STARS Fellowships

John Armendariz

Vice Provost for Institutional Diversity & Inclusion

John Armendariz

Dr. John V. Armendariz currently serves as Northeastern University’s Vice Provost of Institutional Diversity & Inclusion. With experience in government, healthcare, nonprofit, and higher education, John brings a deep knowledge of working within an organization to engage stakeholders and enhance a culture that welcomes and includes a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Prior to joining Northeastern, John served as Associate Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Yale University, where he directed diversity programming aimed at creating an organizational culture of inclusion and consulted with senior leadership and academic departments to advance and align diversity efforts. John has also worked in diversity leadership roles at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the Texas Department of Health. John graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio, earned a Master of Arts in Education from the University of Texas, and holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island.

Our Vision of Diversity: We value and celebrate diversity in all its forms and strive to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds community

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Richard Harris

Assistant Dean, Academic Scholarship, Mentoring and Outreach & Director of NU Program in Multicultural Engineering (NUPRIME), Diversity Programs

Assistant Dean, Academic Scholarship, Mentoring and Outreach & Director of NU Program in Multicultural Engineering (NUPRIME), Diversity Programs

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.

Benjamin Hescott

Teaching Professor; Director - Broadening Participation; College of Computer and Information Science

Benjamin Hescott is a teaching professor and Director of Broadening Participation at Northeastern University. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Tufts University.

Hescott’s research interests include computational complexity, approximation algorithms, and computational biology. Most recently, he helped create a new metric of “closeness” for popular biological models. This work was used in the Dream Challenge for Disease Module Identification and received the “Best Performer” award. His students say that he works on using computer science to help cure human disease, he says he works on graphs.

His favorite place to be is in the classroom. He is continually searching for new tools and analogies to help make computer science and programming accessible to all. His teaching tools include everything from rolls of paper towels to model Turing Machine tapes to nesting Tupperware containers and yarn for linked lists.

Hescott graduated from Boston University with a Ph.D. in computer science in 2008. He has been the faculty supervisor for the student ACM chapter and served as the liaison to the New England Undergraduate Computer Science Symposium. He is member of the leadership team for ELA (Empowering Leadership Alliance) whose main purpose is encouraging, preparing, and retaining underrepresented minorities in computer science.

He is the recipient of the 2011 IEEE Computer Society Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, recognizing his contribution for making computer science accessible to all. During his time at Tufts Univeristy, Hescott won the 2011 Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising, the 2012 Henry and Madeline Fischer Award (Engineering Teacher of the year award) and the 2012 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Excellence in Teaching and Advising of Students. He was recognized in 2013 by the Tufts Graduate Student Council for Outstanding Faculty Contribution to Graduate Studies. In 2016, he was awarded the ROUTE award which recognizes undergraduate teaching and mentoring. That same year the Tufts Student Body awarded him “Professor of the Year”.

Carla Mattos

Professor, Chemistry and Chemical Biology; College of Science

GTPases of the Ras Family; Protein Interactions; Protein X-ray Crystallography; Solvent Mapping of Protein Surfaces; Structure Based Ligand Discovery

Research in the Mattos Lab focuses on understanding the rules that govern the recognition, assembly and function of macromolecular complexes. It is clear that macromolecular interactions are central to the proper functioning, regulation and specificity of any cellular process, for example, signaling, transport, and replication. We are particularly interested in the protein-protein interactions that allow these assemblies to form in a specific manner. We are also interested in how small ligands are able to mediate or interfere with these interactions.

The biological system studied in this lab involves a group of closely related members of the Ras superfamily of GTPases. The protein-protein interactions mediating signal transduction pathways in which these GTPases are involved result in diverse and highly specific biological outcomes, including the control of cell proliferation, cell motility, transport of proteins across the nuclear membrane and many others. Ras and its family members normally have a disordered active site, which explains the intrinsically slow rate of GTP hydrolysis measured for these enzymes in solution. The active site is modulated by protein binding partners in both its regulation and in interaction with effector proteins which propagate signaling. In addition, our group has recently discovered an allosteric mechanism through which binding of ligand at a remote allosteric site orders the active site in Ras, suggesting a new mechanism for the intrinsic hydrolysis reaction. We are actively investigating this mechanism, the components of the allosteric switch and how it is impaired in a variety of mutants.

The Mattos lab is also engaged in the study of protein binding sites and differences in properties of sites of protein ligand interactions versus binding sites for water molecules. We work on the development of methods to study solvents and their functional roles on the surfaces of proteins. The MSCS method is a powerful tool based on X-ray crystallography. It involves using organic solvents and small solutes as molecular probes to protein surfaces in order to both locate and characterize sites of protein-protein or protein-ligand interactions. In general, the method consists of growing crystals of the target protein in aqueous mother liquor and crosslinking the crystals with gluteraldehyde. This makes the crystals less likely to dissolve once transferred to organic solvent/water mixtures. Typically the soaking solutions contain at least 50% by volume of an organic solvent such as dimethylformamide, trifluoroethanol, isopropanol, cyclopentanol, etc. About ten crystal structures of the protein are obtained, each in a solvent condition, and the models are superimposed for analysis. Remarkably, the organic solvent molecules displace water molecules primarily at sites that evolved as binding sites. The superimposed structures therefore reveal clusters of organic solvents at hot-spots within protein binding pockets. Most recently we developed the program entitled Detection of Related Solvent Positions (DroP) for the analysis of crystallographic water molecules and other solvents across several structures of the same or related proteins. It is also the primary analysis tool for MSCS data sets. The method takes into account space group symmetries, raking of water conservation among a set of structures, and renumbering of water molecules according to the rank so that a water molecule at a given protein binding site has the same number in all structures. Use of DRoP allows for a more straight-forward correlation between structure and function of solvents on protein surfaces.

The tools used in our laboratory include protein crystallography, computational biophysics, molecular biology and biochemistry. In addition we collaborate with cell biologists to correlate our structural biology work with results obtained in the context of the cellular environment.

Hameed Metghalchi

Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Director, Energy Systems Program; College of Engineering

Mohamad (Hameed) Metghalchi received Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Oklahoma University. He received Masters and Doctor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined department of Mechanical Engineering at Northeastern University in Fall of 1979. Prof. Metghalchi served as the Chair of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department from 2004 to 2012. He has also served as Senior Associate Dean and Interim Dean of College of Engineering in 2006-07. He is currently Director of Master of Science program in Energy Systems Engineering.

Professor Metghalchi is an active member of national professional societies such as American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Society of Engineering Education, Society of Automotive Engineers and Combustion Institute. He is Fellow of ASME and past chair of the Executive Committee of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME. He is the Editor-in-Chief of ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology. He is recipient of 2011 ASME Harry Potter Gold Medal of Thermodynamics and 2014 ASME Edward Obert Award for thermodynamics. He has been proposal and scientific paper reviewer for National Science Foundation, Army Research office, Combustion Science Technology, Combustion Institute, ASME Journal of Energy Resources technology, ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbine and Power, Combustion and Flame, Biotechnology and American Chemical Society.

Professor Metghalchi’s research is in the general area of Thermofluids dealing with scientific issues in power, energy, combustion, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and chemical reactions. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation, Army Research office, Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, Qatar Foundation and private companies such as Ford Motor Company, Cater Pillar, Stone and Webster Corporation, Integrated Genetics, Genzyme Inc, and Environ International Corporation. Professor Metghalchi has supervised 17 Ph. D. dissertations and 25 M.Sc. thesis at Northeastern University. Currently, five graduate students are working under his supervision. Professor Metghalchi has published extensively in education and research areas in the last thirty years.

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.

Barbara Guthrie

Professor & Director, PhD Program Faculty, School of Nursing

Professor Barbara Guthrie, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing and for seven years, she was the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Yale University School of Nursing (YSN). Prior to accepting the position at Yale University School of Nursing, Dr. Guthrie held a dual appointment at the University of Michigan as an associate professor in the Division of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction and Women Studies.

Dr. Guthrie's research focus is examining the intersectionality of early sexual engagement, ethnicity, gender, and substance use among girls of color from diverse contexts.