Two COE Students Awarded Goldwater Scholarships
Chemical engineering and biochemistry student Cameron Young, E’22, and electrical engineering student Spencer Lake Jacobs-Skolik, E’22, were awarded the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship, the United States’ premier award for outstanding young researchers in STEM fields.
Main photo: Cameron Young, left, has spent the last two semesters on co-op at Boston Children’s Hospital on a project tracking the emergence of multisystem inflammatory syndrome. Spencer Jacobs-Skolik, right, is pursuing a career in biosignal processing—and already has two scientific publications under his belt. Photos by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University
Spencer Lake Jacobs-Skolik, E’22
Major: Electrical Engineering; minors in Biomedical Engineering and Mathematics
Hometown: Weston, Connecticut
Career Goal: I plan to earn an MD/PhD and conduct research in machine learning and signal processing for neuroengineering as well as teach at a postgraduate level.
Mentors: Eugene Tunik, Deniz Erdogmus, Dana Brooks
Spencer Lake Jacobs-Skolik aims to improve the lives of people with neurological diseases by advancing research and treatment at every level: from investigating the basic electrophysiological biomarkers of these conditions, to developing neurostimulation-based interventional measures, to prototyping and testing rehabilitative and assistive devices based on this knowledge. He discovered the practical implications of his work in coding and signal processing through his work with Enabling Engineering, a Northeastern student-led group that designs and builds devices to empower individuals with disabilities. His research experiences have included work on advanced prosthetic hands, analysis of M-wave and Hoffman reflex behavior to elucidate the locus of motor deficits, prediction of muscle activation for motor control, and the development of a novel machine learning algorithm to detect the features of the cortical silent period, a distinctive EMG characteristic often used to diagnose neuromotor disorders, working across labs with mentors and collaborators Gene Tunik, Deniz Erdogmus, and Dana Brooks of the Movement Neuroscience Laboratory, the Cognitive Systems Lab, and the Biomedical Signals Processing Lab, respectively. Jacobs-Skolik plans to pursue an MD/PhD specializing in electrodiagnostic medical research so that he can lead the translation of basic research into clinical applications for patients with neurological conditions.
Read Spencer Lake Jacobs-Skolik’s full story: Research Experiences Led to Goldwater Award
Cameron Young, E’22
Major: Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry
Hometown: Medfield, Massachusetts
Career Goal: M.D./Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. I aspire to develop the next generation of personalized cancer therapeutics.
Mentors: Giovanni Traverso, Ambika Bajpayee, Adrienne Randolph
Cameron Young aims to be at the forefront of personalized medicine, pioneering the next generation of cancer therapeutics that will be customized to each patient’s unique disease physiology. In the Northeastern lab of Assistant Professor Ambika Bajpayee, Young has studied the role of crosslinks called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) in the development of osteoarthritis. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, meanwhile, he has been involved in a number of projects, including researching ways to protect mucosal tissue from damage during radiotherapy; developing a machine learning model to predict drug-transporter interactions in the gastrointestinal tract; and investigating therapeutic candidates for acute respiratory distress syndrome. Currently, Young is managing the database of over 1,700 patient case reports of acute COVID-19 infection at Boston Children’s Hospital as part of a CDC-funded sentinel surveillance study at over 70 pediatric hospitals. In order to take the latest breakthroughs from the bench-top to the bedside, Cameron aspires to earn an MD/PhD and run a laboratory at an academic teaching hospital.
Read Cameron Young’s full story: A Future in Cancer Research
Related Story: Goldwater Scholarships go to 3 undergrads immersed in promising science, by Allie Nicodemo – contributor, News @ Northeastern