With access to up-to-the-minute information, the Bioengineering Department has been actively involved in COVID-19 research since the start of the pandemic. Our research is wide-ranging, including the impact of the virus on a cellular level, practical decontamination strategies in PPE, and quick, accurate testing techniques.
COVID-19 Research in Bioengineering
Intrinsically interdisciplinary, and centrally located in a biotech hub, bioengineering at Northeastern is leading the way in bioimaging, cell and tissue engineering, biomechanics, and biomedical device advancement.
Spotlight Stories
NSF CAREER Award to Develop Better Asthma Treatments
Assistant Professor Harikrishnan Parameswaran, chemical engineering, recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Parameswaran seeks to understand how the smooth muscle detects inhaled irritants and generates force at the cellular level to develop better treatment for people with asthma.
Paul G. Allen Distinguished Investigator for Pioneering Single Cell Proteomics Research
Assistant Professor Nikolai Slavov, bioengineering, was recently named a prestigious Allen Distinguished Investigator and was awarded a $1.5 million three-year grant to further his novel research on single cell proteomics.
Engineering In Action
World-Renowned Cooperative Education
Kritika Singh, BS, Bioengineering, is on her first co-op at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Center for Systems Biology and she is also working on a malaria project to express a difficult to express protein. Her ambition is to be a physician scientist and says co-op will definitely help her achieve that.
World-Renowned Cooperative Education
Aanie Phillips, BS, Bioengineering, says co-op puts into perspective what you learn in the classroom providing an immersive learning experience. She did two co-ops, a clinical one at a doctor’s office, and the other as a mechanical and operations engineer at Virtudent, a teledentistry startup. Aaanie is off to medical school with a full scholarship from her top-choice school.
Recent News
Using Robots to Help Blind and Deaf People Communicate
Samantha Johnson, E’21, ME’21, bioengineering, built a robotic hand that can be used to produce tactile sign language so that people who are blind and deaf can be more independent.
Cutting-Edge Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator
BioE/ECE Affiliated Faculty Eugene Tunik, ECE Professor Deniz Erdogmus, ECE Research Professor Dana Brooks, and COS Professor Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli were awarded a $400K NSF MRI grant for the “Acquisition of a controllable pulse transcranial magnetic stimulator with robotic positioning and integrated EEG / EMG for engineering and neuroscience research and education.”
Bencherif Publishes “Oxygen-Generating Cryogels Restore T Cell Mediated Cytotoxicity in Hypoxic Tumors” in Advanced Functional Materials
ChE Postdoctoral Research Associate Thibault Colombani (lead author), Loek Eggermont, Stephen Hatfield, Zachary Rogers, PhD’23, Mahboobeh Rezaeeyazdi, PhD’19, Adnan Memic, Michail Sitkovsky, and Assistant Professor Sidi A. Bencherif) published their article Oxygen-Generating Cryogels Restore T Cell Mediated Cytotoxicity in Hypoxic Tumors in the Advanced Functional Materials journal.
Investigating the Dynamics of Biochemical Systems
University Distinguished Professor Eduardo Sontag, ECE/BioE, is the PI of a $305K NSF grant for designing “New Techniques for Analyzing the Long-term Behavior of Intracellular Networks.” The project aims to develop an approach to the computer-aided analysis of biochemical networks and is based on research done in the Sontag Lab by Senior Research Scientist Muhammad Ali Al-Radhawi.