− Zachary Flinkstrom, E’19 bioengineering
A HEALTHY OUTLOOK At Northeastern, more and more engineers are focusing on critical global issues that affect human health
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rowing up in Maine, Zach Flinkstrom (E’19) always felt connected to the natural world through camping and outdoor sports. While he knew he wanted to study and solve problems as an engineer, he wanted those problems to involve biology or human health. “Nature is an amazing example of engineering, and so many engineering challenges have been overcome simply by observing and mimicking what occurs in the natural world,” notes Flinkstrom. “When I was looking at engineering schools, I applied to some schools with bioengineering majors and other schools, like Northeastern, that had the right interdisciplinary culture to facilitate a wide range of engineering studies.” When Flinkstrom received his acceptance letter from Northeastern’s College of Engineering in early 2014, he learned exciting news: the university had just founded a Bioengineering department. If he enrolled at Northeastern, he would be one of the first class of bioengineering majors in the college’s 118-year history. Already leaning toward Northeastern, Flinkstrom was thrilled by the news. “The Bioengineering department was one of the single biggest factors in my decision to come to Northeastern,” he says today. “I thought it would be an
exciting and unique opportunity to be part of a brand new program. I couldn’t wait to get started.” The creation of the department was a priority of Dean Nadine Aubry, who joined Northeastern in 2012. She saw it as the next logical step to the existing PhD in Bioengineering, for which candidates were advised by faculty from other engineering and science fields. “Zach is just the kind of ambitious, energetic student we were envisioning when we founded the Bioengineering department,” says Aubry. “With an aging global population, the skyrocketing cost of patient care, and emerging diseases like Ebola and Zika, we need young engineers like Zach to bring a fresh approach and new problem-solving skills to these issues. We’re delighted that Northeastern’s College of Engineering is now a training ground for nextgeneration bio-inspired innovation.”
Creating a Hub of Research and Discovery Today, the Bioengineering department has seven full-time faculty and approximately 80 affiliated faculty from across the university, and is hiring five more full-time faculty this year.
“It’s been exciting to create a new academic department from the ground up,” says Department Chair Lee Makowski, who came to Northeastern in 2010 after seven years in the Bioscience Division of Argonne National Laboratory, including serving as its director. Before chairing the Bioengineering department, he was jointly appointed in Electrical Engineering and Chemistry — which reflects the diverse nature of the faculty recruited to this new department. Beyond the focus on health and medical applications, engineering in a biological context, this group also views bioengineering as bioinspired engineering. For example, understanding how bones can be both strong and flexible may help us to strengthen bones in human beings as well as create construction materials that can better withstand hurricane-force winds. Their research and education interests are broad, focusing on sensors and devices, mechanics and motor control, imaging and computing, cell and tissue engineering and bio-environmental interaction. To achieve this new approach to bioengineering, Aubry points out, “All of these people need to come together in a collaborative team and share their knowledge. At Northeastern, we’ve worked for years to create the kind of Engineering @ Northeastern 11
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“The Bioengineering department was one of the single biggest factors in my decision to come to Northeastern”