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Smart Technology: Open Source and Equitable

Between 2012 and 2017, the number of car accidents in Boston rose by 33%. Depending on the year, 25% to 31% of all reported accidents in Boston resulted in non-fatal injuries. Christos Cassandras, a distinguished professor of engineering and head of the division of systems engineering,  is working to mitigate this issue through smart technology. By implementing cooperative autonomous vehicles, which can communicate with each other, he aims to improve safety, congestion, and energy consumption. More

Sabelhaus Research: Advancing the Safety of Soft Robots for Human Interactions

The emergence of soft robots will enable safe human interactions which will allow robots to assist in the industrial, medical, automotive and space industries. College of Engineering Professor Andrew Sabelhaus (ME, SE), has been working on making soft robots safer to improve these human interaction tasks, in areas such as medicine, as well as explore difficult or dangerous locations. His work will help improve the design of many other soft robots. More

Could a Computer Diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia?

Researchers at Boston University have developed a new tool that could automate the process and, eventually, allow it to move online. Their machine learning–powered computational model can detect cognitive impairment from audio recordings of neuropsychological tests—no in-person appointment needed. More

One Small Step For A Mouse: Using Information Science to Understand the Brain

How does learning a new skill or process change the physical structure of the brain? Using techniques from data science and high-dimensional statistics, Professors Bobak Nazer (ECE), Venkatesh Saligrama (ECE, SE), and Xue Han (BME), aim to find out. Their project, titled “Discovering Changes in Networks: Fundamental Limits, Efficient Algorithms, and Large-Scale Neuroscience,” has won the support of a $1.2M National Science Foundation (NSF) Award. More

Machine, Meet Stem Cells

By Sarah Williams for Gladstone Institutes Model organs grown from patients’ own cells may one day revolutionize how diseases are treated. A person’s cells, coaxed into... More

Spring 2021 CISE-ENG Seed Awards Winners

By Margo Stanton Four Spring 2021 Seed Grants were awarded by the Boston University Center for Information & Systems Engineering (CISE) and the College of Engineering’s (ENG)... More

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PhD Candidate Wins Best Paper Award at IEEE CDC

SE PhD candidate Wei Xiao is the first author on a paper titled “Feasibility-Guided Learning for Constrained Optimal Control Problems.” The piece was published in Proceedings of 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and earned the Outstanding Student Paper Award. More

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COVID-19 Risk Assessment to Address Inequity

This article was written by Eliza Shaw (CISE), videos produced by SE. Informing Policy, Resource Allocation and Workplace Adjustment Policies https://youtu.be/rC0HC-YhFbA Video Part 1: Researching the risk of COVID-19 relates... More

$3 Million for Transformational Energy Technology

"NewRAMP will develop innovative approaches that quantify the risk of individual Electric-Power-Grid-interconnected assets based on their performance and ability to deliver market cleared capacity and energy,” explains Prof. Caramanis. “By synthesizing ideas and theories from finance and insurance, operations research, power system engineering and electricity market design, NewRAMP will offer ground-breaking methodologies constituting a risk-driven paradigm to achieve higher adoption of stochastic resources and a more efficient and reliable system operation. As such, it will contribute to reducing imported energy, reducing energy-related emissions, and improving energy efficiency.” More

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Advancing Smart Cities with the Internet of Cars

Inadequate systems to manage the traffic at road intersections are at the root of most car accidents and traffic jams. Autonomous vehicles are being developed to address these traffic management issues. Cassandras' team is revamping their proposed solution by extending earlier research on optimally controlling autonomous cars crossing an urban intersection. More

Robot Reinforcement

A team of researchers led by Professor Calin Belta has developed a new machine-learning framework to teaching a robot, or a team of robots, a high-risk, complex task—a framework that could be applied to a host of tasks. More

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Multiplication by Divisions

Fuel cell use could be one of the best ways to mitigate climate change—fuel cells work like batteries, provide efficient power and don’t emit air pollutants. But there are multiple barriers in research and development before they will be available to a commercial market. Professor Soumendra Basu (ME, MSE) has been working on fuel cells, but, along with everyone else, was stymied by one of those barriers: the material used on the cell’s cathode was unstable and subject to decomposition. For help, he reached out to Professor Karl Ludwig in the Physics Department. More

SE Big Data Story

Know what’s good for your health? Artificial intelligence

A generation ago, the internet changed everything. Today, data science is proving just as revolutionary. Fueled by the abundance of personal information on the internet—yours, ours, everyone’s—data science is making business smarter, healthcare more efficient, technology easier, and sports more fun to watch (and play). More

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How to Make Self-Driving Vehicles Smarter, Bolder

Autonomous vehicles that can maneuver themselves around any city are already out on our public roads, says Yannis Paschalidis, but operating off-road remains a challenge. Paschalidis is testing a new self-driving vehicle with the goal of correcting that problem. These vehicles can operate on and off-road. “We are interested in developing fundamental principles that can be applied to autonomous vehicles capable of navigating themselves on the ground, underwater, and in the air,” he says. More

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ENG Robotics Programs Listed Among Nation’s Best

Boston University makes the short list of top Robotics Universities, according to Analytics Insight. The Robotics Lab at Boston University’s college of engineering offers three distinct research topics to impart the knowledge of how to program and create robotic automation among its students. Boston University Robotics Lab is a self-contained research facility situated in the Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) on Boston University’s Charles River campus. More

Using Big Data, Machine Learning to Reduce Chronic Disease Spending

“There is a lot of information about every one of us, in EHRs, in smart phones, in smart watches, and in other tracking devices,” Iaonnis Paschalidis, Director of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Professor, told HealthITAnalytics.com. “We can now analyze what happens to patients in real time and characterize the status and health condition of each individual.” More

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US News Lists BU among Most Innovative Universities

BU was named one of the most innovative national universities for the first time in the 2019 US News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, out today. “I think there’s a general understanding that the world of higher education is changing rapidly,” says Gerald Fine (MSE, ME). “The leadership of the University has created an environment where experimentation in better ways to educate students is encouraged.” More

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BU and Johnson & Johnson Innovation Team Up to Fight Lung Cancer

As a model for industry and academia collaborating to improve human health, BU has launched a five-year translational research alliance with Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC (JJI) aimed at preventing, intercepting, and curing lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Spiral (SE) will lead the effort. More