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Co-ops help expand research experience, career path

Ariana Mechem’s two co-op positions helped formulate her career objectives. At Dreamlane, a Bay Area autism treatment provider, she served as a behavioral therapist, conducting home visits to implement individualized therapy programs for young children. As a research assistant in the Brain Game Center on Northeastern’s Oakland campus, she assessed games’ effectiveness at improving cognitive function for older adults living with HIV. These experiences with neurological populations inspired the behavioral neuroscience major’s next co-op at Boston Children’s Hospital, examining sensory encoding in children on the autism spectrum.

Graduate awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

A 2025 mechanical engineering graduate, Matthew Coughlin completed two co-ops and conducted research at Northeastern, MIT, University of Delaware, and Stanford. His research experience, particularly in thermal management in high-performance computing, earned him the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship for graduate studies at Stanford. The program appealed to him because of its interdisciplinary focus. “I see a lot of value in such interdisciplinary work, because that’s how you realize very impactful solutions,” says Coughlin, who also received the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Student honored for excellence in STEM research

Kaitlyn Ramesh, a bioengineering major who develops computational tools and examines genomics data, says she’s drawn to research because it allows her to “dive deep” and “pursue every nitty-gritty detail” of a subject. In one project, she builds an algorithm to analyze how cells heal from a heart attack. Ramesh’s research excellence earned her a Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes ambition and achievement in undergraduate STEM research. She’s also a member of the Women’s Research Engagement Network, which supports undergraduate women researchers at Northeastern.