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Pavel Belakurski and Abigail Hou Receive ECE Undergraduate Researcher Awards
Congratulations to Pavel and Abby! 🎉 This award recognizes their outstanding achievements and dedication as undergraduate researchers. Well deserved! LinkedIn Post Link
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McCormick Highlights our Data Driven Plant Science Course
This winter, Northwestern Engineering featured our new course, COMP_SCI 396/496: Data-Driven Plant Science, in a McCormick School of Engineering spotlight. Co-developed by Prof. Nivedita Arora and Dr. Susan Strickler of the Chicago Botanic Garden, in collaboration with Qitong Li (MS ’25) and peer mentor Raj Dave, the course bridges experimental biology with embedded sensing, bioinformatics,…
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Jack Thoene and Members Wins ACM SenSys Best Poster Award
Congratulations to Jack Thoene, along with co-authors Rama Janco, Valerie Wong, Samuel Grayson, Emma Alexander, and Nivedita Arora, for receiving the Best Poster Award at ACM/IEEE SenSys 2026 (CPS-IoT Week, San Mateo)! Their project, MANTIS: Manufacturable Application-Specific Narrowband Tunable Filters for Inference-In-Sensor, draws on mantis shrimp-inspired optics to enable lightweight hyperspectral imaging in embedded systems.…
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Prof. Nivedita Arora Named to Women in Energy List by Griffin Museum
We are proud to celebrate Prof. Nivedita Arora for being named to the Women in Energy list by the Griffin Museum. This recognition honors her leadership and contributions at the intersection of sustainable technology and research. Congratulations, Nivedita! Link
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Raj Dave Wins Northwestern CS Outstanding Peer Mentor Award
Congratulations to Raj Dave, a second-year master’s student in Computer Science, for receiving the Winter 2026 Northwestern CS Outstanding Peer Mentor Award! Raj serves as a peer mentor for COMP_SCI 396/496: Data-Driven Plant Science. His nominators noted: “Raj’s impact on the class has been defined by proactiveness that goes beyond the expected duty. He met…
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Lab Receives ASPB Plant BLOOME Grant 2025
We are thrilled to share that our lab has been awarded the ASPB Plant BLOOME Grant 2025 for the project Photosynthesis-Bits: A Hands-on Course Bridging Plant Physiology, Bioelectronic Sensors, and Data Science. The project is led by Prof. Arora in collaboration with co-leaders Dr. Susan Strickler and Dr. Sarah Jones. The proposal received a perfect…
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Lab Paper Accepted to IEEE BSN Conference
Smart Glasses for Monitoring Eye Damage Risk from UV Exposure
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PhytoBits Workshop Hosted at Chicago Botanic Garden
The plant sensing and education team hosted a PhytoBits pilot workshop at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where students explored the integration of biology, physical computing, and programming using the Micro:bit-based toolkit. Through activities on photosynthesis, data collection, and computational modeling, participants built confidence in applying computational thinking to biology based on their prior expertise. This…
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Jack Thoene and Qitong Li Honored with ECE Best MS Thesis Awards
https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/electrical-computer/news-events/news/articles/2025/2025-ece-annual-award-winners.html Best MS Thesis Awards Qitong Li (MS ’25) won the Best Computer Engineering MS Thesis Award for “Phytobits: A Bioelectronic Sensor and Microcontroller-Based Curriculum for Cam Photosynthesis Education.” Li, a member of the VAK Sustainable Computing Lab, was advised by Nivedita Arora, the Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Junior Professor of Design and assistant professor of…
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Katie Jiang Wins UG Research Award
Congratulations to Katie Jiang, who was awarded the Best Computer Engineering Undergraduate Researcher Award. This award recognizes her outstanding achievements and dedication as an undergraduate researcher.
VAK Embodied Systems Lab 