Dr. John Olawepo, Associate Clinical Professor in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the Academy of Public Health at the West Africa Institute of Public Health. The Academy addresses the limited human resource capacity for public health in West Africa and is headquartered in Nigeria with members across Africa. Dr. Olawepo’s work focuses primarily on chronic illness in people living with HIV, but also includes global health, child health, and obesity. Dr. Olawepo is also a faculty scholar for the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern.

Dr. Alexa Carlson, Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacy and Health Systems Sciences in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, has been awarded the Adult Medicine Practice and Research Networks Mentoring Award by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP). This award honors ACCP members who have demonstrated excellence in mentoring students, residents, fellows, and others in the pharmacy profession with consistent and substantive contributions. Dr. Carlson specializes in internal medicine and maintains a practice site in adult internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Dr. Juner Zhu, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in the College of Engineering, has been honored with the Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship from the Electrochemical Society (ECS). This fellowship requests proposals from young professors and scholars pursuing innovative electrochemical research in green energy technology. Professor Zhu will investigate non-destructive techniques to identify common degradation modes in commercial Li-ion cells through the fellowship. Professor Zhu’s work explores electro-chemo-mechanics, energy storage systems, scientific machine learning, battery sustainability, and safety. He is the co-founder and executive director of the Center for Battery Sustainability.

Dr. Stephanie Noble, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Bioengineering and the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, has been awarded the Early-Career Rigor Champions Prize from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in recognition of her and her team’s work on more reliable and valid neuroimaging studies. Professor Noble’s research explores the intersection of data science, neuroscience, and open science with a focus on statistical and computational tools to facilitate more precise human neuroscience inference and prediction. Professor Noble is the leader of the NeuroPRISM Lab at Northeastern.

Dr. Alisa Lincoln, Professor of Health Sciences and Sociology in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities and Bouvé College of Health Sciences, has received the Steve Banks Mentoring Award from the American Public Health Association. The Steve Banks Mentoring Award is bestowed annually to recognize outstanding mentoring. Professor Lincoln’s research examines questions related to social factors and their relationships with mental health and mental health services. In addition to her duties as faculty, Professor Lincoln is the Director of the Institute for Health and Social Justice Research at Northeastern.

Dr. Bahram Shafai, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, has been presented with the lifetime achievement award from the Integrated Systems Design and Technology (ISDT) conference, organized by the Institute of Knowledge Based Systems & Knowledge Management at the University of Siegen, for his contributions to control systems engineering. In addition to control systems, Professor Shafai’s research interests include positive dynamic systems, fault detection, and robotics. Professor Shafai has been the director of the ECE Capstone Design Program since 1996 with the goal providing engineering students practical experience in finding solutions to an open-ended problem. This is Professor Shafai’s second lifetime achievement award from a major organization.

To see the College of Engineering’s article on Professor Shafai’s accolade, you may visit their website.

Dr. Cristian Cassella, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, has been presented with the Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society for his work on Piezoelectric Microacoustic Metamaterial Filters. Professor Cassella’s co-authored paper discusses the first microacoustic metamaterial filters (MMFs) and their performance in testing. Professor Casella’s research focuses on acoustic resonators, nonreciprocal components, and ultrasonic transducers. Cassella is also Principal Investigator for the Microsystems Radio Frequency Laboratory at Northeastern and an Affiliated Researcher for the Dublin Innovation Institute.

Dr. Francesco Restuccia, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, has received the Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This award from the Department of War agency DARPA will support Professor Restuccia’s research on resilient AI in autonomous systems to improve the situational awareness of autonomous mobile systems in the field. Professor Restuccia specializes in artificial intelligence, computer networks, and cyber-physical systems. He is a member of Northeastern’s Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, which researches wireless systems and networks.

You may read more about Professor Restuccia’s achievement on the College of Engineering’s website.

Dr. Laurel Gabard-Durnam, Assistant Professor of Psychology in the College of Science, has been awarded the 2026 Boyd McCandless Award from the American Psychological Association. This award recognizes early-career researchers who have made distinguished contributions to developmental psychology. Professor Gabard-Durnam’s research examines how early life experiences shape brain development and mental health across the lifespan, with particular focus on understanding sensitive periods of development and individual differences in neuroplasticity. Professor Gabard-Durnam leads the Plasicity in Neurodevelopment (PINE) Lab at Northeastern.