After years as a scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Miguel Fuentes-Cabrera realized that he enjoyed mentoring his students more than conducting his research. Now a professor at Northeastern’s Oakland campus, he wants to open opportunities for students to explore their curiosities, and his research experience has proven key in this effort.

The type of students that are here, they are very driven, [and] they are very entrepreneurial … I would love to see them in the future becoming professionals

Miguel Fuentes-Cabrera, Associate Teaching Professor

Ellen Spertus’s programming journey began in her childhood and led to a 10-year career as a research scientist at Google. While teaching at Northeastern’s Oakland campus, she encourages students to believe in their own potential for success, too.

I like to bring my industry experience and my many decades of computer experience to the classroom, talking with students about what’s done in industry and why we teach what we do

Ellen Spertus, Teaching Professor

By the time Nate Derbinsky entered high school, he’d been running his own software company for years. Now he shares that wealth of experience with his students, with the goal of providing CS education to students of all backgrounds and enabling young computer scientists to enjoy the sorts of opportunities he did.

When you bring a lot of different people to the table that think in different ways, and they have different
expertise, you can have that much more impact going into industry, changing things, and solving new problems that nobody had even thought of before

Nate Derbinsky, Associate Dean of Teaching Faculty

Whether he was helping the Canadian government catch drug traffickers or optimizing travel schedules for Japan’s top baseball league, Richard Hoshino has leveraged mathematics and computer science to help others accomplish their goals. Now at Khoury College, he’s doing the same for his students.

My mission statement for my entire career has been to help students discover their potential and purpose by transforming how they experience mathematics and computer science … and to make change on the issues they care about

Richard Hoshino, Associate Teaching Professor

After 10 years of working in Vancouver’s tech industry, Lino Coria Mendoza realized his heart was set on academia. Now a professor at Khoury College’s Vancouver campus, he wants to make up for lost time by helping students reach their maximum potential.

It’s not so much that I’m here to teach, but I am here to help my students learn. And that learning means getting out of your comfort zone

Lino Coria Mendoza, Associate Teaching Professor

While working in Seattle with software engineers, Akriti Chadda started to wonder if there was a place for her in the tech industry. Now an alumna of the Align program, she’s grateful for the community she found at Khoury College and her part in increasing representation in the field.

The one word that comes to my mind when I think about Khoury is ‘grateful,’ and it’s not just because of the skills that I learned over the years … I think the community that we formed just by virtue of the fact that we were all working towards the same goal of increasing representation in tech is absolutely wonderful

Akriti Chadda, Align MSCS ’97

Wayne Duso’s path to tech wasn’t one he always saw coming. So when the former Amazon Web Services VP sought to bolster the company’s longterm innovation, he turned to a pipeline of similarly unconventional talent — Align master’s students from non-computing backgrounds. Now, after building the collaboration alongside program manager Brecka Fetzer, he’s seeing his own life lessons recycled for the next generation of software engineers.

“Align interns are very driven and excited … It takes a lot of courage to leave an industry that you’re in and
transition into computer science. I’m glad we can help them pursue a career they’re passionate in.”

Wayne Duso, Industry Partner

For Mani Sundaram (MS ’99), attendance at Northeastern was somewhat happenstance. After getting an undergraduate degree in India, he was set on coming to the US for graduate work. His father made something clear to his ambitious son: he only had enough money to support a one-way ticket. Due to cost of college applications, Sundaram applied to just four colleges. He got into Northeastern with a scholarship, though he thought he was applying to Northwestern, he admits now.

In the end, Sundaram could not be happier, as he credits Northeastern as a key factor in his professional achievements.

“What I learned at Northeastern gave me the foundation for what I do right now,” Sundaram said. “Without clearly understanding the foundations of computer science, it’s hard to be a security practitioner.”

After completing his MS degree, Sundaram was hired during an on-campus interview for Stratus Technologies, and later moved to Virtify. The bulk of his career, however, has been spent at Akamai, a web and internet security company. He is currently executive vice president and general manager of the Security and Technology Group, overseeing strategy and product direction for Akamai’s security solutions, as well as the business and platform security units’ core functions of engineering, product development, and product management.

Sundaram finds the security field very engaging because it is always changing and presenting new opportunities.

“The opportunities are boundless,” he said, noting that he’s approached each opportunity he’s been given with “the explicit goal of learning as much as possible.”

Since graduating, Sundaram has remained connected to Northeastern as an alumnus and donor. He and his wife Meena sponsor six students in the College of Professional Studies’ “A2M for Tech” program, which provides financial assistance to community college students continuing their studies at Northeastern. “It’s a joy to sponsor these students,” they said.

What I learned at Northeastern gave me the foundation for what I do right now. Without clearly understanding the foundations of computer science, it’s hard to be a security practitioner

Mani Sundaram, MSCS ’99

In addition, numerous Northeastern students have pursued co-op opportunities at Akamai during Sundaram’s tenure.

“The one thing I have always admired about Northeastern students is they are very pragmatic,” Sundaram said. “They come in talking about how to get things done, something they are able to do on day one.”

As an alumnus, Glen Coppersmith — who earned his bachelor’s in computer science and cognitive psychology in 2004 and his PhD in experimental psychology in 2008 — has been an active member of the Northeastern community.

“I’ve been welcomed with open arms,” Coppersmith said.

Since 2017, he has worked with faculty member Byron Wallace.​ In 2019, he​ joined the McCarthy Venture Network at Northeastern to help others shift from academia to industry.

“When I go to events, it’s nice to have a community of people,” he said. “With the launch of the ​​Institute for Experiential AI, I reconnected with a friend from freshman year who is now a professor affiliated with the group: John Basl. He was just as bright and fun as before; it was a full circle from my freshman year dorm.”

In 2019, Coppersmith received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Khoury College in recognition of his work at Qntfy, a mental health data science startup he bootstrapped from its founding in the summer of 2014.

Within a year of receiving that award, the world was facing a mental health emergency due to the pandemic. Even in the first few weeks of the pandemic, Coppersmith said, “there were already early warning signs about the mental health crisis, especially with health care workers. We spent a bunch of time generating relevant information and getting it to people who needed it. The whole world was focusing on COVID, and we were with them.”

That summer, Coppersmith and Qntfy ​saw the massive need and ​decided to seek a pre-seed round​, since the world was finally ready for what they were building​. One of their investors made an introduction to another mental health leader: Mark Frank, CEO of SonderMind.

I’m working to better understand mental health and well-being using the data that is traditionally unavailable to clinicians and provders … We [can] look at this problem differently from the rest of the field by starting from a machine learning perspective

Glen Coppersmith, BSCS ’04

“We didn’t know much about each other, but within the first ten minutes we were completely aligned on how to ​redesign and hopefully ​fix ​the ​mental health care​ system​,” Coppersmith remembered. “Frank said, ‘This might be a little forward, but​ ​could ​we ​acquire you​?​ It looks like we’re building two halves of the same company.’ Four months later, ​we were on stage together doing a fireside chat all unified at SonderMind.”

Coppersmith now works as the chief data officer at SonderMind. Switching from the “lonely” CEO job at a small company to a C-suite with colleagues and collaborators has been rewarding for Coppersmith.

“It’s exciting to be part of a larger team again,” he said. “I’ve learned so much from Mark and ​my colleagues ​at SonderMind. It’s been a continuation of the journey and a total paradigm shift at the same time.”

At SonderMind, Coppersmith leads the team towards a data-driven method of mental health treatment. They want to address the critical problem of matching patients and mental health providers to improve their access and clinical outcomes. The SonderMind team has acquired companies with apps around self-care that facilitate interaction with the platform, which is a rich source of data for a feedback loop of improving care. Other possible ideas include sleep tracking through wearables.

Looking back at his time at Northeastern, Coppersmith believes that his double major in computer science and psychology paved the way for his work at Qntfy and SonderMind.

“I was enough of an expert in those spaces to see solutions differently. It helped hone my sense of pragmatism, the desire for real world impact,” he said. “Being out in the workforce for co-op before graduation was a huge part of that Northeastern pragmatism.”

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