Faculty & Staff

I compose, perform, record, mix and produce electroacoustic music; I am interested in how we can use the tools and techniques of audio production to explore new musical territory. I build mechatronic and robotic musical instruments; I am interested in how we can free electronic music from the world of speakers through computer-controlled automatic mechanical instruments. I conduct research and experiments that explore how our cognitive and perceptual processes affect our musical experience; I am interested in how we can use such research to guide our compositional and analytic activities. ... View Profile

Roshanak Bigonah has studied Education and Technology, and Media with concentration in Video Production and Advertising. For the past 13 years, she has taught a wide range of courses in Digital Arts including  Graphic Arts, Web Design,  Photography, Videography and 3D Design. Roshanak Bigonah has worked as a freelance graphic and web designer.  In addition to her teaching interests Roshanak Bigonah, is a poet and has published four poetry books in her native language, Farsi. A collection of her works has been translated and published in Dutch and German. ... View Profile

Coming from a family with a long teaching tradition going back at least to her great-grandfather, teaching has always been fundamental to Professor Brisson’s well-being. Being a German professor at WPI in particular has been a great privilege because the students are motivated, hardworking, and eager to learn. She feels that teaching German language and culture is particularly important at an engineering school with a strong focus on environmental technology and sustainability for a number of reasons. ... View Profile

In addition to teaching the history of science and technology, I have at various times in the past raised baby birds at the Bronx Zoo and the Baltimore Aquarium, curated and inventoried mammal skeletons in attics at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, designed biology teaching labs at the University of Colorado, and collected dinosaurs and other fossils while camping in the Wyoming badlands with paleontology field crews. ... View Profile

One of Professor Cullon's students recently called him "strangely fascinating." He knew that he was strange but he was happy to learn that a student founding his approach to teaching fascinating. He likes to encourage students to see history not as a mass of dead facts but as a vital mode of inquiry and a moral project that has the potential to inform the present as much as illuminate the past. ... View Profile

Jennifer deWinter has long been interested in how culture (which is local) moves internationally. She has spent a number of years analyzing anime, comics, and computer games as part of global media flows in order to understand how concepts such as "art," "culture," and "entertainment" are negotiated. In 2003, Professor deWinter joined the Learning Games Initiative, a group of scholars and game designers dedicated to the general study of games and the use of games to teach concepts and skills in particular. ... View Profile

Wen-Hua Du is an assistant teaching professor of Chinese in the Department of Humanities and Arts. Prior to joining WPI, she worked as a senior lecturer and coordinator of the Chinese Program at the Pennsylvania State University and visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her expertise is in the areas of language teaching, curriculum design, and program development. Her research interests include culture teaching and learning, language learning strategies, and pedagogy of Chinese as a foreign language and Chinese as a heritage language. ... View Profile

Michelle Ephraim is the Shakespeare scholar at WPI. She is the author of Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage (Routledge, 2008) as well as numerous articles on 16th- and 17th-century literature. Professor Ephraim also teaches writing courses: Short Story, Creative Non-Fiction, and Sci-Fi/Horror/Fantasy. Her essays have appeared in publications such as the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Lilith, Tikkun, The Morning News, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. ... View Profile

Brenton Faber studies medical writing and the human factors that influence medical diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. He is a practicing paramedic who volunteers with a rural ambulance squad and at a free urban clinic. I am currently interested in the concept of "allostasis" and "allostatic load." The terms have been used to describe a continued activation of the body’s neural, neuroendocrine, and immune systems as an adaptive response to prolonged stress. ... View Profile

Roger S. Gottlieb, professor of philosophy, is the author or editor of twenty books and more than 100 articles on environmentalism, religious studies, contemporary spirituality, political philosophy, ethics, the Holocaust, feminism, and disability. He is internationally known for his work as a leading analyst and exponent of religious environmentalism, for his passionate and moving account of spirituality in an age of environmental crisis, and for his innovative and humane description of the role of religion in a democratic society. ... View Profile

James Hanlan teaches courses in American urban history, American labor history, and the American History survey sequence. His book-length publications include a study of 19th-century textile workers in Manchester, NH; a two-volume encyclopedia of American labor history; and a study of a 20th-century printing firm. Professor Hanlan serves as executive secretary of the New England Historical Association, a professional society with approximately 700 members. ... View Profile

Joshua Harmon is the author of the essay collection The Annotated Mixtape, the short fiction collection History of Cold Seasons, the novel Quinnehtukqut, and the poetry collections Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie and Scape. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared widely in periodicals. He is currently working on a novel, a collection of poems, and a book-length essay on cultural iterations of fantasy c. 1977. At WPI, he has taught courses in creative writing and American literature. View Profile

My primary focus is technical and professional writing. However, I also teach general writing courses that are less technical in nature. Having spent over 20 years in industry as a professional writer, I tend to think about how I can help students become stronger writers in the workplace. I also believe that, in becoming stronger writers, students should enjoy the process. So I try to structure my classes in a way that allows students to improve their writing skills while writing about topics that interest them. As a professor of practice, I believe in learning by doing. ... View Profile

When new acquaintances find out I teach writing, it’s not unusual for them to lament a broad decline in the nation’s writing skills. How does it make me feel, they ask, that students, say, don’t know the difference between adjectives and adverbs? Or, can I believe it that people hardly even know what apostrophes do, let alone where to put them? As someone who treasures good, careful prose, I’m sympathetic to these worries. But as an educator, I think it’s important to steer the conversation in a different direction. ... View Profile

Jennifer McWeeny is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Humanities and Arts Department. Her training in philosophy is pluralistic in nature, engaging work from a variety of schools and traditions including Continental philosophy, analytic philosophy, feminist philosophy, pragmatism, and Asian and comparative philosophies. ... View Profile

Professor Pfeifer’s research focus in philosophy is on contemporary continental philosophy, social and political philosophy, global justice, and development ethics. He teaches philosophy courses, international studies courses, and for the Great Problems Seminars program. In addition to a number of chapters in edited collections, Professor Pfeifer's work can be found in journals such as Human Studies, The European Legacy, Crisis and Critique, Continental Thought and Theory, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory. ... View Profile

Dr. Joshua W. Rohde is the Director of Choral Activities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he conducts all four of the university’s choral ensembles – Men’s Glee Club, Women’s Alden Voices, Festival Chorus, and the Chamber Choir. He is also the Music Director of the Quincy Choral Society and an active professional cellist throughout the Boston area. Dr. Rohde’s work spans multiple musical genres, with an emphasis on new music from living composers. ... View Profile

Jennifer Rudolph's main area of research is modern Chinese political history.  While her first book dissects institutional change in late imperial China, in her second, she explores identity politics in the Taiwan Strait. In it, Rudolph explores co-optations of a 17th-century pirate-merchant Zheng Chenggong. Through the centuries, Zheng has lived on, with regimes ruling, or desirous of ruling, Taiwan portraying him as a traitor, Confucian god, Chinese nationalist, Japanese nationalist, and the Moses of Taiwan. ... View Profile

William San Martín is a historian of global science and technology, socio-ecological change, and public policy. He specializes in inter-American politics and relations, and Latin America in a global context. Prior to joining WPI, he was a Postdoctoral Associate, jointly affiliated with the program of Science, Technology, and Society and with History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Fulbright Scholar and is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Program of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... View Profile

Lance Schachterle enjoys the excitement of the classroom--meeting new students each term, sharing ideas about works of literature that matter, and learning to communicate more effectively. He teaches courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels, mostly in modern literature, but also really likes interdisciplinary courses that involve science. WPI students work harder than most, and students pursuing their minor in literature often really get intellectually and emotionally involved in what they are studying. ... View Profile

Douglas Weeks is the administrator of music at WPI and in that capacity coordinates music activities and classes. In addition, he directs the WPI Orchestra, Concert Band, and Brass Ensemble. These ensembles perform at a high level, presenting numerous concerts on campus during the year. They have also performed frequently overseas, most recently on a concert tour in Prague and Berlin in March 2012. Professor Weeks’ own background is in performance and education, with degrees in both areas from several colleges including a doctorate from Boston University. ... View Profile