Penny Beuning, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, was named an American Cancer Society Research Scholar for her work on tolerance to agents that damage DNA such as ultraviolet light, chemicals, and reactive oxygen species. The objective of her work is to understand how DNA polymerases that possess the ability to copy damaged DNA are able to distinguish between different types of damage. These findings will lead to a better understanding of how toxins in the environment lead to cancer.

Sri Sridhar, CAS Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics, and collaborators from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, have secured funding from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. Their research will investigate a novel tumor therapy that combines sustained in-situ delivery of radiosensitizers to the prostate, resulting in highly efficient chemoradiation therapy with minimum toxicity and discomfort, compared with current prostate cancer treatments.

Heather Clark, associate professor of pharmaceutical science, has received a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to explore nanosensors for monitoring the behavior of electrical and chemical neurotransmitters between neurons in the brain.

Barry Bluestone, Stearns Trustee Professor and Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and Stephanie Pollack, associate director of research, received a grant from the Barr Foundation to assist the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in developing a transportation finance campaign.

• External awards exceeded $100 million
• Invention disclosures exceeded 100 (1 per every $1 million)
• Portfolio of 13 university spun out ventures, five launched in FY12
• Research Innovation and Scholarship Expo (RISE) submissions up 35% to 400

The recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the individual mandate clause of the Affordable Care Act included a citation by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of an amicus brief co-authored by Wendy Parmet, George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law. Parmet has served as the counsel of record for a group of Massachusetts health care advocates who have argued that the state's healthcare reforms cannot reach their full potential without federal assistance.

Gary Young, director of the Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Research and professor of strategic management and healthcare systems in the College of Business Administration, has been selected by the United States Secretary of the Treasury to serve a 2-year term on the Internal Revenue Service's Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities. Members of the committee advise the IRS on operational policy and procedural improvements on several fronts, including employee retirement plans, tax- exempt bonds, tax-exempt organizations, including hospitals, churches, colleges and universities, and federal, state, local, and Indian tribal governments.

Joseph Raelin, Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education in the College of Business Administration, won the Best Paper Award at the 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition for "The Effect of Cooperative Education on the Self-Efficacy of Students in Undergraduate Engineering."

Healthcare reform has been the focus of intensive national debate, as policymakers work to control spiraling medical costs while extending coverage to millions of uninsured
Americans. The recently upheld Affordable Care Act includes a wide variety of provisions designed to make medical care more accessible, affordable, and responsive to the healthcare needs of all Americans. These provisions include funding to develop and test new models of service delivery/payment improvements that promise rapid results to achieve these policy goals.

A recently announced award from the new Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation will fund Northeastern’s launch of a 3-year, $8 million demonstration project that integrates industrial and systems engineering (ISE) methods into healthcare delivery. Jim Benneyan (above), professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and director of Northeastern’s two established, federally awarded healthcare systems engineering centers, will direct the new center.

Benneyan explained that under the innovation award, Northeastern will establish a regional systems engineering extension center that will embed ISE improvement methods used in other complex industries into local healthcare organizations. Engineers and healthcare professionals will be cross trained in applying these methods to important healthcare problems, and will work together in engineer clinician project teams, integrating industrial engineers directly into health systems.

The project will launch a network of similar centers across the country, starting in Massachusetts in year one and then expanding to Washington and North Carolina, where Northeastern has graduate campuses.

The appeal of these improvements is easily apparent to healthcare providers and insurers, who will be held more accountable for quality and cost of care as healthcare reform rolls out, and whose reimbursements will increasingly be tied to patient outcomes. "Our overall goal is to measurably demonstrate the value of this model to significantly lower costs, improve access, and achieve better outcomes, leading to better care and higher patient safety," Benneyan described. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation estimates the projected 3-year savings from the project will be $60,780,907.

As of the end of July, all 12 FY13 Appropriations bills have been drafted in the House, and all but the Interior bill have been drafted in the Senate, but most have not passed both houses.

Labor-Health and Human Services-Education: The House bill keeps the NIH budget flat-lined at $30.6 billion, which is $100 million below the Senate proposal. The new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences would be level funded at $575 million; the Senate would provide $639 million to the center. The Health Resources and Service Administration would be cut $453 million below the FY12-enacted level, but the Centers for Disease Control would see an increase to $5.75 billion.

Defense: The House provides more than $518 billion for the Department of Defense, more than $7 billion above the Senate version. The bill allocates $2.1 billion for basic research (6.1%), $4.5 million or 0.2% above the enacted 2012 level. The bill also provides $4.6 billion for applied research (6.2%), which is a cut of $176 million or 3.7%.

Energy-Water: The House includes a $72 million cut for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Somewhat surprisingly, overall research funding has been spared deep cuts so far in the FY13 Appropriations process. But researchers should assume agency budgets will remain flat until after the election when Congress will return for a lame-duck session where it will attempt to pass the Appropriations bills and address sequestration.

To learn more, contact Tim Leshan, VP for government relations, at northeastern.edu/governmentrelations

He and Yung Joon Jung, an asso­ciate pro­fessor of mechan­ical and indus­trial engi­neering, have received a three-​​​​year, $309,000 National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion grant to explore a phe­nom­enon they dis­cov­ered entirely by chance, which could afford a new gen­er­a­tion of extremely effi­cient electronics.

Kar's exper­tise is in the physics of graphene, which is a sheet of carbon atoms, one-​​​​​​atom-​​​​​​thick. Because of its struc­ture, graphene is a supe­rior thermal and elec­tric con­ductor. Jung's work focuses on the mechanics of carbon nan­otubes, or nanometer-​​​​sized rolled-​​​​up sheets of graphene.

"The two mate­rials are closely related in many ways," said Kar.

Last year, the Provost's office awarded Jung and Kar a Tier 1 Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Seed Grant to develop new opto­elec­tronic and solar devices using both graphene and carbon nanotubes.

But their inves­ti­ga­tions weren't going as planned. Shining light on the devices gen­er­ated a com­pletely unex­pected behavior.

"We kept get­ting a weird kind of response," said Kar. Added Jung: "We thought there must be something wrong."

So they decided to take a step back and remove the graphene from the equa­tion, leaving a layer of carbon nan­otubes over a sil­icon sub­strate. Lo and behold, Kar said, the results remained the same.

The weird responses had nothing to do with the graphene, but rather, were related to an unex­pected prop­erty at the inter­face between the carbon nan­otubes and the silicon.

Past research by other groups has shown that inter­ac­tions between sil­icon atoms and carbon nan­otubes can turn light into elec­trical cur­rent. "That is pretty much the basis of all pho­to­di­odes and solar cells," said Kar. "If such a device is held in dark­ness, there's little or no cur­rent at all. You shine light and cur­rent flows — it's called photocurrent."

But dif­ferent from con­ven­tional diodes, the pho­tocur­rent in Kar and Jung's devices can be con­trolled by applying a voltage. "A few volts can change the pho­tocur­rent by up to four orders of mag­ni­tude. That is what makes it a very sen­si­tive pho­to­switch," Kar said. "The pho­tocur­rent grows almost expo­nen­tially, resulting in large pho­tocur­rents for rel­a­tively small light inten­si­ties." They believe the behavior comes from the highly orga­nized carbon nan­otube archi­tec­tures unique to Jung's lab.

Since only small amounts of light are required, the phe­nom­enon could be useful for low power opto­elec­tronics. A dig­ital camera using the pho­to­switch, for example, could pro­duce crisp images in very low light. If the behavior can work in the infra​​red spec­trum, it could mean more effi­cient night-​​​​vision technologies.

But before it can be used in any prac­tical appli­ca­tion, the team must first under­stand the under­lying physics of the phenomenon.

Kar's lab will quan­tify the behavior, map­ping the phys­ical prop­er­ties of these curious devices while a col­lab­o­rator in South Korea will use his exper­tise in the­o­ret­ical physics to ana­lyze the results computationally.

Ulti­mately, they hope the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach will afford a better under­standing of the behavior on an atomic level.

"That is the beauty of nanoscience and nan­otech­nology research," said Jung. "By col­lab­o­rating with people from dif­ferent back­grounds you can accom­plish great things."

I am pleased to inform the Northeastern community that Ni (Phil) He, Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, has joined the Provost’s Office as Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education as of January 1, 2012, initially in a half time appointment.

Professor He, who has been at Northeastern for almost 10 years, is an expert on the legal system and criminal justice practices in China. He has worked closely with both the John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation in recent years to conduct empirical legal research and to promote evidence-based legal reforms in China. As a faculty member and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice he has provided dedicated service and effective leadership in developing and strengthening the School’s highly competitive graduate programs.

In his new role he will be working with me, the Graduate Associate Deans of the Colleges, the Graduate Council of the Faculty Senate, and other important constituencies on a broad range of graduate issues, from approval of new courses and programs, to evaluating and enhancing the competitiveness of Masters and PhD programs.

I look forward to working with Phil to continue to strengthen our graduate programs. Please join me in congratulating him on his appointment.

Mel Bernstein
Senior Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Education

TIER 1: Seed Grant/Proof of Concept Program
Competitive program provides funds to support and encourage individual faculty members to form multidisciplinary teams to secure proof of concept, with a goal of successfully competing for sponsored research opportunities. Funds are also available as seed grants for faculty teams to develop new and innovative research directions. An explicit strategy for securing external funding must be outlined. Total support of up to $50,000 for one year, provided by College(s), Department(s) and Senior Vice Provost for Research & Graduate Education is available, with the possibility of a second year renewal. Proposals will be peer reviewed internally and award decisions will be made by the Senior Vice Provost for Research & Graduate Education and relevant Dean(s). Proposals are due to the Office of the SVPR by April 1 for support beginning July 1. Funding cannot be requested for faculty salary support.

TIER 2: Federally Designated Centers; Major Programs Initiative
The Senior Vice Provost for Research and the Dean(s) will provide incentive support to faculty groups pursuing large, multi-disciplinary Federal funding opportunities. Funding consists of support to facilitate the preparation of highly competitive proposals, up to $75,000; and/or post-award annual operating support up to 10% of the IDC, or post-award cost sharing support.

TIER 3: Campus-wide Research Initiatives Program (CRIP)
This competitive program provides support for development of broad, multidisciplinary research initiatives and centers that will position the university to become a national leader in an emerging or sustained area of research that responds to a national or societal need. Successful applicants will receive planning grants of up to $150,000 and post-CRIP designation support of up to $150,000 from the Senior Vice Provost for Research and Dean(s) for a designated time period.

Procedures:
Those interested in applying for any of the above programs should request a form from the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Research & Graduate Education to describe research plans and strategies for pursuing external funding. Endorsements are required from relevant chair(s) and Dean(s) prior to forwarding proposals to the Senior Vice Provost for Research & Graduate Education .

Forms:

• TIER 1: Request Form
  
• TIER 2: Request Form
• TIER 3: Request Form

“The idea is that a lot of people are doing excellent research in the field of nanomedicine, but in 95 percent of the cases this research ends with a good publication,” said Vladimir Torchilin, distinguished professor and director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences. “The most difficult part is the next step—if you have good results, how do you turn those results into products?”

Led by Torchilin, the new center’s research and development partnership includes Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and Auburn University. The partners will work together to develop a continuous path from basic research to industrial production of cancer nanomedicines—thereby narrowing the gap between discovery and early development of cancer therapeutics and diagnostics.

In addition to the Center of Excellence designation, the alliance has awarded Northeastern distinguished professor Mansoor Amiji with a five-year, $2.32 million grant as part of the Cancer Nanotechnology Platform Partnership program. Amiji, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Bouve’s School of Pharmacy, will collaborate with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital to develop treatment for multidrug resistant forms of lung and ovarian cancer. The work involves using nanoparticles and gene silencing techniques to more efficiently target tumors and reverse their resistance to anti-cancer therapies. The researchers will also create a library of nanoparticles they can screen and select from when treating various forms of cancer.

“This is an extraordinary accomplishment for Vladimir and his team, and it is well deserved recognition of the quality of his research,” said Stephen Zoloth, dean of Bouvé, which is home to several centers focusing on biotechnology, nanomedicine, drug discovery, and public health research. “It is centers of excellence like these that make Northeastern a hub of translational research that can lead to breakthroughs in cancer diagnosis and treatment.”

The new center will help accelerate the momentum of use-inspired research leading to important discoveries in health—one of three Northeastern research themes, including security and sustainability, aimed at solving pressing global challenges.

“It is the responsibility of leading research universities to solve the greatest challenges of our time,” said Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. “Northeastern has been at the forefront of nanotechnology innovation and discovery in several areas of global significance. With this new center we are taking research at the frontiers of medical science to the next level.”

Northeastern University is home to a strong base of interdisciplinary nanotechnology research, and is an ideal location for this new center, which will collaborate with other centers of nanotechnology research. The George J. Kostas Nanoscale Technology and Manufacturing Research Center at Northeastern, which is part of the University’s Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing, as well as the Center for Translational NeuroImaging and the IGERT Nanomedicine Science and Technology program will all work in partnership with the new center.

For more information, please contact Greg St.Martin at 617-373-5463 or at g.stmartin@neu.edu.