Khoury News
Inside Northeastern Seattle’s newest research group — and the newly opened lab it calls home
The FlexLab has quickly become a popular hub for the campus's research and experimentation, and Khoury College's Seattle-based Internet of Things research group is taking full advantage of its many resources.
Northeastern Seattle’s new FlexLab might look chaotic at first glance, but that’s because it’s home to a fast-growing community of students from different colleges and wildly different disciplines, all looking to gain hands-on experience in applied technology research.
The lab, which officially opened in April, brings students together to work on everything from serious academic projects to 3D printing Batman statues. The coolest thing about the lab is “a Ford Mustang for autonomous driving and computer vision that our students can mess around with,” says Becky Buckler, a former middle school art teacher and alumna of Khoury College’s Align master’s program who now manages FlexLab.
The lab contains workstations, prototyping tools, sensors, and collaborative research areas designed to support projects that bridge hardware and software. For Buckler, the goal was to create a space that feels accessible to students while still supporting advanced research and bringing students together across disciplines.
“They’re all sitting at this table doing something with their hands,” Buckler says. “They’re not looking at their phones and it’s like, this is amazing, [students] talking to each other.”
The FlexLab has also helped grow Seattle’s new Internet of Things (IoT) research group and houses its growing repertoire of projects. The group, led by Khoury Associate Teaching Professor Sarita Singh, presented three papers at the Seattle-based IEEE AIIoT 2026 — the Annual Congress on Artificial Intelligence of Things hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — adding to a growing list of accomplishments that includes a best paper award at IEEE UEMCON 2025 for a smart watering system for plants.
For Singh, both the formal launch of the group and its access to FlexLab resources represent the next steps in a sustained effort to advance IoT research.
“I had long wanted to introduce IoT projects to my students,” Singh says. “The establishment of the FlexLab provided access to extensive on-campus resources, making it much easier for students to work in the lab and obtain the hardware required for IoT research.”
The smart watering project became an early example of the group’s broader mission: using connected devices and sensor systems to solve everyday problems. The system monitored environmental conditions and automated water distribution for plants, showing just how helpful small-scale IoT systems can be.
Now the group’s work spans several projects, with students contributing to both hardware and software development. The Seattle campus provides a strong environment for this type of research because of the region’s larger technology industry.
“The goal is to equip students with the skills needed to design scalable, secure, and intelligent solutions that can positively impact society,” Singh explains. “Currently, we are focusing on developing IoT systems for the remote monitoring of patient health.”
Among these new researchers are Align student An Nguyen and recent Align graduate Hongpeng Fu. The two have been major contributors to the lab’s IoT research, even as they worked to develop their own research skills for the first time.
“I think it’s really important for students to pursue something they’re passionate about or interested in,” Nguyen says, noting the value of learning through experience and applying classroom concepts in a practical environment. “I feel like I learn a lot more doing these independent projects and research than I do in class.”
Nguyen’s research focused on building gloves that could detect tremors in the hands of patients thought to have Parkinson’s disease. Designed to help doctors make a diagnosis, the gloves allow for long-term monitoring of a patient that would otherwise not be possible.
Fu describes the experience of contributing to active research projects as both challenging and rewarding. His research involves the development of a low-cost, IoT-based system that uses smart sensors to monitor chair-based leg exercises. The aim is to enable older adults to do exercises on their own at home.
“Most older people don’t have access to doctors to supervise them or guide them,” Fu explains. “Most researchers only focus on theoretical proposals, but it is really cool to create a demo or a real product.”
Both students say the hands-on nature of the work has helped them develop technical and collaborative skills that are difficult to replicate in traditional coursework alone.
For Singh, that student involvement is central to the group’s mission. Rather than separating teaching from research, the lab immerses students directly in experimentation, troubleshooting, and publication-level work.
That collaborative environment was on display at IEEE AIIoT in May, where the group presented papers on their various research projects. The conference’s location in Seattle added another layer of visibility for the relatively new research initiative.
Although the IoT group is still in its early stages, its leaders and students say the momentum is already visible — not just in published research, but in the growing community taking shape inside FlexLab.
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