Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Website

Interests: Long-distance cycling, teaching Yoga, Latin dance

For Dr. Hortensia Amaro, Distinguished Professor at Bouve College of Health Sciences, research is a means to reach out and make a tangible difference in the lives of people struggling with substance abuse and mental illness. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of addiction, mental health and HIV, and allows her to develop more effective prevention and treatment for patients. Dr. Amaro has created clinical programs within Boston, including an outpatient program for women with a history of abuse, trauma, and addiction that has been helping women and their families for the past 18 years. Her work is not just based in a classroom or research laboratory, but is, as she says, “about working on the ground, in real-life settings, developing programs from scratch for real-life communities.”

Dr. Amaro serves as the Director of the Institute of Urban Health Research (IUHR) and works with the 10 to 12 graduate students that IUHR funds each year. She assists the graduates, whose tuition is often covered and who are paid for their 20 hours of research each week, in helping to learn valuable research skills, data coding and analysis, report preparations, and grant writing. This close collaboration helps to develop a number of treatment approaches, making it easier to reach out to troubled individuals and “help them to heal, break self-destructive patterns, and put their lives back together.” Dr. Amaro says, “I really enjoy being at the Northeastern campus. It gives me more day-to-day contact with the graduate students. There is a real sense of campus life.”

Computer & Information Science

Research Area: Natural language dialogue systems, health behavior informatics, relational agents

Website

Timothy Bickmore, an assistant professor in the College of Computer and information sciences, aspires to better the lives of people through his research. "I get really jazzed about making systems that actually help people . . . if we can make even a small dent in the health and wellness issues in the US, I think that'll be a big deal."

Perhaps the most advanced system in Professor Bickmore's list of current research projects is developing what he calls "relational agents," computer programs that are designed to effectively - and affectively - help hospital patients recover. These programs interact with patients through animated figures and develop personal relationships with their patients. "We have a virtual discharge nurse," Bickmore states, "who is talking to patients in their hospital beds before they go home - reviewing all of their medications with them, self care procedures, follow-up appointments, and impending tests. So, when they go home they know what to do to take care of themselves.” Relational Agents emulate human emotions in their verbal and non-verbal capacity, providing comfort for patients in need.

Bickmore speaks highly of his research environment at Northeastern. The interdisciplinary nature of the Northeastern graduate program is a big part of this positive working atmosphere. "I have students working with me from computer science, of course, but also from the animation program, because we build these characters. We have other students from the exercise physiology department who design some of the intervention content and help test it out, run the studies. . . it's good to have a number of different disciplines and strong programs in this area to pull students from to participate in the work.”

The city of Boston also plays a large part in the creation of this environment. "I am embedded in medicine and health care . . . and there are how many med schools and hospitals within a few blocks of here?” The tightly woven community of Boston schools allows for a unique system of collaboration, research and ideas. "Most of the work I do is at Boston Medical Center, but Harvard Medical School is nearby . . . so I have lots of collaborators to pull from. It's a great place to be doing medical informatics research."

Professor Bickmore received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2003. He has taught and researched at a number of schools, including MIT and the Boston University School of Medicine. "I am interested in doing things that are theoretically interesting for my academic discipline but also in building things that help people . . . which is a big motivator for me. I think the students enjoy actually getting to go to the hospital and talking to doctors, nurses, and patients and build things that interface with them, doing things that are real and not just made up."

Engineering

Research Area: Diffuse Pollution, Water Quality Management, Total Maximum Daily Loads, Restoration, Socio-economic Issues of Water Quality Abatement

Website

Interests: Art, Music

Dr. Vladimir Novotny, Chair Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Environmental Studies, has researched issues of pollution abatement and water quality at Northeastern for the past six years. He describes Boston as a “very good laboratory for research,” which is evidenced by the way his work often draws on the Charles River and Stony Brook watershed. Dr. Novotny’s teaching areas include Hydrology and Watershed Management. His graduate students work with him on research and help to produce a technical report and publication. “By the time they finish,” Novotny says, “they are highly regarded in the profession.”

Dr. Novotny is a former Fulbright scholar and has received numerous honors for his contributions to the field of Urban Environmental Studies, particularly in the area of diffuse pollution. He holds an honorary chair professorship at the University of Beijing
Dr. Novotny has recently published Cities of the Future, which focuses on water quality and ecological sustainability in urban areas. Cities of the Future marks Dr. Novotny’s fourteenth publication.