wang (SE, PhD’13) as one of the New Faces of Engineering, an award recognizing outstanding engineers age 30 or under who have contributed to projects that significantly impact society. A senior operations research developer for Sabre Airline Solutions, Wang, 30, develops products for crew management systems serving more than 20 airlines.

› Associate Professor Muhammad

Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE)

› In July, Assistant Professor Bobak Nazer (ECE, SE) and Professor Michael Gastpar of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the University of California, Berkeley, received a 2013 Joint Paper Award at the IEEE International

Zaman (BME, MSE) was selected as a 2014 Fellow for Science, Technology and Society at the Institute of Advanced Study in Science, Technology and Society in Graz, Austria, where he will participate in a series of public lectures and meetings this summer.

The Institute recognized Zaman for his work on detecting substandard drugs. (See article on p. 30.)

— Mark Dwortzan, Rachel Harrington, Kathrin Havrilla and BU Global programs

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

33

alumni

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! SEND YOUR CLASS NOTES SUBMISSIONS TO ENGALUM@ BU.EDU OR VISIT WWW.BU.EDU/ENG/ALUMNI.

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen with Dan Ryan and Aaron Ganick (both ECE’10), Anton Papp (EE’90) (middle) and George Savage (BME’81) (right).

Distinguished Alumni Awards Honor Exceptional ENG Grads n a ceremony held October 25 at the Boston University Photonics Center, the College of Engineering celebrated its alumni and announced the 2013 Distinguished Alumni Awards. Presented by Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen following a buffet dinner and champagne toast, the awards recognized individuals who have made significant contributions to their alma mater, community and profession. Lutchen commended the recipients for bringing honor to the College through their careers, their commitment to the highest standards of excellence and their devotion to the College.

I 34

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Anton Papp (EE’90), vice president for Corporate Development at Teradata, received the Service to Alma Mater award, which honors alumni who have enhanced the College of Engineering’s stature through voluntary service to BU. At Teradata, Papp oversees, evaluates and executes investments, mergers and acquisitions, and strategy. Prior to joining Teradata, he served as vice president of Corporate Development & Global Alliances at Aprimo and held numerous investment banking positions. A graduate of the prestigious US Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN), Papp attended BU on a Naval ROTC scholarship and served as a naval officer and F-14 Tomcat flight instructor. He also earned an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School.

Papp serves on the College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board, the ENG West Coast Alumni Leadership Council, and the BU West Coast Regional Campaign Committee. He has been the leading supporter for the ENG/SMG Summer Leadership Institute program and part of the College’s efforts to recruit top undergraduates.

Dan Ryan and Aaron Ganick (both ECE’10), cofounders of the telecommunications company ByteLight, received the Distinguished Young Alumni award, which honors alumni within 10 years of graduation for outstanding service to their profession or community.

A startup that emerged out of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center at BU, ByteLight has produced a system that’s similar to an indoor GPS. Special overhead LED lights provided by ByteLight

enable your smartphone to bring up location-based information ranging from store coupons to museum exhibit descriptions.

See pp. 24–27.

George Savage (BME’81), chief medical officer and cofounder of Proteus Digital Health, and a member of the BU College of Engineering West Coast Advisory Council, received the Service to the Profession award, which honors alumni whose work has significantly contributed to the advancement of their profession and brought them recognition within their field.

Savage has started 10 companies since 1989 as entrepreneur or founding investor, including FemRx (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), CardioRhythm (acquired by Medtronic) and QRx Pharmaceuticals. He holds an MD from Tufts University School of Medicine and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and serves on the boards of Menlo Healthcare Ministry, the Pacific Research Institute and Silent Cal Productions.

At Proteus, Savage has advanced a system of small, ingestible event markers that are implanted in a patient’s medications. A monitor worn as a patch on the patient identifies each pill upon swallowing and tracks vital signs, which are uploaded to the patient’s mobile phone and transmitted to caregivers and health care professionals. The system allows for instantaneous and personalized treatment and promises to transform the way doctors monitor patients’ medicine.

CLASS NOTES Want to earn an ENG T-shirt? Send your class notes submissions to engalum@bu.edu or visit www.bu.edu/eng/alumni. Contributors of all published notes receive a red BU Engineering T-shirt!

1986 Mark Tanzi, BS, Providence, Rhode Island • After working for five years for Raytheon Company in Rhode Island, Mark changed his career path in 1991 by joining Palmer Industries, a small family business specializing in custom fabrication of solid brass architectural hardware and bath fixtures. He is responsible for design, engineering, operations and general management of a line of solid brass metal consoles for bathroom vanities. He and his wife and daughters Giuliana Rae, 9, and Angelina Rose, 11, visit BU often. “We follow Terrier hockey passionately!” he says. Contact Mark at mark@sinklegs.com.

design and project management of an innovative, T-shaped assembly line to manufacture two different product models.

The production line’s flexible design allows for dynamic assembly line balancing to accommodate the boiler industry’s seasonal demand fluctuations.

2010 Michael Koeris, PhD, Natick, Massachusetts • Michael raised $11M series B equity

CEO of Pyng Medical, a company that develops trauma and resuscitation products for critical care personnel around the globe.

financing for Sample6 Technologies, a synthetic biology startup that’s developing integrated systems to quickly and easily detect harmful bacteria in the food, health care and other industries. In 2014 Sample6 plans to introduce a synthetic biology-based diagnostic tool for food safety testing. Michael is a co-founder and COO of the company, which he started out of Professor James J. Collins’s (BME, MSE, SE) lab.

2008

2011

Jacob Miller, BS, Greensboro, North Carolina • Currently working at Weil-McLain, a

David Lessard, BS, Los Angeles, California • David has been working at Praxair as a

subsidiary of SPX Corporation, Jacob received a Q3 2013 Innovation Award from SPX’s Innovation Council. He was recognized for his

plant engineer since graduation. In 2013 he was promoted to production manager of the company’s Los Angeles plant.

1999 Mark F. Hodge, MS, Andover, Minnesota • Mark (also GSM’99) is now the president and

PASSINGS James H. Turcotte (’49), Wethersfield, CT Russell T. Galiano (‘52), North Andover, MA Kenneth R. Bostrom (’54), Bethel, VT Gilette B. Knight (’55), Andover, MA Patrick A. Kearney (’59), Norwell, MA Martin B. Cutler (’60), New York, NY Glenn A. Dawson (’63), Falmouth, MA Edwin More (’63), West Ossipee, NH Robert B. Fishman (’67), West Hartford, CT Charles S. Wong (’68), Cholon, Viet Nam Edward M. Govoni (’69), Mashpee, MA James J. Krupa (’86), Garden City, NY Patrick J. Callery (’94), Goleta, CA

E N G I N E E R S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 W W W. B U . E D U / E N G

35

An EPIC Event

36

GREGG ADKIN (EE’86), ANTON PAPP (EE’90) AND DEAN KENNETH R. LUTCHEN

DAVID HUBBARD (EE, MFG’09, LAW’14), ELIO NICOLOSI (AERO’04), PROFESSOR TED DEWINTER (ME) AND MICHELLE NICOLOSI

LAURA APPLETON, EVAN APPLETON (BME’10, BIOINFORMATICS’12) AND ENG POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW ERNST OBERORTNER

GORDON WALSH (ENG MGMT’67, MENG’68, GSM’71), KAREN CULLAS (BME’77) AND RUTH A. MACFARLANE HUNTER (AERO’64, GSM’86)

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

PHOTOS BY DAVE GREEN

College of Engineering alumni, faculty, relatives and friends put on their “hard hats” for a behind-the-scenes, pre-construction tour of the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) during BU Alumni Weekend in October.

The Engineering Annual Fund Helping Students Gain Real-World Experience Generous gifts from alumni and friends to the Engineering Annual Fund give students valuable, outside-the-classroom experiences beyond what tuition alone can support. The Summer Term Alumni Research Scholars (STARS) Program, which provides summer housing to students engaged in research in faculty labs, is one way the Engineering Annual Fund enriches the educational experience.

“Over the summer, I worked on the sensor network communication system for Boston University’s ANDESITE satellite project with Professor Theodore Fritz as part of a competition among 10 universities to develop a unique satellite mission. I’m now serving as the project’s Command and Data Handling subsystem leader.

Thanks to STARS, I have developed my leadership and engineering skills, learning to troubleshoot potential problems and delegate tasks to reach critical milestones. Through my work last summer and beyond, I hope to help our team win the competition and receive continued funding to complete and launch ANDESITE.”

PHOTO BY KELLY DAVIDSON

—Caitlin Manes (ECE’16)

To continue helping students like Caitlin, visit www.bu.edu/eng/alumni and make your gift to the Engineering Annual Fund today.

NONPROFIT US POSTAGE PAID BOSTON MA PERMIT NO. 1839

Muhammad Zaman PhD, University of Chicago Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering Named by Scientific American as innovator behind one of ten “World-Changing Ideas”

Boston University’s academic rigor, interdisciplinary culture and abundance of world leaders in engineering, sciences, public health and policy have enabled me to pursue complex, multidisciplinary and high-impact questions that go beyond traditional engineering. The rich academic culture and resources at BU in general and the College of Engineering in particular empower my students and me to respond to those questions, leading not only to significant advances in science and engineering but also to meaningful improvements in the quality of life for people around the world.”

To learn learn more, more,visit visitwww.bu.edu www.bu.edu/eng. /eng.

4

B U CO L L EG E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

CYDNEY SCOTT

“We are engineering new experimental and computational technologies for high-value health care problems in both the developing and developed worlds. Our work ranges from probing the mechanisms of cancer metastasis to developing robust, cheap, portable and user-friendly diagnostics and analysis toolkits to address global health challenges. Among the global health technologies we’re advancing are devices to detect counterfeit drugs, preserve biological reagents used in diagnostic tests, and provide other in-demand health care solutions targeting the specific needs of resource-limited countries.