Leila Carvajal Erker ’96 grew up around chocolate, spending much of her childhood shadowing her father at his cocoa processing plant in Guayaquil, Ecuador before making the business her own. Now, she’s using a fusion of tradition and science to help the world’s chocolatiers build a better bar. Discover more alumni stories in the WPI Journal.
Catherine Whittington, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has received a $200,000 Career Development Award from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to determine how fat cells and tissue stiffening contribute to pancreatic cancer. Read more, and sign up for the research newsletter for the latest research news.
My research focuses on combining bio-instructive biomaterials with cells to design 3D tissue-engineered platforms for regenerative medicine, disease modeling, improved predictability of therapeutic outcomes, and as translatable technologies for clinic and industry.
Dr. Alexander M. Wyglinski is an internationally recognized expert in wireless communications, cognitive radio, spectrum coexistence, broadband connectivity, 5G/6G, connected vehicles, software-defined radio, dynamic spectrum access, satellite communications, vehicular technology, wireless system optimization and adaptation, autonomous vehicles, and cyber-physical systems. Dr.
Carolina Ruiz's research interests are in machine learning, artificial intelligence and data mining. Together with her graduate and undergraduate students, Dr. Ruiz has worked on numerous interdisciplinary research projects with clinicians from the University of Massachusetts Medical School on developing and using machine learning algorithms over clinical and behavioral patient data.
Research in the Mattson Group is a combination of catalyst design, methodology development, and complex molecule synthesis. Our catalyst design program is focused on the synthesis and study of new families of non-covalent catalysts, including boronate ureas and silanediols, that are able to promote new reactivity patterns. The catalyst design and associated reaction development programs are currently geared toward the synthesis of enantioenriched nitrogen and oxygen heterocycles that frequently appear in naturally occurring bioactive compounds.
The research in my lab is generally concerned with the biophysical characterization of lipid mediated protein functions.
My research program focuses on understanding and managing fungal diseases. We primarily study Candida albicans, an opportunistic pathogen and the most prevalent fungal pathogen of humans. It is responsible for common clinical problems including oral thrush and vaginitis, but can also lead to life-threatening systematic infections in immunocompromised individuals such as AIDS patients, resulting in 30-50% mortality rates. The estimated annual cost of treating nosocomial Candida infections exceeds $1 billion per year.
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