Highlights

We are proud to announce that the recent renovation of our building, Stratton Hall, has received an architectural award: the Silver Award for 2025 Outstanding Projects in Renovation/Historic Preservation, granted by the publication Learning by Design in their Fall 2025 Issue. This recognition celebrates the project’s innovative approach to modernizing a historic building while preserving its architectural character. 

The renovation, led by Stantec, transformed Stratton Hall into a vibrant, collaborative space that supports cutting-edge research and teaching. Read more about the award here.

For 35 years, excluding the Covid-affected ones, the WPI Department of Mathematical Sciences has been hosting an annual competition for high school students across New England. This outreach initiative is intricately connected to the Master of Mathematics for Educators (MME) program and serves as an essential bridge to the local high school community.

The 35th Annual Math Meet competition was held on October 17, 2025.  It involved 175 students and their advisors for a total of 44 teams (one team for each participating high school).

The top winners for this year were:

1st Place Team - Nashua High School South
2nd Place Team - TIE St. Mark's School and Worcester Academy
3rd Place Team - No award

We also congratulate the top 3 individual scorers: in first place, Pratham Mukewar from Nashua High School South; in second place, Vaibhav Rastogi from Bishop Brady High School, and in a tie for third place, Alex Ding from Worcester Academy and April Sun from Lynnfield High School.

The success of Math Meet owes much to the dedication of our department, graduate students, staff, and the Math Meet committee. A huge thank you to everyone that helped to make this event a great success!

Pictured above is the top-scoring team, Nashua High School South, from Nashua, NH. A big congratulations to the team members, Ameya Kharade, Pratham Mukewar, Samarth Sharma, and Hannah Thomas, and to their advisor and teacher, Kellie Gabriel!

Prof. Vadim Yakovlev has received a new one-year award from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The research, titled "Models and Machine-Learning Algorithms for Energy Efficient Carbon Fiber Production Using Microwave-Assisted Plasma," is sponsored by the Department of Energy in the framework of the "High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg)" Program and will involve participation of RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies Corp.).

Due to its unique mechanical and physical properties, carbon fiber (CF) is an extremely valuable material for the aerospace and automotive industries. ORNL has demonstrated that carbonization, a key step in CF production, can be made much faster and more energy efficient when accompanied by microwave plasma processing. However, promising results have been demonstrated on small-scale equipment. This project will create an electromagnetic model of a microwave system in which plasma-driven carbonization is to be carried out, and its performance will be optimized using specialized machine-learning algorithms. The developed modeling and optimization approaches will then be implemented in ORNL's HPC environment. This will pave the way for CAD of efficient large-scale carbonization devices and potentially facilitate the development of microwave plasma technologies on an industrial scale.

Congratulations to Vadim!

Discovering disease-associated genes from whole genome sequencing datasets is challenging and current methods operate with low precision. Prof. Zheyang Wu, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and affiliated with the Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Program and the Data Science Program, was recently awarded a 3-year project from the National Science Foundation to develop new statistical tools to enhance the power and precision of discovering disease-associated genes. By integrating diverse sources of genomic information and improving how prior knowledge and statistical evidence are combined, the project aims to uncover subtle genetic signals that might otherwise be missed. It focuses on two core challenges: (1) designing more effective weighting strategies for incorporating prior information when combining statistical significances, and (2) developing new methods to integrate discrete statistics within a general hypothesis testing framework. The project will implement and apply these approaches to whole genome sequencing data analysis. 

Congratulations to Zheyang!

Prof. Christopher Larsen has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) which supports his research on developing and analyzing mathematical models for material and structural failure. The project, titled "New variational methods for fracture evolution," is sponsored by the Division of Mathematics within the NSF.

For a large range of applications, from civil infrastructure to national defense, predicting the failure of materials and structures is critical. Our ability to predict failure depends on mathematical and computational models, and we need both to be as rigorous and physically justified as possible. Over the last 25 years, there have been significant mathematical advances in this area, which have directly improved computational models, particularly for fracture. However, these advances still have significant limitations - they are mostly restricted to models without applied forces, and existing mathematical models can entangle fracture nucleation and propagation in an unphysical way. Larsen recently formulated a mathematical model for fracture that isolates propagation and is compatible with all applied forces. The first goal of this project is to show existence of evolutions satisfying this principle. Another goal is to formulate models and show existence for evolutions satisfying both this principle and physical criteria for nucleation. Larsen also develops and studies improved computational models based on these mathematical results. The project includes training Ph.D. students.

Prof. Mayer Humi, professor of mathematical sciences, recently published a paper in the Journal of Mathematical Physics titled “Laplace conjecture about the formation of the solar system.” In the paper, Humi introduces a mathematical model based on solid physical laws that offers a support for the 1796 Laplace conjecture that described the sun as a cloud of gas having a very large radius that contracted inwards as it cooled and cast off a family of gas rings from which the planetary system later condensed. Read Humi’s paper here.

Congratulations to Mayer!

Prof. Barry Posterro was recently featured in an article in the Actuarial Review from the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS). Posterro is the first CAS Fellow at WPI. The article highlighted the way he has integrated CAS syllabi papers into his courses. It also noted that his expertise in ratemaking, estimating unpaid claims and price, and capital allocation has helped WPI introduce key P&C insurance concepts into its curriculum. You can read the article here.

Congratulations to Barry!

Prof. Balgobin Nandram, professor of mathematical sciences, has been awarded a certificate from the American Statistical Association (ASA) in recognition of 35 years of membership. The ASA is one of the oldest professional associations in the United States. Nandram has been active and recognized within the society for many years. He served as the associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 2007-2012. He was awarded the honorary rank of fellow in the ASA in 2003 for contributions in Bayesian hierarchical models and finite population sampling and successful efforts in mentoring students. Also, in 2006, he received the prestigious Statistical Partnership in Academe, Industry and Government (SPAIG) award from the ASA for WPI with collaboration with his students and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Congratulations to Bal!