One year after their initial meeting, two Northeastern professors from opposite coasts have been honored for leveraging the university’s global network to solve problems in local communities.
Alicia Sasser Modestino (based on the Boston campus) and Carrie Maultsby-Lute (Oakland) are joint recipients of Northeastern’s inaugural Network Accelerator Award. Together they’ve launched a Northeastern-sponsored organization, City to City, which uses research to confront difficult problems and develop long-term solutions based on the needs of the community. City to City is one of many impact accelerators and engines deployed by Northeastern to solve problems by clustering together expertise from a variety of disciplines and experiences.
“The larger goal of City to City is to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice,” says Modestino, an associate professor of public policy and urban affairs and economics, as well as research director for the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. “It’s about producing research in partnership with state agencies, city departments and community-based organizations to move the needle on long-standing problems in areas such as housing, workforce development, opioids or crime.”
