Bouvé College of Health Sciences, MS in Speech-Language Pathology
2010

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.”

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.”