BU Professors Showcase Research Ranging from Software Development to Big Data

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, former Hariri Institute Steering Committee member and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, coordinated the “Shaping the New Human-Technology Frontier: Current Research at BU” event, which brought together 40 professors at the School of Law’s Barristers Hall to foster interactions and offering a unique networking opportunity. The goal for the event was to bring people and professors on campus together who may not be inherently connected through their research areas, but could potentially reap huge benefits by working together and taking on new, innovative directions for research.

Each speaker had four minutes to present his or her research topic, with the goal of spiking interest in the crowd so that the attendees could delve into further discussion after the event. Shinn-Cunningham spoke about her research on the hearing technologies, where she detailed that one third of people over 65 have hearing loss. She noted, “we are taking knowledge of how we hear in complex settings and using that technology to build new kinds of devices. It is actually a pretty ripe time to rethink the hearing aid.”

Margrit Betke, Hariri Institute Fellow, AIR core faculty and professor of Computer Science, presented a series of video demonstrations on the Proficio, a robotic arm. The event transitioned to online and computer technologies with Sharon Goldberg, Institute Fellow and professor of Computer Science, who spoke on why encryption matters. She shared how her lab is combatting the threat attacks by looking at different types of attacks, trying to understand how they can happen in different situations, and how protocols can be designed in order to make these attacks harder for bad actors to carry out. Abby Rudolph, Institute Affiliate and professor in the School of Public Health attended the event to see how this information could address her own research. Joining Rudolph was Institute Affiliate Juliet Floyd,  a professor in the School of Theology, who hoped that researchers would start to more systematically include ethics in ongoing discussions about the development and use of new technologies. CAS Dean Ann Cudd shared Floyd’s concern, stating, “we should think about the kinds of apps and devices that are made to select what you should pay attention to.”

[Read the full article on the Daily Free Press]