
2023 INSTITUTIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Research and innovation
A bold approach to discovery
Northeastern pushes scientific inquiry past boundaries, testing new knowledge in the world and translating what we learn into high-impact solutions that advance society.

$282.4M
in external research awards in 2022–2023
480%
increase since 2006
33
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships held by current PhD students, up from 1 in 2006
23
Early Career Investigator Awards, including seven prestigious NSF CAREER awards, two NIH Early Stage Investigator MIRA awards, and three awards from the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program
8
inaugural Impact Engines earned seed funding from the university for their capacity to create measurable impact
Focus on health, security, and sustainability
Our researchers are discovering high-impact solutions to our greatest global challenges.
Seeding ways to accelerate impact
A new way to move the needle
Impact Engines galvanize interdisciplinary learning, research, and partnerships to create local change at scale. Launched in 2022, these university-supported teams cross colleges and campuses.
Increasing access to higher ed
Led by Elizabeth Zulick, vice chancellor for strategic planning and projects, Experiential Associate to Master’s will collaborate with local communities to create pathways for students to pursue credentials at multiple levels—from certificates to master’s programs—while providing student supports, mentoring, and experiential learning opportunities. This Impact Engine will leverage Northeastern’s successful A2M model, and align learners with sectors with strong career trajectories and high demand for skilled workers.

An AI game-changer for critical-care delivery
A research partnership with MaineHealth—the state’s largest hospital system—aims to use Big Data to predict adverse outcomes in cardiac patients, enabling faster intervention. Healthcare Enabled by AI in Real Time—or HEA(RT)—is among Northeastern’s new Impact Engines. The group’s top researcher, Rai Winslow, sees HEA(RT)’s predictive model impacting nearly every decision in critical care, improving hospital care worldwide.

Measuring air quality street by street
Led by Yang Zhang, associate chair for research and civil and environmental engineering professor, the new interdisciplinary Impact Engine Intelligent Solutions to Urban Pollution for Equity and Resilient—or iSuper—is installing more than 100 air pollution sensors around Greater Boston and patrolling city streets in a van outfitted to detect the same. The goal: to identify hyperlocal hotspots in real time to develop pollution reduction strategies that eventually inform all city design processes. The Impact Engine seed funding will speed progress toward that goal.

Expanding our faculty expertise

924
T/TT hires since 2006, including 100 in 2022-23
180
faculty with interdisciplinary appointments, up 329% since 2012
Meet some of our new faculty
-
Khaled Ghannam
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and researcher in iSuper Impact Engine -
Larry Han
Assistant Professor of Health Sciences -
Alina Lungeanu
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Management and Organizational Development -
Eileen McGivney
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Art and Design -
Briony Swire-Thompson
Assistant Professor of Political Science and Psychology -
Idia Thurston
Professor in Health Sciences and Applied Psychology, and Associate Director of the Institute of Health Equity and Social Justice Research
Faculty awards, honors, and excellence
Entrepreneurship and innovation

STARTUP CULTURE BOOST
Rooted Living
Rachel Domb, ’24, founded Rooted Living out of a desire for healthy, eco-friendly snacks. As a first-year student, she launched her line of plant-based snacks, with support from the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship—or WISE—and the Husky Startup Challenge. Now a thriving business venture, Rooted Living offers granola free of refined ingredients. Domb’s vision was rewarded with a $10,000 Innovator Award from Women Who Empower.

LAB SPINOUT
BrilliantStrings Therapeutics
Bioengineering Professor Jeffrey W. Ruberti founded a spinout company to develop a process that could revolutionize rehabilitative medicine. BrilliantStrings Therapeutics was born out of his lab, where he has been studying collagen, the human body’s most abundant protein and the building block of connective tissues. BrilliantStrings Therapeutics harnesses collagen to heal connective tissue injuries—either by injecting it directly into the site of the injury or, for larger tears, using a patch that releases the protein.

nasa launch support
Zeus AI
Zeus AI is a new startup, with NASA seed funding, that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict weather patterns. Founders Thomas Vandal, ’18, and Kate Duffy, ’21, with PhDs in engineering, want to improve short-term forecasting by processing the vast amount of data—on atmospheric winds, water vapors, temperature changes, and cloud cover—provided by government satellites. The new startup’s intended clients include energy markets and energy traders.

FOUNDERS CO-OP
Foreign Resource
Matias Belete, ’24, and Robert Yang, ’24, launched a unisex streetwear company, Foreign Resource, to appeal to fashion-forward globetrotters. This fall, they’re spending their six-month co-op working on Foreign Resource full time. The pair want to use pop-up stores—typically used only as a marketing tool—to scale and grow their business. They also received support from the Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship, and resources from IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator.