Cars that learn how to drive themselves by watching other cars
BY GINA MANTICA Self-driving cars are powered by machine learning algorithms that require vast amounts of driving data in order to function safely. But if self-driving cars could learn to drive in the same way that babies learn to walk – by watching others around them and trying to mimic certain movements – they would […]
Telepractice Presents a Challenge to Voice Therapy
Boston University researchers urge caution when evaluating voice disorders over teleconferencing platforms due to differences in acoustic measurements. BY GINA MANTICA, gmantica@bu.edu Over the past year, people across the world learned how teleconferencing platforms like Zoom can help folks stay connected – playing games with friends, hosting virtual weddings, and even visiting a doctor. But […]
Graduate Student Fellow Addresses Ecological Research Challenges with Computing
BY: DEIRDRE SHAHAR Computing is the way of the future for scientific research, including ecological studies. Luca Morreale, a Graduate Student Fellow at the Hariri Institute, conducts research on how humans, roads, cities, and other developments affect forests in the Northeast. While publicly collected datasets offer large opportunities for ecologists to learn this information, these […]
From Industry to Academia: How a Graduate Student Fellow Uses Engineering to Study Speech
BY: NATALIE GOLD Hasini Weerathunge has a strong background in industry—from working in the London Stock Exchange to conducting research at SYNERGEN Technology Labs. Now, as a Graduate Student Fellow at Boston University’s Hariri Institute for Computing, she is studying how Parkinson’s disease affects speech production processes in the brain. Originally from Sri Lanka, Weerathunge […]
How one Junior Faculty Fellow aims to advance engineering research
BY: NATALIE GOLD Boston native Emma Lejeune has found herself back in the area, starting a new lab for her group to advance computationally-driven research. Now a Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute, Lejeune aims to advance research as both a mentor and an advocate for open-source data and software. Lejeune’s interest in engineering […]
How one scientist’s curiosty led her to the Hariri Institute
BY: GINA MANTICA Allyson Sgro explored many different career trajectories and research fields before landing in academia. Sgro’s fearless pursuit of her passions led her from considering a path running her own scientific small business to getting degrees and post-doctoral training in chemistry and physics. The interdisciplinary nature of her current work to understand how […]
The Physics of Climate Change – How Earth’s “greening” affects temperature
Many people hear the term “greener earth” and envision flourishing rainforests. But former Junior Faculty Fellow Dan Li hears this phrase and pictures mathematical equations. Li and colleagues use computational models to understand the role that physics plays in climate change so that they can propose effective mitigation strategies. Their article, recently published in Science […]
Junior Faculty Fellow Creates Land Value Map to Improve Conservation Policies
If scientists and lawmakers don’t know how much it costs to conserve private lands, then they cannot enact sufficient policies to protect it. Christoph Nolte, a Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute for Computing and an Assistant Professor in Earth & Environment at the BU College of Arts & Sciences, used machine learning to build a map that shows the value of lands across the contiguous United States.
MOC’s Michael Daitzman to Keynote at Open Infrastructure Summit
Boston University’s Michael Daitzman, Director of Engineering and Product, Mass Open Cloud (MOC), will be giving a keynote on OpenInfra Labs (OIL) – a new OpenStack Foundation (OSF) project launched in collaboration with the MOC – at the virtual Open Infrastructure Summit, hosted by the OSF, October 19 – 23. The Summit features keynotes […]
Hariri Faculty Affiliate Carol Neidle Awarded through NSF Convergence Accelerator
Hariri Faculty Affiliate Carol Neidle received an NSF award through the NSF Convergence Accelerator program. This is a collaboration with Principal Investigators Dimitris Metaxas and Mariapaola D’Imperio of Rutgers University and Matt Huenerfauth of Rochester Institute of Technology. These researchers were awarded almost $1 million, with the money going towards the development of “Data & AI Methods for Modeling Facial Expressions in Language with Applications to Privacy […]