Faculty & Staff

Jeanine Skorinko is a professor of psychology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies. She also is the director of the Psychological & Cognitive Science program. She received her PhD in social psychology at the University of Virginia. Her research program attempts to understand how factors in our social environment, especially those factors we are unaware of, influence decisions and interpersonal interactions. She investigates how different types of external and internal influences (e.g., subtle contextual signs, ...

I am a social psychologist trained in the interdisciplinary field of judgment and decision making. I am particularly interested in how people develop an understanding of complex environmental and societal problems and how their "mental models" of complex systems can best be studied and improved to aid both personal and public decision making. I firmly believe that environmental and social problems can't be solved without understanding how they are represented in the mind and identifying what cognitive processes people bring to bear upon them. My interests are eclectic, and I particularly enjoy ...

Angela Incollingo Rodriguez is an assistant professor of Psychological & Cognitive Sciences and Neuroscience. In addition to collaborating on interdisciplinary research teams across campus - including the Chronic Pain Research Group - she also directs her own lab - the WPI Stigma Eating & Endocrinology Dynamics (SEED) Lab. Her research program uses a biopsychosocial approach to study health and health behaviors. She conducts research at the intersection of social phenomena (such as weight stigma), biomarkers (such as the stress hormone cortisol), and psychological ...

Richard Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies at WPI. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, social neuroscience, and Open Science practices applied to functional neuroimaging. He also directs the Social Neuroscience of Affective Processes (SNAP) Lab. In the SNAP Lab, Professor Lopez and his students utilize tools in modern neuroscience (e.g., fMRI) and longitudinal modeling of behavior to better understand how human beings align their thoughts and emotions with goals they are pursuing—with ...

Erin Ottmar is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Learning Sciences at WPI. She received her BA in psychology and elementary education from the University of Richmond. After college, she spent several years teaching in Ecuador and Japan. In 2011, she received her PhD in Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science from the University of Virginia. After graduate school, spent 3 years as a post-doctoral research scientist at the University of Richmond. Before coming to WPI, she was most recently a visiting research associate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at ...

Stacy Shaw's research focuses on understanding creative thinking in mathematics, how anxiety and other threat experiences affect mathematical cognition and reasoning, as well as how classroom experiences can affect performance and learning in STEM. Recently she has become interested in the role of rest for academic achievement, burnout, and student wellbeing. She graduated with her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA in 2020, and is an Ambassador for the Center for Open Science, Catalyst for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, and a part of the Better Book ...

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. I am ...