Manasi Vartak ’10 using her passions to found AI startup Verta; Arnold Lee ’98 becoming a highly regarded lead master Pilates trainer after realizing he wasn’t fully committed to his engineering career; and the first cohort of students resuming in-person project work at Acadia National Park—they’re just a few examples of WPI alumni and current students braving their own unknowns.
Sam Walcott, associate professor of mathematical sciences, has received a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a mathematical model to predict the amount of chemical energy muscles need to contract, work that could lead to improved medical treatments and the creation of better prosthetic devices. Read more, and sign up for the research newsletter for the latest research news.
My research is in human-computer interaction. One focus of my research is on next-generation interaction techniques, such as brain-computer interfaces, physiological computing, and reality-based interaction. I design, build and evaluate interactive computing systems that use machine learning approaches to adapt and support the user’s changing cognitive state and context. I also investigate novel paradigms for designing with accessibility in mind, particularly for the Deaf community.
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.
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.
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