Hariri Institute Announces 2019 Junior Faculty Fellows

The Hariri Institute for Computing at Boston University is pleased to announce its ninth cohort of Junior Faculty Fellows: 

Joshua Campbell: Assistant Professor, Bioinformatics, MED

James Feigenbaum: Assistant Professor, Economics, CAS

Wen Li: Assistant Professor, Astronomy, CAS

Sanaz Mobasseri: Assistant Professor, Management & Organizations, QST

Allyson Sgro: Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, ENG

Gianluca Stringhini: Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, ENG

The Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellows program was established in 2011 both to recognize outstanding junior faculty at Boston University working in diverse areas of the computational and data-driven research, as well as to provide focal points for supporting broader collaborative research in these areas at BU and beyond. Junior Faculty Fellows are selected by the Hariri Institute Steering Committee based on nominations received each spring, and are appointed for a three-year term.

Commenting on this ninth cohort of Junior Faculty Fellows, Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Founding Director of the Hariri Institute, Azer Bestavros, expects to see these fellows develop their research portfolios and expand their collaborative research horizons at BU just as prior cohorts did, noting that:

“Every fall, the induction of a new slate of Junior Faculty Fellows at the Institute is an occasion to contemplate the exciting opportunities that lie ahead by virtue of the research they pursue. Looking at the impressive profile of this year’s slate, one can only conclude that the future of computing and data-driven research at BU is bright!”

Over the next academic year, each of the Junior Faculty Fellows will be giving a lecture at the Institute. For more information and to receive notices about this and other Institute activities, please join our mailing list by becoming an affiliate member or by subscribing to the Institute’s mailing list for general announcements. For more information, please visit our website or connect via Facebook and Twitter.

About the Fellows

JOSHUA CAMPBELL

Research Interests: Computational Biology; Single Cell Genomics; Bayesian Modeling; Integrating Multi-Modal Data; Cancer; Translational Medicine; Cancer Biology

Joshua Campbell is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine where he develops novel Bayesian approaches to analyze data from single-cell genomic technologies to analyze cellular heterogeneity in lung and prostate cancer. He received his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from Boston University and completed his postdoctoral research training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT where he worked with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to identify novel mutational drivers of lung cancer.

David Coleman, Chair and Professor, Clinical Science, MED said: “Dr. Campbell’s research lies at the intersection of computational methods development and translational medicine. He develops novel statistical algorithms and software packages to analyze complex data generated by single-cell genomic technologies. These algorithms are applied to data from clinical cancer specimens to elucidate cellular and molecular heterogeneity responsible for disease initiation and progression. He also co-directs the Department of Medicine Single Cell Core which enables investigators to generate and analyze single-cell RNA-seq data from their own studies.”

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: November 6, Location TBD

JAMES FEIGENBAUM

Research Interests: Economic History; Inequality; Intergenerational Mobility; Record Linkage

James Feigenbaum is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University. His primary research interests are at the intersection of economic history and labor economics. Making use of recently digitized and transcribed historical census sources, James studied intergenerational mobility, inequality, the returns to education, and the long-run effects of early twentieth-century public policy and environmental shocks. To construct these new longitudinal data sources, following individuals over many decades in the early 1900s, he developed new machine learning approaches to historical record linkage with a focus on the specific challenges of working with imperfect and noisy historical data. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2016 and joined BU after a one-year postdoc at Princeton University.

Bart Lipman, Chair and Professor, Economics, GRS said: “The Department was very happy to hear of James’ selection as a Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow. He’s a very talented economist bringing machine learning techniques to large and complex datasets in economic history. So I think he will both contribute to and learn from the other excellent researchers at Hariri. The implications for research in economic history and history more broadly are enormous as digitization and careful cleaning of historical records dramatically expand the data available for these areas. These developments are bearing fruit in James’ work and will have huge impacts on the area at large.”

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: January 22, Location TBD

WEN LI

Research Interests: Space Plasma Waves; Earth’s Radiation Belts; Solar Wind Magnetospheric Coupling; Energetic Particle Precipitation; Jupiter’s Magnetosphere and Aurora

Wen Li is an Assistant Professor in the Astronomy Department at Boston University. Her research interests include the generation of various plasma waves and their effects on energetic particle dynamics in the magnetosphere of the Earth and Jupiter, as well as their relation to solar wind activity. She uses computational models to simulate energetic particle dynamics due to wave-particle interactions and is also interested in applying machine learning techniques to specify and predict the state of the space environment by taking full advantage of various satellite data. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Physics, and James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union.

Dan Clemens, Chair and Professor, Astronomy, GRS said: “Professor Wen Li studies the physics of Earth’s radiation belts, particularly wave-particle interactions in the Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetospheres using a combination of satellite data and sophisticated numerical simulations. She is extensively involved in several spacecraft missions including the Van Allen Probes, THEMIS, and Juno. She is keen to apply machine learning techniques to the “big data” recently made available from these multiple spacecraft missions. Her projects are both well-aligned with scientific directions in our department and can help bring new computing methods to other investigations in and beyond Astronomy. We are thrilled that she has been appointed to become a Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow.”

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: November 20, Location TBD

SANAZ MOBASSERI

Research Interests: Labor Market Inequality; Gender; Race; Culture; Emotion; Cognition; Social Network

Sanaz Mobasseri is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Her research investigates how organizational and social network processes shape gender and race differences amongst employees in the workplace. She does this by examining the roles of culture, cognition, and emotion in organizations using field experimental and computational research methodologies. Mobasseri completed her Ph.D. in the Management of Organizations Department at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked in finance in the U.S. and U.K. She also holds a Master of Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Karen Golden-Biddle, Chair and Professor, Organizational Behavior, QST said: “The Management and Organizations Department of the Questrom School of Business is delighted that Professor Sanaz Mobasseri has been selected as a Junior Faculty Fellow of the Hariri Institute. Sanaz is one of our field’s rising stars and a highly valued and respected colleague. In her research, Sanaz uniquely blends field experimental and computational research methodologies to generate an understanding of how organizational and social network processes shape gender and race differences in the workplace. Her innovative and thoughtfully executed work holds significant implications for the workplace of the future as leaders and society grapple with complex human issues of diversity and inclusion.“

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: November 13, Location TBD

ALLYSON SGRO

Research Interests: Multicellular Decision Making; Cell Signaling; Collective Behavior; Information Processing Algorithms

Allyson Sgro is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the College of Engineering. Her research is creating new methods to observe and control cellular behaviors to develop a predictive understanding of how the signals inside and among cells shape group activity. Complex group behaviors—from biofilm formation to wound healing, tissue assembly, or cell development—are determined by communication between individual cells. In the past, technological challenges have prevented the connecting of microscale signaling events inside and between individual cells with the population-wide changes they cause. By identifying how cells communicate to work together in different organisms and contexts, she can design new tools to control this communication and reprogram cell behavior to engineer new functions and optimize human health. Sgro completed her Ph.D. and MS in Chemistry at the University of Washington. She received her BA in Chemistry and Pre-Medical Studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. She is also the recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface for extraordinary early-career interdisciplinary scientists furthering biomedical research.

John A. White, Ph.D., Chair and Professor, Biomedical Engineering, MED said: “I am delighted that the Hariri Institute chose Allyson Sgro as one of its junior faculty fellows. Allyson is an expert in the principles by which biological cells coordinate their behaviors to build functional tissues and organs. This is a critical and understudied problem, absolutely necessary to achieve our goals of building replacement organs and combating diseases like cancers. To attack this challenging task, Allyson has built a broad collaborative network and is using a wide variety of techniques, including applied genetics, long-term imaging, and mathematical theory. She is poised to make a big difference in human health.”

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: October 30, Location TBD

GIANLUCA STRINGHINI 

Research Interests: Identification and mitigation of malware in online and social networks; Mobile and web system security and cyber forensics

Gianluca Stringhini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University, where he co-directs the Security Lab (SeclaBU). His research interest falls in the data-driven approach to better understand malicious activity on the Internet. Through the collection and analysis of large-scale datasets, he develops novel and robust mitigation techniques to make the Internet a safer place, which involves a mix of quantitative analysis, (some) qualitative analysis, machine learning, crime science, and systems design. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2014. He is the recipient of Facebook Secure the Internet Grant, the UCL BEANS Future Leaders in Engineering and Physical Sciences Award and Google Research Award.

Clem Karl, Chair and Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, ECE said: “Gianluca joined ECE in the fall of 2018. His selection as a Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow is a fantastic opportunity and perfect match given his cross-disciplinary focus. Gianluca’s research focus is at the boundaries of computer security and computational social science and he uses data-driven methods to better understand malicious activity on the Internet. These malicious activities are perhaps most well known from the last US election and thus the focus is timely indeed. He is a rising star in this space and has a Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow he will have the opportunity to collaborate seamlessly across multiple domains and maximize his impact.”

Wed@Hariri Talk Date: October 23, Location TBD