News
Jul 07, 2026
Horsley Awarded $7.1M NSF Cooperative Agreement for Global Deep-Tech Startup Alliances
ECE/MIE Professor David Horsley, in collaboration with Michelle Kiang at Innovation Impact International/MTM Venture Partners, has been awarded a $7.1 million National Science Foundation grant for “Scaling Deep Tech Innovation Through International Partnerships” to position Northeastern as the lead institution in a major international expansion of deep-tech partnerships.
Jul 01, 2026
Patent for Transfiguring Aluminum Alloys into High Efficiency Solar Absorbers Using Alkaline Solutions
MIE Associate Professor Yi Zheng was awarded a patent for “Method for producing plasmonic-nanostructure spectrally selective solar absorber having high solar absorptance, low thermal emittance, and high thermal stability.”
Jun 22, 2026
Automated Vehicle Mounted Sensor Array Wins First Place at SICK 10K Challenge
Ben Cometto, MS, robotics and James Tukpah, E’20, MS’22, PhD’27, computer engineering won first place at the SICK $10K Challenge for developing an automated, vehicle-mounted sensor system that uses lidar and hyperspectral imaging to map and measure the moisture content of vegetation in real time, significantly speeding up how assessment teams identify potential wildfire fuels.
Jun 08, 2026
Akcay Wins Best Paper Award at IISE Annual Conference
MIE Associate Professor Alp Akcay received the Best Paper Award from the Modeling & Simulation (MS) Division of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) for his paper on “Data-Driven Resource Aggregation for Scalable Digital Twin and Simulation Model Generation”.
Jun 04, 2026
Northeastern Launches Physical AI Research Initiative, Unveils NU-WORLD Platform
Northeastern University launched the Physical AI Research (PAIR) Initiative on May 21–22, bringing together over 200 researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and government representatives to advance intelligent systems that learn from and act in the physical world. The two-day event featured keynote talks, the public debut of Northeastern’s open world-model platform NU-WORLD, and broad participation from organizations including NVIDIA, Amazon Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Microsoft — signaling strong momentum around a field that spans robotics, healthcare, manufacturing, and beyond.
Jun 02, 2026
Zheng Appointed Chair of Optica Photonic Metamaterials Technical Group
MIE Associate Professor Yi Zheng has been invited to serve as the chair of the Photonic Metamaterials (PM) Technical Group for a three-year term running through December 2028.
Jun 01, 2026
Two Northeastern Students Helping Increase IVF Success Through Co-op
Two Northeastern students––Jake Percival, E, mechanical engineering and bioengineering, and Tori Christianson, E, chemical engineering and bioengineering––are completing their co-ops at AutoIVF. They are working on a device that can find “hidden” egg cells in follicular fluid, helping to increase the chance of successful IVF by increasing the number of eggs retrieved.
May 27, 2026
Why U.S Drivers Aren’t Switching to Electric Vehicles
The gas prices have soared since the War in Iran, but Americans are still not buying into the electric vehicle industry. MIE Assistant Professor Juner Zhu and others explain the variables that may be influencing their decisions.