Faculty & Staff

Joseph Beck, assistant professor of Computer Science, has been at WPI since 2007. His research focuses on educational data mining, a new discipline that develops techniques for analyzing large educational data sets to make discoveries that will improve teaching and learning. His work centers on estimating how computer tutors impact learning. He established the first workshop in the field and in 2008 was program co-chair of the first International Conference on Educational Data Mining. ... View Profile

Mark Claypool has been a professor of Computer Science and Interactive Media Game Development at WPI since 1997. Mark has a B.A. in Mathematics from Colorado College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers and written two books on computer games. He has chaired several ACM conferences on networks, games and multimedia and served on the technical program committee for over 40 of them. ... View Profile

I am generally interested in  network security  and  traffic analysis , and in the challenges that arise when attempting to design security systems which are  performant ,  effective , and  usable . My interests cover: IoT and residential network security Web and cloud security Software security Malware detection and understanding Usable security View Profile

Professor Eltabakh’s research is in the broad area of Database Management Systems and Information Management. In particular, his work is in the areas of query processing and optimization, indexing techniques, scientific data management, and large-scale data analytics. Prof. Eltabakh is currently exploring possible extensions to both database management systems and Hadoop framework to support scientific applications and health-care systems. He is a member of the Database Systems Research Group (DSRG) and a faculty member of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BCB) program. ... View Profile

I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst advised by Prof. Prashant Shenoy in 2016. I am a system builder. My research is about modeling system behaviors, especially these of large scale systems, and to build prototypes that help to empirically evaluate system's behaviors. Broadly, I am interested in designing systems to handle new trade-offs in cost, performance and efficiency. ... View Profile

Neil T. Heffernan enjoys doing educational data mining and running the ASSISTments system. ASSISTments helps schools teach better. It’s a web service hosted at WPI that allows teachers to assign nightly homework or daily class work. Students get instant feedback while teachers get live reports. Professor Heffernan enjoys supervising WPI students in creating ASSISTments content and features. He has  6 dozens paper in educational data mining, and 20+ papers in comparing different ways to optimize student learning. ... View Profile

Professor Kong’s research interests focus on data mining and machine learning, with emphasis on addressing the data science problems in biomedical and social applications. Data today involves an increasing number of data types that need to be handled differently from conventional data records, and an increasing number of data sources that need to be fused together. Dr. Kong is particularly interested in designing algorithms to tame data variety issues in various research fields, such as biomedical research, social computing, neuroscience, and business intelligence. ... View Profile

Dr. Lee’s research interests are in social computing, information retrieval, data science, and cybersecurity over large-scale networked information systems like the Web, social media, crowdfunding, and crowd-based systems. My research focus has both positive and negative dimensions. On one hand, I focus on threats to these systems and design methods to mitigate negative behaviors; on the other, I look for positive opportunities to mine and analyze these systems for developing next generation algorithms and architectures that can empower decision makers. View Profile

Dr. Xiaozhong Liu is an Associate Professor at Computer Science and Data Science, WPI. Before that, he was Associate Professor at School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include natural language processing (NLP), text/graph mining, information retrieval/recommendation, metadata, and computational social science. His dissertation at Syracuse University (advisor Dr. Elizabeth D. Liddy) explored an innovative ranking method that weighted the retrieved results by leveraging dynamic community interests. ... View Profile

I have completed my PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2014. Afterwards, I have been a postdoc at Cornell, UC Berkeley and Princeton. I am interested in how theoretical insights from computer science, discrete mathematics and probability theory can lead to better algorithms in the domains of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Intractability results such as NP hardness arise in numerous AI applications. Devising ``beyond worst case" approaches that can bypass intractability results is one of my main research interests. ... View Profile

Carolina Ruiz is the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Harold L. Jurist ’61 and Heather E. Jurist Dean's Professor of Computer Science. She joined the WPI faculty in 1997. Prof. Ruiz’s research is in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining, and their applications to Medicine and Health. She has worked on several clinical domains including sleep, stroke, obesity and pancreatic cancer. Prof. ... View Profile

My research interests are in graph theory, discrete mathematics, and theoretical computer science. I am especially interested in studying the structure of very large graphs,; an area that is getting more and more important these days. I enjoy teaching at WPI; in particular, I enjoy the project experience. I am the founder and director of the Budapest Project Center, the first and only WPI Project Center in Eastern Europe. I love sports, especially tennis and soccer. View Profile

Dr. Smith's research interests are in computational medicine and computer science education. Her interest in data flow and other massively parallel computer architectures led to an application of Petri nets in biological networks. She is interested in finding biomarkers in datasets of relatively invasive tests such as a biopsy or blood test, and seeking a version of the biological signal in less invasive tests, such as a breath test or cheek swab. Dr. Smith wishes to use her background as a CEO and entrepreneur to strengthen students’ self-confidence. Dr. ... View Profile

My research is in human-computer interaction. One focus of my research is on next-generation interaction techniques, such as brain-computer interfaces, physiological computing, and reality-based interaction. I design, build and evaluate interactive computing systems that use machine learning approaches to adapt and support the user’s changing cognitive state and context. I also investigate novel paradigms for designing with accessibility in mind, particularly for the Deaf community. Much of my work also explores effective human interaction with complex and autonomous systems and vehicles. ... View Profile

My research interests are in applied machine learning, computer vision, data science and their applications to education, affective computing, and human behavior recognition. My work is highly interdisciplinary and frequently intersects cognitive science, psychology, and education. Before joining WPI, I was a research scientist at the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning at Harvard University. In 2012, I co-founded Emotient, a San Diego-based startup company for automatic emotion and facial expression recognition. ... View Profile

My research focuses on developing methodological solutions to problems concerning neuroscience data analysis. ... View Profile