Faculty Research & Focus Areas

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DS AI Team_Elke

Prof. Elke Rundensteiner and Prof. Lane Harrison joined by their PhD research team

 

CONTACT
Location: Unity Hall
Office Location: 3rd Floor, Room 366
Phone: 508-831-6220

WPI Data Science researchers are exploring every aspect of this burgeoning field. Together, they innovate Data Science techniques and technologies, and their applications fuel breakthroughs that have direct, real-world impact. These state-of- the-art analytics tools allow users to explore data spurring advances in digital health, genetic analysis, educational software, financial trading, and more. Talented graduate students also have frequent opportunities for paid research positions, fellowships and industrial sponsorships. The students are privileged to participate in big data research projects and gain in-the- field experience, learning to turn raw data into actionable information.


 

Research Focus Areas

Faculty across disciplines work on shared research projects in data science areas as diverse as:

  • High performance data analytics
  • Bioinformatics and genomic databases
  • Business intelligence and predictive analytics
  • Data mining and knowledge discovery
  • Digital Health
  • Deep Learning algorithms
  • Educational data mining
  • Fake news detection
  • Financial decision-making
  • Fraud detection
  • Generative artificial intelligence
  • Healthcare data analytics
  • Large-scale data management and infrastructure
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Numerical and statistical data analysis
  • Optimization and prescriptive analytics
  • Urban computing
  • Signal processing and information theory
  • Social media analytics
  • Statistical and machine learning
  • Visual analytics of large data sets

 

Faculty News & Research Highlights

AI_RoeeShraga
AI & Humans:

NSF Grant to Study How Humans Interact With Artificial Intelligence

Roee Shraga, assistant professor of computer science and data science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), has received $175,000 from the National Science Foundation to scrutinize the human aspects of data discovery and integration. The research project aims to explore the critical role of human involvement in data preparation processes to identify and address biases that automated systems may fail to detect. 

Prof. Seyed Zekavat
Using Drones, Radar, and AI, Researchers Aim to Improve Irrigation and Protect Soil

Seyed Zekavat Leads $1.1 Million Project to Develop System That Will Create Soil Moisture Maps for Farmers

Seyed (Reza) Zekavat and a team of researchers are bringing together drones, ground-penetrating radar, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to develop a low-cost system that will rapidly map root-zone soil moisture levels on large farms and help farmers irrigate more efficiently.

Professor Paffenroth Receives a 3-Year Grant to Develop Data Science Driven Approaches for Chemical Identification

Prof. Paffenroth, Core Data Science Faculty Member and Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences, and his Data Science PhD student Cate Dunham recently received a $1,000,000 over 3-year project with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US Army DEVCOM-SC to develop state-of-the-art methods to develop deep neural networks for the generation of synthetic chemical signatures.

12 Faculty Members Attain Rank of Full Professor, Six Others Awarded Tenure

DS Professor Yanhua Li Recognized by WPI

Yanhua Li has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Computer Science. Li is a data science expert who joined the faculty in 2015 and focuses his research on spatial-temporal data science and artificial intelligence with applications in smart cities. He has led or supported research funded with $8.1 million. As a principal investigator, he has secured $4.6 million from industry and the NSF, including prestigious NSF CAREER and CRII awards. Li has taught a range of undergraduate to graduate courses and developed a new course in reinforcement learning, a type of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents take actions to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. 

Andrew Trapp Profile Photo
NSF Awards WPI and RPI Research Team $1.8M to Create Platform

Help Nonprofits Find Resources and Talent, and Create Community Connections

Seeking to support the efforts of nonprofits to match resources and assets with client demand and operational needs, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has received a four-year, $1,849,994 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to design and implement a new algorithm-based community “collective ecosystem” tool that nonprofit organizations can use to find and share resources—such as event space, transportation for supplies, donations for clients, or even a staff member experienced in grant writing or a volunteer lawyer to review documents.

WPI Mathematician Creates Chemical Sensors For Army Soldiers

WORCESTER, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A WPI mathematician is working with the U.S. Army to develop tiny, wearable chemical sensors that help them detect harmful chemicals quickly.

WBZ NewsRadio's Laurie Kirby spoke with Randy Paffenroth, an associate professor of mathematical sciences, computer science, and data science at WPI, about the project, on which he served as principal investigator.

Headshot of Lane Harrison
How we see and interact with information ripe for more robust look

Professor Lane Harrison to Support Data Visualization Studies with NSF Grant

Whether it’s polling numbers or voter turnout displays on a news website, public health COVID-19 vaccine messaging, or artificial intelligence interfaces, how data visualizations are presented can inform and influence important, and often critical, decisions.

Determining whether those presentations are effective—whether people got the message—takes time and an empirical approach. Associate Computer Science Professor Lane Harrison hopes to speed up that process by putting better tools into the hands of researchers who study the graphical representation of information using charts, graphs, animations, or maps. 

DS AI_Elke
Elke Rundensteiner and Students Develop Algorithms to Address Bias in Automated Rankings

AI and Fairness:

When it comes to fairness, artificial intelligence (AI) is imperfect.

But Elke Rundensteiner, William Smith Dean's Professor in the Department of Computer Science and founding director of the Data Science program at WPI, and her students are developing a way to address this problem with algorithms that help ensure fairness in aggregated rankings that impact people in profound ways. The work has been supported by a grant of nearly $500,000 from the National Science Foundation.


 

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U.S. National Science Foundation, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation double investment in science-driven conservation projects

WPI Researchers Awarded $2 Million Grant to Use Science to Combat Wildlife Trafficking

WPI will partner with researchers from Florida International University and the University of Maryland on the four-year, $2 million grant. For Kyumin Lee, professor of computer science, and Renata Konrad, a professor in The Business School at WPI, the new grant represents an evolution of work they started in 2020 to use a mix of artificial intelligence, physical tools, and supply chain, financial, and social media data to deter illegal wildlife trade. 


 

DS - AI Faculty Research

Faster, Fairer, and More Accurate AI Models with Graph Data

WPI Prof. Fabricio Murai discusses their current research related to FRV AI. 

Extracting Knowledge with Natural Language Processing

WPI Prof. Kyumin Lee describes his research information retrieval and AI. 

Better Data for Better AI Results

WPI Prof. Roee Shraga describes his work to improve the data used b AI systems and algorithms. 

Understanding Brain Networks using Deep Learning

WPI Prof. Xiangnan Kong discusses their current research related to AI. 

Faculty Profiles

Carolina Ruiz
Carolina Ruiz
Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences and Harold L. Jurist ’61 and Heather E. Jurist Dean’s Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science
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 [...]
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