PhD Network

Claudia Torres Garibay

Interim Assistant Director, Graduate Operations, PhD Network

Claudia Torres Garibay coordinates the program offerings and communications by the PhD Network, mentors students in the LSAMP STARS fellowship program, and acts as a liaison for collaborations with the Right Question Institute, where she serves as a Higher Education Consultant. Her most recent academic assignment is as a lecturer in the Materials Science and Engineering department at the University of California Davis. Previously she worked as associate professor in the Electrical Engineering and Renewable Energy department at Oregon Institute of Technology where she taught several courses and laboratories, in addition to holding various service positions, including department chair and program director. Claudia holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (2007), a M.S. in Materials Science at the Advanced Materials Research Center (Mexico, 2000), and a B.S. in Electrical and Industrial Engineering at Chihuahua Institute of Technology (Mexico, 1996).

Jason Sidman, PhD

Director of Partnership Relations

As Director of Partnership Relations, Jason engages with companies to understand their professional development, workforce and business needs and to identify the Experiential PhD programs that meet these requirements.  His responsibilities include providing information about the program of interest, connecting industry partners with Northeastern faculty, establishing agreements between the parties, identifying additional opportunities for joint collaboration, and continuously finding ways to improve Northeastern's offerings.

Jason received his PhD from Tufts University in Experimental Psychology.  He then went on to work in industry for 15 years, working in companies that conducted innovative research through joint collaborations between industry and academia.  With his background, Jason has an appreciation both for the experience of students going through a PhD program, and for companies looking to hire, manage, and train PhD-level employees.  It is this perspective that Jason brings to this role as he looks to nurture and expand partnerships between Northeastern and our partners.

Sara Wadia-Fascetti

Vice Provost for the PhD Network

Professor Wadia-Fascetti served as Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the College of Engineering between 2010 and 2017. As Associate Dean, she collaborated with the college Graduate Directors and colleagues across the University to strengthen engineering graduate programs, craft new degree & certificate pathways, and create student and faculty focused graduate support. As the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education (2010 – 2015), her leadership contributed to the tremendous growth of COE. During this period research grew 40% and engineering PIs on individual proposals increased by 30%.

As a professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, she has led and co-led cross-college interdisciplinary initiatives resulting in advanced technologies and systems to inspect and maintain our transportation networks; doctoral training grants; and education program development. As a leader, Professor Wadia-Fascetti envisions and builds institutional initiatives that are sustained beyond her direct role. One example is Northeastern ADVANCE; initially funded by the National Science Foundation and now institutionalized as the ADVANCE Office for Faculty Development at Northeastern University.

Professor Wadia-Fascetti received a BS in Civil Engineering with a double major in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, and a MS & PhD in Civil Engineering from Stanford University. She is a member of the Carnegie Mellon University Engineering & Public Policy Alumni Advisory Council and the Rochester Institute of Technology ADVANCE Institutional Transformation External Advisory Board. In 2003 she was recognized at the White House with a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

Amal Ahmed

Associate Dean

Amal Ahmed is an associate professor of computer science at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Within programming languages, she is particularly interested in semantics and type systems for reasoning about imperative code, concurrency, security, compiler transformations, and provenance.

Before joining Northeastern, she was an assistant professor at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University for three years, a research assistant professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago for three years, and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University for two years. She received her doctorate in computer science from Princeton University in 2004.

Ahmed’s research involves programming languages and compiler verification with a focus on type systems, semantics, secure compilation, gradual typing, and software contracts. Her work scaling the logical relations proof method to realistic languages with various features was widely used for the correctness of compiler transformations, soundness of advanced type systems, and verification of fine-grained concurrent data structures. Ahmed recently developed the first proof architecture for verifying multi-pass compilers in the presence of inter-language linking of compiled code.

Ahmed has served on numerous program committees in her field of programming languages, including ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming, IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, and the European Symposium on Programming. She has been a regular invited lecturer at the annual Oregon Programming Languages Summer School and twice served as co-organizer. She is a member of IFIP WG 2.8 (Working Group on Functional Programming) and has served on the steering committees of ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming, Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop, and ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Types in Language Design and Implementation. Her awards include an NSF Career Award, a Google Faculty Research Award, and a George Van Ness Lothrop Fellowship.

Akram Alshawabkeh

Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, College of Engineering

Akram Alshawabkeh is Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, George A. Snell Professor of Engineering and University Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director of the PROTECT Superfund Research Center and Director of the  Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development in Puerto Rico (CRECE).  His research areas include geoenvironmental engineering, soil and groundwater remediation; electrokinetic and electrochemical processes; contaminant fate and transport environmental restoration.

Brent Nelson

Associate Dean and Associate Professor, College of Science

Jared Auclair

Associate Dean for Professional Programs, College of Science

Jennifer Kirwin

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Clinical Professor, School of Pharmacy

Professor Jennifer Kirwin joined Northeastern's faculty in 2007 as an Associate Clinical Professor and became the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs after serving as Director of Undergraduate and Professional Programs.  She holds a doctoral degree from the School of Pharmacy at Northeastern.  Professor Kirwin is a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist and specializes in ambulatory pharmacy practice.  Her current research is in medication adherence.

Thomas Vicino

Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, College of Social Sciences & Humanities; Professor of Political Science, Public Policy & Urban Affairs

Professor Thomas J. Vicino is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is appointed as Professor in the Department of Political Science and holds a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. Previously, from 2017-2019, he served as Chair of the Department of Political Science; and from 2011-2017, he served as the Director of the Master of Public Administration Program. In 2014, Prof. Vicino was a U.S. Fulbright Core Scholar to Brazil, where he was a visiting professor of political economy in the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at Pontificia Universidade Catolica (PUC Minas) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He teaches at the graduate level in the MPA, MPP, and MUPP Programs. At the undergraduate level, he teaches in the political science major and the urban studies minor.

Professor Vicino specializes in the political economy of cities and suburbs, focusing on issues of metropolitan development, housing, and demographic analysis. He is the author of four books, including: Suburban Crossroads: The Fight for Local Control of Immigration Policy (2013) and Transforming Race and Class in Suburbia: Decline in Metropolitan Baltimore (2008) and co-author of Global Migration: The Basics (2014) as well as the bestselling book Cities and Suburbs: New Metropolitan Realities in the US (2010). He has also published numerous book chapters and research articles in peer-reviewed journals. Currently, he serves on the Governing Board of the Urban Affairs Association, holding the elected position of Vice Chair.

Waleed Meleis

Associate Dean for Graduate Education; Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Affiliated Faculty, Bioengineering

Professor Waleed Meleis received his BSE degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1990, and the MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992 and 1996. In 1996 he joined the Computer Engineering Group of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University.

Professor Meleis’s research is on developing and evaluating algorithms and bounds for combinatorially difficult optimization problems.

Thomas Sheahan

Senior Vice Provost for Curriculum and Programs

Prof. Sheahan is a professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northeastern, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He is also the Senior Vice Provost for Curriculum and Programs for Northeastern University, overseeing academic program development, governance and inter-college coordination, program assessment integration, and university-wide curricular initiatives, in addition to academic units including ROTC and Explorers.  His technical expertise is in geotechnical engineering, specifically experimental methods for studying the mechanical behavior of soft ground and its relationship to environmental contaminant problems. Most recently, he has been funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) program, first on a basic (R01) grant, then as Training Core Leader for a project known as PROTECT, a multi-institution effort examining the link between groundwater contamination and high preterm birth rates in Puerto Rico. He has also received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), including a current project related to coastal sustainability adaptation strategies in the U.S. and Caribbean. Prof. Sheahan is the author of over 90 publications, including a seminal textbook on geotechnical engineering. He has been recognized with outstanding teaching awards at Northeastern, and received the national Tau Beta Pi McDonald Mentoring award for his work as a faculty advisor, mentor to junior faculty, and his advising of student groups. His service activities have included national leadership positions in his discipline and as an ABET accreditation evaluator and commission member.