In
his last week as leader of Northeastern, President Richard M. Freeland,
Hon.'06, gathered staff of the Office of Advancement and the Center for
Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems to announce that the University
had secured a gift of $20 million. Northeastern University Receives Gift Donation
$20 Million Donation to Advance Engineering Research Center and Create New Program to Inspire and Educate Future Engineering Leaders
August 10, 2006 — Northeastern University today announced it is receiving a gift of $20 million from The Gordon Foundation, established by engineering innovator and philanthropist Bernard M. Gordon and his wife, Sophia.
It will support Northeastern’s Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) and establish an innovative model for educating engineering leaders, the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program.
|
CenSSIS, which will be named the Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems, has created a new model of collaboration between academia, industry and government.
In the six years since it was established as a federally funded Engineering Research Center (ERC), CenSSIS has received more than $22 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and compiled an impressive roster of corporate and government partners and research contracts.
The Center has also received seed funding from the Massachusetts John Adams Innovation Institute to pilot university/industry collaboration.
Research & Development, Leadership Program
The Gordon Foundation gift will enable CenSSIS to continue its operations after “graduation” from ERC funding in 2010, and to evolve from an academic research center into an R&D center focused on converting research into new products for commercial and governmental markets.
Equally important, the gift will establish within CenSSIS the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, an intensive one-year graduate program aimed at building an elite corps of engineering professionals. The program will begin in September 2007.
The Gordon Engineering Leadership Program will lead to a Masters Degree in a core engineering discipline and a certificate in Engineering Leadership. Participants will be called Gordon Fellows.
As a central element of the program, the Fellows will lead a team to successfully conduct a complex engineering project from initial conception to completion. The participants will be supported by mentors who have a demonstrated track record of leading major engineering projects in an industrial setting.
Projects will stem from the emerging technologies produced by CenSSIS research as well as industry-sponsored initiatives. Each project must result in production of a viable commercial product or government system application.
There will also be a feeder program through which advanced undergraduates (Gordon Junior Fellows) will have co-op assignments that will be a pipeline into the graduate program.
‘Redefining the Way We Educate Engineers’
“The vision and generosity of the Gordon Foundation and of Bernard and Sophia Gordon will enable the Gordon Center to turn research in critical areas such as health care and homeland security into important technologies that will meet many of society’s most urgent needs,” said Richard M. Freeland, President of Northeastern University.
“Through his life and career, Bernard Gordon has demonstrated that an engineering leader can have a tremendous impact on society and on individual lives. His example will serve as an inspiration to those engineers who aspire to become Gordon Fellows.”
Freeland said the university plans to create a visual tribute on campus which will recognize and honor distinguished engineering leaders such as Bernard Gordon.
Northeastern President-elect Joseph Aoun lauded the Gordons for their support.
“Turning promising academic research into technologies that address real-world problems is among the foremost responsibilities of a research university,” said Aoun. “The Gordon Center is well-positioned to foster the collaboration to make this happen.”
“The Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems promises to become a national model for the fusion of academic research and private-sector collaboration,” said Michael Silevitch, CenSSIS Director and Robert D. Black Professor of Engineering at Northeastern University.
“It will lead to technology transfer and spur economic development in Massachusetts and beyond. At the same time, the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program will be redefining the way we educate engineers. The lack of effective engineering leaders is a national problem that must be addressed immediately. The Gordon Foundation gift will enable us to do that.”
Lynn Preston, leader of the ERC Program, said: “The ERC Program and CenSSIS are dedicated to developing engineering leaders who understand how to take on high-risk technological opportunities and work with industry to speed their entry into the marketplace. For 20 years the ERC Program has been redefining engineering education and the Gordons’ gift will serve as a catalyst for establishing a national model for engineering education.”
About Bernard M. Gordon:
A 1986 National Medal of Technology recipient, Analogic founder and Chairman Bernard Gordon and his teams are responsible for dozens of engineering milestones.
With several hundred patents worldwide, his most significant inventions include:
| • | The modern analog-to-digital signal converter, used in everything from computers and televisions to EKG machines and atomic clocks |
| • | The dot matrix, alphanumeric display, used on virtually every computer |
| • | The instant imaging (CT) scanner |
He also pioneered the first digital air traffic control and fetal monitoring systems and the first 3-D, multi-slice, dual-energy explosive detection CT system in airports nationwide.
Believing that all people should have access to high-quality medical imaging, saving lives and improving outcomes, Gordon co-founded NeuroLogica, a neuroscience-based medical imaging company in 2004. Its revolutionary portable brain scanning device helps doctors diagnose problems from strokes to traumatic brain injuries.
About Sophia and Bernard Gordon’s Commitment to Philanthropy:
In their almost 50-year marriage, Sophia, who emigrated from Greece after surviving World War II, has encouraged her husband’s achievements. Recently, Sophia, a dancer and expert in nutrition and fitness, and Bernard who has “always liked putting things together and being useful,” have enabled the establishment of many beneficial educational and medical initiatives including:
| • | The Gordon Institute at Tufts University |
| • | The Sophia Gordon Cancer Center at Lahey Clinic |
| • | The Gordon Prize for educational innovation at the National Academy of Engineering |
| • | Professorships of Medical Imaging and of Engineering Practice at MIT |
| • | The Sophia Gordon Center of the Arts at Salem State College |
| • | The Gordon Center for Systems Engineering at the Technion |
| • | The Sophia Gordon Hall at Tufts |
About CenSSIS:
The Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems is a multi-university NSF Engineering Research Center founded in 2000.
Its mission is to revolutionize the existing technology for detecting and imaging “hidden things,” i.e., objects or conditions that lie underground, underwater, embedded in the human body or in manmade objects such as luggage or bridge decks.
The Center's unified, multidisciplinary approach combines expertise in wave physics (photonics, ultrasonic, electromagnetic), multi-sensor fusion, image processing, and 3D CAT scan-like reconstruction and visualization of hidden regions.
The goal of the Center is to invent new ways of probing deeply into important hidden regions, i.e., the brain or the earth, and create prototypes that may be transitioned to industry partners for further development.
A key element of the CenSSIS education mission is to immerse students in efforts to solve important real-world problems such as non-invasive breast cancer detection or underground pollution assessment.
The Center's academic partners are Northeastern University (lead), Boston University, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Puerto-Rico at Mayaguez.
About Northeastern:
Northeastern University, located in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts, is a world leader in practice-oriented education and recognized for its expert faculty and first-rate academic and research facilities.
Northeastern integrates challenging liberal arts and professional studies with the nation's largest cooperative education program. Through co-op, Northeastern undergraduates alternate semesters of full-time study with semesters of paid work in fields relevant to their professional interests and major, giving them nearly two years of professional experience upon graduation. The majority of Northeastern graduates receive a job offer from a co-op employer.
Cited for excellence four years running by U.S. News & World Report, Northeastern has quickly moved up into the top tier rankings — an impressive 35 spots in four years. In addition, Northeastern was named a top college in the 2006 edition of the Princeton Review's annual “Best Colleges” issue.