SIGBITS

Promotions and Tenure: 

Prof. Kyumin Lee, Prof. Xiaozhong Liu, and Prof. Gillian Smith were promoted to professor in the Department of Computer Science

Prof. Shubbhi Taneja was promoted to associate teaching professor.

Prof. Daniel Reichman was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Prof. Jun Dai and Prof. Xiaoyan Sun were awarded tenure as associate professors.

Grants:  

• Prof. Mark Claypool received a $250,000 corporate gift to support the Latency and Games Research Group.
• Prof. Mark Claypool received an $85,000 award from NVIDIA for “Research on the E-Sports and Game Player Performance and Quality of Experience.”
• Profs. Mark Claypool, Charles Roberts, and Gillian Smith received an $85,000 grant from YouTube for “A Unified Framework for Reusable, Cross-Platform UI Shaders on Mobile Devices.”
• Prof. Jun Dai and Prof. Xiaoyan Sun serve as PIs on a $600,000 National Science Foundation grant to train high school teachers nationwide in quantum information science and cybersecurity.
• Prof. Neil Heffernan was awarded $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation for a three-year project, “Phase I CAMEL-CN: Curating a Large-Scale Publicly Available Multimodal Dataset of Student Actions in Illustrative Math to Study Mathematical Misconceptions.” Prof. Heffernan is the PI. Co-PIs include Cristina Heffernan and WPI research scientists Jiayi Zhang and Sarah Miller. The project will support graduate and undergraduate research.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin is the PI on a four-year, $1.6 million National Institutes of Health R01 grant, “Unraveling the Impact of Alternative Splicing on RNA-Binding Protein Function Using Integrative Machine Learning.” Natalie Farny (Biology and Biotechnology) is also a PI.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin is a co-PI on a two-year, $400,753 National Institutes of Health R21 grant, “Engineered Probiotic Bacteria for Toxin Elimination.” Natalie Farny (Biology and Biotechnology) is the PI.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin received a $100,000 grant from the M&H Foundation.
• Prof. Xiaozhong Liu and Prof. Roee Shraga were awarded a $3.03 million National Institutes of Health R01 grant to pioneer an innovative clinical AI system, “Triage-AI+,” designed to optimize trade-offs in emergency department decision-making.
• Prof. Jennifer Mortensen and Prof. Matthew Ahrens are co-PIs on a Northeastern University CIC grant, “Study of Student Trajectories through the Computer Science Curriculum.” Award amount: $30,500. Project dates: May 15, 2026-May 1, 2027.
• Prof. Craig Shue, Prof. Jun Dai, Prof. Xiaoyan (Sherry) Sun, and Prof. Robert J. Walls received a one-year, $204,288 Department of Defense grant, “DoD Cyber Service Academy.” The grant will support one undergraduate student and one graduate student studying cybersecurity; after graduation, the students will work for the Department of Defense.
• Prof. Erin Solovey is a co-PI on a Draper grant, “Assessing Warfighter Readiness and Augmenting Performance through Robust Measurement and Fusion of Human Signals and Adaptive Support in Dynamic Training Environments.” The collaborators are co-PIs Pratap Rao (WPI) and Andrea Webb (Draper). Gary DeVilbiss is the Draper Scholar.
• Prof. Erin Solovey is the PI on a National Science Foundation supplemental award to her RET Site grant, “RET Site: Engineering for People and the Planet: Research Experiences for Teaching Integrated STEM” (Award 2419292). Award amount: $119,783. Co-PI Kathy Chen (WPI STEM Education Center) is a collaborator. The supplement responds to NSF’s Dear Colleague Letter “Expanding K-12 Resources for AI Education” (NSF 25-035) and supports AI-literacy programming for K-12 STEM educators, including a summer institute and graduate course; expanded RET participation with AI, data science, and computer science research teams; and research in Prof. Solovey’s lab on educators’ interactions with AI tools.
• Prof. Jacob Whitehill is the PI on a National Science Foundation grant, “Collaborative Research: Towards an Authentic Simulated Student Agent” (Award 2604251). WPI award amount: $265,797. Project dates: August 1, 2026-July 31, 2029. WPI co-PI Stacy T. Shaw is a collaborator. This is a collaborative award with PI Andrew Lan at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

External Awards: 

• Prof. Erin Solovey, Deniz Sonmez Unal, Catherine Arrington (Lehigh University), and Erin Walker (University of Pittsburgh) received the Best Paper Award at the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2026), held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in June 2026, for “Leveraging Privileged Multimodal Data to Model Cognitive States in an Interactive Learning Platform.”
• Prof. Erin Solovey was named a Summer Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for summer 2026.
• Prof. Tian Guo was elevated to IEEE Senior Member and named an ACM Senior Member.

Patents: 

• Craig A. Shue, Lane Harrison, “Method and Apparatus for Providing Isolated Asset Access in a Layered Security System,” US Patent Number 12341822, granted June 24, 2025.

Publications:  

Prof. Matthew Ahrens’ Publications:

• Crystal H. Brown, Francesca Bernardi, Matthew Peter Ahrens, Erin Solovey, Rodica Neamtu, Lane Harrison, Debra Boucher, and Keenan Kidwell. 2026. Creating Pathways of Belonging and Achievement: Lessons from WPI’s PASS-CS Program (Experience). In 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. ASEE Conferences, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--59141

   

Prof. Mark Claypool’s Publications:  

• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Joohwan Kim, Josef Spjut, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Effects of Frame Rates up to 500 Hz on First Person Shooter Game Players. ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (July 2026). https://doi.org/10.1145/3837059
• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Clive Thompson, Zimraan Ahmad, Joshua Solomon, Jae Won Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Validation and Evaluation of HyStart++ for Linux. In Proceedings of the 0x1A NetDev Conference (Netdev 0x1A), Rome, Italy (July 13-16, 2026). https://netdevconf.info/0x1A/sessions/talk/validation-and-evaluation-of-hystart-for-linux.html
• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Josef Spjut, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Impact of Frametime Spikes on Performance and Quality of Experience in Platformer Games. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2026), Copenhagen, Denmark (August 10-13, 2026). https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/spikes-fdg-26/
• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Josef Spjut, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Adaptive Time Delay for Improving Player Experience and Fairness in First-Person Shooter Games with Network Latency. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2026), Copenhagen, Denmark (August 10-13, 2026). https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/adaptive-fdg-26/
• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Joohwan Kim, Josef Spjut, Peter Xenopoulos, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Impact of Graphical Fidelity and Frame-Time Stutter in a First-Person Shooter Game. Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques 9, 1, Article 16 (May 2026), 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3804493
• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Jae Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Fast and Effective Bandwidth Estimation Using TCP Slow Start. In Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC 2026). IEEE, 709-715. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNC68183.2026.11416939
• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Amber Cronin, Jose Manuel Perez Jimenez, Katy Stuparu, Connor Tam, Jae Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, and Mark Claypool. 2026. Using SEARCH to Improve TCP Slow Start on Wireless Local Area Networks. In Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC 2026). IEEE, 723-727. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNC68183.2026.11416871
• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Joohwan Kim, Josef Spjut, and Mark Claypool. 2025. Timing Matters: The Impact of Event-Specific Frametime Spikes in First-Person Shooter Games. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2025). IEEE, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX65720.2025.11219993
• Xiaokun Xu and Mark Claypool. 2025. Evaluating the Impact of Playout Buffer Policies on Cloud Gaming QoE. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2025). IEEE, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX65720.2025.11219906
• Samin Shahriar Tokey, Ben Boudaoud, Joohwan Kim, Josef Spjut, Peter Xenopoulos, and Mark Claypool. 2025. Lead Rush: A First-Person Shooter for User Studies and Understanding Effects of Frame Time Spikes. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2025). IEEE, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX65720.2025.11219931
• Xiaokun Xu and Mark Claypool. 2025. Reflex - An Open-source Tool for Measuring Human Reaction Times. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2025). IEEE, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1109/QoMEX65720.2025.11219942

Prof. Jun Dai’s Publications:                                 

• Xue Tan, Hao Luan, Mingyu Luo, Zhuyang Yu, Jun Dai, Xiaoyan Sun, and Ping Chen. 2026. Was My Data Used for Training? Membership Inference in Open-Source LLMs via Neural Activations. In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS ‘26).
• Jin Wei, Yuwei Liu, Kunwei Qian, Hongmei Shi, Changhui Wang, Ping Chen, Yanhao Wang, Yi Wang, Bing Mao, Jun Dai, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. ProteusFuzz: From Static Harness Generation to Adaptive, Agent-Guided Library Fuzzing. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing. https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2026.3730860
• Xue Tan, Yi Zheng, Yunruo Zhang, Ping Chen, Jun Dai, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. PRA-RAG: Provably Robust Aggregation in Retrieval-Augmented Generation against Retrieval Corruption. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026.
• Yinxin Wan, Ting Xu, Tran Ngoc Bao Huynh, Jun Dai, Xiaoyan Sun, Kuai Xu, and Guoliang Xue. 2026. Characterizing Security and Privacy Risks in Smart Home IoT Device Access Sharing. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Embedded Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Systems (SenSys ‘26).
• Chao Wang, Shubing Yang, Xiaoyan Sun, Yan Bai, Jun Dai, and Dongfang Zhao. 2026. PixCrypt: Fast Fine-Grained FHE with Range-Aware Caching. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS ‘26).
• Cole Ouellette, Brian Almaguer, Xiaoyan Sun, and Jun Dai. 2026. Detection, Validation and Analysis of Deepfaking in Social Media. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Application Intelligence and Blockchain Security (AIBlock ‘26).

Prof. Tian Guo’s Publications: 

• Javier Vela-Tambo, Davud Azizov, and Tian Guo. 2026. Towards Reproducible Evaluation of Distributed Quantum Circuit Partitioning Algorithms. In Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering Workshops (QCE Workshops ‘26), DQC-SI Workshop. IEEE. To appear. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.27099
• Zimeng Huang, Shijian Li, Zihao Fan, Bo Jiang, and Tian Guo. 2026. Cornucopia: Elastic GPU Cluster Management for Mixed Batch-Interactive Distributed Training. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing 217 (November 2026), Article 105334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpdc.2026.105334
• Yiqin Zhao and Tian Guo. 2026. Can Foundation Models Revolutionize Mobile AR Sparse Sensing? In 2026 IEEE 3rd International Workshop on Foundation Models for Cyber-Physical Systems & Internet of Things (FMSys). IEEE, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/FMSys72110.2026.00009
• Harsh Chhajed and Tian Guo. 2026. ARBot: A High-Fidelity Robotic Manipulator Teleoperation Framework for Human-Centered Augmented Reality Evaluation. In Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Systems Conference 2026 (MMSys ‘26). ACM, 409-415. https://doi.org/10.1145/3793853.3799807
• Ashkan Ganj, Yiqin Zhao, and Tian Guo. 2026. AR as an Evaluation Playground: Bridging Metric and Visual Perception of Computer Vision Models. In Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Systems Conference 2026 (MMSys ‘26). ACM, 72-83. https://doi.org/10.1145/3793853.3795748
• Zichen Zhu, Tian Guo, and Sheng Wei. 2025. Carbon-Efficient Internet Video Streaming. In 2025 IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP). IEEE, 304-309. https://doi.org/10.1109/MMSP64401.2025.11324397

Prof. Lane Harrison’s Publications: 

• Bijesh Shrestha, Hilson Shrestha, Karen Bonilla, R. Jordan Crouser, and Lane Harrison. 2026. Evaluation-First Design for Data Visualization Interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘26), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791057
• Justin Raynor, Bijesh Shrestha, Cody Dunne, Melanie Tory, and Lane Harrison. 2026. From Evidence to Decisions: Interview-Based Study of Reporting Practices in Defensive Cyber Operations. European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security 25, 1 (June 2026), 626-635. https://doi.org/10.34190/eccws.25.1.4839
• Crystal Brown, Francesca Bernardi, Matthew Ahrens, Erin Solovey, Rodica Neamtu, Lane Harrison, Debra Boucher, and Keenan Kidwell. 2026. Creating Pathways of Belonging and Achievement: Lessons from WPI’s PASS-CS Program (Experience). In Proceedings of the 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. ASEE Conferences. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--59141
• Zach Cutler, Jack Wilburn, Hilson Shrestha, Yiren Ding, Andrew M. McNutt, Lane Harrison, and Alexander Lex. 2026. Running Online User Studies with the reVISit Framework. The Eurographics Association. https://doi.org/10.2312/evt.20261002
• Katerina Batziakoudi, Anne-Flore Cabouat, Mennatallah El-Assady, Sara Irina Fabrikant, Lane T. Harrison, Kuno Kurzhals, Carolina Nobre, Jan Rummel, Filip Sadlo, Antonia Schlieder, Karen Schloss, and Michael Wybrow. 2026. Learning and Friction in Visualization. In From Psychology Enabled Visualization to Visualization Enabled Psychology (Dagstuhl Seminar 25511).

Prof. Neil Heffernan’s Publications:

• E. Croteau and N. Heffernan. 2026. Seeing Is Solving: MLLMs, Reasoning, and Refusal in Visual Math. Journal of Educational Data Mining 18, 1, 244-285. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19420820
• E. Croteau and N. Heffernan. 2026. Beyond Aggregate Accuracy: Continuous Evaluation of Residual Failures in Image-Required Educational Mathematics. In Impactful and Responsible AI Systems for Education. PMLR, 170-179.
• F. Ikram, N. A. Kumar, J. Lu, H. McNichols, C. Walkington, N. Heffernan, and A. S. Lan. 2026. A Multi-Agent Approach to Validate and Refine LLM-Generated Personalized Math Problems. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education.
• W.-C. Lim, E. Worden, A. Sales, and N. T. Heffernan. 2026. LLM-Generated Summaries for Teachers: A Randomized Field Experiment in a Digital Learning Platform. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ‘26). ACM, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3774398.3811606
• Yanping Pei, Adam Sales, Johann Gagnon-Bartsch, Eamon Worden, and Neil Heffernan. 2026. Accounting for Classroom Effects in Student-Level Randomized Online Experiments: The Ordered LOOP Estimator. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM ‘26). International Educational Data Mining Society, 589-593. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21039790
• E. Worden, L. Dang, W.-C. Lim, S. Miller, J. Zhang, A. Haim, A. Sales, A. Gurung, and N. Heffernan. 2026. A Large Scale Randomized Control Trial Showing LLM-Generated Feedback Helps Low-Knowledge Middle School Math Students with Short-Term Learning. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ‘26). ACM, 12 pages.
• E. Worden, C. Heffernan, N. Heffernan, and S. Sonkar. 2026. FoundationalASSIST: Dataset for Foundational Knowledge Tracing and Pedagogical Grounding of Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education.
• E. Worden, M. Lee, A. Siedahmed, A. Sales, J. Zhang, R. Shraga, and N. T. Heffernan. 2026. Short, Long, or Affective: Evaluating LLM-Generated Feedback Styles for Student Learning. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education.
• J. Zhang, R. S. Baker, D. B. Mallick, C. Heffernan, and N. Heffernan. 2026. A Case Study Reexamining the Cold-Start Problem in Knowledge Tracing Models and Implications for SafeInsights, an Education Research Infrastructure. arXiv:2606.11004.
• S. Zhang, E. Worden, W. Leite, N. T. Heffernan, and A. F. Botelho. 2026. Would a Short Explanation Immediately Help? Examining Causal Effects of Students’ Help-Seeking in Math. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Educational Data Mining.

Prof. Dmitry Korkin’s Publications:

• J. M. Coburn, D. Korkin, and L. V. Titova. 2026. MXene-Biomaterial Composites for Tissue Engineering. In MXenes: A Roadmap on Synthesis, Processing, and Applications, sec. 7.4, p. 156.

Prof. Yanhua Li’s Publications: 

• Xin Zhang, Jonathan Martinez, Yanhua Li, and Yingxue Zhang. 2026. Decision Transformers as Zero-Shot Learners via Text-Behavior Alignment. In Proceedings of the Forty-Third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML ‘26). Spotlight presentation, July 6-11, 2026, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
• Yuhang Liu, Yingxue Zhang, Xin Zhang, Yanhua Li, and Jun Luo. 2026. UniLLM: A Unified Large Language Model for Multimodal Urban Dynamics Prediction. In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ‘26), August 9-13, 2026, Jeju, Republic of Korea.
• Nasrin Kalanat, Yiqun Xie, Yanhua Li, and Xiaowei Jia. 2026. Temporal Environment-Aware Image Generation via Latent Diffusion. In CVPR 2026 Workshop on AI for Creative Visual Content Generation, Editing, and Understanding (CVEU ‘26), June 3-4, 2026, Denver, Colorado.

Prof. Fabricio Murai's Publications:

• Olulana Oluseun, Fabricio Murai, and Elke Rundensteiner. 2026. Can LLMs Rank Candidates with Missing Sensitive Attributes Fairly? Transactions on Machine Learning Research.
• Matheus S. Azevedo, Geovana S. de Oliveira, Andrea Failla, Alexandre M. de Sousa, Fabricio Murai, Ana Paula C. da Silva, and Carlos H. G. Ferreira. 2026. The Brazilian Vaccination Debate on YouTube: Topics, Perspectives, and Engagement Dynamics. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM ‘26).
• Yiqing Zhang, Xiaozhong Liu, and Fabricio Murai. 2026. PubMedReasoner: Dynamic Reasoning-Based Retrieval for Evidence-Grounded Biomedical Question Answering. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL ‘26). Oral presentation.
• Henrique Assumpção, Diego Leonardo Braga Ferreira, Leandro Augusto Lacerda Campos, and Fabricio Murai. 2026. CodeEvolve: An Open-Source Evolutionary Framework for Algorithmic Discovery and Optimization. In Findings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP Findings ‘26).
• Geovana Silva de Oliveira, Ana P. C. da Silva, Fabricio Murai, and Carlos H. G. Ferreira. 2026. Who Shapes Brazil’s Vaccine Debate? Semi-Supervised Modeling of Stance and Polarization in YouTube’s Media Ecosystem. In Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci ‘26).
• Olulana Oluseun, Kathleen Cachel, Fabricio Murai, and Elke Rundensteiner. 2026. Can Large Language Models Rank Tabular Data Fairly? In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC ‘26). Short paper.
• Sahana Gokulakrishnan, Amaya Keys, Samuel B. Phillips, Pavan Antala, Thomas B. Arnold, and Fabricio Murai. 2026. Neuromechanistic Shelf-Life Prediction with an Agentic, Explanation-Oriented Interface. In Proceedings of the IEEE MIT Undergraduate Research and Technology Conference (URTC ‘26).

Prof. Rodica Neamtu’s Publications:

• Crystal H. Brown, Francesca Bernardi, Matthew Peter Ahrens, Erin Solovey, Rodica Neamtu, Lane Harrison, Debra Boucher, and Keenan Kidwell. 2026. Creating Pathways of Belonging and Achievement: Lessons from WPI’s PASS-CS Program (Experience). In 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. ASEE Conferences, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--59141
• Bernice Ngwi Abraham, Elvis Twumasi, Desmond Edem Primus Klenam, Tabiri Kwayie Asumadu, Abdulhakeem Bello, Vitalis Chioh Anye, Nancy A. Burnham, Rodica Neamtu, and Winston Oluwole Soboyejo. 2026. Machine Learning Guided Design of Doped Lithium Lanthanum Zirconium Oxide (LLZO) for Improved Performance. Energy Storage 8, 4, Article e70418. https://doi.org/10.1002/est2.70418
• Akshatha Dixith, Mehrnoush Alizade, Anthony G. Spangenberger, Rodica Neamtu, and Diana A. Lados. 2026. Machine Learning Methodology for Porosity Classification and Prediction from Computed Tomography Data and Its Application to Processing-Properties Optimization in Additive Manufacturing. Journal of Materials Science.

Prof. Roee Shraga’s Publications: 

• Angela Santos, Nina Klimenkova, and Roee Shraga. 2025. Woman-in-the-Loop: AI-Driven Mentorship Matching System. In 2025 IEEE MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference (URTC). IEEE.
• Mahdi Esmailoghli, Steven Purtzel, Roee Shraga, Renée J. Miller, and Matthias Weidlich. 2026. Every Data Lake Has a Past: Analytical Exploration of Wikipedia History as a Temporal Data Lake. In Proceedings of DOLAP, 116-124.
• Nan Ma, Rania Labib, Robert Amor, Adrian Chong, Cheng Fan, Kasimir Forth, Xiaoqin Fu, Stefan Fuchs, Tianzhen Hong, Nina Klimenkova, Jaheem Koo, Shundong Li, Steven Tanner McCullough, June Young Park, Roee Shraga, Sungmin Yoon, Liang Zhang, and Yiting Zhang. 2026. Ten Questions Concerning Large Language Models (LLMs) for Building Applications. Building and Environment, Article 114260.
• Nina Klimenkova, Sreeram Marimuthu, and Roee Shraga. 2026. Human-Centered Exploration of Table Unionability. Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 19, 9, 2099-2112.
• Nicholas Pulsone, Roee Shraga, and Gregory Goren. 2026. BEACON: Budget-Aware Entity Matching Across Domains. In Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD ‘26). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3802021
• Eamon Worden, Morgan Lee, Abubakir Siedahmed, Adam Sales, Jiayi Zhang, Roee Shraga, and Neil Heffernan. 2026. Short, Long, or Affective: Evaluating LLM-Generated Feedback Styles for Student Learning. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Springer Nature Switzerland.
• Nicholas Pulsone, Gregory Goren, and Roee Shraga. 2026. Understanding Domain-Aware Distribution Alignment in Budgeted Entity Matching. arXiv:2606.27342. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.27342
• Sreeram Marimuthu, Roee Shraga, Xiaozhong Liu, and Patricia L. Mabry. 2026. Right for the Wrong Reasons: A Benchmark for Hallucination and Clinical Safety in AI Health Triage. In Proceedings of Workshops at the 52nd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB ‘26), Workshop on Biomedical Data Management Systems (BioDMS ‘26). https://biodms.org/

Prof. Craig Shue’s Publications: 

• Adam Beauchaine and Craig A. Shue. 2026. See, Record, Do: Automated Generation of UI Workflows from Tutorial Videos. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision.
• Shuwen Liu and Craig A. Shue. 2026. Bringing Your Own Privacy: Towards Measurable Privacy in Mobile Device Management and Security. In Proceedings of the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN ‘26).
• Shuwen Liu and Craig A. Shue. 2026. Towards Automated Policy Training in Android Software-Defined Networking. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security.

Prof. Erin Solovey’s Publications: 

• Deniz Sonmez Unal, Theresa Mowad, Catherine M. Arrington, Erin Solovey, and Erin Walker. 2026. Leveraging Privileged Multimodal Data to Model Cognitive States in an Interactive Learning Platform. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM ‘26), 12 pages. Best Paper Award.
• Felicity Bell, Eike Schneiders, Václav Janeček, Dirk Hartung, Erin T. Solovey, Niels van Berkel, and Benjamin Tag. 2026. Augmenting Legal Work: Artificial Intelligence in Professional Practice. In CHIWORK Companion ‘26: Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work (CHIWork ‘26). ACM, 6 pages.
• Christopher Micek, Lasse Warnke, Lorenco A. Rodrigues, Felix Putze, and Erin T. Solovey. 2026. Capturing Team Cognition: A Multimodal Dataset for Adaptive Collaborative Interfaces. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘26). ACM.
• Crystal Brown, Francesca Bernardi, Matthew P. Ahrens, Erin T. Solovey, Rodica Neamtu, Lane Harrison, Debra Boucher, and Keenan Kidwell. 2026. Creating Pathways of Belonging and Achievement: Lessons from WPI’s PASS-CS Program. In Proceedings of the 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
• Navya Tiwari, Erin T. Solovey, Andrew L. Kun, Osnat Mokryn, and Orit Shaer. 2026. Sensei: Intelligent Physiological Signal Acquisition and Analysis Dashboard. In Companion Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI Companion ‘26). ACM, 4 pages.

Prof. Xiaoyan Sun’s Publications:

• Hao Luan, Xue Tan, Zhiheng Li, Jun Dai, Xiaoyan Sun, and Ping Chen. 2026. Dataset Reduction and Watermark Removal via Self-Supervised Learning for Model Extraction Attack. In Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS ‘26).
• Haowen Xu, Xue Tan, Lei Ma, Zhihao Zhang, Chao Wang, Qingze Wang, Ping Chen, Jun Dai, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. When Agents Go Rogue: Activation-Based Detection of Malicious Behaviors in Multi-Agent LLM Systems. In Proceedings of the Forty-Third International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML ‘26).
• Haowen Xu, Tianya Zhao, Xuyu Wang, Lei Ma, Jun Dai, Alex Wyglinski, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. EMPalm: Exfiltrating Palm Biometric Data via Electromagnetic Side-Channel. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Embedded Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Systems (SenSys ‘26).
• Zhongli Fang, Yiran Chen, Lingyu Chen, Yu Liu, Xiaoyan Sun, Ping Chen, and Jun Dai. 2026. A Trustworthy Watermarking Framework for LLM-Generated Food Safety Content. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME ‘26).
• Zhilong Wang, Haizhou Wang, Nanqing Luo, Lan Zhang, Peng Liu, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. Hide Your Malicious Goal into Benign Narratives: Jailbreak Large Language Models through Carrier Articles. In Proceedings of the 22nd EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm ‘26).
• Tran Huynh, Haowen Xu, Brian Almaguer, Jun Dai, and Xiaoyan Sun. 2026. INFER: Portable Hands-On Labs for Digital Forensics Education: Design, Deployment, and Educational Impact. Computers & Security.

Prof. Robert J. Walls’ Publications:

• Zheyuan Ma, Gaoxiang Liu, Alex Eastman, Kai Kaufman, Md Armanuzzaman, Xi Tan, Katherine Jesse, Robert J. Walls, and Ziming Zhao. 2025. “We Just Did Not Have That on the Embedded System”: Insights and Challenges for Securing Microcontroller Systems from the Embedded CTF Competitions. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ‘25). ACM, 2474-2488. https://doi.org/10.1145/3719027.3765039
• Tongwei Ren, Ronghan Che, Guin R. Gilman, Lorenzo De Carli, and Robert J. Walls. 2025. REVDECODE: Enhancing Binary Function Matching with Context-Aware Graph Representations and Relevance Decoding. In 34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security ‘25). USENIX Association, 6857-6875. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity25/presentation/ren
• Guin Gilman and Robert J. Walls. 2025. ReFINE: A Reactive and Fine-Grained Scheduling Framework for Concurrency on General Purpose GPUs. In Proceedings of the 37th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA ‘25). ACM, 193-209. https://doi.org/10.1145/3694906.3743331

Prof. Hanmeng Zhan’s Publications:

• Yichi Xu and Hanmeng Zhan. 2026. Subspace State Transfer in Coined Quantum Walks. Quantum Information Processing 25, 5, Article 153. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-026-05172-7

Prof. Cheng Zhang’s Publications:

• Cheng Zhang, Qiancheng Fu, Hang Ji, Ines Santacruz Del Valle, Alexandra Silva, and Marco Gaboardi. 2026. Outrunning Big KATs: Efficient Decision Procedures for Variants of GKAT. In Programming Languages and Systems. Springer Nature Switzerland, 392-423. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-22723-2_14

Professional Engagements and Leadership:  

• Prof. Jun Dai continues to serve as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, a role he has held since April 2025.
• Prof. Jun Dai is serving as artifact evaluation co-chair for the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security 2026.
• Prof. Jun Dai is serving on the AP Networking Development Committee and served on the Career Kickstart Cyber Advisory Committee for the College Board. The committees helped establish course frameworks in Networking Fundamentals and Cybersecurity Fundamentals.
• Prof. Tian Guo continues to serve as an associate editor of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC).
• Prof. Tian Guo co-organized the Human-Centered Immersive Perception Evaluation Workshop at WPI on July 17, 2026.
• Prof. Lane Harrison appeared with Prof. Rob Krueger on the WPI Podcast in June 2026 for the episode “The AI Connector: Social and Data Sciences”.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin was invited to serve as an associate editor of Bioinformatics Advances (Oxford University Press), a flagship journal of the International Society for Computational Biology.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin was invited to serve on the external advisory board for the Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering program at SUNY Polytechnic Institute.
• Prof. Dmitry Korkin is serving on the organizing committee for the inaugural 2026 New England Computational Biology Symposium.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu gave an invited talk, “AI and the Workforce,” at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest in April 2026.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu gave an invited talk, “AI/Machine Learning for Materials Design and Manufacturing,” at the AI in Action Summit at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York, in March 2026.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu gave an invited talk at the AI Summit organized by WPI Undergraduate Studies in March 2026.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu appeared on the WPI Podcast in May 2026 to discuss her work with AI-generated content. Listen to the episode.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu was interviewed by InformationWeek about AI bias in hiring. Read the article.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu’s work with Global Projects was featured in a WPI Journal article about using AI in projects at the Bucharest Project Center. Read the article.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu’s leadership in supporting computer science students was featured in a WPI article about the impact of the NSF S-STEM PASS-CS grant. Read the article.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu’s leadership in Global Projects was featured by TRINITAS TV.
• Prof. Rodica Neamtu’s work with WPI students at the Bucharest Project Center was featured by YouTube, Media Online Calarasi, and Facebook.
• Prof. Roee Shraga served as local arrangements chair for the 52nd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases in Boston.
• Prof. Roee Shraga served as a guest editor for “Editorial: Special Issue on Human-in-the-Loop Data Analytics” in Information Systems.
• Prof. Craig Shue was recognized as a Distinguished Member of the INFOCOM 2026 Technical Program Committee for providing high-quality peer reviews.
• Prof. Craig Shue was featured in a CBS News MoneyWatch article by Mary Cunningham, “Here’s What Experts Say the Amazon Web Services Outage Reveals about the Fragility of the Cloud”, updated October 22, 2025.
• Prof. Craig Shue was featured in a Computerworld article by Sharon Gaudin, “Surviving AI: Navigating Workload Creep, AI Slop, and the New Tech Career Playbook”, published August 4, 2026.
• Prof. Erin Solovey is serving as papers chair for ACM CHI 2027, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
• Prof. Erin Solovey is serving as technical program chair for MobileHCI 2027, the ACM International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction.
• Prof. Erin Solovey served as subcommittee chair for the Understanding People subcommittee at CHI 2026 in Barcelona in April 2026.
• Prof. Erin Solovey organized the workshop “Augmenting Legal Work: Artificial Intelligence in Professional Practice” at the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work (CHIWORK ‘26) in June 2026.
• Prof. Erin Solovey served on the program committee for CHIWORK 2026.
• Prof. Erin Solovey continues to serve as an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
• Prof. Erin Solovey was appointed graduate program director for the Department of Computer Science. She chairs the Graduate Committee and Graduate Admissions Committee and serves on the WPI Futures Working Group.
• Prof. Erin Solovey appeared on the WPI Podcast in November 2025 for the episode “Thinking with AI”.
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan gave an invited talk, “Enabling Subspace State Transfer with Quantum Coins,” at the 18th Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications conference (OPSFA 2026).
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan gave an invited talk, “Quantum Walks and Graph Spectra: New Connections and Problems,” at Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM 2026).
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan gave an invited talk, “State Transfer in Discrete Quantum Walks: From Coins to Weighted Graphs,” at the 27th Conference of the International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS 2026).
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan gave an invited talk, “The Trace of the Average Mixing Matrix,” at the American Mathematical Society Sectional Meeting (AMS 2026).
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan gave an invited talk, “Subspace State Transfer in Coined Quantum Walks,” at the International Workshop on Operator Theory and Its Applications (IWOTA 2026).
• Prof. Hanmeng Zhan guest-edited a theme issue, “Numerical Analysis, Spectral Graph Theory, Orthogonal Polynomials and Quantum Algorithms,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
• Prof. Cheng Zhang served on the program committee for POPL 2027.
• Prof. Cheng Zhang gave a talk, “From Rewriting to Fixpoints: Solving Recursive Equations with E-Graphs,” at the E-graph Workshop 2026, co-located with PLDI.
• Prof. Cheng Zhang gave an invited talk, “CF-GKAT: Validation and Verification of Control-Flow Transformation,” at MIT Programming Languages Review 2026.
• Prof. Cheng Zhang gave an invited talk, “Validation and Verification of Control-Flow Transformation: From Automata to Practice,” at the Tufts Computer Science Colloquium 2026.
• Prof. Cheng Zhang gave an invited talk, “Outrunning Big KATs: Efficient Decision Procedures for Variants of GKAT,” at the Cornell Programming Language Discussion Group in 2025.

Student News:  

Doctoral Student Awards: 

• Merveille Santi Zinsou, a visiting PASET Ph.D. scholar from Gaston Berger University in Senegal, received a L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Sub-Saharan Africa Award. Advisor: Prof. Dmitry Korkin.

Doctoral Students – Graduated:  

• Wen-Chiang (Ivan) Lim. Advisor: Prof. Neil Heffernan. Dissertation: “LLM-Generated Summaries for Teachers: A Randomized Field Experiment in a Digital Learning Platform.”
• Xiaokun Xu. Advisor: Prof. Mark Claypool. Dissertation: “Measuring and Improving Quality of Experience in Cloud Game Streaming.”
• Akim Ndlovu. Advisor: Prof. Lane Harrison. Dissertation: “Advancing the Design and Evaluation of Thematic Mapping Techniques.”
• Shuwen Liu. Advisor: Prof. Craig Shue. Dissertation: “From Homes to Enterprises: Supporting Incident Response with SDN and Android Mobile Devices.”
• Merveille Santi Zinsou, a visiting PASET Ph.D. scholar from Gaston Berger University in Senegal. Advisor: Prof. Dmitry Korkin. Dissertation: “A Robust and Interpretable AI Framework for the Histopathological Diagnosis of Infectious Skin Diseases: The SINDI Approach Validated on Mycetoma.”