The Michael B. Silevitch and Claire J. Duggan Center for STEM Education is pleased to announce that last week we officially welcomed our 2024 cohort of REU-PATHWAYS students to campus!
This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program (NSF #2150417, P.I. Ibrahim Zeid, Co-P.I. Claire Duggan) provides pathways for local community college students to enrich their education and careers by becoming meaningfully involved in research projects hosted at Northeastern University. This cohort of thirteen students represent eight unique institutions: Bunker Hill Community College (3), Framingham State University (1), MassBay Community College (3), Middlesex Community College (2), Northern Essex Community College (2), North Shore Community College (1), and Roxbury Community College (1).
Our group spent the first week orienting themselves to the campus and the program. This included presentations on key items such as lab safety from Northeasterns’s Office of Academic and Research Safety (OARS) and Research Learning Contracts (RLC’s) from Professor Patricia Mabrouk. Thank you to our presenters! Professor Jennifer Love also introduced the cohort to her multi-week Arduino Workshop which will culminate in an independent project. While some of the students have a computer science background, others are brand-new to coding!
Of course, we had to make time for a hands-on Engineering Design Process activity during our initial days! As you can see in the below images, the REU students had a lot of fun working in pairs to build paper towers based on different requirements. Don’t let the common building material fool you; this activity is much trickier than you might think! We also got to know each other better while chatting over lunch in the International Village Dining Hall and Curry Student Center.
REU students Jessie and Jonathan try to build a paper tower and react as it falls over.
Muskan and Tory, REU students, pose with their paper tower.
Last but certainly not least, the students were able to meet their faculty and graduate student mentors and began getting situated in their labs and with their research projects. These projects span across many areas of study within the College of Engineering, as seen below:
- ‘Healthcare Analytics,’ Muhammad Noor E Alam, Associate Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ‘Complex Fluid Flows,’ Sara Hashmi, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering; Affiliated Faculty in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering; Affiliated Faculty in Chemistry and Chemical Biology
- ‘Bio-implications of Future Wireless Communications,’ Josep Jornet, Professor and Interim Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair; Associate Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things
- ‘Data Analytics in Preterm Birth Research,’ David Kaeli, COE Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering; Program Director of Data Science; Affiliated Faculty in Bioengineering; Affiliated Faculty in Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- ‘Human Trust in Automation/Human Robot Interaction,’ Yingzi Lin, Professor and Interim Chair in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- ‘Studying VOC pollution in Boston though sensors, field work, and data analytics,’ Amy Mueller, Associate Professor jointly appointed in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Marine and Environmental Sciences; Affiliated Faculty in Electrical and Computer Engineering
- ‘A Novel Biosensor for Wastewater COVID-19 Detection,’ Hongwei Sun, Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
We are so excited for the upcoming weeks and cannot wait to see what the REU students will accomplish!
