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How can AI tools help consumers find the best deals and tackle the holiday shopping list? Associate Professor of marketing Purvi Shah spoke with NBC Boston about the technology driving retail transformation. "AI can help you compare products and prices across stores. It can also give you review summaries that can help you evaluate various product options based on those review summaries," Shah said. "All of this is done very efficiently."
Camila Gomez and Hassan Dajana, graduate students in WPI’s master’s in community climate adaptation program are exploring the potential operational and environmental impacts of using beet juice for treating roads and highways to avoid icing. They spoke with the Telegram & Gazette about preliminary findings from their year-long project with Worcester’s Department of Sustainability & Resilience which is aimed at providing a variety of recommendations to help the city address winter climate resilience.
Securing edge servers and edge data centers requires measures to protect against physical and environmental threats; and dangers from bad actors seeking to tamper with them. Shahin Tajik, assistant professor of electrical & computer engineering, shared his thoughts in StateTech on how to protect critical devices from vulnerability.
Antonio Marzoratti, a robotics student and co-founder of Technotonin Industries, spoke with GBH’s All Things Considered along with his business co-founder Arav Tyagi of Boston University about the company’s technology that can adapt manual wheelchairs into powered devices. The pair discussed how their idea became a business and the support they’ve received from wheelchair users and accelerator programs including the Goat Innovators Summer Accelerator at WPI's i3 Lab.
A group of WPI students, including Michael Massa and Lexi Joseph, helped celebrate National Adoption Day by dressing up as characters including Spider-Man and Rapunzel at the Worcester courthouse. The students are a chapter of the nonprofit A Moment of Magic and were on hand to mark the adoption of 30 children across Worcester county in emotional ceremonies.
Alex O’Neil, an AV Technology Specialist at WPI, recently completed and premiered “More Than a Fridge,” a documentary about the Worcester Community Fridges project, which provides 24/7 food access for area residents. Worcester Magazine wrote about Alex’s work and the project
Techopedia asked experts to weigh in on their expectations for new developments in technology in the new year. Alexander Wyglinski, professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean of graduate studies, shared insight on the potential applications of the rise of 6G technology, including remote health monitoring, information sharing among vehicles, virtual reality, and augmented reality.
WPI is offering educational programs aimed at improving the country’s software security. The Strengthen Workforce Education for Excellence in Programming Securely (SWEEPS) program will include a variety of options focused on improved security in computer coding, including online courses and certificate programs, offered by a coalition of universities and colleges. "The increasing frequency of large-scale cyberattacks reinforces the need for more experts in secure programming," said Xiaoyan (Sherry) Sun, associate professor of computer science, an administrator of the program.
WPI researchers are partnering with Grensol and XCharge North America to develop an industrial recycling solution for electric vehicle supply equipment, such as EV charging cables and modules in an effort to promote more sustainable electrified travel. The research at WPI is being led by Brajendra Mishra, the Kenneth G. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Mechanical & Materials Engineering and the director of the Metal Processing Institute at WPI, and Akanksha Gupta, a postdoctoral fellow in materials science & engineering.
Farnoush Reshadi, assistant professor of marketing in The Business School, provided answers to frequently asked questions about purchase protection plans, which are sometimes offered by retailers and credit card companies, for an article in WalletHub.
The Tech Edvocate, a blog that covers education technology in the PreK-12 and higher education sectors, has ranked The Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science at WPI as the top public K-12 school in Massachusetts. Mass Academy is a designated "school of excellence." The academy is an administrative unit within WPI, and 12th grade students at the academy enroll in classes at WPI.
A new agreement will allow pre-engineering students at Framingham State to transfer into WPI's School of Engineering to complete a bachelor's degree in engineering if they meet minimum academic requirements. The partnership also provides opportunities for students to join accelerated master's degree programs in data science, medicinal chemistry, and neuroscience.
WHDH featured student innovation at WPI by highlighting the winners of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2024 Global Pitch Competition. Technotonin Industries, a company that includes students from WPI (Antonio Marzoratti and Ivan Zou) and Boston University (Arav Tyagi) won first prize. WHDH also spoke with Rosanna Garcia, Beswick professor of innovation and entrepreneurship, about how WPI supports student entrepreneurs with its i3 Lab, mentorship, networking, business guidance, and pitch competition opportunities.
As part of their Interactive Qualifying Project, four students at WPI's Nantucket Project Center are conducting a survey about usage of the Nantucket Community Pool. The project, in partnership with the Nantucket Community School, is one of 89 projects that WPI students have conducted at the project center since 2008 in collaboration with local organizations and town officials. “These projects have covered a wide variety of topics in areas such as energy conservation, museum studies, parks and recreation, coastal erosion, parking, sustainable agriculture, affordable housing, facilities management, light pollution, and town trees," said Nantucket Project Center Director Dominic Golding.
Nantucket is working in partnership with four WPI students and the non-profit Nantucket Lights on a project to reduce light pollution. As part of the students’ Interactive Qualifying Project, the students will take feedback from residents on new LED streetlights and potential future lighting decisions as part of the town's adoption of an outdoor lighting by-law.
An article in Australia's Waste Management Review highlighted the work of WPI students during their Interactive Qualifying Project at the Melbourne Project Center. The students helped Jesuit Social Services' Ecological Justice Hub to support local recycling solutions by designing a plastic recycling assembly line to collect, sort, and recycle bottle caps and turn them into new products. In March, the student team was honored for its work as winners of the Forum on Education Abroad's Award for Academic Achievement Abroad.
Jamal Yagoobi, professor of Materials Science & Engineering at WPI, spoke with Energy News Network about advances in laser-powered technology he’s developing at the Center for Advanced Research in Drying (CARD) that could make manufacturing more sustainable across several sectors.
As brush fires in the northeast continue, WPI students and faculty in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering are doing research and hands-on projects that help better understand how wildfires spread and their impact. Spectrum News 1 Worcester reported on the laboratory experiments being conducted aimed at protecting solar energy infrastructure from wildfire threats.
Albert Simeoni, head of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering, spoke with Boston 25 News for a report on the elevated brush fire danger in the northeast and the impacts of smoke from those fires on people living nearby.
Xiaowei Teng, the James H Manning Professor in Chemical Engineering, is leading a team to explore new battery technologies for grid energy storage. Teng hopes the research will lead to improved alkaline iron-air batteries for applications such as microgrids or solar or wind farms.
