Innovation on the Front Line: Security & Defense Technology Research

INNOVATION FOR THE NEW FRONT LINE:

Security & Defense Technology Research

INNOVATION FOR THE NEW FRONT LINE A hacker accesses personal information on millions of smartphones. A terrorist gets plastic explosives past an airport screener. A foreign country threatens to use weapons of mass destruction.

As today’s news headlines make all too clear, attacks on life and property can come from any place at any time. Keeping citizens and soldiers out of harm’s way in a world where the front line can be anywhere depends increasingly on advanced technologies designed to counter a diverse range of new and fast-changing threats.

Toward that end, 30 faculty members at Boston University’s College of Engineering are pursuing research that could lead to significant improvements in personal and homeland security, and enhanced capabilities for our armed forces overseas. Funded by major federal agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation, these efforts promise to produce more robust defenses for smartphone users against cyber attacks; faster and more thorough airport screening devices; more effective detection of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; and many other mission-critical applications.

Energized by collaborations among multiple College departments and divisions, BU colleges and schools—and international alliances with partners in academia, government and industry—this research aims to boost security at home and abroad in five key areas: cyber security; threat detection; soldier technology; robotics; and military medicine. College of Engineering-based innovations in these domains may not only make us safer, but also bring significant improvements to our quality of life in energy, communications, computation and healthcare.

Whether empowering UAVs to patrol the eastern seaboard, soldiers to detect signs of enemy troop movements at night, medical personnel to aid blast victims, airports to provide more effective screening of passengers and luggage, or smartphone users to safeguard personal data, College of Engineering researchers are making strides in packing greater functionality and performance in security and defense technologies while minimizing their size, cost and energy consumption.

BU faculty may work in labs and offices far from any conflict, but when it comes to advancing methods and systems to make the world a safer place to live, they are truly on the vanguard.

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Research at a Glance CYBER SECURITY

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ACCESS DENIED Securing the Smartphone

DEFENDING DATA A Cyber Attack Detection System

THREAT DETECTION

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FASTER, BETTER, SAFER Upgrading Airport Screening

PIXELS DON’T LIE Detecting Suspicious Events in Cluttered Environments

CAUGHT ON CAMERA Recognizing Unusual Activities

TUNING IN TO NBC Detecting Weapons of Mass Destruction

TERAHERTZ V. TERROR MEMS-Based Metamaterials for Security and Defense Applications

SOLDIER TECHNOLOGY

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LIGHTENING THE LOAD Advancing Energy-Efficient Soldier Technology

GERMANIUM UNBOUND Lasers for Secure Communication and Sensing

THE POWER OF LIGHT Fiber Lasers for Naval Applications

SPRAY-ON PROTECTION Anti-Corrosive Coatings for Military Vehicles

ROBOTICS

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ON GUARD Managing Multiple, Semi-Autonomous Vehicles

FLIGHT TESTED Bat, Bird and Insect-Inspired UAVs

TO ERR IS HUMAN Optimizing Performance of Mixed Human/Robotic Teams

STAYING ON TRACK Analysis and Control Strategies for Mobile Robots

MOBILIZING MICROBES Engineering Robot-Assisted, Bacteria-Based Sensors

MILITARY MEDICINE

36 38 40 42 44 46

NOT GOING VIRAL Advancing a Faster, Cheaper, Point-of-Care Diagnostic Chip

LOOKING THROUGH YOU Portable, Noninvasive Imaging of Brain Injuries

RAPID RESPONSE Microfluidic Chip to Distinguish Between Trauma and Sepsis at Point of Care

HIGH TECH LIFELINES Engineered Blood Vessels for Reconstructive Surgery

CAN YOU REPEAT THAT? Coping with Complex Auditory Environments

SKIN DEEP An Electrostatic Method for Rapid Inoculation of Mass Populations

College of Engineering faculty affiliations that appear in this brochure include departments—Biomedical Engineering (BME), Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (ECE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME), and divisions—Materials Science & Engineering (MSE) and Systems Engineering (SE).

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CYBER SECURITY

ACCESS DENIED Securing the Smartphone An estimated 80 percent of the U.S. population accesses the Internet though PCs, smartphones and other networked devices, placing vast amounts of personal and business data at risk to malware, identify theft and other forms of cyber attack. Now three ECE faculty members, Professors Mark Karpovsky and David Starobinski and Associate Professor Ari Trachtenberg, are participating in a project that seeks to identify, understand and mitigate security risks to smartphones— particularly those posed by a growing trend to replace their hardwired features with open-source, customizable software programs.

Funded by a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation and based at BU’s Center for Reliable Information Systems and Cyber Security, the project involves nine faculty in the College of Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences, and Metropolitan College; two industrial partners, Deutsche Telekom and Raytheon BBN Technologies; and one academic partner, Warwick University.

The ECE researchers’ ultimate goal is to design more secure networking protocols and hardware and develop more effective, software-based strategies to authenticate users and callers.

Toward that end, they’re designing new wireless network protocols that are less vulnerable to jamming via radio signal interference and smartphone authentication systems that do more than prompt for a username and password.

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Leveraging the devices’ unique features including sensors, accelerometers and digital cameras, they’re developing authentication systems that pose questions only the owner could answer correctly based on data stored in the phone’s memory, or exploit biometric information such data from the phone’s accelerometer characterizing the owner’s distinctive gait.

“Because your phone is a microcosm of you, it can capture details that a random person wouldn’t know,” says Trachtenberg. “With fewer of its features hardwired, the phone has to be a little suspicious about everyone who is using it, and require you to demonstrate that you really are its proper owner.”

Screenshot of an Android-based phone application req uesting permissions fr om the phone user. Man y users simply click O K without having any idea about the significance of the requested perm issions.

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CYBER SECURITY

DEFENDING DATA A Cyber Attack Detection System As people grow more dependent on computers for everything from accessing their bank accounts to storing sensitive information, cyber security has become an increasingly important research area. At Boston University, Professor Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE) is hoping to improve upon computer data protection by developing an effective way to detect intrusions into private networks and any exfiltration of sensitive or classified information.

“Cyber attacks not only can compromise classified information—whether military, government or corporate—but also cripple the nation’s key infrastructure, including financial institutions, telecommunications, air-traffic control and the electricity grid,” says Paschalidis. “Being able to detect such attacks is an important first step to effective countermeasures.”

Toward that end, the U.S. Army Research Office is funding Paschalidis’ project, “A Coordinated Approach to CyberSituation Awareness Based on Traffic Anomaly Detection.” The principal investigator on the project, Paschalidis is working closely with co-PIs, BU Professors Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) and Mark Crovella (CS, SE), and University of Wisconsin Professor Paul Barford.

The team aims to build upon its previous research in order to develop a series of anomaly detection algorithms and tools that will monitor network traffic and operate at both local and global levels. To improve counteraction, input will be processed by a clustering/pattern recognition approach that will identify and classify specific cyber attack scenarios.

On partnering with the Army Research Office, Paschalidis says, “This collaboration will provide us with real examples of attacks we can leverage to improve our methods.”

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attack A particular client scenario by a red. is shown in ow s The graph sh nal the alarm sig orithms from the alg team the research . has developed

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FASTER, BETTER, SAFER Upgrading Airport Screening Since the September 11 attacks, U.S. airport security has tightened considerably. Passengers can carry only small amounts of liquids onboard and must submit to full body scans or pat downs. And they still have to haul out their laptops and take off their shoes for separate screening.

Now Professors David Castañón (ECE, SE) (the project’s associate director), W. Clem Karl (ECE, BME, SE) and Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE) and several ECE PhD students have devised new approaches that could lead to faster, more accurate airport screening. Their research is funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Project ALERT: Awareness and Localization of Explosive Related Threats, which tasks multidisciplinary experts from 15 academic institutions to improve the nation’s explosives detection capability.

The BU team focuses on mathematical problems in machine learning, optimization and image processing. “We model the capabilities of different sensors, develop algorithms to combine the information they gather to form decisions concerning the presence of a potential risk, and intelligently sequence sensor data to ensure that the system as a whole performs well,” says Castañón.

Castañón and Karl have advanced a strategy for checked-luggage screening machines that combines x-rays of multiple wavelengths, rather than the single wavelength that standard machines use. This method, which collects materials’ specific absorption signatures, enables the machines to discriminate more precisely between explosives and materials that pose no safety threat.

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g and Using advanced modelin team algorithms, the ALERT port at BU aims to enable air screening machines to l provide three-dimensiona so g ba cross-sections of a n be that individual items ca es clearly separated. Imag of show top and back view jects. boom box and other ob

Casta帽贸n is also working with Saligrama to develop novel machine learning techniques to optimize the capabilities of multi-sensor passenger screening systems, potentially reducing the need for pat downs. In a related effort, Karl is developing signal processing techniques that could enable conveyor-belt x-ray machines that inspect carry-on luggage to produce reconstructed 3-D images from multiple angles, rather than the top-view, 2-D images they now provide. The new technology could improve explosives detection accuracy, reduce manual inspections and shorten the security checkpoint line.

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PIXELS DON’T LIE Detecting Suspicious Events in Cluttered Environments Each week more than 30 million surveillance cameras produce nearly 4 billion hours of video footage, far more than human analysts can process. Even where software is used to sift through the data for suspicious activity, the algorithms used are not always up to the task, especially in busy urban areas.

Now two College of Engineering researchers—Professors Janusz Konrad (ECE) and Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE)— and University of Sherbrooke colleague Pierre-Marc Jodoin have devised a technique to process video data and pinpoint unusual events in cluttered urban environments that’s much faster and more reliable than conventional approaches.

Rather than classify and track objects in a video stream, the new technique detects motion in video footage, computes motion statistics at each pixel across time and uses statistical methods to identify and locate pixels whose motion statistics depart from normal activity. Data collected on these anomalies can then be tracked via conventional software systems.

“Typical approaches entail tagging, identifying and tracking every single object, but in an urban setting with too many moving objects, you can’t track them all,” says Saligrama. “Our idea is to collect pixel-level statistics and monitor variations over time. Using cameras with embedded algorithms, we’ve shown that pixel-level anomaly detection can work.”

“Not only is the algorithm effective at detecting anomalous dynamics in the scene, but it is also efficient in that it requires relatively low-power computing hardware and its memory footprint is minimal compared to state-of-the-art algorithms,” notes Konrad, “enabling implementation in the camera instead of a central server.”

The project is funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Office of Naval Research.

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The framework developed by the researchers makes it possible, without tracking, to capture people jaywalking while ignoring regular motorized traffic.

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CAUGHT ON CAMERA Recognizing Unusual Activities When watching a video, children have no problem recognizing that a person is walking, jumping or waving. Give the video footage to a computer, however, and the same task becomes daunting. One difficulty is that different actions, such as walking and running, may sometimes appear very similar due to the viewing angle or camera frame rate.

Another is that the same action may look quite different when performed by different individuals. Despite significant progress over the past decade, action recognition—the automatic detection and identification of animate actions from camera-recorded digital video signals—remains a challenging problem.

In a National Science Foundation-funded project, Associate Professor Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE), Professor Janusz Konrad (ECE) and graduate student Kai Guo have risen to the challenge. They have developed a new framework for action recognition that consistently exceeds the performance of state-of-the-art methods and, due to low storage and computational requirements, is suitable for real-time use.

Unique in its combination of features developed earlier for object-tracking and classification, the framework is based on compressive sampling principles. The algorithms developed within this framework may ultimately be exploited for homeland security, healthcare monitoring, ecological monitoring, automatic signlanguage recognition and other applications.

For this work the researchers won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and SignalBased Surveillance and placed first in the “Aerial view Activity Classification Challenge” in the Semantic Description of Human Actions (SDHA) contest at a recent International Conference on Pattern Recognition.

“There are plenty of other real-world engineering and algorithmic challenges to overcome,” says Ishwar, “but the fact that our method has performed so well consistently across several datasets is exciting.”

“In very difficult real-world scenarios our algorithm still misses about five times out of 100,” Konrad cautions, “but we are hopeful of making further progress soon.”

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Actions of individuals are recognized by analyzing various properties of corresponding silhouettes such as those shown here.

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TUNING IN TO NBC Detecting Weapons of Mass Destruction To detect the potential release of nuclear, biological or chemical material, American cities typically deploy a small number of expensive, large sensors in strategic locations. But in the past five years, Professors Ioannis Paschalidis and Christos Cassandras (both ECE, SE) have sought to turn that paradigm on its head.

With funding from the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy and in consultation with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, they are designing a long-duration monitoring system that relies on a network of multiple, cheap, often mobile sensors. Such a system could be used not only for material detection but also for intelligence gathering in remote locations.

To maximize system performance, the researchers have devised strategies to keep sensors up and running, collecting data on potential threats and communicating it across the network.

“We’ve developed algorithms that do everything from routing information to preserve energy across the network, to optimizing sensor positions to maintain good coverage of areas we’d like to monitor,” says Paschalidis.

Among other things, the algorithms maximize area coverage and minimize energy consumption by using the fewest possible sensors to cover a designated space and directing them to strategic intersections of streets and building corridors. They also track the location of each sensor by reading the strength of the signal emanating from a small radio antenna attached to the sensor, and pinpoint the source of a harmful agent release based on multiple observations of increased concentration levels near the source.

“We’ve built a testbed at the BU Photonics Center where, in a small-scale environment, we’re experimenting with these algorithms,” says Paschalidis. “Our work over the past five years has produced a fundamental science base for government and industry to further develop wireless sensor networks for long-term surveillance applications.”

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The sensor netw ork envisioned by th e College of Engi neering researchers wo uld be able to dete ct the transport of radiological mat erial.

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Terahertz metamaterial d detector develope

by Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) and collaborators.

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TERAHERTZ V. TERROR MEMS-Based Metamaterials for Security and Defense Applications Photonics engineers use light to excite the bonds that connect atoms within molecules, causing them to vibrate at a specific resonant frequency. Using spectroscopy techniques to examine what frequencies are absorbed by a material, they can determine what kind of bonds it contains, and thus identify the material. In recent years engineers have designed artificially structured materials, or metamaterials, that produce strong resonance frequency responses in the terahertz range—distinct responses that can “fingerprint” many biological and chemical agents.

Situated between infrared and microwave radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz radiation can also penetrate everything from clothing to paper to plastic.

Full-body scanners at airports and train stations routinely use electromagnetic frequencies in the terahertz range to screen passengers for potentially hazardous substances, but researchers are looking for ways to provide the same fingerprinting capability in a portable device—a feat that would require a sharp reduction in the size of the radiation source and detector.

Now Professor Xin Zhang (ME, MSE) and collaborators at Boston University, Boston College and Sandia National Laboratories have done just that. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency, they have combined a micromechanical cantilever array—akin to a set of mini-diving boards—with split-ring-shaped devices that can be tuned to resonate at any specified frequency.

Made of metamaterials, the split-ring resonators (SRRs) can operate at any wavelength; the researchers tuned them to absorb terahertz-range frequencies. Composed of two layers of metals with vastly different properties, the cantilever array moves when it absorbs heat from the SRRs, indicative of the presence of a contraband substance. Reflectors embedded in each cantilever provide an optical display indicating if any of the cantilevers have moved.

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LIGHTENING THE LOAD Advancing Energy-Efficient Soldier Technology Increasingly reliant on electronic weaponry, detection devices, protection systems and advanced communications systems to do their jobs, U.S. Army soldiers routinely shoulder up to 35 pounds of batteries. To lighten that load, Boston University is partnering with the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and several other universities in a five-year, $15 million effort to develop computer simulations to create materials for lighter, more energy-efficient devices and batteries.

BU researchers are focusing on electronic and photonics materials; the University of Utah and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will research electrochemical materials/devices and heterogeneous materials, respectively. The collaboration, known as the Alliance for Computationally-Guided Design of Energy Efficient Electronic Materials, or CDE3M, also includes Politecnico di Torino in Italy, Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, Brown University, and University of California, Davis.

Simulatio n method s by time a nd length scale tha t will be employed in the multi-sc ale simulatio n of electronic a nd photonic s materia ls.

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Associate Professor Enrico Bellotti (ECE, MSE) is developing simulation models of semiconductor-based materials that could lead to more energy-efficient water purification systems, chemical sensors and other applications.

“We’ll explore how to design electronics materials such as LEDs or lasers to be more efficient light emitters, and detectors for different spectral ranges that are better performing, consume less power and require less cooling,” Bellotti explains. “For instance, if you could make an infrared, nightvision detector that doesn’t require cooling, you could reduce a soldier’s load by two kilograms.”

Associate Professor Luca Dal Negro (ECE, MSE) is advancing new approaches for designing smaller and more efficient devices that can turn electromagnetic radiation into electricity that could be stored in batteries or power electronic devices. Associate Professor Martin Herbordt (ECE, MSE) is contributing his expertise in High Performance Computing, a key enabling technology for producing the simulation models.

Ultimately, the researchers aim to use high-performance computers to simulate the behavior of new and materials on multiple scales in order to develop better, lighter power systems.

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GERMANIUM UNBOUND Lasers for Secure Communication and Sensing Improving the efficiency of light emission to allow for the development of lasers from group-IV semiconductors, which provide the leading materials platform of microelectronics, is a goal many photonics researchers are working toward. Such lasers could lead to improvements in everything from on-chip data transmission to biochemical sensing to wireless optical communications. For instance, they may allow for the development of highly integrated systems, comprising photonic sensing and electronic data-processing functionalities all on the same chip, for the detection of biochemical agents in homeland security and military applications.

At Boston University, Associate Professor Roberto Paiella (ECE, MSE), Cicek Boztug (ECE PhD ’14), and Faisal Sudradjat (ECE PhD ’12) are collaborating with researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to overcome challenges associated with the radiative properties of silicon, germanium and related alloys, all of which are excellent materials for electronics but don’t emit light very efficiently.

However, they discovered that germanium nanomembranes—single-crystal sheets no more than a few tens of nanometers thick—when mechanically stressed, can serve as great light emitters, particularly for the mid-infrared spectral region.

“There have been a lot of efforts to make silicon and germanium efficient photonic active materials,” Paiella says. “Our method has proven to be highly effective.”

“We were able to demonstrate that germanium can be a good candidate for chiplevel integration of electronics and photonics for mid-infrared applications,” says Boztug. “Potentially, this new development could lead to biochemical sensors as well as secure communication devices integrated on silicon chips.”

Paiella said that using germanium nanomembranes to emit light is a unique idea in photonics research, one that could enable the development of silicon-compatible diode lasers, which represent the “missing link” for the full integration of electronic and photonic functionalities on the same materials platform.

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Associate Professor (ECE), Cicek Boztug (PhD’14), and Faisal Sudradjat (PhD’12) work to improve the efficiency of light emission to allow for laser development from group-IV semiconductors.

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THE POWER OF LIGHT Fiber Lasers for Naval Applications The sensing technology of choice for military applications, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is the optical analog to RADAR; rather than radio waves, LIDAR relies on laser light to detect distant objects. When deployed in the ocean, LIDAR technology depends on the ability to transmit light through water, but must also be compact and lightweight in order to be used by ships and submarines. Toward that end, the U. S. Navy is considering using fiber lasers—already used in telecommunications, spectroscopy and medicine— but none of the current laser technologies fit the military’s needs.

Now Associate Professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE) has developed a new class of fiber lasers that emit light in highly complex spatial patterns called Bessel beams.

“These beams possess several intriguing properties, ranging from the ability to propagate virtually diffraction-free to the ability to recreate itself past opaque objects,” Ramachandran explains.

These exotic properties, along with the ability to generate these beams in fibers, suggest that the development of high power Bessel beams may enable the application of LIDAR technologies through ocean water, fulfilling the U.S. Navy’s critical need for future maritime sensing capabilities. Ramachandran is also advancing Bessel beam laser technology to enable improved underwater communications.

Light-based underwater communications could enable high-bandwidth data transfer that traditional sonar communications cannot provide. Lasers for such applications must emit light in colors at which seawater is transparent—in the blue-green spectral range— so the light can successfully transmit through the ocean. In addition, these sources must be powerful enough to counteract the high signal losses associated with salt water.

“Fiber-based Bessel beams of a given color can interact with one another, as well as with the fiber itself, to produce high-power beams at other user-defined colors, including those in the blue-green range, and this makes them especially attractive for maritime communications applications,” says Ramachandran.

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ower A high-p am Bessel be rom a output f r fiber lase

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SPRAY-ON PROTECTION Anti-Corrosive Coatings for Military Vehicles Developed through trial-and-error experiments on dedicated platforms, today’s synthetic biology-based products often require more than seven years to build and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to finance. But a new, more universal synthetic biology platform is emerging that promises to dramatically accelerate the process, enabling on-demand production of new materials and devices, from wound sealants to anti-corrosive coatings for military vehicles, at a much lower cost.

In pursuit of this vision, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $3.6 million grant to Assistant Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) and collaborators at MIT, University of California-San Francisco and Pivot Bio (a biotech startup) to help establish a “living foundry” where researchers can access, design, assemble and test synthetic genetic systems composed of hundreds of DNA parts— and, ultimately, speed production and reduce its costs tenfold.

Informed by databases of DNA sequence information and equ ipped with an extensive library of DNA parts, the MIT team will build gene clusters with the potential to produce corrosion-resistant chemicals called siderophores, and tes t the resulting siderophores to see how well they work. Densmore will then analyze the DNA used to create the siderophores to determine rules that distinguish gene clusters that work well from those that don’t, and use those rules to hypothesize how to take known gene clusters and pro duce better ones.

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To advance that objective, they’ll create a library of more than 10,000 modular DNA parts, derived from bacteria, to serve as biological building blocks; develop an automated process to systematically assemble and use these parts to perform specific biological functions; and apply this process to the production of siderophores, chemicals that bind to metal surfaces and form a protective layer to prevent corrosion, a widespread and costly problem faced by the Department of Defense, which routinely operates in highly corrosive environments. Siderophores could be sprayed on ships, planes and other military vehicles and equipment to prolong their operational lifetimes.

“Our goal is to engineer bacteria that can create siderophore compounds in a more tuned, engineered way so that they are better performing, cheaper to manufacture and faster to produce” says Densmore. “I’ll use the Eugene programming language my group has developed to create new gene clusters with machine learning techniques that use rules to bias new designs away from past failures and toward future successes.”

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ON GUARD Managing Multiple, Semi-Autonomous Vehicles Aiming to radically reduce the workload for human operators of semi-autonomous underwater, ground and aerial vehicles in military and civilian contexts, Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) and Associate Professor Calin Belta (ME, SE) are developing intelligent single agents—robots, UAVs and other technologies that compute, communicate and control—that can interpret and reason about their environment in changing conditions, as well as networks of multiple agents that can safely and efficiently coordinate their activities with other agents and human operators.

Their efforts are part of a $7.5 million project funded by the Navy that since 2009 has tasked machine learning and control theory experts from BU, MIT, University of California-Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania to engineer more intelligent and autonomous vehicles. Ideally, the technology will enable vehicles to make decisions independent of human interaction except when absolutely necessary—regardless of changes in weather, lighting or other ambient conditions. In the military theater, the ultimate goal is to create teams of persistent surveillance agents to give combat vehicles the edge in detecting and responding to hostile targets.

To maximize single-agent autonomy, Belta has developed a computer language that translates an operator’s simple, structured English instructions into machine code that controls the agent’s motion and communication throughout a mission, from avoiding certain territory to coordinating specific activities with other selected agents.

Meanwhile, Cassandras is developing algorithms that optimize how multiple agents cooperate to solve persistent surveillance problems. He likens the effort to coordinating the movement and communication of multiple PacMan “enemies” tasked to eat up all displayed dots—which collectively mark the region under surveillance—as quickly as possible. Cassandras plans to translate his “dot-eating” algorithms into directions, such as start, stop, wait, or turn around, that robots running on Belta’s computer code can follow, and thus survey a defined space.

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illance ent surve t is s r e p A in which scenario agents a multiple to survey e t a in d r o co h scene wit x le p m o c ighted by ize areas we nd recogn a e c n a t r impo Photo activity. ( l a m r o n ab ffice of the O y s e t r u o c ) Research of Naval

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Directed by College of Engineering Resear ch Engineer Kenneth Seb esta (shown left) in sup port of this research, Bos ton University’s Int elligent Mechatronics Lab lau nched a two-pound UAV toward a dense cloud of Bra zilian free-tailed bat s exiting caves in a remote stretch of Sou th Texas. Thousands of the bats flapped har mlessly past the UAV as thr ee ground-based, hig h-speed, infrared cameras and an onboard, 3-D, hig hdefinition camera cap tured their flight paths.

The objective was to determine how large numbers of bats can fly so close to one anothe r and past unexpected obstacles without colliding—a capability the Lab hopes to translate into flight control systems that will significantly boo st the agility of UAVs and other autonomous veh icles.

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FLIGHT TESTED Bat, Bird and Insect-Inspired UAVs Can studying the flight dynamics of bats, birds and insects lead to a new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles that navigate more effectively in cluttered environments for military, disaster recovery and other missions? To maneuver as well as winged animals in tight places such as forests and caves, and land as safely on variable and moving terrain, an engineered system would have to incorporate unprecedented sensing and control capabilities while satisfying complex physical design, weight and computational requirements.

Toward that end, a team of College of Engineering researchers in the Systems Engineering Division—Professors John Baillieul (ME) and Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE) and Associate Professor Calin Belta (ME)—is developing a set of biologically-inspired flight control algorithms. In collaboration with biologist Thomas Kunz and computer scientist Margrit Betke at Boston University and multidisciplinary researchers at three other universities under an Office of Naval Research grant, the systems engineers are carefully studying and modeling the dynamics of different airborne species.

“We’re learning how these animals move from place to place and react to obstacles, and rethinking flight control algorithms from the ground up,” says Belta.

“Classical flight

control algorithms emphasize stability and safety, but it may be advantageous to modify them so vehicles can react quickly to the environment.”

In one scenario, Baillieul, Belta and Paschalidis will use computer-enhanced images of bat trajectories through forests to develop algorithms approximating the bats’ flight, and ultimately test them on real vehicles. Much of the College of Engineering team’s work will leverage its previous research on multiple robot formation control and feedback control of mobile vehicles.

“We’ve worked with ground-based robots and operated them in formation,” says Baillieul. “The goal is to take what we know about controlling groups of mobile robots and apply it to aerial vehicles that must rapidly maneuver through clutter.”

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TO ERR IS HUMAN Optimizing Performance of Mixed Human/Robotic Teams If you are assembling a team of humans and robots to accomplish a specific objective, what are the right ways to partition tasks, who is in charge under what circumstances, and what psychological factors are involved?

Addressing these questions in a five-year, Air Force Office of Scientific Research-funded project, a team of mathematicians, cognitive and social psychologists, and engineers—including Professors John Baillieul (ECE, ME, SE) and David Castanon (ECE, SE)—is conducting several experiments to improve joint human/robot decision-making. Potential applications include air force missions involving cooperation between human controllers and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in unpredictable, hostile environments.

One set of experiments explores decision-making in reconnaissance simulations in which human controllers collaborate with sensor-based robots to measure pollutant concentration levels, such as radiation fallout after a nuclear accident. The controllers direct mobile platforms (UAVs or underwater vehicles) equipped with sensorbased control algorithms to detect various substances and their concentrations.

“If you just let people know the clock is running and they have to explore as much territory as possible and report back as much detail as possible, how will they trade off the level of detail against the amount of time that they have to acquire information?” says Baillieul. “Working with the robots, they have to decide when is enough enough, and when is it time to gather information somewhere else.”

In a second set of experiments on communication through action, computer-assisted video cameras deconstruct the movements of salsa dancers.

“We’d like to understand exactly how you can automate/predict the motion evolution in dance and competitive sports,” Baillieul explains, “and how to write simple computer programs to enable mobile robots to react appropriately to the motions and gestures they were seeing on the part of human team members.”

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Mobile Khepera III robots emulate the motions of salsa dancers in experiments focused on communication through action.

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STAYING ON TRACK Analysis and Control Strategies for Mobile Robots Command to mobile robot: “Moving only through regions determined to be safe, travel first to a region containing medical supplies, and then to a region containing an injured person.”

Easier said than done. In mobile robots, biological networks, power systems and other complex, dynamic systems, electronic noise can divert the system from executing a specified task. For instance, in a mobile robot positioned at a T-intersection of two hallways, sensor noise can lead the robot to misjudge its location and initiate a turn at the wrong place, and actuator noise can cause it to turn right instead of left.

But there is a way to get a handle on this noise and help keep mobile robots and other complex systems on task.

In a National Science Foundation-funded project, Associate Professors Sean Andersson and Calin Belta (both ME, SE) are developing control algorithms for systems subject to sensor and actuator noise—algorithms that maximize the probability that the system will respond correctly to a given command. The project is one of the first to take a probabilistic approach to this problem and to address noise in complex, dynamic systems.

“With the algorithms we are developing, the system would be handed the task and then autonomously determine and carry out the best control policy,” says Andersson. “Our research is best suited for complex systems in uncertain environments, from automated lawnmowers to search-and-rescue robots.”

Incorporating a mathematical model of a given system, real-time sensor data and instructions in a specialized control language that specifies system tasks and attaches probabilities to them (e.g., “avoid the busy intersection with 90 percent probability”), the researchers’ algorithms produce a control choice at every time-step.

Although focused on fundamental, theoretical development, this research also involves the implementation of the algorithms on real robots.

As a robot moves through its as environment, it must make choices rm perfo to ns actio diate imme to what For task. fied speci a ve achie to so as t robo the as e, imag this in example, ld it moves into the intersection, shou This left? or ght strai , go right s research strives to develop algorithm that will allow the system to autonomously determine the choice that maximizes the probability of achieving the task in the face of sensor and actuator noise.

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MOBILIZING MICROBES Engineering Robot-Assisted, Bacteria-Based Sensors Cheap, adaptable to extreme environments—and endowed with a natural ability to probe, analyze and modify their surroundings—microbiological organisms represent a promising line of attack for everything from underwater mine to chemical weapons detection. But harnessing this capability will require some complex technological enhancements. Major challenges include getting the microbes to sense, process and respond to specific stimuli; equipping them to communicate their findings; and coordinating them to take collective action in real-time.

Now a research team led by Professor James Collins (BME, MSE, SE) proposes to surmount these challenges through an unprecedented combination of expertise in synthetic biology, computer engineering, control systems and robotics.

The Office of Naval Research has awarded the team—which includes Associate Professor Calin Belta (ME, SE) and Assistant Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) and leading researchers from Harvard University, MIT, Northeastern University and the University of Pennsylvania—with a highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant of $7.5 million to develop technologies that enable swarms of microbiological organisms to execute desired tasks in a cohesive, efficient manner.

The researchers plan to genetically alter microbes to detect, analyze and respond to explosives, toxins, metals, salinity, pH, temperature, light and other environmental signals; assemble groups of these programmed microbes and support hardware into 10-100-micrometer-long hybrid “micro-biorobots” (MBRs); and design 10-100-centimeter-long, powered “chaperone robots” that direct and monitor thousands of MBRs at close proximity and apprise human operators of their progress via wireless communication.

Using synthetic biology techniques, Collins and his colleagues intend to modify DNA within bacterial cells so that the cells can both sense and report on specific stimuli. For instance, they may alter DNA to produce a fluorescent protein that glows green in the presence of high pH, a signal that nearby chaperone robots can interpret and relay to human operators.

Robolobs ter robot s may be adapted to chaper o ne micro-bio -robots.

y College of Boston Universit t the arch will suppor Engineering rese main thrusts: project’s three ered eria with engine programmed bact c ors and syntheti biomolecular sens ion at ic un two-way comm gene networks, d an ) o-robots (MBRs between micro-bi MBRs , and swarms of chaperone robots stems. aperone robot sy supervised by ch

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MILITARY MEDICINE

Schematic description of the plasmonic nanohole array sensor defined on a gold film.

Sensor is functionalized with antibodies (green features) to specifically immobilize target viruses (blue particles).

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NOT GOING VIRAL Advancing a Faster, Cheaper, Point-of-Care Diagnostic Chip Conventional virus detection technology often requires significant training, sample preparation, refrigerated transportation and laboratory analysis. New, point-of-care, chip-scale diagnostic platforms that College of Engineering faculty members are developing promise to overcome these drawbacks. Delivering rapid, low-cost, userfriendly, fully-integrated diagnostics in clinical and field settings, these platforms could dramatically improve our capability to confine bioterror-based viral outbreaks and pandemics.

In collaboration with Boston University School of Medicine Assistant Professor John Connor, Professor Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE), Associate Professor Hatice Altug (ECE, MSE) and Research Assistant Professor Helen Fawcett (ME) are refining virus detection platforms Ünlü and Altug have developed independently. Associate Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE) and Research Assistant Professor Mario Cabodi (BME) are further advancing microfluidics technology they’ve designed to integrate sample preparation in each of the two platforms. The BU researchers will partner with Becton Dickinson to transform one platform into a working prototype, and enlist University of Texas Professor Thomas Geisbert, an internationally recognized expert on viral hemorrhagic fever diseases, to test it in his Biosafety Level 4 lab in Texas on highly lethal viruses such as Ebola and Marburg. Ünlü’s platform shines light from multi-color LED sources on a layered microchip containing multiple antibodies that bind to, or “capture,” various viruses. Light reflected from the sensor surface is altered by the presence of the captured viral particles, producing a distinct signal that reveals the size of each individual pathogen. Altug’s platform exploits arrays of 250-350-nanometer apertures on metallic films that transmit light more strongly at certain wavelengths. When live viruses bind to the sensor surface, the result is a detectable shift in the resonance frequency of the light transmitted through the nanoholes. The magnitude of that shift reveals the presence and concentration of the virus in the solution.

Whether based on Ünlü’s or Altug’s model, the prototype nanoscale platform should be able to look for multiple viruses at the same time.

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LOOKING THROUGH YOU Portable, Noninvasive Imaging of Brain Injuries In collaboration with researchers at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Lecturer Caleb Farny (ME) is developing an unprecedented, ultrasoundbased imaging technology for the U.S. Army that could detect foreign objects that penetrate the skull, or identify resulting regions of blood pooling or hemorrhaging.

“We’re working to improve imaging techniques of soft tissue in the brain through the skull using ultrasound,” says Farny. “The goal is to develop a portable transcranial imaging modality that allows the skull layer to remain intact.”

Ultrasound offers a low-cost, low-power, portable, radiation-free solution that’s easily deployable in the field, but getting it to perform as specified is no easy task.

“It’s difficult to image soft tissue through the skull, and high-frequency ultrasound doesn’t pass well through thick bone layers,” Farny observes.

“We’re developing imaging methods that correct for signal distortion coming from two different types of sound wave propagation—longitudinal and shear mode—that the skull introduces.”

Longitudinal waves travel and oscillate in the same direction, whereas shear mode waves oscillate perpendicular to the direction of travel. Like noisecancelling headphones, Farny’s ultrasound device cancels out sound coming through the shear mode wave, yielding a sharper image of soft tissue beneath the skull—and could add a new imaging modality beyond MRI and CT-scans.

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RAPID RESPONSE Microfluidic Chip to Distinguish Between Trauma and Sepsis at Point of Care Symptoms from two of the leading causes of premature death in the U.S., traumatic injury and sepsis—a cascade of events that starts with an infection and can result in organ failure and/or death—can be hard to distinguish at first. The early stages of sepsis include fever (or hypothermia), accelerated heart and respiratory rates, and an abnormal white blood cell count; in certain scenarios, such as at the ICU, burn unit or battlefield, trauma patients can present with these same symptoms.

In both cases, death and morbidity are linked to the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS), a globally activated immune system response that causes organ failure and susceptibility to secondary infections. But trauma and sepsis require very different treatment approaches, with treatment most effective when administered immediately upon diagnosis. Early differentiation would have a significant impact on casualty care.

Current SIRS cases require a blood culture that takes 24 to 72 hours to complete. To reduce unnecessary wait times for trauma patients, Carl Hauser, a trauma surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, developed an assay to distinguish between sterile (trauma-based) and sepsis SIRS. The assay determines the quantity of a type of DNA that occurs in abnormally high levels in the bloodstream of trauma patients.

The process takes up to four hours to complete in a lab, but Hauser is collaborating with Associate Professor Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE) to transform it into a rapid test that can be administered at the point of care. Klapperich has designed a microfluidic chip that has completed DNA assays in under two hours.

“Using Dr. Hauser’s assay in our microfluidic chip, we could deploy a rapid test in military and other contexts,” says Klapperich, who aims to test it on blood samples from human patients. “We’re looking at about a 90-minute turnaround time.”

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Within each chip, the top column performs solid phase extract ion, selectively grabbing RNA from a blood sample and directin g it into the reverse transcription (RT) chamber below. Within the RT chamber, an enzyme reverse -transcribes the RNA into DNA, which then flows into a heated, serpentine channel for replication—a 30-cycle pro cess designed to yield sufficie nt DNA to be detected by an extern al reader.

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HIGH TECH LIFELINES Engineered Blood Vessels for Reconstructive Surgery One of the biggest problems in tissue engineering is the vascularization—incorporation of structures emulating blood vessels—of engineered tissue. While skin grafts for a burn victim can wait long enough for blood vessels to grow into them, larger structures such as muscle and heart tissue need immediate access to blood vessels or they will die from lack of oxygen and nutrients.

To avoid this problem, Associate Professor Joe Tien (BME) is developing materials with engineered blood vessels already inside. Starting with a gel or polymer, he applies lithographic patterning methods from the integrated circuit industry to carve out microfluidic networks in the materials that mimic the shape and size of real blood vessels.

“We build biomaterials that contain internal channels that resemble the human vascular (blood vessel) system in scale and shape,” says Tien. “Our objective is to provide reconstructive surgeons with new tools for forming complex three-dimensional tissues that require immediate perfusion with blood.”

Among other things, the novel biomaterials could be a boon to blast victims in military theaters worldwide.

“Reconstructive surgery is quite advanced, but usually a surgeon takes tissue from one part of the body and transfers it to the other,” says Tien. “In severe cases, you need to replace a large volume of muscle or other tissue, and that’s where the biomaterials we’re developing could help.”

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Image of a collagen-based biomaterial that contains internal channels to guide the flow of blood. The pairs of “ports” shown at the top and bottom could, in principle, be surgically connected to the vascular system of a recipient in which the biomaterial is implanted.

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CAN YOU REPEAT THAT? Coping with Complex Auditory Environments Overexposure to loud music is known to cause permanent hearing loss, but new research suggests that even before a typical audiological exam can detect the damage, such exposure may interfere with everyday communication. An individual may have “normal hearing” based on standard tests that measure the quietest sound a person can hear, yet still have trouble understanding what her best friend is saying at a crowded cocktail party.

A Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health-funded study led by Professor Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (BME) that appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the problem may lie in the “first-responder” portion of the auditory system, which encodes the detailed structure of incoming sounds before the brain processes them further.

In the study, Shinn-Cunningham and her Boston University Hearing Research Center coauthors, BME PhD students Dorea Ruggles and Hari Bharadwaj, reveal significant variations in how well listeners with normal hearing filter out distracting sound sources and focus on a desired one in complex auditory environments. The researchers correlate these variations with undiagnosed differences in how the most peripheral part of the auditory system encodes sound in the brain, and speculate that defective encoding may be due to nerve fiber loss resulting from overexposure to common, high-volume noise sources.

“Our results suggest that the fidelity of early sensory encoding in the subcortical brain determines the ability to communicate in challenging settings,” says Shinn-Cunningham.

“Understanding the factors that limit communication has important implications for many situations, whether for an air traffic controller conversing with multiple pilots or for a foot soldier coordinating ground operations with a remote commander.”

Her research introduces more precise measures of auditory processing impairments than those used in today’s audiologists’ offices—measures that could lead to improved hearing diagnostics and hearing aid technology.

In a study publis hed in PNAS, Professor Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (BME) and her coauthor s explored why som e people with normal hearin g have difficulty understa nding conversations in co mplex auditory environmen ts.

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SKIN DEEP An Electrostatic Method for Pain-Free Inoculation All methods aimed at systematically delivering drugs beneath the skin either require using micro-needles or dose very slowly, but Professors Mark Horenstein (ECE) and David Sherr (School of Public Health) are advancing an approach that avoids these drawbacks and may ultimately permit the rapid inoculation of large populations.

“We’re developing a method for transdermal drug delivery in which drug-laden nanoparticles are forced into the skin—without needles—using an electrostatic pulse,” says Horenstein.

Ultimately, Horenstein and Sherr hope to develop the technique into a portable field instrument that can be used in a doctor’s office or by an emergency medical technician for the painless and rapid inoculation of large populations in the event of a bioterror attack.

To inoculate someone rapidly, one must direct a vaccine into the stratum corteum, the system of cells lying just under the outer skin layer that has a direct pipeline to the immune system. The researchers are working to use electrostatic forces to drive drug-encapsulated nanoparticles about 10 microns below the outer layer of the skin, where the stratum corneum resides, and track their pathway to the immune system.

Fluorescent-labeled nanoparticles are first produced in the laboratory. Once they have been forced into the skin, Sherr monitors their movement into the immune system in laboratory mice. His goal is to establish that the dendritic cells in the stratum corteum ingest the nanoparticles and transfer them to the immune system.

“We are in the process of demonstrating the basic biology and physics of our approach,” says Horenstein, who with Sherr is running experiments to show that nanoparticles can be driven through skin layers using electrostatic forces. “If we are successful, the next step will be to engineer a viable product.”

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Electrical engineering student Katherine Murphy tests the experimental nanopulse device in the laboratory.

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Researchers at a Glance Associate Professor

Professor

Hatice Altug (ECE, MSE)

David Castañón (ECE, SE)

37 Not Going Viral

8 Faster, Better, Safer 30 To Err is Human

Associate Professor

Professor

Sean Andersson (ME, SE)

James Collins (BME, MSE, SE)

33 Staying on Track

35 Mobilizing Microbes

Professor

Associate Professor

John Baillieul (ME, SE)

Luca Dal Negro (ECE, MSE)

28 Flight Tested 30 To Err is Human

18 Lightening the Load

Associate Professor

Assistant Professor

Enrico Bellotti (ECE, MSE)

Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME)

18 Lightening the Load

24 Spray-On Protection 35 Mobilizing Microbes

Associate Professor

Lecturer

Calin Belta (ME, SE)

Caleb Farny (ME)

26 28 33 35

On Guard Flight Tested Staying on Track Mobilizing Microbes

38 Looking Through You

Research Assistant Professor

Research Assistant Professor

Mario Cabodi (BME)

Helen Fawcett (ME)

10 Command and Control 37 Not Going Viral

37 Not Going Viral

Professor

Professor

Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE)

Martin Herbordt (ECE, MSE)

6 Defending Data 14 Tuning in to NBC 26 On Guard

18 Lightening the Load

College of Engineering faculty affiliations that appear in this brochure include departments—Biomedical Engineering (BME), Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (ECE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME), and divisions—Materials Science & Engineering (MSE) and Systems Engineering (SE).

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Professor

Associate Professor

Mark Horenstein (ECE)

Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, MSE)

46 Skin Deep

22 The Power of Light

Associate Professor

Professor

Prakash Ishwar (ECE, SE)

Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE)

13 Caught On Camera

8 Faster, Better, Safer 10 Pixels Don’t Lie

Professor

Associate Professor

W. Clem Karl (ECE, BME, SE)

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (BME)

8 Faster, Better, Safer

45 Can You Repeat That?

Professor

Professor

Mark Karpovsky (ECE, SE)

David Starobinski (ECE, SE)

4 Access Denied

4 Access Denied

Associate Professor

Associate Professor

Catherine Klapperich (BME, MSE)

Joe Tien (BME, MSE)

37 Not Going Viral 40 Rapid Response

42 High Tech Lifelines

Professor

Associate Professor

Janusz Konrad (ECE)

Ari Trachtenberg (ECE, SE)

10 Pixels Don’t Lie 13 Caught On Camera

4 Access Denied

Associate Professor

Professor

Roberto Paiella (ECE, MSE)

Selim Ünlü (ECE, BME, MSE)

20 Germanium Unbound

37 Not Going Viral

Professor

Professor

Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE, SE)

Xin Zhang (ME, MSE)

6 Defending Data 14 Tuning in to NBC 28 Flight Tested

17 Terahertz v. Terror

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Research Centers and Degree Programs From laser optics to robotics to systems engineering, disciplines critical to advancing security and defense systems are a major focus of several College of Engineering and Boston University-wide research organizations, and of the curriculum in all College of Engineering degree programs.

Primary Research Organizations Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) bu.edu/systems CISE convenes researchers from across BU to investigate the design, analysis and management of complex systems. CISE faculty members and the students they advise come predominantly from the College of Engineering, but also from the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Management.

Founded in 2002, CISE now represents 31 faculty members and more than 100 graduate students pursuing projects funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, Department of Energy and other major federal agencies. CISE members have made seminal contributions in control systems, optimization and decision theory; applied probability and simulation; networking; information sciences; computational biology; and production systems.

Major accomplishments to date include innovative techniques for assessing network and server performance and pricing Internet services, novel image processing techniques with applications in radar and biomedical imaging, new algorithms for machine learning and pattern recognition with applications in explosives detection, new computer simulation methodologies that have been adopted by leading software companies, and advanced computational methods in structural biology.

ECE Department Information Sciences and Systems (ISS) Research Group bu.edu/iss The ISS group’s mission is research, education and technology transfer in all areas related to the sensing, communication and processing of information, encompassing an extensive range of natural and man-made phenomena, as well as the design and synthesis of secure networked systems for optimum decision-making and control. Comprising a third of the ECE department, ISS is home to 14 dynamic faculty of international renown, several post-doctoral researchers, more than 50 doctoral candidates, scores of master’s students and a number of undergraduates exploring state-of-the-art research outside their regular curriculum.

ISS members have a broad range of research interests but share a common approach to problemsolving, the pursuit of foundational research, and the development and utilization of sophisticated analytic and algorithmic tools from mathematics, statistics, computer science and physics.

Photonics Center bu.edu/photonics The Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) builds strong academic programs in the science and engineering of light, and develops advanced photonic device prototypes for commercial and military applications. Groundbreaking research conducted at the center includes work on science and technology for solid-state source and detector materials, quantum cryptography, subsurface imaging, adaptive optics, micro-opto-electromechanical systems, high-speed modulation and sensing, bioorganic chemistry, nanophotonic devices and biomedical applications of photonics.

Occupying 235,000 square feet on ten floors, the BUPC houses more than 25 faculty research laboratories; three shared laboratories focused on optoelectronic processing, integrated optics and precision measurement; a business incubator; and instructional and seminar facilities specifically designed for photonics research and education.

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Additional Research Organizations • Applied Electromagetics lab bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/applied-electromagnetics • Biomolecular Engineering Research Center bmerc-www.bu.edu/index.html • Center for Biophotonic Sensors & Systems bu.edu/cbss • Center for Computational Science ccs.bu.edu • Center for Human & Robot Decision Dynamics people.bu.edu/johnb/CHARDD.html • Center for Nanoscience & Nanobiotechnology /nanoscience.bu.edu • Center for Reliable Information Systems and Cyber Security (RISCS) bu.edu/riscs • Computational Electronics Lab bu.edu/ece/research/electro-physics/computational-electronics • Computer Architecture & Automated Design Lab bu.edu/caadlab • Control of Discrete Event Systems (CODES) Laboratory bu.edu/codes • Cross-disciplinary Integration of Design Automation Research cidarlab.org • Hearing Research Center bu.edu/hrc • Hybrid and Networked Systems Laboratory hyness.bu.edu/Home.html • Intelligent Mechatronics Lab bu.edu/iml/people • Laboratory for Diagnostics & Appropriate Healthcare Technologies bu.edu/klapperich • Laboratory of Integrated Nanophotonics & Biosensing Systems people.bu.edu/altug • Laboratory for Microsystems Technology people.bu.edu/xinz • Laboratory of Networking and Information Systems nislab.bu.edu • Optical Characterization and Nanophotonics Laboratory ultra.bu.edu • Reliable Computing Laboratory reliable.bu.edu • Visual Information Processing Lab vip.bu.edu • Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Laboratory bu.edu/nitrides

Degree Programs • Biomedical Engineering (BS, MEng, MS, PhD) • Computer Engineering (BS, MEng, MS, PhD) • Electrical Engineering (BS, MEng, MS, PhD) • Global Manufacturing (MS) • Manufacturing Engineering (MEng, MS) • Materials Science & Engineering (MEng, MS, PhD) • Mechanical Engineering (BS, MEng, MS, PhD) • Photonics (MEng, MS) • Systems Engineering (MEng, MS, PhD)

Concentration Programs • Aerospace Engineering • Energy Technologies • Manufacturing Engineering • Nanotechnology • Technology Innovation

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