Sponsor Perspectives

How it works:

The sponsor specifies a challenging business problem and provides data for the students to analyze. A team of three or four Data Science graduate students works under the terms of a mutually beneficial agreement between the corporate sponsor and WPI. Students are expert in a variety of technical and professional skills. Each team is adept in computing, machine learning, statistics, big data management, deep learning, and visualization, and with using industry-standard analytical software tools. They also receive instruction in teamwork, project management, and communication. The Graduate Qualifying Projects contribute to cutting-edge data science STEM programs provided by the industry sponsors through innovative project-based education that bridges the gap between educational training and industry.

For sponsors:

• Bring together faculty and aspiring data scientists to tackle their problems with state-of-the-art techniques, new ideas, and vision.
• Access a well-trained and much sought-after talent pool with students trained in the field of big data and data science.
• Gain exclusive access and application of new techniques and technologies to find solutions to their problems
• Create new intellectual property and value for their corporation.

Samples of Graduate Qualifying Projects and Their Sponsors

While we strive for a rich diversity of project types (from data analytics and data science tool building to visual analytics) and domains (from science, engineering, financial, government, security, health, and more), some companies and/or mentors repeatedly collaborate with WPI on this important effort.

• Analytical Approach to Account Management —sponsored by AndPlus
• Prediction of Failed Job for Web2print —sponsored by AndPlus
• Visual Analytics for Robust Corrosion Assessment —sponsored by Army Research Laboratory
• MIL-STD-3059: Moving Toward the Future, a Data Science Approach —sponsored by Army Research Laboratory
• Beat Cancer with Natural Language Processing —sponsored by Dana Farber Cancer Institute
• Measuring Cancer Patients Similarity with the Clinico-Genomic Likeness Index —sponsored by Dana Farber Cancer Institute
• Subvocal Speech Recognition Using EMG —sponsored by Delsys
• Clustering Time Series Data Based on a Given Distance Function —sponsored by EnerNOC
• Dive Into the Health Insurance World—sponsored by Fallon Health
• Automated Process for Data Acquisition, Analysis and Preprocessing —sponsored by Findability Sciences
•  Data on Demand —sponsored by GRC
• Aircraft Health Predictive Analytics —sponsored by IBM
• Bioassay Concept Mapping: Limitations of Current NLP Technologies —sponsored by IOMICS
•  Structuring the Unstructured: Natural Language Analysis of a Knowledge Base —sponsored by Kronos
• Modeling Workforce Transaction —sponsored by Kronos
• VERTI Auto Insurance —sponsored by MAPFRE/VERTI Insurance
• Mobile App Usability and Click Tracking Analysis —sponsored by MAPFRE/VERTI Insurance
• Public School Website Design —sponsored by MassINC
• Machine Estimation of Exposure —sponsored by MassDEP
• MassDEP Disposal Cleanup Rate Factors —sponsored by MassDEP
• University Lookup Via Textual Analytics —sponsored by MathWorks
• Bridging the Communication Gap in Global Fire Safety Using Neural Machine Translation —sponsored by National Fire Protection Association
• Research and Implementation of Distributed Frameworks for Geocoding —sponsored by National Fire Protection Association
• Fleet Maintenance Data Mining at National Grid —sponsored by National Grid
• Adding Value in Machine Learning in Building the IoT —sponsored by OSRAM
• Application of Smart Lighting to Workspace Optimization in Office Space Utilization —sponsored by OSRAM Sylvania
• Clinical Supply Chain Shipment Profiling —sponsored by Pfizer
• Clinical Supply Chain Data Profiling —sponsored by Pfizer
• Clinical Trial Overage: Define the Data Landscape —sponsored by Pfizer
• Enhancing and Accelerating Chemical Development Through Easy-to-Use Computational Tools —sponsored by Pfizer
• Investigational Product Waste Analysis: Optimizing the Global Clinical Supply Chain —sponsored by Pfizer
• Enhancing and Accelerating Chemical Development Through Easy-to-Use Computational Tools —sponsored by Pfizer
• Global Clinical Supply Chain (Patient Enrollment Performance and Prediction) —sponsored by Pfizer
• Scientific Data Cloud —sponsored by Pfizer
• Real-Time Cyber Security Threat Detection —sponsored by Seceon
• Anomaly Detection in Cybersecurity —sponsored by Seceon
• Analysis of Wearable Sensors Data For Human Activity Recognition —sponsored by Takeda Pharmaceutical
• Learning the Brain —sponsored by UMass Medical School
• Learning the Mind —sponsored by UMass Medical School
• Outlier Detection In EEG Data —sponsored by UMass Medical School
• Talent AI: A Job Recommendation System Via Resume Text Mining —sponsored by United Technologies
• Empowering Fraud Detection —sponsored by Waters Corporation
• Paradigm™ Scientific Search Redesign —sponsored by Waters Corporation
• Data Mining Waters Databases —sponsored by Waters Corporation

“I very much enjoyed working with WPI in defining this project and for identifying a quality group of students to work with. I like how they are aligning students with industry organizations to help solve real-world problems. I hope we continue this collaboration and I wish you all the success in the world in expanding the program and creating the next generation of super-smart data scientists that we all need.”

—John Arnold, Cognitive Solution Leader from IBM