Northeastern alumnus Marquis Cabrera deferred enrollment at an Ivy League graduate school after graduating in 2011 with a degree in criminal justice. Instead, he chose to continue developing Foster Skills, a Boston-based nonprofit he started as an undergraduate that supports the city’s foster children.

It’s a personal cause for Cabrera, who grew up in foster care before being adopted as a teen. Now, his hard work and dedication have earned him the recognition of being named one of the region’s top innovators by The Boston Globe.

“The deck is stacked against children in foster care,” the Globe wrote in a profile of Cabrera that ran in the newspaper’s special Globe 100 issue last month. “No one knows that better than Marquis Cabrera, a former foster kid who beat the odds to graduate college. Now he’s trying to help other foster children achieve life success through his nonprofit social enterprise, Foster Skills.”

After growing up in New York City’s foster care system, Cabrera wanted to create an organization that could support children like him and lobby for systemic changes. With those goals in mind, he created Foster Skills, where he served as CEO until January. Cabrera stepped down, he said, to allow enough time for the organization to transition to new leadership as he continued his education.

Foster Skills has worked with some 450 local youth and organized more than 80 workshops focused on teaching life skills. The organization has also established partnerships with like-minded organizations; lobbied for new legislation advocating for education and judicial stability; developed MyHome, a web portal of resources for foster children; and launched the Foster Youth In Action Initiative to share stories of successful foster youth.

At an event at the Massachusetts State House in April, Cabrera and several current Northeastern students lobbied legislators and rallied members of the public to support legislation that would improve the lives of foster children in Massachusetts who age out of the system.

Now a member of the nonprofit organization’s board of directors, Cabrera is navigating a web of opportunity, including graduate school. Cabrera credits his experiential-learning opportunities at the White House, City Year, and the startup Wayfair “for developing the skills and connections to build Foster Skills.”

At 24, Cabrera is the youngest of this year’s crop of 12 leading innovators, who include inventors, CEOs, researchers, and other local luminaries.

“Marquis is truly a superhero for his work in building and supporting families, and inspiring other young people to be change-makers as well,” Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson told the Globe.

While investigating drug-protein interactions at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jay Duffner realized he would need advanced training in his field to be a competitive member of the biotechnology industry.

Duffner turned to Northeastern’s Professional Science Master’s program in Biotechnology, which features a unique approach to graduate education that includes training in business practices in addition to the science and technology courses offered in traditional master’s programs.

“I wanted to keep my ties with industry, and Northeastern provided a good opportunity to gain a master’s, learn more, and to apply what I was learning in the workplace,” said Duffner, who is one of the first graduates of program.

Jim Leung, academic director of the biotechnology PSM program, has seen first-hand the need for qualified job candidates like Duffner throughout his 30 years working in the biopharmaceutical industry. “We always have a great demand for well-trained people,” he said. “It had been quite an effort to fill those positions because the skills are pretty specialized.”

Fifteen years ago, academia took notice, and with the help of funding from the Sloan Foundation, universities established a new kind of graduate program specifically designed to fill that need.

“The Professional Science Master’s degree was designed to be the scientific equivalent of the MBA,” said professor Graham Jones, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. With a significant portion of the nation’s nearly 3 million unfilled jobs spanning the biotechnology industry, biotech PSMs have a unique and important role in today’s economy, he said.

Celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this year, Northeastern’s PSM program in Biotechnology is expanding to the Seattle campus, accepting applications for the fall and has become a model for others around the country. This is thanks in no small part to the efforts of program manager Cynthia Bainton, who last fall received an award from the National Professional Science Master’s Association for her outstanding contributions to the PSM initiative.

Bainton noted that the industry is constantly evolving, and as a result, programs like Northeastern’s need to be flexible and responsive to what’s happening in the real world. For instance, if industry requires job seekers to have expertise in drug product formulation, then programs must adapt their training to meet that need. Northeastern’s program recently revitalized its curriculum for just that reason and now offers three new tracks, including analytical sciences and pharmaceutical technology.

Unique from master’s and PhD programs, 30 percent of the standard PSM curriculum is dedicated to so-called “plus courses,” which train students in everything from leadership and ethics to intellectual property law and tech transfer. At Northeastern, the other 70 percent is spent in the classroom with world-leading academic and industry experts.

But the central component of any PSM is work experience—which aligns strongly with the university’s global leadership in experiential education. At Northeastern, that takes shape through graduate co-op placements, a critical feature that sets Northeastern’s program apart. Leung and Jones agree that Northeastern’s edge lies in its commitment to providing high-quality internship experiences. “We regard ourselves as industry facing,” Jones said. “That’s in our DNA.”

During his second year of the program, Duffner transferred to Momenta pharmaceuticals, where he used his co-op to bring a new set of tools into the company’s repertoire. “I learned how to perform gene expression analyses, something I had never done before,” he said. This effort eventually turned into a platform that nearly every division of the company now makes use of. Today, Duffner works as a senior scientist there, employing a new generation of co-op students from his alma mater.

The success of Northeastern’s program is visible: Every PSM student who applies for a job after graduation receives one. With a unique set of skills unattainable through any other educational program, PSM students are filling the industry’s void, said Leung.

All clinical drugs are intended to go through lengthy and thorough trials before reaching a pharmacist’s shelves. These tests are designed in part to catch any adverse effects of the drug on the patients. But these clinical trials are extremely controlled and the test subjects are cherry picked from the patient pool, according to Nick O’Donnell, a recent graduate of Northeastern’s doctor of pharmacy program. The real world looks a lot different than this, he said.

That’s why O’Donnell, in conjunction with John Devlin, an associate professor of pharmacy practice in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, decided to delve a little deeper into one class of drugs: intravenous sedatives. Because of their systemic action, these drugs have the potential to disrupt processes across the body.

Every time a patient experiences an adverse effect of a drug—be it an increase in heart rate, the development of an infection, a failure in the gastrointestinal track, or anything in between—the attending physician has the option of reporting the event to a central database maintained by the Federal Drug Administration. Because the system is voluntary, O’Donnell said, there are some serious reporter bias problems built in. For instance, if a patient experiences an adverse effect that doesn’t surprise the physician, it’s less likely to be reported.

Still, the database represents the most inclusive collection of wisdom on drug side-effects post-marketing. O’Donnell used this information to perform the most comprehensive examination on the most often used IV sedatives to date. He selected 2,500 anonymous patients from the database, who collectively experienced 6,000 adverse events over an eight-year period from 2004 to 2011.

He looked at the relative incidence of events per organ system, including the neurological, cardiac, respiratory, metabolic, and gastrointestinal systems. He also looked at infection rates.

“No one had looked at which sedatives affect different organ systems the most,” O’Donnell said. Much of what they found was to be expected. But there were a few anomalies that could never have been detected without this kind of search.

For instance, one of the sedatives known to decrease blood pressure and heart rate was also associated with a large incidence of cardiac arrest, something doctors would never have previously been concerned about with this particular drug. Another drug commonly known to affect the GI tract had similarly high rates of respiratory-related events.

O’Donnell presented the work at the Research, Innovation, Scholarship, and Entrepreneurship expo, or RISE, earlier this year and earned an award in the Health Sciences category. “I enjoy this kind of work because I can turn the data I have into something useful for the field,” he said.

Larry J. Merlo, president and CEO of CVS Caremark, said on Tuesday morning at Northeastern’s CEO Breakfast Forum that the challenges presented by America’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape will require innovative solutions that lower costs and improve patient access to quality care.

Merlo said today’s healthcare industry is grappling with challenges ranging from meeting the needs of Baby Boomers to what he called the “epidemic” of patients’ non-adherence to prescription medication schedules. The Affordable Care Act, he added, is constantly introducing new elements into the fold.

“All of the stakeholders in the system including consumers, employers, and hospitals, are experiencing levels of unprecedented change,” said Merlo, the latest keynote speaker at Northeastern’s CEO Breakfast Forum series. President Joseph E. Aoun hosts the events, where leading CEOs share their expertise with audiences of other CEOs and senior executives from the Greater Boston area.

President Joseph E. Aoun, right, greets Larry Merlo, president and CEO of CVS Caremark, on Tuesday morning at Northeastern’s CEO Breakfast Forum. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

CVS Caremark, Merlo explained, is driving many innovative approaches to meet these healthcare challenges, particularly by reinventing pharmacy’s role in the equation. He detailed CVS Caremark’s Pharmacy Advisor Program, which helps patients manage the treatment of chronic diseases through a variety of resources such as counseling services and email notifications. He also pointed to MinuteClinic, CVS Caremark’s retail medical clinics located in select CVS/pharmacy stores nationwide that Merlo said offer convenient, affordable, high-quality care and ease the burden on hospitals treating non-emergency conditions. Launched in 2000, there are now 650 MinuteClinic locations that have collectively treated 15 million patients.

“CVS Caremark is uniquely positioned to help stakeholders navigate the complexities of a changing healthcare system,” said Merlo. He noted that the company’s resources and services are extending the frontlines of care for consumers, helping to alleviate the primary-care physician shortage, closing gaps in care, and improving medication adherence.

In his introductory remarks, Aoun highlighted the longstanding relationship between Northeastern and CVS Caremark, particularly through partnerships in the School of Pharmacy and School of Nursing in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. CVS Caremark currently employs 278 alumni and nearly 700 students have completed co-ops at CVS Caremark since 2002. In addition, 45 pharmacy students from the 2013 graduating class were placed at CVS Caremark for their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences—intensive experiential courses—during their final year in the Doctor of Pharmacy program.

“Northeastern graduates have certainly demonstrated their leadership abilities among our workforce,” Merlo said.

Aoun noted how Northeastern’s innovative approach to higher education through experiential education parallels CVS Caremark’s novel approach to healthcare solutions. “I was struck by the similarities between the two,” he said.

During a question-and-answer session, Jack Reynolds, dean of the School of Pharmacy, asked Merlo to discuss ways in which the school’s curricula could integrate new elements that align with the evolving healthcare field. Merlo pointed to two areas of opportunity: customer interaction and the evolving nature of the pharmacy industry.

Describing the challenges related to customer interaction, Merlo told the story of a MinuteClinic nurse practitioner who noticed a high-school athlete’s heart murmur during a routine physical and directed the family to a specialist. The boy’s mother initially questioned the finding, but the specialist’s later confirmation compelled her to write a warm letter to CVS Caremark lauding the nurse practitioner’s careful attention.

“This is just one story about what is happening out there every day, whether it’s a nurse practitioner or a pharmacist doing wonderful things that ultimately end up saving people’s lives,” Merlo said.

College of Engineering alumnus and tech innovator Michael Sherman is the man behind Northeastern University’s Michael J. and Ann Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education.

Scheduled to launch this fall, the new program’s curriculum is designed to arm engineering undergraduates with the appropriate entrepreneurial skills to successfully pitch and commercialize their innovations. Workshops and courses will be led by Northeastern faculty and innovators from industry.

“We need to ensure that engineering students are able to communicate in the commercial world,” said Sherman, who graduated with a bachelor of science from the College of Engineering in 1968. In some ways, he said, the “commerciality of innovation is more important than the innovation itself.

“It doesn’t matter how good your product is,” he explained. “If you can’t make a business case for its viability then you won’t be able to bring it to market.”

The center complements Northeastern’s commitment to fostering entrepreneurship on campus and will work closely with faculty in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business and IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator.

“Michael’s passion for turning innovative engineers into savvy entrepreneurs resonates deeply with our mission at Northeastern,” said Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. “Our students thrive on infusing their knowledge with real-world experiences. Michael’s support will be instrumental for our engineering students and the sustainability of their inventions.”

Nadine Aubry, dean of the College of Engineering, shares Sherman’s passion. “Engineers create products but without taking those to market, what’s the point? Business considerations need to be an integral part of the engineering design process; otherwise engineers waste time designing products that will never be used,” said Aubry, who met Sherman shortly after she had expressed her vision to introduce entrepreneurship in engineering education as new dean last fall. “Michael and Ann’s investment will allow the college to introduce entrepreneurship in our engineering curriculum at a much larger scale.”

Sherman has 40 years of experience in communications hardware and software development, including wireless applications for military, government, and commercial use. His business, AES Corp., of Peabody, Mass., produces and installs leading-edge security products for organizations and households in more than 130 countries around the world.

Sherman grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and moved to Boston in 1963 to attend Northeastern. He credited co-op with giving him the confidence to excel in the business world. “Gaining experience in the work environment made me realize that I could accomplish the business objectives I desired,” he said. “I have always considered Northeastern integral to my career success.”

This multi-million dollar seed investment is a testament to Sherman’s loyal and ongoing support of his alma mater during the last 25 years. He is grateful to be in a position to give back to Northeastern’s crop of burgeoning engineers. “Engineers and the engineering profession will exist long into the future if they are able to become the commercial engines of innovation,” he said.

Born and raised in New England, Northeastern alumnus Tim Lo often wondered why the region didn’t host its own yearly music festival. That’s why, after returning to his hometown in Maine, he jumped on an opportunity to start something unique, the KahBang Music Festival.

“Bangor has a ton of infrastructure that’s perfect for a festival,” said Lo, who graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He pointed to the city’s transportation, lodging, and natural beauty as its most vital assets.

The fifth annual festival will take place Aug. 8–11 on the newly restored waterfront of the Penobscot River, a five-minute walk from downtown Bangor.

Headliners for this year’s six-stage show include Paper Diamond, The Weeks, and Dr. Dog, but the spotlight is not solely focused on up-and-coming musical acts. The festival also features an assorted lineup of artists and filmmakers. Artistic mediums range from traditional forms like paintings and sculpture, to interactive pieces and performance art. With an audience as diverse as those drawn to KahBang, it’s important to Lo that no fan goes underserved.

“We’re about discovering your next favorite band or artist or filmmaker, we thrive on the concept of discovery,” said Lo. “We’re big advocates for having a balanced lineup with a little something for everyone.”

It’s safe to say KahBang’s business model is working. According to Lo, some 12,000 festivalgoers attended last year’s show. Many of which take advantage of a campsite not far from the festival grounds, where a late night stage will have acts until 3 a.m.

Since the festival’s inception, the majority of its most passionate employees have come from Northeastern’s co-op program, including the three music industry students who are helping Lo plan this summer’s show. He said students looking for experience in event production or festival branding covet the opportunity to work in the live music business.

“My experience at KahBang helped me realize that putting on and booking shows is what I want to be doing,” said Abbey Mahan, a senior on co-op with KahBang for the third consecutive year. “I’m happy just knowing that I was part of putting this festival on for three years. That impact is the best I could have.”

Northeastern alumnus Jessica Bashelor has decided to pursue her longtime passion for fitness and exercise by opening South Boston’s first indoor cycling studio, The Handle Bar.

“In Boston there’s a cult following for spinning, but there’s a small niche of people who have never tried it and are scared of it,” said Bashelor. “Opening this studio in Boston will both expose people to spinning and grow the market. The more that pop up, and the more people that try it, the more they’ll love it.”

After graduating in 2010 with a degree in biology, Bashelor took a job at a startup activewear company, which brought her to studios and gyms across New England and allowed her an inside look into running a fitness business. After eight months at the startup, Bashelor decided it was time to branch out and embrace her own entrepreneurial spirit by starting work on her own fitness studio.

After making the decision to become a certified spin instructor in 2012, Bashelor reached out to IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator, which provided her with networking opportunities, connected her to pro bono legal work, and exposed her to mentors that helped shape the path she ultimately took.

The Handle Bar, which officially opened its doors on June 15, offers an a la carte experience, giving people an opportunity to try spinning on a class-by-class basis rather than make the kind of large financial commitment a typical gym might. Bashelor said she’s brought top-of-the-line equipment, nine of the best instructors Boston has to offer, and a great staff to the 1,700-square-foot studio.

“Big gyms don’t have the incentive or the time to make a spin class what it really can be,” explained Bashelor. “Since we focus on one type of fitness, we’re really able to hone in on the details and make them perfect.”

For the grand opening, The Handle Bar offered 12 free classes over a two-day period, which brought in an impressive amount of interest and a steady stream of regulars who bought multiple-class packs.

“I would love to eventually open a new location, but my immediate goal is to create a strong community at The Handle Bar,” said Bashelor. “I want to become part of the South Boston neighborhood and have everyone feel like this is a haven where they can meet new people, do fun things as a group, and escape from their day-to-day.”

Northeastern alumnus Peter Petrin has been selected as one of the “Top 24 Under 24 Youth Changemakers” by a bi-partisan, youth-led initiative called the Campaign for a Presidential Youth Council. SparkAction, a collaborative, nonprofit journalism and advocacy network, curates the Changemakers series.

Petrin, who graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, is currently in Mississippi teaching mathematics to high school students through the Teach for America program.

Petrin devoted his college career to youth development, with a particular focus on political engagement. He served as a Democracy Coach and director of Northeastern’s chapter of Generation Citizen, a nonprofit that uses an action civics curriculum to teach underrepresented middle– and high-school students how to become effective citizens.

“I had the opportunity to discuss community issues with youth, find out what they saw as the reasons for community disengagement, and talk about what we can do about it,” said Petrin. “It was a great chance to focus on the issues I find important and help youth create solutions to the problems they saw.”

In 2012, Petrin was elected president of Northeastern’s Student Government Association. The appointment gave him the chance to put into practice the skills he had been coaching for the past few years.

His proudest accomplishment as SGA president came in the fall of 2012. It was then that he spearheaded the NUVOTES initiative, which focused on getting college students to invest in the future of the Greater Boston community and become stakeholders in the democratic process.

“We worked on fostering a campus environment in which students were educated on local policy issues,” said Petrin. “It was a fun opportunity to bring together different areas of campus that don’t usually collaborate to work together to accomplish one goal: elevating the power of student voice.”

Both SparkAction and The Campaign for a Presidential Youth Council focus on enhancing the student voice and view youth as vital stakeholders in the democratic process, which directly aligns with Petrin’s longtime passions. The recognition is a fitting distinction, and one that Petrin takes humbled pride in. “It’s definitely an honor,” he said, “and affirms the importance of working to elevate youth voices, and all voices in our democracy.”

Business pioneer and Northeastern alumnus Roger Marino has once again stepped forward to invest in his beloved alma mater by making a multimillion dollar gift to support the ambitious goals of the university’s historic Empower campaign. His passion for Northeastern’s experiential-learning model and for its unprecedented momentum under the leadership of President Joseph E. Aoun is the driver behind Marino’s latest gift.

“President Aoun has taken Northeastern to new heights,” Marino said. “The university’s future looks bright.”

He credited Northeastern’s co-op program with giving him the confidence to succeed in the fast-paced business world. “I became very comfortable interacting with my colleagues because I was knowledgeable about how I should act in a professional setting,” he said, noting his experiential-learning opportunities with Raytheon and Sylvania Lighting. “Co-op helped me understand the inner-working of different types of corporations so that they weren’t alien to me when I graduated from Northeastern.” Marino’s investment will help future generations of students experience similarly rewarding professional experiences through co-op.

Marino graduated with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering in 1961; received an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 1996; and was named a lifetime trustee emeritus in 2009. His $2 million investment is the latest from Marino who has been a loyal supporter of Northeastern for the last 20 years, giving back to the university for initiatives focused on health and education.

“Roger epitomizes the impact Northeastern has had on many of our graduates,” said President Aoun. “Just as his education was transformative for him, Roger’s enduring commitment to Northeastern has impacted countless members of our community.”

His gift in the early 1990s funded the Marino Recreation Center, which opened in 1996 on Huntington Avenue. “I was really bowled over when I saw it at night, all lit up against the Boston background,” he once said of his first visit to the Marino Center. “That was just amazing.”

Marino is also a benefactor of the Torch Scholars Program, a seven-year-old initiative that supports first-generation, low-income students who exhibit potential in nontraditional ways. Based on data from the first two graduating classes, 100 percent of scholars are either in graduate school or employed in their fields.

“I can’t believe how smart these kids are,” Marino said. “They’re extraordinary.”

Marino grew up in Revere, Mass., and arrived at Northeastern in the fall of 1956. His father immigrated to America from Italy in the early 20th century and worked as a tailor at a factory not far from campus.

Marino and fellow College of Engineering alumnus Richard Egan cofounded EMC in 1979, transforming the Hopkinton, Mass.-based global data storage company from a startup into a multinational corporation with 40,000 employees.

He retired from EMC in 1992 to pursue business ventures related to his lifelong interest in sports and entertainment. He is the executive producer of five feature films and the former principal owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League.

Despite difficult economic times, Northeastern University has continued to surpass its fundraising goals, securing $63.3 million in new gifts and pledges.

Since 2005, Northeastern’s annual fundraising average has tripled. Support from all members of the community—alumni, students, parents, friends, and university partners—has been integral to this momentum. And undergraduate alumni played a key role during the last fiscal year, with an impressive 13,103 donors making gifts—a record for Northeastern.

These gifts are fueling the launch of Empower: The Campaign for Northeastern University, a comprehensive fundraising drive to secure $1 billion in support of students, faculty, and research innovation. The campaign, announced in May, will amplify Northeastern’s strengths in creativity and entrepreneurship, and redefine the university’s leadership on a global scale.

“Northeastern has a bold vision for the future and the philanthropic support of our community and friends give life to this vision,” said Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. “Our momentum is unprecedented. It is our goal to strengthen it for generations to come by remaining at the leading edge of research and continuing to attract world-class students and faculty.”

Consistent with its global outlook, Northeastern followed the Empower campaign’s official kick-off in Boston with celebrations in London and Paris in July. Nearly 150 members of the university’s international community gathered to celebrate the campaign’s public phase—the point at which, with significant funding in hand, an institution calls upon every constituent for support. Northeastern seeks to raise $500 million from generous donors, and $500 million from corporations, university alliances, and government.

“At Northeastern, these funds are highly interdependent and synergistic,” said Diane N. MacGillivray, senior vice president for university advancement. “A donor’s gift may support a faculty member, who brings in grants—which ignite discoveries, inspiring additional gifts. Philanthropy has the power to change lives—both of those who give and those who benefit.”

During the coming months, Northeastern will continue hosting national and global Empower events. On Nov. 15–16, the greater university community will convene family-friendly campaign celebrations during Homecoming Weekend. Guests will have the opportunity to experience the future of Northeastern through interactive exhibits showcasing the innovation, entrepreneurship, and research of the university’s exceptional students, faculty, and alumni.

Empower campaign supporters are already making a remarkable impact across disciplines at Northeastern. They have established a pioneering partnership with the Ocean Genome Legacy Center of New England Biolabs to house a renowned collection of marine genome samples; the innovative Michael J. and Ann Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education; and the Northeastern University-​​Boston Ballet Education Program, a groundbreaking educational program to help professional ballet dancers earn undergraduate and graduate degrees to prepare them for careers after dancing.

As technology continues to become more integrated into everyday life, Northeastern’s School of Nursing in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences held a symposium Wednesday night to discuss how nurses can take advantage of information technology to improve patient care.

The symposium, titled “New Healthcare: How to Nurse IT” and held in the Raytheon Amphitheater, also highlighted how Northeastern is preparing nursing students to become leaders in their field.

Hoda Sayed-Friel, a 1980 graduate of Northeastern’s former College of Pharmacy and Allied Health, served as the keynote speaker. For the last 25 years she has worked for MEDITECH, a leading software vendor in the healthcare informatics industry, and is currently the company’s executive vice president of strategy and marketing.

“Hoda is a remarkable example of a Northeastern alumna who exemplifies the highest standards of her industry and makes every effort to give back to Bouvé on a continuous basis. We are so grateful for her support and leadership,” said Terry Fulmer, dean of the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

Sayed-Friel reflected on the synergy between new technology and healthcare, and how nurses can respond to and take advantage of changes taking place in this area. These changes include how healthcare providers will be reimbursed for hospice care and how patients are increasingly informing themselves about their health conditions.

“Patients are becoming more educated, and they are asking better questions,” Sayed-Friel told the attendees. “And they are going to be involved, which is a good thing. We need to take time to answer those questions.”

Whether healthcare professionals are documenting preventative measures, such as flu vaccines, or engaging patients who have returned home after treatment, Sayed-Friel said technology should be part of that process. She even encouraged healthcare professionals in the audience to use new communication methods like texting and web messaging to remind them to take their medication.

“If you don’t go to them they are going to be coming back to you,” Sayed-Friel said, referencing the need to address patient compliance to prevent unnecessary and costly readmissions.

The symposium was a precursor to the School of Nursing’s 50th anniversary celebration on Nov. 2. Carole Kenner, dean of the School of Nursing, noted that health informatics and healthcare delivery has many stakeholders, including higher education, industry, nurse clinicians, and other healthcare professions.

“The technology revolution is rapidly changing how care is delivered,” Kenner said. “As Ms. Sayad-Friel illustrated, we must embrace technology. As educators we must ensure that are students continue to make care human while using data to plan and provide care.”

Northeastern and MEDITECH have created a partnership to integrate technology into nursing education, which includes developing a first-of-its-kind curriculum for disease managers and case managers.

“It’s collaborations between industry and education like the one Northeastern University and MEDITECH share that advance the innovation and integration of IT into all phases of healthcare,” said Laura Mylott, a clinical professor in the School of Nursing.

Mylott added that the School of Nursing recognized early on that health IT would play an essential role in practice education and its principals and concepts are integrated in both the undergraduate and graduate nursing curriculum. This includes electronic documentation and the use of simulation lessons to train nursing students.

“The partnership between Northeastern and MEDITECH has been enormously productive in terms of advancing educational opportunities of high fidelity simulation,” Mylott said.

Northeastern alumni Josh Trautwein and Daniel Clarke renovated an old school bus into a mobile farmers market to serve Boston neighborhoods that lack access to health food. Fresh Truck opened for business in July, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. We asked Clarke to reflect on their experience founding Fresh Truck and how Northeastern helped them along the way.

Inspired by working at a small startup after graduation, Northeastern alumna Jessica Bashelor decided to try her own hand at entrepreneurship. This summer, she made her dream a reality and opened South Boston’s first indoor cycling studio, The Handle Bar. Jessica shared with us some thoughts about how she got to this point and how Northeastern made an impact on her entrepreneurial path.

When Asanterabi Malima was 15, his father suffered a fatal heart attack at 57. He had been an accomplished scholar and minister in the Tanzanian government. “Everyone in my family is in politics,” said Malima, PhD’13, a graduate of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and now a postdoctoral researcher in Northeastern’s Center for High Rate Nanomanufacturing.

They all expected he’d keep with the family business, but his father’s early passing set Malima on a different course. “My passion was always to develop some kind of technology to diagnose diseases earlier, to come up with something that wouldn’t save my father, since he’d already passed away, but may save somebody else’s parent,” Malima said.

In 2012, this vision became a reality when he founded Biolom with fellow Northeastern alumni Cihan Yilmaz, PhD’13, and Jaydev Upponi, PhD’12, graduates of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, respectively. They started the biotechnology firm to commercialize a device they had developed at the center under the guidance of its director Ahmed Busnaina, the William Lincoln Smith Chair and professor in the College of Engineering.

Their device is smaller than a pinhead and has the capacity to diagnose a variety of diseases at their earliest stages.

The device developed by Malima and his colleagues at Biolom is the size of a pin and has the capacity to detect disease at its earliest stages. Photo by Casey Bayer.

Malima’s work has received significant recognition. In June, as part of Massachusetts’ celebration of Africa Week, Gov. Deval Patrick presented him with the Entrepreneurial Award, which honored his contribution to the state’s economic well-being and vitality. But not only does Biolom promise to improve the health and job prospects of the state’s residents, it also has the potential to cure disease in Malima’s native Tanzania, where cervical cancer is predominant.

Biolom’s device consists of four distinct areas, each of which can be optimized to detect a specific biomarker—such as those that indicate different types of cancer or cardiovascular disease. With cervical cancer, a device like this could be invaluable for its ability to quickly and inexpensively turn around diagnoses when the cancer is first taking root.

The team originally developed the device to detect colorectal cancer, but it pivoted to focus on liver cancer after an exhaustive field survey of clinicians, researchers, and members of the pharmaceutical industry.

“In more than 50 percent of the patients that have tumors, they are missed” Malima said. That’s because the biomarker that clinicians typically use to monitor for the disease doesn’t reach meaningful concentrations until a tumor has grown to significant size. “Usually once somebody develops symptoms, he or she only has about nine to 12 months to live,” Malima explained.

But there are other approaches to detecting liver cancer, namely two other less-often used biomarkers. The team decided to reconfigure its device to be able to detect all three biomarkers simultaneously. The approach, Malima explained, is expected to bring clinical sensitivity from 50 to 90 percent when the combination of biomarkers is used.

Starting a company has brought with it its own set of unique challenges, quite distinct from those of any engineering problem that Malima has yet encountered. Along the way, Biolom has received support from the Center for Research Innovation, the Health Sciences Entrepreneurs program, and IDEA—Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator—which provided mentoring as well as gap funding to support the clinical validation studies that are now underway.

“I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur,” Malima said. He expected to be the brains in the background, quietly tinkering away at large firms like Toshiba, where he worked for several months before pursuing his graduate education at Northeastern. Instead he’s working at the cutting edge of an industry that promises to change the face of disease diagnosis as we know it.

His father would be proud.

Image source: http://www.jeetbanerjee.com/50-great-quotes-about-entrepreneurship/

This guest post was written by Joe Ciccolo, a 2004 Criminal Justice graduate and an accomplished expert in building enterprise risk management functions.  He now serves as a financial regulatory consultant for various Rotary International service projects. 

There’s no question that the current employment landscape is extremely challenging for today’s job seekers. While employers have trimmed spending to the bone and large-scale layoffs have subsided, hiring remains anemic. Organizations positioned for growth are very deliberate and highly selective when it comes to interviewing and retaining candidates for employment.

This so-called “employer’s market” continues to disproportionately affect college graduates, as employers remain committed to measuring qualification in terms of years of experience. Not surprisingly, the popular refrain I hear from so many recent graduates is ‘how can I get a job that requires experience, if I can’t get any experience?’ It’s a question that I asked myself many a time while submitting 100s of applications in the months following my graduation from Northeastern in 2004. How I wish I knew then what I know!

The answer to this question is simple…create your own job. After all, experience is not the product of formal employment, but rather the demonstration of one’s ability to identify and solve problems, and effectively manage projects.

To accomplish this, I advise those I mentor to seek out and approach an organization that has a particular need that would benefit from their unique skill set. For example, the marketing graduate might begin by exploring the collateral of various non-profit and civic groups within her community. After identifying a potential need, say for example brochures for an upcoming charity golf tournament, she could then approach the group and offer to provide her expertise in exchange for formal recognition. Such an endeavor would not only provide much needed project management experience and items for her professional portfolio, but would also put her in a position to meet business owners and other influential parties. Similarly, a computer science student might offer to create a website and social media presence for a local organization in exchange for his credentials appearing at the bottom of the homepage or recognition at an upcoming fundraising dinner.

The opportunities are limitless, and applicable to all graduates irrespective of major. All it takes is individual motivation and to the willingness to put yourself out there. Non-profit and civic organizations are always looking for motivated individuals to share their vocational talents. In so doing, individuals will have the opportunity to display in demand project management and problem solving skills, while giving something back to their community.

Continued best wishes to members of the Class of 2013 and those following in their footsteps. Go Huskies!

About the author:

Joe Ciccolo graduated Magna Cum Laude from Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice in 2004. He’s an accomplished expert in building enterprise risk management functions, including the fraud prevention department of a publicly traded financial services firm and most recently the anti-money laundering department of a large online bank. Mr. Ciccolo is a Certified Fraud Examiner and Anti-Money Laundering Certified Associate. He serves as a financial regulatory consultant for various Rotary International service projects. 

Mr. Ciccolo can be reached via email at joeciccolo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @AML_Report  

Note: Views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Ciccolo and do not necessarily represent those of his employer.

Madison Flashenburg flipped through the Book of Names, scanning the 6-foot-high volume in search of her surname, her ancestors, her blood.

She expected to find a few Flashenburgs among the 4.2 million known Holocaust victims listed in the oversize book, the centerpiece of a new exhibit displayed in Block 27 of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp. But to her surprise—to her horror—she found 20. Not one, not two, but 20.

“It was jarring to see my name on those pages,” recalls Flashenburg, MA’14. “It made my experience much more personal.”

Flashenburg, who graduated in the spring with a master’s in history, visited the exhibit in July, during the tail end of her monthlong trip to Poland. She traveled there with an octet of her peers, graduate students, and doctoral candidates who had been chosen to participate in the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellows Program.

The program gave the scholars in training the opportunity to study the Holocaust in situ and the experience—listening to the testimonies of Holocaust survivors; visiting Oskar Schindler’s factory; touring Krakow’s Jewish quarter—moved Flashenburg one step closer to realizing her dream of becoming a curator of a Holocaust museum.

As a 17-year-old high school student, Flashenburg participated in the March of the Living, an annual program in which thousands of teens walk silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp built during World War II. “Ever since then,” Flashenburg says, “I’ve known I’ve wanted to work in Holocaust education.”

Her goal to keep the Holocaust story alive by working as a museum curator started to take shape during her undergraduate years at Florida State University, when she conducted research and helped install exhibits at the Florida Holocaust Museum. But it was her course work and internships as a graduate student at Northeastern that solidified her career ambition. As a public history expert in training, she completed two directed studies, including an analysis of the American responses to the Holocaust, and interned at the New England Archives of the American Jewish Historical Society, where she conducted historical research and processed archival collections.

“Preservation of survivor history is invaluable,” says Flashenburg, noting that her museum experience in Poland honed her talent for telling the stories behind Holocaust artifacts. “My generation is so lucky to be able to learn from survivors, but it’s scary to think that future generations will not get to hear that first-hand testimony.”

In Krakow, Flashenburg listened to an Auschwitz survivor recount her experience as one of Josef Mengele’s human experiments. The German physician and SS officer, who later fled to South America, attempted to change the color of her eyes from brown to blue by injecting them with chemicals. Her eyes swelled shut and she developed festering wounds. In Warsaw, another woman recalled how her family had hidden a Jewish girl in their home and passed her off as their cousin. Improbably, the two women reconnected in Israel some 20 years later and remain good friends today.

“This,” Flashenburg says, “is one of the happiest endings you can get.”

When Ryan McGill wants to clear his mind, he’ll mount his surfboard and ride some waves.

Over the past 20 years, McGill, DMSB’04, has surfed many of the world’s most picturesque beaches, looking for the perfect breaks and swells. One of his favorite surfing spots is Lagundri Beach on Nias Island in Indonesia, where, he says, “the waves are so flawless, so mechanical.”

“There is no other feeling in the world that can compare to surfing,” says McGill, who grew up playing tennis, soccer, and basketball, but ultimately found his athletic calling in the deep blue. “When I’m out on the ocean, I’m totally relaxed.”

His most frequent destination is Jenness Beach in Rye, New Hampshire, where he co-founded the Summer Sessions Surf Shop in 2002 with his younger brother Tyler. The family-owned and operated shop boasts an impressive selection of boards, wetsuits, and gear, and offers surf lessons to kids and adults.

Since the shop’s inception some 12 years ago, McGill estimates that he and his staff have helped more than 1,000 students find the joy in surfing. One of those students is Denise Garcia, the Sadeleer Research Faculty Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern University.

Ryan McGill hangs out on the beach with one of the shop’s student surfers.

Garcia started surfing in the spring of 2013, when her sister signed her up for a lesson at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, the international mecca for surfing, swimming, and sunbathing. A few months later, her friend introduced her to Summer Sessions, where she is currently taking up to four lessons per week.

“Surfing makes me feel like I’m flying,” says Garcia, who finds her new favorite sport to be relaxing, even rejuvenating.  “It’s very calming and has helped me focus on the mounting academic obligations I have all over the world.”

For her, Jenness Beach is the perfect training ground for the fledgling surfer and McGill is the quintessential entrepreneur, a creative, yet customer-centric businessman. McGill, for his part, says he honed his business acumen at Northeastern, where he studied finance and learned the ins and outs of the sales pitch.

In 2003, he was working on co-op as a broker’s assistant at A.G. Edwards, a financial services holding company that was later acquired by Wells Fargo Advisers. His daily duties included making up to 300 cold calls per day, a responsibility that has played no small part in preparing him for his job at the shop. “If I could handle making hundreds of cold calls every day,” he says, “I could handle selling surfboards to excited kids.”

Today, Summer Sessions is one of the largest surf shop in New Hampshire’s Seacoast Region, and the McGills have continued to build their brand and expand their entrepreneurial reach. After years of planning, Ryan and Tyler have ventured into the restaurant business, opening up The Juicebox, a high-end juice, smoothie, and coffee bar in North Hampton.

“I’m lucky to work with my brother,” says McGill, whose typical 12-hour days at the shop tend to fly by when he’s having fun with Tyler, his employees, and their customers. “We have our normal, brotherly quarrels, but within five minutes one of us is saying, ‘Hey, want to go surf?’”

Mary Bonauto, an alumna of North­eastern University’s School of Law and a pioneer in the fight for marriage equality, has been named to the 2014 Class of MacArthur Fellows. The prestigious award, which is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foun­da­tion, includes a $625,000 “genius grant.”

The MacArthur Fellows Program aims to stoke the creativity of talented individuals by allowing them the freedom to follow their innovative visions without stipulations or reporting requirements. More than 900 people with a track record of high achievement in a diverse range of fields have been selected to receive the award since the program’s inception in 1981.

Bonauto, L’87, is the law school’s second graduate to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. The first recipient, Marie-Therese Connolly, L’84, received the award in 2011 to advance her work to combat elder abuse and mistreatment.

Bonauto has spent the majority of her professional career promoting liberty and equality for all. In particular, she has worked to secure marriage equality for same-sex couples and the legal protections marriage affords.

“Gay people share a common humanity with everyone else,” said Bonauto, who has been called the Thurgood Marshall of the gay rights movement. “Over the past 10 years, we have seen every demographic move toward greater support for marriage equality, with more and more people standing up for what they truly believe in.”

Bonauto has worked as the civil rights project director at Gay & Les­bian Advo­cates & Defenders since 1990, focusing on impact litigation for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. In 1999, she waged the legal effort to secure marriage in Vermont, which led to the nation’s first civil unions law. In 2003, she won the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, providing a roadmap for future litigation.

At a panel discussion at Northeastern last fall, Bonauto reflected on the per­sonal and polit­ical ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the state’s same-​​sex mar­riage ruling, saying that the four judges who voted in favor of legalizing gay marriage were censured for their decision. “They real­ized they would take a pounding for standing for their prin­ci­ples,” she said, “but these same prin­ci­ples caused people to rally for this deci­sion, which lifted up gay people in this state and across the nation.”

Eight years after same-sex couples began marrying in Massachusetts, Bonauto led GLAD’s chal­lenges to the con­sti­tu­tion­ality of Sec­tion 3 of the Defense Of Marriage Act, which defined mar­riage as a legal union between one man and one woman. Her work served as the model for United States v. Windsor, the landmark case that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down DOMA in 2013.

Jeremy Paul, dean of Northeastern’s School of Law, praised Bonauto for her unwavering commitment to breaking down legal barriers based on sexual orientation. “Bonauto is well-known on our campus as a courageous, irrepressible, and brilliant lawyer who has been the architect of many legal victories along the road to full equality for all our citizens,” he said. “Her work has helped us all see that when it comes to legal recognition love should truly know no bounds.”

In addition to her considerable achievements as a civil rights lawyer, Bonauto is a past co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee and currently serves on the Honorary Board of the Boston Chapter of the American Constitution Society.

Bonauto earned her bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College in 1983 and her juris doctor from Northeastern’s law school just four years later. She completed four co-ops while at Northeastern, working for two law firms; the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General; and Greater Boston Legal Services, which provides free legal assistance and representation on civil matters.

Each of her experiential learning opportunities at Northeastern enabled her to examine the legal system from a different vantage point, giving her a rare perspective on the many ways in which the law can be used for good. “My co-op experiences have been invaluable to the work I’ve done at GLAD,” Bonauto said. “We’ve been very eager to collaborate with nonprofits, advocacy groups, and legal services organizations to help us move our initiatives forward.”

Bonauto’s long-term goals include eradicating HIV and ending LGBT discrimination in both the workplace and the classroom. “Achieving marriage equality does not mean our work is done,” she said. “Marriage equality will resolve the issue of gay marriage, but it will not ensure that LGBT students are safe in schools or LGBT employees are not discriminated on the job.”

Dan Papaleo arrived at Northeastern in 2010 with his major undeclared, but ultimately he choose a career path in supply chain management after taking the concentration’s introduction course in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business.

Now in his final year at Northeastern, Papaleo, DMSB’15, is in search of a full-time job in that field. On Thursday afternoon that search brought him to Northeastern’s biannual career fair in the Cabot Center, where he and more than 2,000 students arrived ready to seek out full-time, internship, and co-op opportunities and network with representatives from 262 companies.

One of the companies Papaleo was eager to connect with was Johnson & Johnson. “It was a very positive interaction,” Papaleo said. “Hopefully it will lead to a career opportunity for me.”

The event is sponsored by Northeastern’s Department of Career Development, which has received national recognition for its career services. The second career fair of the academic year is scheduled for February 2015.

Duy Le, E’15, said he was looking to connect with a variety of different companies, especially ones that allowed him to delve into areas beyond his chemical engineering concentration.

Throughout the day, many students huddled with their peers to review the long list of companies and decide where they would go next. Companies from a range of industries were represented, including information systems, food, finance, travel, and defense.

“You really have to do your research beforehand because there are a lot of companies here,” said Bala Gopalakrishnan, MS’16.

He and Janvi Charkraborty, MS’16, were at the fair in search of summer internship opportunities in information systems and both spoke with Deloit and Kayak, among other companies. “They were all very informative,” Charkraborty said.

A number of Northeastern alumni were at the fair as well representing the companies where they now work. John Falkowski, E’08, was at the fair with Vermont-based Keurig Green Mountain, where he is a design engineer.

Falkowski said his company was looking to connect with students searching for full-time employment or co-op, and he was very impressed about the caliber of students with whom he’d spoken.

“We’ve gotten a lot of interest and a lot of good questions,” Falkowski said. “We find great talent in the students here. We use the co-op students as extensions of our teams, and the students really enjoy what they do.”

The Northeastern community commemorated the Curry Student Center’s 50th anniversary on Tuesday night by opening time capsules from 1964 and 1994, unveiling a new gallery exhibit highlighting five decades of historical milestones, and celebrating the building’s rich history.

The captivated crowd of university leaders, students, faculty, staff, and alumni waited patiently in the indoor quad for the contents of the time capsules to be revealed, which happened shortly after 7 p.m. Here are some of the highlights from the time capsules and the rest of the evening:

1994 time capsule:
A map of the campus tunnel system; an admissions brochure; student organization T-shirts; a Homecoming megaphone; a course catalog; the commencement program from the springtime celebration in which former U.S. President Bill Clinton served as the keynote speaker; a Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority stuffed moose; newspapers; and a piece of railing from the newly renovated student center.

1964 time capsule:
A U.S. proof coin set from 1964; a laminated 1963 dollar bill and 1898 silver coin, marking the year Northeastern was founded; a brochure on Northeastern’s co-op program; the President’s Annual Report; an aerial photo of campus; blueprints for the new student center; a Boston Globe newspaper with the headline “Dr. King Will Lead Protest March on Boston;” pictures of the student center’s cornerstone being cemented; and a Boston cultural events guide.

Hoda Abou-Jamra, PAH’97, left, and former SGA president Ryan Fox, E’11, open the 1994 time capsule. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

Speakers reflect on the Curry Student Center’s legacy:
Laura Wankel, Northeastern’s vice president for student affairs, noted that the student center is the college campus’ “unifying force,” a gathering place whose environment promotes student success.

“Through its commitment to social, cultural, and recreational programming, its many offerings create the mosaic that enriches and empowers student life—the place where student growth, exploration, leadership, and reflection are nourished. At Northeastern, we embrace the notion of learning happening through experience. The work of the Curry Student Center is focused on providing the environment within which students have a wonderful laboratory to learn things about themselves and others.”

Noah Carville, SSH’15, president of Northeastern’s Student Government Association, echoed Wankel in reflecting on how the Curry Student Center fosters a strong sense of community on campus, one that is constantly being shaped by students’ needs. “It has empowered us to pursue our passions professionally, personally, and academically,” said Carville, adding that since its inception students have played instrumental roles in shaping the center.

Hoda Abou-Jamra, PAH’97, recalled attending the celebratory event in 1996 in which Northeastern renamed the building in honor of former President John A. Curry: “Now in 2014, I’m back on this stage. I feel like I’m back home.”

Abou-Jamra said her time in the Curry Student Center “really shaped my life, helped me develop skills, and contributed to my success.” While at Northeastern, she also played an integral role in creating the International Student Center. The center, which was then located on the 4th floor of Ell Hall, worked hand-in-hand with the International Student and Scholar Institute although they were separate entities until merging a few years ago.

Rini Ghosh, PhD’16, president of the Graduate Student Government and a doctoral candidate in the law and public policy program, reflected on how the GSG was formed two decades ago following a student referendum borne out of graduate students wanting more out of the Curry Student Center. It was originally named the Graduate Student Association.

“The Curry Student Center has a lot of meaning to graduate students, and that’s something we should celebrate,” she said, noting that the GSC received a new office in the student center last year.

New gallery exhibit explores Northeastern and U.S. history:
After the time capsules were opened, Northeastern unveiled a new gallery exhibit in the CSC indoor quad. There visitors can explore milestone moments in the university’s history and major U.S. and world events that coincided with those moments, beginning with the 1960s. SCOUT, the student-led design studio, created the exhibit, which will be on display until Homecoming in November.

A new gallery exhibit highlights Northeastern’s history over the past 50 years. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

Curry Student Center’s history:
The building’s history dates back to the early 1960s, when Northeastern announced a program calling for the expansion of the student cafeteria, lounge, and bookstore located in Carl S. Ell Hall to create a student center. The project kicked into high gear when students chose to tax themselves to raise funds for a dedicated student center. This led to the building’s construction, completed in 1964 and from which campus life grew and student groups emerged. A year later, Northeastern dedicated the student center to President Carl S. Ell.

The student center was redesigned in 1994, renamed the Curry Student Center in 1996 in honor of President Curry, and underwent its most recent series of renovations in 2012.

What’s next?:
Tuesday night’s celebration served as the first of two major events commemorating the Curry Student Center’s 50th anniversary. The second is Saturday, Nov. 15 during Homecoming Weekend, when the 2014 Homecoming King, Queen, and Mayor of Huntington Avenue will be crowned and Northeastern’s 2014 time capsule will be created. It will be opened in 2064 for the Curry Student Center’s 100th anniversary.

For more information about the “golden anniversary” festivities, visit northeastern.edu/csi/cscturns50/.