How Northeastern Vancouver is Bridging the Gap Between Engineering Education and Industry
Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus provides a unique co-location model where engineering and computer science students collaborate with over 60 embedded industry partners on capstone research and internships that lead directly to full-time engineering roles.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Kate Rix. Main photo: Highspot is one of about 60 businesses that operate at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus. Courtesy Photo
These grad students found a pipeline to their ‘dream’ jobs
Northeastern students in Vancouver benefit from embedded business partners that offer research and employment opportunities.
After finishing her master’s degree at Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus, Lexi Liu never applied for a job.
However, she seamlessly transitioned from student to full-time software engineer, all within the same downtown building.
A gleaming, 25-story high-rise that resembles unevenly stacked glass boxes, Northeastern University’s Vancouver campus is home to classrooms, but also to an entire floor of businesses that provide mentorship, internships and research opportunities to students. In some cases, these embedded industry partners hire graduates, creating seamless transitions into the job market.
“I dreamed about it before I started,” Liu says of the job offer she received from the software company Highspot after her internship. “But I didn’t expect it to happen so smoothly.”
Northeastern University graduate students on the Vancouver campus often do research with embedded business partners as capstone projects. Courtesy Photo
More than 60 businesses work out of the campus building’s second floor, occupying desks and conference rooms as little as one to three days a week and exchanging their availability to students for rent in Vancouver’s pricey downtown core.
One way that partners engage with students is through capstone projects. Usually completed in a master’s degree student’s final year, these projects focus on applied research. The projects are usually completed by a group of students, and the ideas sometimes come from embedded industry partners.
Vancouver-based Wisr.AI, which develops cybersecurity assessment and safety tools, uses office space on the second floor and has engaged Northeastern capstone students to tackle research questions. Last year, the company asked a group of students to analyze a public dataset of companies with known security vulnerabilities to look for patterns, Wisr.AI CEO Rob Goehring said.
The work was so well done, Goehring said, that the company hired one of the students.
Dhaval Jariwala was one of the first students to receive his master’s degree in data analytics engineering from Northeastern’s campus in downtown Vancouver in 2024. Today, he is a data analyst for Wisr.AI, returning to the campus building two or three times a week to work on the second floor.
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Dhaval Jariwala, left, earned a master’s degree in data analytics engineering from Northeastern’s Vancouver campus and now works as a data analyst for Wisr.AI. Lexi Liu, right, also a Northeastern graduate, is a software engineer at Highspot in Vancouver. Courtesy Image and Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University
“Dhaval definitely rose above the other students in terms of his capability, but also how quickly he understood the problem,” Goehring says. “He had the skills to join us and start doing some programming right away.”
Read full story at Northeastern Global News