2023 Annual Awards Honor WPI Faculty and Staff

I have a long-standing interest in applying computer science and mathematics to solve biological problems. I am currently the Associate Director of WPI’s Program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and I am always looking for students with interests in this exciting interdisciplinary area. One of my goals in teaching biology is to help students to think more quantitatively about biological questions. A few years ago, my colleague Dr. Brian White of UMass Boston and I were awarded a grant from the NSF to develop a course, “Simulation in Biology”.

Teaching has evolved into a second career for me. After working for over 25 years as an actuary, I came to WPI a few years back, and have loved every minute of it! I provide insight to my students about working as an actuary, as well as convey a real world sense of urgency and connection to what we are doing in the classroom. I particularly enjoy the academic cycle – getting a fresh start every fall term, and seeing a new batch of enthusiastic first year students arriving on campus.

As a Professor of Practice, my focus is to bring my 30 years of experience in the chemical and environmental industries to the undergraduate classes.  My focus through most of my career has been on Chemical Process Safety, Environmental, Health and Safety, and, Air Pollution Engineering.  These fields draw on virtually every part of chemical engineering, including transport phenomena, thermodynamics, and reaction kinetics.  They also draw very heavily on legal documents, particularly governmental regulations and technical design standards, so I have often worked in multidisciplinary teams i

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.

Professor Frederick Bianchi works in the area of music technology. As the director of music technology research, Bianchi works with students from all disciplines. His particular focus is Virtual Orchestra technology, multichannel sound design, and neuroscience research. In addition to overseeing the Media Arts Group Innovation Center (MAGIC), Professor Bianchi is also the director of the Bar Harbor, Maine Project Center and the Glacier National Park Project Center.

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.

My research centers around religion in North Africa and the Middle East with a focus on Islam; I approach the study of Islam through its representation in visual culture. My first book project, an outgrowth of my dissertation, focuses on recent fiction film by Moroccan women filmmakers as oblique forms of resistance to dominant narratives about Muslim women. My research tends to be very interdisciplinary: I draw on religion, cultural studies, feminist theory, film theory and affect theory.

Dr. Lindsay Davis is a broadly trained interdisciplinary historian whose research interrogates the gendered, racial, and cultural foundations of the American prison state. Her current book project, "Lessons in Captivity: A Cultural History of Gender and Criminality During the Transitional Carceral Era, 1930-1973," examines the cultural coverage of women prisoners - in "real life" and in film - in an era preceding mass incarceration. In the classroom, Dr.