Students

Arts & Sciences, Pursuing PhD in Political Science

Research Area: Health Policy

Hometown: Rockville, Maryland
Interests: Acting, Running, Volunteer community work

An energetic doctoral candidate in political science, Chris currently conducts research in the area of health policy. After earning a B.A. degree at Boston University, with dual majors in biology and art history, she took a year off and joined AmeriCorps. Following that, she returned to Boston University and completed an M.P.H. degree and took a position working for the next five years at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

“During my professional career,” Chris explains, “I started realizing that there is a lot in my field to conduct research on. I started looking into Ph.D. programs to find one that fits my interests and visited Northeastern. Professor Chris Bosso kindly spent time with me and helped me find a program and research topic that matches my interests and work experience. Having work experience in public health, I discovered health policy could be a great area for my doctoral studies. Professor Bosso recommended Professor Michael Dukakis to be my advisor because of his vast expertise in health care policy.”

Chris continues to work for Harvard as the Program Manager for the Harvard China AIDS Project. And in addition to her scholarly pursuits, she is a volunteer photographer and videographer, a key host for the John Hancock Boston Marathon Elite Athlete Program, co-vice chair of the Brookline Commission for Women, and has been President of the Graduate and Professional Student Association at Northeastern. In what little spare time all of these other accomplishments leave her, she also enjoys acting and has been on stage in places such as the Boston Center for the Arts and the Footlight Club in Jamaica Plain.

Chris’s parents are from Thailand and she is first generation born in the United States – in Maryland. “I think the diverse environment at Northeastern is a great melting pot to prepare students for today’s job market. The diverse backgrounds of students here create a challenging environment that we all can learn a lot from. I believe I brought worthwhile different perspectives to my classes, too. For instance, when we have a discussion about genocide in Darfur, I can develop the discussion from a public health perspective and articulate issues related to the health of victims. As another example, on the topic of globalization, I open discussions on issues that are not always quickly noticed such as emerging diseases like SARS and Avian Influenza.”

“I believe Northeastern pays lots of attention to the future of students and their intellectual lives.
Departments organize conferences and they also support students who attend events in other universities. My department also helped and encouraged me to join scientific associations in my area. These types of events are great networking opportunities and I have learned a lot from other members.”

“From the day I started, I have had a great experience at Northeastern. Although I was away from school for 5 years working in the field of public health, right from the beginning the environment here has been completely supportive and helped me get up to speed. Study groups, professors and classmates all have great roles in this supportive environment.”

“At Northeastern, professors become your family. We quite often have gatherings with our professors and classmates. I was honored to have Professor Dukakis officiate at my wedding ceremony. This friendly environment at Northeastern creates a wonderful bond among scholars and boosts synergy among them.”

Arts & Sciences, Pursuing PhD in History

Research Area: Music and Society; Jazz, Race and Gender

Hometown: New Zealand
Interests: Choral singing, Tennis, Swimming, Cycling, Volunteering

Northeastern provides a nurturing environment for students who wish to explore their wide-ranging academic interests – like Rachel, a doctoral candidate whose research combines the study of jazz music, race, and gender. After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree and graduating with honors from the University of Otago in her native New Zealand, Rachel applied to Northeastern. Because she was overseas during the application process, history professor Chris Gilmartin reached out and phoned Rachel to help her determine whether the University’s program would be suitable to her interests. “She was enormously helpful and encouraging,” recalls Rachel.

The emphasis on building relationships between student and faculty and personalizing the academic experience has been characteristic of Rachel’s time at Northeastern. She works extensively with both Professor Judith Tick in the music department and Professor Laura Frader in the history department. The strong inter-departmental relations and the opportunity to work across disciplines are essential to Rachel, whose diverse interests are reflected in her research. Her doctoral thesis explores transnational perceptions of race by contrasting the experience of black American jazz performers in interwar Paris with the experience of black colonial subjects. “Combining a range of disciplinary techniques and sources is vital to more fully understanding any social context,” says Rachel. “Fortunately, Northeastern is very supportive of the interdisciplinary approach.”

Moving to Boston has been a rewarding experience, as the city itself has offered Rachel abundant opportunities. She notes that many conferences are held in the city, allowing her to network and learn about other innovative research being undertaken. As a member of the Graduate Consortium for Women’s Studies, whose membership includes six Boston-area colleges, Rachel has been able to pursue her cross-disciplinary interests and meet other graduate students who are doing the same. The city has also nourished Rachel’s other interests, which include tennis, cycling, and volunteer work with mental health consumers. A passionate choral singer, she has performed with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Trinity Church Choir. Rachel has just returned from a trip to Paris, where she traveled on a scholarship awarded by the history department to complete her dissertation.

Computer & Information Science, Algorithmic game theory

Research Area: Online Algorithms, Approximation Algorithms, game theory

Website

Hometown: Edicott, NY
Interests: duplicate bridge, quilting, hiking, skiing

Community is an important factor in the Northeastern graduate experience. Smaller classes, opportunities to work in multiple disciplines of study, and close working relationships with professors build the foundation of academics at the University. Laura Poplawski, a doctoral candidate in the College of Computer and Information Science, says the community environment has helped her in the emerging field of Algorithmic Game Theory. "We have a very interactive department," she explains, "so all of the professors work together. If one professor doesn't know something, they will turn you over to the right individual and that person will be happy to work with you. It is the perfect mix of working by yourself and working with others." In this sense, the College of Computer and Information Science offers the atmosphere of a small, close-knit college with all of the resources of a large, urban university.

"Algorithmic game theory is a relatively new area in computer science; a lot of things could fit into it." Laura describes her current research: In layman's terms, let's say you have a social network and everybody is only allowed to connect to a certain, limited number of other people. But everybody is trying to get as few hops as possible to everyone else in the network by strategically picking who to connect to. So the question is: what happens when everybody is selfishly deciding who to pick as their friends in order to connect to everybody . . . do you end up with a stable condition or do people keep moving? You can take this theoretical question and apply it to wireless networks, or to fractional connections, like time-based, or all sorts of different versions."

The new facilities that house the College of Computer and Information Science are an added bonus for Laura. "The brand new building," she says with a smile, ". . . I'm a big fan of that." Built in 2004, the building offers state-of-the-art classrooms and all the necessary technology for vanguard research and development. Accompanying the advanced technology in the classrooms is a refined architectural aesthetic quality that is unmatched. The building was awarded the 2005 Harleston Parker Medal by the Boston Society of Architects as the best new building in the Boston metro area.

Computer & Information Science, PhD in Programming Languages

Research Area: Typed Scheme (a statically-typed dialect of PLT Scheme) with an expressive type system that captures a wide variety of common Scheme idioms, as well as allowing types in only portions of the program.

Website

Hometown: Lewiston, ME
Interests: Ultimate Frisbee, politics volunteering, outdoor activities (rock-climbing, backpacking)

Collaboration is an important facet of the Northeastern graduate experience. So says Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, a doctoral candidate in the College of Computer and Information Science. "There are about six or seven professors who teach programming languages and close to twenty grad students," he explains. "We have a big lab where everyone is together. There's a lot of cross collaboration and a lot of opportunity to talk to other grad students who are working on related topics, bounce ideas off of them, get ideas from them." Collaboration among graduate students has aided Sam in his work with typed scheme—a system "we have developed to enable the porting of untyped script into larger typed or maintainable programs."

Faculty support at Northeastern has provided a great base for Sam as well. "There are so many professors who have interesting and useful insights. It's been a great place to work . . . My advisor is Matthias Felleisen, and he's been terrific. He's a really supportive advisor, he knows a ton about the subject, and he's really helped me refine ideas for my thesis."

Collaboration does not end at the department or even University level. Sam says that the city of Boston is beneficial to his education as well. "Boston is great because it has so many universities where there are people working on similar things. I've been to seminars at Harvard, BU and Tufts, at MIT of course . . . so there are great opportunities to meet people." Connecting with people at various other prestigious establishments, from universities to businesses, is part of the educational and cultural Bostonian experience Northeastern graduate students encounter. "There's even a programming language workshop series that is run in New England and that is mostly based in Boston, because that's where the big conglomeration of research is. So it's a great environment to do research in. There are so many people to collaborate with and learn from all over the area."

"The College of Computer and Information Science has been great for me. We have a really strong program in programming languages, which is what I study."