Faculty & Staff

Faculty

Professor & Department Head, Robotics Engineering

My research spans robotics, haptics, multi-modal perception, and artificial intelligence, at the intersection of computer science and engineering. There are two highly related themes in my robotics research: one is the focus on “contact sport”, i.e., the contact and interaction between a robot or a part/tool it holds and the environment, and the other is real-time adaptiveness of robots to uncertainty and uncertain changes in an environment based on perception. Under the first theme, my work includes compliant motion planning involving complex contact scenarios for high-precision robotic ...

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Assistant Teaching Professor- Engineering, Robotics Engineering

Dr. Lewin is the Associate Head of Robotics Engineering. He teaches courses that focus on system integration, sensor and data processing, and system design. Prior to joining WPI, Dr. Lewin was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where he directed the Technology Leaders Program, an interdisciplinary engineering program focusing on the design of cyber-physical systems. He has performed research and development of sensor systems, turbomachinery, energy systems, and robots in both academic and industrial settings. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling and he’ll be happy to tell ...

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Associate Professor/Graduate Coordinator, Robotics Engineering

Phone: +1 (508) 8315000 x4857

An integral part of a rewarding academic career is being an educator. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with students and guide their development to fulfill their potential. I enjoy teaching the fundamentals of robotics engineering, science and technology as well as training students in advanced independent research. I aim to teach students about research-based thinking and problem solving, to give them a real career choice to determine their future in further research or the industry. With its hands-on culture and students taking responsibility for their own learning, WPI is the perfect ...

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Assistant Teaching Professor, Robotics Engineering

I genuinely enjoy teaching and interacting with students. I am both an instructor and a researcher at heart and believe that teaching and research are complementary as they advance one another. Teaching: As an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Robotics Engineering Department at WPI, I teach a range of courses, including Kinematics, Dynamics, and Controls courses in both undergraduate and graduate levels. I do believe that teaching entails much more than merely instructing and imparting knowledge on how to solve particular problems related to particular ...

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Senior Instructor, Robotics Engineering

  I am delighted to return to full-time teaching as an instructor in the robotics engineering program at WPI after a long and very satisfying career at Daniel Webster College (DWC) where I had the opportunity to teach courses in engineering design (including CAD/CAM), statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and differential equations. I also had the privilege to serve as dean of the DWC School of Engineering and Computer Science (5/2009-12/2015).     My interest in robotics was ignited as the result of consecutive ...

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Assistant Professor-Engineering, Robotics Engineering

Berk's research primarily focuses on problems related to robotic manipulation, which is a key functionality largely missing from the current state of the art in robotics for unstructured environments, including homes, modern warehouses, and collaborative manufacturing stations. He develops multi-modal robotic manipulation strategies mainly focusing on the role of vision feedback for coping with uncertainties of unstructured environments. He integrates advanced control methods, active vision framework, machine learning and intelligent mechanical design to provide robust dexterous manipulation ...

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Assistant Teaching Professor, Robotics Engineering

Siavash Farzan is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Robotics Engineering Department at WPI. Farzan received his Ph.D. in Robotics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021. His research focuses on safety-critical motion planning and control of cyber-physical systems, while providing formal guarantees on their performance in the presence of modeling uncertainties and disturbances. Farzan brings several years of experience in industry as an Embedded Systems Engineer into classroom. He regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses and laboratories in the areas of ...

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Assistant Professor-Engineering, Robotics Engineering

My research interests are in the application of robotics and computer science to enhance medicine, and particularly surgery. What gets me out of bed in the morning is the prospect of helping doctors save lives and improve the quality of life of their patients. My students and I work side-to-side with clinical collaborators to create technology that presents a tangible clinical value – for instance, making an existing surgical procedure more accurate or enabling new procedures that are not feasible with current instrumentation. Close interaction with medical doctors is a fundamental component ...

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Phone: +1 (508) 8315000 x5261

Professor Fischer is the William Smith Dean's Professor and a faculty member in Robotics Engineering with a appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at WPI. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgery. At WPI he has been an integral part of developing the Robotics Engineering program and teaches primarily junior-level and graduate courses in Robotics. He is the founding director of the Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) ...

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Assistant Professor, Robotics Engineering

My research bridges the gap between human-robot interaction and human movement science. I am particularly interested in the design of human-robot interfaces and assistive robot autonomy, based on the understanding of the perception-action coupling of humans and cyber-human systems. At WPI, I primarily work on tele-nursing robots and assisted teleoperation interfaces. I also have extensive experience in exoskeletons for rehabilitation and tele-surgical robots.

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Phone: +1 (508) 8315000 x5766

I joined the faculty of the ECE Department in 1991 after leaving Raytheon Company, where I spent approximately 12 years involved with the development of embedded computers for guidance, communications, and data processing systems for spaceborne and terrestrial applications. At WPI I perform research and teach in the areas of navigation, communications, and computer system design. I supervise the WPI Center for Advanced Integrated Radio Navigation (CAIRN), where I am developing a Public Safety Integration Center focused on the integration of communications, navigation, and information ...

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Assistant Professor, Robotics Engineering

My research focuses on the creation, modeling, and control of robotic soft matter. Instead of using soft materials for the design of manipulators, I am interested in robotizing otherwise passive elastomeric materials. The goal is to develop programmable robotic soft matter that is able to change its shape; insights from biological organisms will help to develop strategies for the control of morphology. I grew up in Germany where I studied electrical engineering in Bochum. I subsequently moved to Scotland to study electronics and robotics in Edinburgh. At Harvard, I focused on the ...

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Assistant Research Professor,
Research

Christopher Nycz is a research scientist working with WPI's PracticePoint center for advancing healthcare cyber-physical systems. In this role, Chris is responsible for managing a broad range of industry-academia projects in areas including biomechatronics, image guided therapy, smart-home environments, and surgical robotics. Chris’s research interests are in the use of wearable robotics to restore hand function of those suffering paresis as a result of neurological trauma and disease. In his doctoral research he applied a patient-centric approach to hand exoskeletons, working to translate ...

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Assistant Professor of Robotics Engineering and Assistant Professor of Fire Protection Engineering, Robotics Engineering

Phone: +1 (508) 8316853

The focus of my research is designing innovative tools for swarm robotics. I am developing Buzz, a programming language specifically designed for real-world robot swarms. During my Ph.D., I have designed ARGoS, which is currently the fastest general-purpose robot simulator in the literature. Recent work focuses on human-swarm interaction and multi-robot learning. I am also working on swarm robotics solutions for disaster response scenarios, such as search-and-rescue and firefighting.

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Assistant Teaching Professor, Robotics Engineering

Prof. Rosendo is an Assistant Teaching Professor responsible for courses where students combine theoretical components of robotics to a hardware. He was an Assistant Professor at ShanghaiTech University, where he created syllabi for two courses and taught them for over four years. His courses combine theory and applications, and it is quite common for students to develop a hardware to instantiate the theoretical knowledge seen in class. While in China he organized outreach activities, teaching Scratch programming to children from low-income neighborhoods in Shanghai. His research/MQPs ...

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Assistant Professor, Robotics Engineering

I envision a future where we are surrounded by small robots doing various tasks such as pollinating flowers, searching for survivors, carrying payloads, entertaining us and even as our personal pets/companions. To advance autonomy on these tiny mobile robots with on-board sensing and computation, we draw inspiration from nature’s experts – insects, birds and other small beings. My doctoral work culminated in building the world’s first prototype of a RoboBeeHive that involved hummingbird-sized nano-quadrotors capable of pollinating flowers, where all the sensing ...

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hzhang10
Assistant Professor, Robotics Engineering

The research program led by Dr. Haichong (Kai) Zhang focuses on the interface of medical robotics, sensing, and imaging, and to develop a novel biomedical imaging systems that delineates both anatomical and physiological properties of a biological tissue that have been inaccessible. In addition, we will develop robotic assisted imaging systems as well as image-guided robotic interventional platforms, where ultrasound and photoacoustic (PA) imaging are two key modalities to be investigated and integrated with robotics.The scope of innovation includes (1) co-robotic imaging, where a robotic ...

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Research Staff

Staff

Program and Business Development Director, Robotics Engineering

I work to build partnership between WPI Robotics Engineering and Industry and I manage two NSF-funded graduate programs:  WPI's ROSE-HUB (Robots and Sensors for Human Well-being), a multi-university NSF-funded Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) focused on applied robotics and sensing research in a wide range of industries. WPI's Future of Robots in the Workplace Research & Development Traineeship program (FORW-RD NRT), also a NSF-funded program focused on developing leaders of the adoption of robotic interfaces and assistants in ...

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Retired Faculty

David Cyganski

Professor Emeritus

cyganski@wpi.edu

 

Kenneth Stafford

Teaching Professor Emeritus

stafford@wpi.edu 

 

Fred Looft

Professor Emeritus

fjlooft@wpi.edu

 

Craig Putnam

Former Associate Director and Senior Instructor

cbputnam@wpi.edu

 

Michael A. Gennert

Professor Emeritus

michaelg@wpi.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bradley A. Miller

Former Associate Director Robotics Res Ctr

bamiller@wpi.edu

 

Associated Faculty

Name Title Email Phone Extension Office Location
Emmanuel O. Agu Associate Professor emmanuel@wpi.edu 5568 Fuller Labs, 139
Holly Ault Associate Professor hkault@wpi.edu 5498 Higgins Labs, 208
Scott Barton Assistant Professor sdbarton@wpi.edu 5260 Alden Memorial, 208
Torbjorn Bergstrom Operations Manager torbjorn@wpi.edu 5122 Washburn Shops, 107
Rose Bohrer Assistant Professor bbohrer@wpi.edu   Fuller Labs, 132
Christopher Brown Professor brown@wpi.edu 5627 Washburn Shops, 235
Cosme Furlong Associate Professor cfurlong@wpi.edu 5126 Higgins Laboratories, 152
Glenn R. Gaudette Professor gaudette@wpi.edu 6086 Gateway Park 4012
Xinming Huang Associate Professor xhuang@wpi.edu 5771 Atwater Kent Laboratories, 303
Dmitry Korkin Associate Professor dkorkin@wpi.edu Fuller Laboratories, BL22
Yuxiang Shawn Liu Assistant Professor yliu11@wpi.edu 4829 Higgins Laboratories, 110
Carlos Morato Adjunct Professor cwmorato@wpi.edu
Pradeep Radhakrishnan Assistant Teaching Professor pradhakrishnan@wpi.edu
Lenore Rasmussen Adjunct Professor wlrasmussen@wpi.edu 85 Prescott
Candace Sidner Research Professor sidner@wpi.edu 6637 Fuller Laboratories, 140
Jeanine Skorinko Professor skorinko@wpi.edu 5451 Salisbury Laboratories, 371D
Erin Solovey Associate Professor esolovey@wpi.edu 6936 Fuller Laboratories, B21
Alexander Wyglinski Associate Professor alexw@wpi.edu 5491 Atwater Kent Laboratories, 230
Ziming Zhang Assistant Professor zzhang15@wpi.edu   Atwater Kent Laboratories, 217
Yihao Zheng Assistant Professor yzheng8@wpi.edu 4649 Higgins Laboratories, 150

Affiliated Faculty

Name Email
Jie Fu jfu2@wpi.edu
Hideyuki Kimpara hkimpara@wpi.edu