Students

Arts & Sciences, Pursuing PhD in Political Science
Expected graduating class: 2010
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

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.

Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Speech language pathology and audiology, MA

Hometown: Westborough, MA
Interests: Reading, outdoor activities, the beach, spending time with family and friends

When asked what she likes best about Northeastern, master’s student Jamie Becker calls attention to a special feature Northeastern’s campus: “It has a real city feel but also has the community of a traditional campus. I went to undergrad in a rural area and I knew that for graduate school I wanted to see friendly faces, but also to explore the wonderful cultural opportunities of the city.” Those friendly faces are present on the quad, in the Snell Library, in the faculty offices and in the classrooms. “When I met with the faculty in my department, they were very welcoming and I could tell they want their students to do well. That was important for me. I was interested in research in speech pathology, and I liked the fact that the faculty have available facilities on campus and do their research here. The work I am doing currently is very interdisciplinary in nature. I am working with PhD candidates from computer and electrical engineering at Northeastern and others from the Harvard/MIT health science and technology program. Interacting with people in other disciplines provides a tremendous learning experience for me.”

One research project Jamie is working on is titled “VocalID”.“We recorded vowel productions of children with dysarthria, which means they have impaired speech. We were able to extract the source characteristics, such as fundamental frequency of their vocal productions. We combined these source characteristics with filter characteristics of healthy children of the same age, such as vocal tract length and shape, to create unique voices that are more personalized for these children with dysarthria. Many kids that have cerebral palsy or diseases that prevent them from speaking clearly have been, up until now, assigned standard computerized voices, usually of an older male that isn’t appropriate for say a nine year old girl or boy. We are creating technology to allow them to speak with characteristics of their own voices.”

The community at Northeastern has aided Jamie’s successful research. “We recently presented at the research scholarship expo the university sponsored. There has been so much support at Northeastern in my department and at the school in general. In a few weeks, we will be presenting at the Northeastern Corporation meeting in front of dozens of CEOs and the Board of Trustees. Here, the research opportunity is there if you want it. And if research isn’t your thing, the support is still there. My friends who aren’t doing laboratory based research are having a great experience as well.”

Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice

Victimization and Justice in Special Needs Cases

Hometown: Westborough, MA
Interests: desert camping, traveling and learning about music

Criminal Justice major Rebecca Pfeffer is using her innovative research to assist people in need. Her research aims to advocate for people with special needs in the judicial system, aiding them in preventing injustices due to miscommunication. “My current research is working in the criminal justice field to help accommodate people with unique assistance requirements. Victimization of people with special needs is a problem in our current system that needs to be addressed immediately. Many people with special needs don’t know their rights, or in some cases even how to get to a police station if those rights have been violated. If they do file a police report, a series of obstacles remain that they must face, from testimony and communication to elicitation of information to their presumed credibility as witnesses. My research is looking to confront those issues.” By providing a voice for people with special needs, Rebecca works towards not only protecting an underrepresented facet of the population, but also making pronounced strides towards their social empowerment.

“Northeastern’s College of Criminal Justice is pretty sensational,” she says. “Everyone has been very open to my ideas; everyone is willing to help to the fullest extent of their abilities.” Due to the nature of her research, Rebecca encounters a need for support from other disciplines—support she gets from the pronounced interdisciplinary environment at Northeastern. “When my questions step outside of the boundaries of the Criminal Justice field, faculty members from my department are able to point toward experts in other departments. When I, for example, need an autism expert they can show me to someone from psychology. It’s great being at a school that has those options available.”

Engineering, Computer and Electrical Engineering

Hometown:
Interests: Workout, tennis, volleyball, community work

“I realized that I wanted to do research when I came to Northeastern,” Selvapraba says. “I really like what I am doing now.” The two research projects he is currently working on are in the fields of nanoelectronics and bioflex—biocompatible-flexible electronics. “First, in order to meet the demand for an ever strengthening technological push, we need to miniaturize the hardware in our devices. Once this is accomplished, one can have more complex devices that provide more functionality within a limited space. For example, say you have 1000 million transistors and you need to make them denser but don’t have sufficient surface area. The solution is to stack devices on top of one another. Due to physical limitations, our technological limit is going to saturate in 2022—after that we need to come up with a new device to replace the current technology. One of my projects is working with carbon nano tubes and nano wires to develop three dimensional devices.”

“The other side of my research,” he states, “is in bioflex. Life science is of interest to me, and developing compatible electronics combines my background with current issues in health such as cancer and HIV. Biocompatible devices allow for implantable technologies—devices that can be implanted into a patient for medical purposes. And at the same time you can wrap them around your wrist, put them on your jacket, and they do the same thing.”

“Boston is a great city,” Selvapraba states. “It’s a hot spot for people who want to advance in their careers—all of the big schools are in Boston. And at Northeastern we get a lot of visibility in the market for our research . . . especially for nano and biosciences work. Here we have all of the facilities one could need to advance research. I’m very proud to be a grad student at Northeastern.”