ECE Research Fair Offers Job Opportunities to Students
After debuting last year, the ECE Undergraduate Research and Lab Job Fair returned in January and continued to be a popular event among students and faculty alike.
Students listen to Professor Allyn Hubbard (ECE) discuss his research project.
As part of the event, Boston University Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) students and faculty were given the opportunity to discuss research opportunities, how to build their skillsets, and ways to prepare a “mini resume” that lists skills, prior lab experience, and interests at an informal fair set-up by Professor Mark Horenstein (ECE).
“Professors give their students experiences in class with labs, discussions, and projects, but in research, the tables are turned. It’s the professor’s world, and it’s about what skills the students can bring to their research. That’s what this night is about,” Horenstein said.
Round two went extremely well and saw more than 100 students and faculty present, numbers that surpassed last year’s event.
Students walked around the room and eagerly awaited the chance to talk to the professor or graduate student in charge of the research he or she was interested in.
“I want to talk to Professor (Allyn) Hubbard about his infrared detector,” said Indre Jankeviciute. Jankeviciute, an undecided freshman, takes many mechanical engineering classes, but to her, there’s just “something different about ECE.”
“This is an introductory collision event for our younger students,” added ECE Department Chair, David Castañón. “Freshmen aren’t fully prepared for participation in research projects, but they get to observe and start to recognize where their courses are going and start to develop their skills and interests.”
-Samantha Gordon (COM ‘12)
Coskun Named Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellow
The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering at Boston University is pleased to announce its inaugural set of Junior Faculty Fellows. They are:
- Jonathan Appavoo, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
- Ayse Coskun, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
- Mark Kramer, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
- Ben Lubin, Assistant Professor, School of Management
- Jason Ritt, Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
- Evimaria Terzi, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
The Junior Faculty Fellows program recognizes outstanding BU junior faculty pursuing computational research in a range of disciplines. According to Professor Azer Bestavros, Founding Director of the Hariri Institute, “This exceptional cohort of Hariri Junior Fellows epitomizes the qualities that the Institute is striving to cultivate and nurture at Boston University, especially as it relates to the integrative nature of their computing and computational research, which is unhindered by ossified disciplinary boundaries.” Commenting on the breadth and complementary nature of their research, he added, “The research programs pursued by the junior fellows are quite diverse, yet in many ways they are related and complementary. For example, Professors Lubin, Terzi, and Kramer are all working with techniques to analyze large data sets, whereas Professors Coskun and Appavoo share an interest in power-efficient, large-scale distributed computing, in support of demanding HPC applications such as those pursued by Ritt.”
Meeting the Fellows
Over the next several months, each of the Junior Faculty Fellows will be giving a Hariri Institute Distinguished Lecture. For more information and to receive notices about this and other Hariri Institute activities, please join the Institute mailing lists by becoming an affiliate member. For more information, please visit the Institute’s web site.
About the Fellows
Professor Jonathan Appavoo joined the Department of Computer Science in 2009. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, he worked at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory. His current research work focuses in two major areas: architectures for scalable, elastic systems that enable large-scale on-demand computing, and computer systems that can combine traditional computing with the kinds of statistical inference capabilities used by the human brain.
Professor Stan Sclaroff, chair of the Department of Computer Science, says, “Jonathan is leading the pack in the new generation of high-performance computing researchers. If he and his collaborators are successful, then supercomputer-level services will be as accessible, flexible, and affordable as today’s consumer cloud computing services. Jonathan’s research has important implications for business, healthcare, scientific computing—even games. Jonathan’s work also has important implications for the ‘greening’ of cloud computing.”
Professor Appavoo has already been working with his research group at the Institute offices. He says, “It is very exciting to be selected as one of the inaugural Junior Fellows. The Institute, its goals, mandate, and collaborative approach are exactly what I joined academia for. Even physically the Institute has exceeded my expectations. Operating systems research is an interactive and collaborative process and my group has really flourished working in the institute.”
Professor Ayse Coskun joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego in 2009. Her current research focuses on energy efficiency and thermal challenges in computer systems. Some of her main projects include software optimization for green computing, thermal modeling and management of 3D stack architectures (including systems with liquid cooling), and design and runtime management of many-core systems. Such research is critical to enabling the continued growth of energy-efficient computational power.
Asked about the importance of the Hariri Institute to advancing research in computational science, Coskun replied, “The Hariri Institute will be a powerful facilitator for bridging the computing research across different departments at BU, as well as connecting BU researchers with the local industry. Computing research has become, and will continue to be, tremendously interdisciplinary; thus, I believe cross-departmental institutes such as Hariri will play a key role in igniting breakthrough research.”
Professor David Castañón, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, described her work. “Professor Coskun’s research aims to improve energy efficiency in 3D stacked systems while preserving reliability, which will provide unique insights into the complex interplay among energy, temperature, and performance of computer systems. Her work has already attracted significant support from industry and government funding agencies. Through interactions with the Hariri Institute members, her research will expand to include energy-efficient computing motivated by diverse applications.”
Professor Mark Kramer joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2009. His background includes training in physics, dynamical systems, and neuroscience, and he earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 2006. His research currently focuses on mathematical neuroscience, with a particular emphasis on biophysical models of neural activity and data analysis techniques. As one example, Kramer is working with researchers at Mass General Hospital to apply mathematical and computational techniques to better characterize, and eventually treat, epileptic seizures.
“It’s an exciting privilege to join the Hariri Institute as a Junior Faculty Fellow. I look forward to collaborating with the other Fellows and the Hariri Institute’s community of scholars to undertake new and engaging, interdisciplinary research,” said Kramer.
Professor Tasso Kaper, head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, noted, “Our department is proud that Professor Mark Kramer has been named as a Junior Fellow of the Hariri Institute for Computational Science and Engineering in recognition of his pioneering research in mathematical neuroscience. Jointly with colleagues in medicine, neuroscience, and biomedical engineering, he investigates fundamental problems involving the dynamics and functional roles of brain rhythms, functional connectivity in brain networks, and multi-scale activity between individual neurons and populations of neurons. Moreover, he approaches the underlying questions using a broad array of techniques from mathematics, statistics, and physics, in ways that also shed light on multi-scale and network problems in related disciplines.”
Professor Benjamin Lubin joined the School of Management in 2010. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2011. His research interests include game theory, multi-agent systems, electronic commerce, and grid computing. Much of his work is at the intersection of economics and computer science, such as applying machine learning techniques to mechanism design, a branch of economics in which game theory is used to optimize market rules.
Commenting on Lubin’s work, Professor Chrysanthos Dellarocas said, “Ben’s research lies at the intersection of computer science and economics, leveraging computational techniques to construct markets in highly complex settings, such as government bandwidth and landing rights auctions, power and hardware allocation in data centers, and healthcare provisioning. His work is cross-disciplinary and path-breaking. Our department is proud to see him recognized as a Fellow of the Hariri Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.”
“The Hariri Institute represents a tremendous opportunity to foster interdisciplinary research, and I’m thrilled at the chance to be a part of it,” said Lubin.
Professor Jason Ritt joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2010. His current research concentrates on how organisms gather and use information from their environment, through active sensing and sensory decision-making. For example, Ritt and his students are studying the ways in which mice explore environments using their whiskers, employing a combination of computational analysis of high-speed video, electrophysiological recordings, and neurocontrol methods implemented by a real-time feedback system built on a digital signal processing architecture. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience and a master’s in mathematics from Boston University.
Professor Sol Eisenberg, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, observed, “Dr. Ritt is highly innovative, extraordinarily energetic, and very articulate and enthusiastic about his research. We believe he is truly among the very best young faculty working at the intersection of experimental neuroscience, computational science, and bioengineering.”
Ritt is already finding new ideas in discussions at the Institute. “From the first meeting of the Fellows, I could see the exciting and unique opportunity of participating in this highly interdisciplinary center, with the computational issues my lab faces placed in a much larger context from experts with a wide range of backgrounds.”
Professor Evimaria Terzi joined the Department of Computer Science in 2009. Before coming to Boston University, she was a member of the research staff at IBM Almaden Research Center. Her current research focuses on data mining with emphasis on social-network analysis, analysis of sequential data, ranking, clustering and bioinformatics. In particular she is working on problems related to expert identification and team formation in social networks, analysis of online product reviews, and privacy-preserving social network analysis. Evimaria is a Microsoft Faculty Fellow and her research is supported by NSF and gifts from Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft.
Sclaroff continues, “Evimaria has launched a vibrant research program in data mining, including her work on algorithms for very large, network-structured datasets. Her work promises a wide range of cross-disciplinary applications in the social sciences, life sciences, business, and engineering. The Hariri Institute provides a perfect platform for such collaboration.”
Commenting on the role of this program in her research, Terzi said, “The Hariri Institute is an excellent facilitator for data mining research as it brings together scientists from different areas. Being part of it is an excellent opportunity for making data mining research at BU stronger.”
About the Hariri Institute
The mission of the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering is to initiate, catalyze, and propel collaborative, interdisciplinary research and training initiatives for the betterment of society by promoting discovery and innovations through the use of computational and data-driven approaches, as well as advances in the science of computing inspired by challenges in the arts, sciences, engineering, and management. Endowed by a generous gift from Bahaa R. Hariri, the Institute strives to create and sustain a community of scholars who believe in the transformative potential of computational perspectives in research and education. This vision is realized through the support of a portfolio of ambitious computational research projects, and forward-looking educational and outreach initiatives at Boston University.
About the Junior Fellows Program
The Junior Fellows program of the Hariri Institute was established both to recognize outstanding junior faculty at Boston University working in diverse areas of the computational sciences as well as to provide focal points for supporting broader collaborative research in these areas at Boston University and beyond. Junior Fellows are selected by the Hariri Institute Executive Steering Committee based on nominations received each spring.
For more information, contact:
Win Treese
Associate Director
Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering
Boston University
111 Cummington Street
Boston, MA 02215
Email: treese@bu.edu
Professors Mazumder, Toffoli Become IEEE Fellows
Professor Malay Mazumder (ECE)
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Board of Directors have named ECE Professors Malay Mazumder and Tomasso Toffoli as IEEE Fellows, effective January 1, 2012.
According to the IEEE website, Mazumder was selected “for contributions to self-cleaning solar panels, and particle size and charge distribution analysis” while Toffoli was chosen “for contributions to theory of computing including reversible computing, cellular automata, and physics of computation.”
Toffoli, who earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rome as well as a Ph.D. in computer and communication sciences from the University of Michigan, said that he was very happy to be recognized by the engineering community.
“Most of my work has consisted not in trying to find an answer to questions that other people have asked, but rather in raising questions that no one else had formulated and trying to answer them because they looked important – and fun – to me,” he said of his work.
Professor Tommaso Toffoli (ECE)
Toffoli is a member of the editorial boards of Complex Systems, the Journal of Cellular Automata, and the International Journal of Unconventional Computing.
His current research interests include fundamental connections between physics and computation; fine-grained modeling of physics-like systems technology (cellular automata machines) and methodology (programmable matter); and personal knowledge structuring.
Mazumder’s research focuses on material engineering; solar energy systems; particle technology; and electrostatic engineering. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas, is co-editor-in-chief of Particulate Science and Technology, and received the R&D Award and the Electrostatic Society of America Lifetime Achievement Award. As a longtime IEEE member, he was also excited about the honor.
“IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional association, and the diversity of its members is able to foster close connections and collaborations with colleagues in specific areas of research and scientific inquiry,” he said. “To become an IEEE Fellow is a fulfilling distinction and I feel honored to be recognized by my peers.”
Mazumder added that he is excited to represent Boston University and become a Fellow of a group that has had historical ties to prestigious scientists such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. As part of his commitment, he hopes to continue to encourage students to become members of the professional society.
“Student engagement in meetings, presentations, and publications establishes a lifelong collaborative academic network of colleagues,” said Mazumder. “I hope to guide ECE students to join IEEE to foster such opportunities.”
Since 1963, the grade of Fellow has recognized individuals who have had an extraordinary record of accomplishments in IEEE fields of interest. The total number of IEEE Senior Members selected to be elevated to Fellow in any one year does not exceed one-tenth percent of the total voting Institute membership.
For more information, visit the IEEE website.
-Rachel Harrington (rachelah@bu.edu)
Pac-Man as You’ve Never Seen it Before
Last fall, students in EC551: Advanced Digital Design with Verilog and FPGA manipulated video games like Pac-Man as part of their final projects.
How would you like to play classic video games like Tron and Marble Madness as part of your coursework?
Last fall, students in EC551: Advanced Digital Design with Verilog and FPGA did just that. Well, that was part of their assignment anyway…
Assistant Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) gave students in the class four weeks to complete their very own implementation of a digital system on a Xilinx field programmable gate array (FPGA), a chip that can be programmed. The students used Verilog, a hardware description language used to design electronic systems, and were allowed to use external scripts and image conversions.
What resulted were clever manipulations of some famous video games. In Pac-Man, for example, students were able to manipulate the program so that the ghosts in the video game, rather than bumbling around aimlessly, would intelligently pursue the game’s hero.
Watch the video of their final projects.
To learn more about this and other courses in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, view our course listings.
-Rachel Harrington (rachelah@bu.edu)
Related links:
ECE Intro Course Teaches Students to Design Video Games, Alarm Clocks, and More
Paiella Research Group Works to Enable Laser Emission from Microelectronic Materials
Pictured from left, Professor Roberto Paiella (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.
Improving the efficiency of light emission to enable laser development from group-IV semiconductors, which provide the leading materials platform of microelectronics, has the potential to revolutionize photonics research and improve everything from on-chip data transmission to biochemical sensing and wireless optical communications.
At Boston University, Professor Roberto Paiella (ECE), Cicek Boztug (PhD ’14), and Faisal Sudradjat (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 don’t emit light very efficiently due to a basic materials property – their so-called indirect energy bandgap.
They discovered that germanium nanomembranes (i.e., single-crystal sheets no more than a few tens of nanometers thick), when mechanically stressed, can be used to overcome this fundamental limitation and serve as great light emitters, particularly for the mid-infrared spectral region where many biological and chemical species of interest have distinctive absorption lines.
“There have been a lot of efforts to make silicon and germanium efficient photonic active materials,” Paiella said. “Our method has proven to be highly effective.”
The research team wrote a paper on their work titled, “Direct-Bandgap Light-Emitting Germanium in Tensilely Strained Nanomembranes,” and the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences of the United States of America recently published their findings.
“We were able to demonstrate that tensilely strained germanium is a good candidate for chip-level integration of electronics and photonics for mid-infrared applications,” said Boztug. “Potentially, this new development could lead to CMOS-compatible biochemical sensors as well as secure free-space communication devices integrated on silicon chips.”
Paiella said that using germanium nanomembranes to emit light is a unique idea in photonics research and that it 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.
“If you can make a laser this way, you can integrate laser sources directly on electronic chips,” said Paiella. Potential results could include improved on-chip data transfer and better optical sensing.
For Boztug, working on this project has been eye-opening. Not only did she learn about the mechanical properties of nanomembranes through UW-Madison’s Professor Max Lagally, she also had an opportunity to learn about photonics from for her advisor, Paiella.
“I feel very lucky to have an outstanding advisor like him and realized that I learn something new every time we meet,” she said.
Her research at BU centers around group-IV photonics, an area that she said offers great potential for information processing as well as biological and chemical sensing applications.
“I believe that our studies could lead to a new era for on-chip biochemical sensing applications by combining the well-established silicon microelectronics with our light-emitting germanium membranes,” she said.
-Rachel Harrington (rachelah@bu.edu)
ECE Majors Among the Highest Earners in the US
Students work together in Professor Ajay Joshi's section of EK131: Introduction to Engineering.
In today’s tough job market, students who study math or science have the edge, according to a recent Payscale College Salary Report.
Payscale looked at which undergraduate majors led to the highest salaries out of college and found that students who major in Electrical Engineering ranked third, moving up a spot from last year, while Computer Engineering majors, up three places from last year, followed closely behind at sixth place. Out of majors offered at Boston University, Electrical Engineering ranked first, and Computer Engineering ranked fourth.
According to Payscale, Electrical Engineering graduates average a $61,300 yearly salary out of college and tend to make around $103,000 by the middle of their careers. Computer Engineering majors earn slightly higher right out of college, earning an average $61,800 a year, and usually make $101,000 at the midpoint of their careers.
BU’s Class of 2011 is on par with Payscale’s statistics. Recent Electrical Engineering graduates earn an average $69,000 for their starting pay while Computer Engineering graduates earn about $60,000 a year.
“Feedback from technical hiring managers in the Boston area indicates a strong demand for ECE skillsets with some companies citing an inability to keep up with their annual staffing needs,” said Professor Thomas Little, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies. Little said that at a recent Engineering Career Development Day, undergraduates reported, anecdotally, that 90% of the opportunities required a background in ECE.
Recent BU ECE alumni work at a wide range of companies and organizations including IBM, Massachusetts General Hospital, Citibank, Microsoft, Dreamworks, Toyota, and Motorola.
-Rachel Harrington (rachelah@bu.edu)
Related link:
Demand for Computer Engineering Graduates Grows
MSE PhD Student Wins Outstanding Poster Award at ISTFA
MSE PhD student, Yurt Abdulkadir, won the Outstanding Poster Award at the International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis.
Abdulkadir is working on the IC failure analysis project with Professors Bennett Goldberg (BME, Physics) and Selim Ünlü (ECE).
Congratulations!
Announcement courtesy of Materials Science & Engineering
First MSE Innovation Grants Announced
An operational modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) lathe at the BU Photonics Center. MSE Innovation Grant recipients Professor Soumendra Basu (ME) and Associate Professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE) plan to use MCVD, one of two principal industrial fabrication techniques used in the manufacture of optical fibers, in their proposed research project.
Recognizing the need to create a low-overhead way of encouraging innovation and risk taking in a constrained national funding environment, the Materials Science & Engineering Division has launched a new Innovation Grants Program. The program, which awarded its first grants last month, aims to encourage innovation in as-yet-unproven technologies.
Seven faculty members in the extended MSE community representing five proposed projects received the first annual MSE Innovation Grants Program awards—one-time grants of about $10,000 each that can be used for equipment, salary for a student or postdoc, travel or any other legitimate research expense. Project proposals were evaluated by a small committee chaired by Assistant Professor Linda Doerrer (Chemistry).
“The idea is to enable real innovations to take place and encourage far-out thinking, maybe even be a little crazy,” said MSE Division Head David Bishop. “We aren’t interested in supporting things that are almost done or already funded by someone else. In the venture capitalist world they talk about ‘failing early and often.’ Those are the kind of ideas we hope to stimulate, the ones that are very high risk but, if proven, might create a revolution.”
Winners of the initial MSE Innovation Grants are:
- Professor Soumendra Basu (ME) and Associate Professor Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE), who will attempt to design novel semiconductor core optical fibers that can guide mid-infrared (IR) light over tens of meters, the order of fiber-lengths needed for non-telecommunications applications such as jamming heat-seeking missiles or detecting bioterror threats. Their ultimate goal is to develop alternatives to conventional silica optical fibers, in which transmission losses increase dramatically at wavelengths in the mid-IR part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME), who will investigate the use of new biomaterials to control the release of drugs in implantable drug delivery systems (DDS) in real time using ultrasound. While implantable DDS are designed to deliver a therapeutic drug dose over extended periods directly to a target site, they lack real-time control over the release of the drug; once implanted, the drug is delivered at a preprogrammed dose and rate. Grinstaff aims to design a unique, implantable, ultrasound-activated DDS using newly synthesized materials that will enable healthcare providers to release specific doses at specific times in coordination with diagnostics technologies for lung cancer and other diseases.
- Professor Anders W. Sandvik (Physics), who will develop a novel computer simulation method for “quantum glasses.” A common “glass,” such as a window pane, has an exceedingly long relaxation time—its microscopic structure changes so slowly that it normally appears stable. A “quantum glass” is a generalization of the classical glass concept to systems in which quantum fluctuations play an important role, particularly at low temperatures. Theoretical models of quantum glasses are notoriously difficult to study reliably, but Sandvik recently developed a novel algorithm which he plans to use in computer simulations of these systems. A better understanding of quantum glasses is important for future materials applications.
- Associate Professor Anna Swan (ECE) and Professor Bennett Goldberg (Physics), who will attempt to engineer graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycombed structure, to exhibit discrete electrical energy levels that could be exploited to design very efficient electronic devices. A very strong magnetic field could in principle accomplish this, but would be completely impractical. Instead, they plan to stretch and deform the material in such a way to give rise to the desired energy structure. They will probe the response of the material to stretching using light-amplifying plasmonic structures developed by Professor Hatice Altug (ECE).
- Associate Professor Joyce Wong (BME), who will investigate the development of 3D vascularized tissues using self-assembly techniques. A major challenge for tissue engineering is the formation of thick, replacement tissue equipped with blood vessels that integrate the tissue with its host. For example, the current standard practice of care for reconstructive surgery after mastectomy is to obtain vascularized fat tissue from another part of the patient’s body and then transplant it to replace tissue removed during the mastectomy. Elimination of the need to harvest the tissue from the patient would have tremendous impact, because the majority of the surgery is taken up by the time required to harvest tissue with a sufficiently large diameter blood vessel that can then be hooked up via microsurgery to the vessel in the transplant site.
-Mark Dwortzan
Trapping Light the Topic of Recent Distinguished Lecture
Professor Diederik S. Wiersma, the director of the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS) at the University of Florence, spoke at Boston University as part of the ECE Distinguished Lecture Series.
In photonics, understanding how light transmits through structures and being able to control that flow is a top research priority. Breakthroughs in this area have the potential to improve how information is carried through light, create antennas that are more highly direct, and more.
Professor Diederik S. Wiersma, the director of the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS) at the University of Florence and research director at the National Institute of Optics, believes that if light were to follow Lévy flights, new doors could be opened in photonics.
“Light that follows a disordered path has the potential to create new possibilities for light sources and information transport,” he said.
On November 29, Wiersma spoke about his work at Boston University as part of the Fall 2011 Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings groundbreaking engineers to the university.
Additionally, Wiersma and his research team have looked at how Anderson localization – the absence of wave diffusion in a disordered medium – can be used to make light waves more concentrated.
“Using the Anderson method, we also have the potential to make solar cells more efficient,” he said.
Trapping light while keeping it useful and intact is the goal. According to Wiersma, catching light waves in 2-D can already be done pretty easily, but the challenge comes in figuring our how to trap light in a 3-D photonic structure. He and his research group are working hard to find a way to minimize reflection and keep the photons moving within semiconductors.
This was the last talk in the Fall 2011 Distinguished Lecture Series. Please see our Distinguished Lectures page for a list of Spring 2012 talks.
-Rachel Harrington (rachelah@bu.edu)
Densmore Featured in New Scientist
In an October issue of New Scientist, Assistant Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME) was featured as a researcher in one of “science’s hottest disciplines,” synthetic biology.
Author Becky Oskin spoke with Densmore about his job search experience in 2009. He wanted to work in synthetic biology, a field that applies science and engineering to biological components. With a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and postdoc experience in a “synbio” laboratory, he promoted himself as a two-for-one deal, but the plan backfired.
“They weren’t sure what I was going to do, and I was already a risky bet,” he told Oskin.
Assistant Professor Douglas Densmore (ECE, BME)
When he applied again in 2010, Densmore instead focused on his credentials in computational synthetic biology. The plan paid off when he was offered a position at Boston University, which New Scientist dubbed “a synbio hotspot.”
When it comes to switching careers, Densmore told New Scientist to “make sure people know what they are getting, and don’t be afraid to take a risk.”
-Samantha Gordon (COM ’12)
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