Highlights

Profs. William Sanguinet, Michael Smith, Samuel Tripp, and Zheyang Wu have been awarded Summer Sandbox Grants from the Office of Undergraduate Studies at WPI. These grants support faculty in the summer to design and test fundamentally new approaches to teaching and learning. See more about the types of approaches the Summer Sandbox Grants funds at this page.

Prof. Sanguinet and Smith's project description:

The grant is to support the design of a framework for implementation of projects which safely integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into applied mathematics education. The objective of these projects will be to challenge students to teach creative math problems to a locally run large language model, honing both their understanding of math subject matter as well as their ability to work with an LLM.

Prof. Tripp's project description:

The linear algebra courses at WPI are taken by more than 1,100 students annually across almost every major. Students learn best when the material is connected to their interests and career fields. We will build a repository of ten final projects for MA 2071 aligned with the most common majors at WPI taking MA 2071, so that students are sure to have an option of interest to them, and so future faculty can both use and contribute to this store of projects.

Prof. Wu's project description:

This project develops an AI-assisted practice tool for MA2611 Applied Statistics I, a course serving 700+ students annually. Building on a working prototype, the tool delivers curated problems with adaptive difficulty and AI-generated feedback aligned to course pedagogy. Unlike unstructured ChatGPT use -- which often undermines conceptual understanding -- this system provides teacher-guided AI interactions through carefully engineered prompts and instructor-curated content. The tool addresses gaps in existing support by providing personalized, on-demand practice at near-zero marginal cost per student.

Prof. Francesca Bernardi, assistant professor of mathematical sciences, has received the Denise Nicoletti Trustee's Award for Service to the Community for 2026 from WPI. This award honors the memory of Prof. Denise Nicoletti, whose passion for life and humanity touched many lives, and is intended to keep her spirit of service alive in the WPI community. Denise Nicoletti joined WPI in 1991 as the first tenure-track female faculty member in the history of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a recognized authority on ultrasonics, nondestructive testing, scaling and fractal properties, the assessment of student learning, and the promotion of science and engineering to under-represented groups. In 1997, Denise, together with Prof. Chrysanthe Demetry of the ME Department, created Camp Reach at WPI, a widely-acclaimed summer program which introduces seventh grade girls to the excitement of engineering and science. In 1998, she created WECE (Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering) organization to support and inspire WPI’s female ECE students. 

Prof. Francesca Bernardi is the recipient of the 2026 Denise Nicoletti Trustees’ Award for Service to the Community in recognition of her exceptional commitment to inclusive education and community engagement. Through initiatives such as Let’s Talk Math, supporting underserved and marginalized students, leading departmental inclusion and mentoring efforts, and contributing to campus‑wide programs that foster belonging and well‑being, Professor Bernardi exemplifies the spirit of service embodied by the award. Her work has created lasting impact for K–12, undergraduate, and graduate students, and the broader WPI community by expanding access to STEM, strengthening support networks, and advancing equity across campus.

Prof. William J. Martin, professor of mathematical sciences, has received the Board of Trustees' Chair's Exemplary Faculty Prize for 2026 from WPI. This prize recognizes WPI faculty members who excel in all relevant areas of faculty performance, including teaching, research and scholarship, and advising. The tradition of awarding the prize was established in 2007 through the personal philanthropy of Donald K. Peterson ’71, then chairman of the WPI Board of Trustees; it was continued by current board chairman Philip B. Ryan ’65.

Prof. Martin exemplifies excellence in teaching, research, advising, and service. A leading scholar in algebraic aspects of combinatorial mathematics, he is internationally respected for his innovative, rigorous research—spanning pure math to applications in cryptography and quantum information—and for his global scholarly leadership. Equally dedicated to students, Prof. Martin has advised about 50 MQPs, brought cutting‑edge ideas into the classroom, and built vibrant mathematical communities through mentoring, teaching, and long‑standing service to WPI. Together, his intellectual impact, enthusiasm for teaching, and commitment to the university mark him as a model faculty member who embodies WPI’s highest aspirations.

Prof. Suzanne L. Weekes, chief executive officer of SIAM and professor emeritus of mathematical sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) by their Council for 2025. The AAAS's mission is to advance science and innovation to serve society. The AAAS Council elected 449 members and their website states that being elected "honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues." Prof. Weekes was one of nine members elected in the Section on Mathematics. You can read more about the AAAS Fellows here.

Three current and former math majors have won a fellowship from the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program for 2026. Learn more about the GRFP here: Congratulations to them and additional congratulations to their mentors!

Grace Baumgartner - graduated in May 2025 (chemistry double major) - is pursing a Ph.D. in chemistry at Northwestern University

Tora Ito - will graduate in May 2026 (data science minor) - will pursue a Ph.D. in operations research at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Camille Williams - graduated in May 2025 (physics double major) - is pursuing a Ph.D. in microwave electromagnetics engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder

Prof. Francesca Bernardi has received tenure and been promoted to Associate Professor, Prof. Randy Paffenroth has been promoted to Professor, Prof. Guanying Peng has received tenure and been promoted to Associate Professor, Prof. Barry Posterro has been promoted to Teaching Professor, Prof. Dina Rassias has been promoted to Associate Teaching Professor, Prof. Adam Sales has received tenure and been promoted to Associate Professor, Prof. Qingshuo Song has been promoted to Professor and Prof. Zhongqiang Zhang has been promoted to Professor. 

Congratulations to all of our faculty who received tenture and promotions this year!

We had an outstanding Putnam Team this year, which included Yerasyl Abdimash, Andrew Caleshu, Dashiell Elliott, Taran Kaylor, Lily Kropp, Paul Lesyk, Yutaro Matsuyama, Adam Mullaney, Uri Netzer, Roy Sianez, Kendall Snyder, and Arlan Zbarsky. Please join me in congratulating this year's Putnam team for getting a team rank of 85 (out of 487) in the 86th Putnam Competition that took place in December!

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is the most prestigious mathematics competition for undergraduates in the US and Canada. This exam has taken place every year since 1938 and previous winners have gone on to win the Fields Medal (e.g. John Milnor, David Mumford, and Daniel Quillen). These tests are extremely challenging-- the median score of the most recent exam was a 2. On Saturday December 6th, this talented WPI Putnam team completed two sessions (A and B), each lasting 3 hours. WPI's top scorers this year were Taran Kaylor with a score of 23, Yutaro Matsuyama with a score of 20, Dashiell Elliot with a score of 11, Adam Mullaney with a score of 10, and Arlan Zbarsky with a score of 10.

A special thank you to Prof. Guanying Peng for his time and efforts working with this talented group in B-term Denksport (MA 1801). We will start training for the 87th Putnam Competition again next fall. Please consider joining the team!

Kendall Snyder, a graduating math major, won a Pi Mu Epsilon Student Speaker Award. It was presented at Pi Mu Epsilon (PME)'s annual meeting on January 6, 2026. Snyder is one of sixteen undergraduates who won the award this year. PME is an academic society that promotes mathematics and, particularly, student engagement with the subject.

In her own words, Snyder describes her talk that won the award and the experience of attending the conference:

"The presentation was titled 'Exploring the Game of Cycles,' and the talk discussed the background/origin of the game, some established winning strategies and general patterns in game play, and some new ideas regarding asymmetrical game boards. The game was invented in 2020 by Francis Su, who I had the privilege of meeting at my talk. Despite it being such a new topic, interesting results have come about over the past few years. Many winning strategies have been defined on specific game boards and some specific types of game boards, such as trees. Most of the established winning strategies for this game are defined on game boards with high degrees of symmetry, but when examining game boards with lower degrees of symmetry or asymmetrical boards, previously defined strategies can be utilized if the underlying graph of the game board exhibits symmetries. I came to this topic when exploring ideas for my MQP. It was proposed to me by Professor Brigitte Servatius, who has since advised me on this research and encouraged me to attend JMM as well as give this talk. Without her help, none of this would have been possible. The experience was phenomenal. I was able to reconnect with friends from BSM (Budapest Semesters in Mathematics), meet other students with similar interests, and learn about research in topics I have never thought to explore."

Congratulations, Kendall!

Prof. Brigitte Servatius, professor of mathematical sciences, was recently awarded the 2026 C. C. MacDuffee Award for Distinguished Service from Pi Mu Epsilon (PME). According to the PME website, "The C. C. MacDuffee Award for Distinguished Service honors individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions to Pi Mu Epsilon and its mission. First awarded in 1965, it is not given annually but only when service of exceptional impact merits recognition." PME is an academic society that promotes mathematics and, particularly, student engagement with the subject. Servatius has been active in PME for many years. Her service includes supporting students, which included mentoring chapter officers, advising research presentations, and helping organize regional and national PME events. She is the editor of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, and has made "transformative changes" during her tenure. Read more about the award here.

Congratulations, Brigitte!

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, adjunct teaching professor of mathematical sciences, 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, professor of mathematical sciences, 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. 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!

Prof. Barry Posterro, associate teaching professor of mathematical sciences, 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!