The STEM of Their Interest: The Machine Learning Learning Machine, Biruk Abreha in the Lopez Lab

The STEM of Their Interest: The Machine Learning Learning Machine, Biruk Abreha in the Lopez Lab

By Hugh Shirley, Biochemistry, 2019

This is the third of four pieces in the “STEM of Their Interest” series by Hugh Shirley, featuring Northeastern undergraduates and research labs. This piece was originally published as part of our Summer 2018 series.

A lab at Northeastern University comes in many shapes and sizes, and the undergraduates that work in those labs are just as diverse. How students got there, what drives them to put in the hours every week, and what they are passionate about is the subject of this series. We spoke with students in labs around campus to learn about what they do and why they do it.

Biruk Abreha is a rising senior at Northeastern University with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Computer Science. For the past six months, Abreha made his way to the third floor of ISEC most days of the week, sat down at his desk, and studied machine learning in the Lopez Lab. The Lopez Lab opened in January 2018, and is run by Dr. Steven Lopez, who joined the Northeastern Department of Chemistry last year. The Lopez Lab used theoretical methods and technology to solve important problems facing the world today, including climate change, cancer treatment, and sustainable chemistry.

“I’m building a database of computed excited-state properties of organic molecules which will be used to screen molecules that may be useful as catalysts, cancer treatment agents, and sunscreens,” Abreha said about his project. That translates to running a lot of calculations on supercomputers to figure out how theoretical compounds will behave. Machine learning is a powerful tool that describes how machines can be fed huge amounts of data and calculations and be taught to recognize patterns without being programmed explicitly to perform a task.

“I think what led me to want to work in machine learning in the first place is that I’m fairly certain that every industry in the world is going in that direction. I want to be part of that next push in chemistry.”

Machine learning has been a brand new field for Abreha, who started at Northeastern as a chemistry major and recently discovered that computer science is more his speed. His solution? Combine the two. “I was getting more interested in machine learning and how it could be used to solve problems in chemistry,” Abreha said.

“I think what led me to want to work in machine learning in the first place is that I’m fairly certain that every industry in the world is going in that direction,” Abreha said. “I want to be part of that next push in chemistry.”

Dr. Lopez spoke with us about Abreha during our tour of the lab. Abreha interviewed with Dr. Lopez in January and even then, “he really stood out as having an innovative idea for what he wanted to get out of the lab,” Lopez said. “He’s bringing together the machine learning aspect of our group.” Within a month of starting, Abreha had put together and led a workshop on machine learning for a visiting research scientist from the University of Bath, and that was with no research experience in machine learning prior to starting at the lab.

Abreha has enjoyed his time in the lab and part of that comes from the relationships the lab environment has fostered between him, the other students in the lab, and Dr. Lopez. The group dynamic is important to Dr. Lopez, who makes sure everyone has a voice when discussing potential new hires in the lab. “It’s very important to me that they have frank communication with me and that they jive well with the rest of the group,” Dr. Lopez said. That open communication and friendly environment continues between the students according to Abreha. Their weekly meetings are “pretty laid back. They don’t feel high pressure, but we do talk about important things,” Abreha said.

Part of the exclusivity of the Lopez Lab, which currently has six members, stems from the focus on mentorship. Dr. Lopez ensures that he has time each week to meet with his students one-on-one, and asks his postdocs to do the same. Abreha also sees Lopez in that way. “I definitely see it as a mentor-mentee relationship. Since I’m planning to go to grad school, [Dr. Lopez] is a very valuable resource,” he said.

For those students interested in joining Abreha and other undergrads in the Lopez Lab, the best place to start is with an email. If you are interested in “theoretical chemistry, quantum mechanics, organic or physical chemistry, I can guarantee that you’ll learn a ton of stuff,” Abreha said about the overall topics that the lab focuses on. The lab works on multiple projects in different areas of theoretical chemistry, so students who want to put in the time to learn and are interested in working in a growing area of the sciences might consider the Lopez Lab.