In the News

In an article on college admissions, the Worcester Business Journal noted WPI’s drawing more students from faster-growing areas of the country such as California and Texas and saw annual applications rise more than 3,000 in the past decade.



 

WCVB highlighted research by Adam Powell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who is testing a new type of welding that may make the joint between light metal alloys more resistant to corrosion, including salt spray, leading to future designs of durable, next-generation metal car joints used in ultra-light car doors and other vehicle body applications. “Typically, if you reduce the weight by 10 percent, you get five percent better gas mileage,” (1:40) Powell told WCVB.  

In an audio segment on the cost of higher education from Inside Higher Ed, Dean Art Heinricher, undergraduate studies, discussed the value of project-based learning. “Project-based learning works because it’s more than a pedagogical approach, more than a way to teach better. It’s a fundamental survival skill for the future our graduates must build,” he said.​

The New York Times sought President Leshin’s insight for this article. (scroll down to 12th graph). “The fact is, the vast majority of the women and men serving in the Space Force will be doing their important work right here on Earth, just like other members of the military,” Leshin said. “The same is true for people at NASA.”

Rolling Stone interviewed Marco Kaltofen, associate research engineer, physics, for this article. (17th graph). “Essentially what you are doing is taking an underground radioactive reservoir and bringing it to the surface where it can interact with people and the environment,” he told the publication.

In another Inside Higher Ed  segment, Rick Vaz, co-director of the Center for Project-Based Learning, discussed "Women in STEM Fields." “Project-based learning could be a powerful strategy to attract and retain more talented women into science and technology fields,” he said.

The Telegram & Gazette in it's College Town section reported on Bruce Bursten, chemistry and biochemistry professor, being named by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to receive the 2020 ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry.

The Telegram & Gazette in this article, highlighted the university’s ribbon-cutting at PracticePoint, its membership-based development and testing facility. PracticePoint labs is a collaborative health care technology facility that university, state and business leaders hope will deliver breakthroughs in medical devices.

The Worcester Business Journal highlighted WPI’s PracticePoint ribbon-cutting event in its article​, "WPI Marks Opening of New $17M PracticePoint Facility​." PracticePoint is the university’s membership-based development and testing facility. The goal of this alliance space is to advance healthcare technologies and launch better medical cyber-physical systems, through collaboration across the spectrum of product development and implementation. 

Erin Solovey, assistant professor of computer science, was featured in a Telegram & Gazette article. Solovey received a $1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that could lead to significant breakthroughs in technology platforms for the ASL-signing Deaf Community.

Suzanne LePage, instructor, civil and environmental engineering, was interviewed by Boston 25 as part of a segment on Boston traffic congestion and a Baker Administration proposal to give tax credits to employers letting employees telecommute. “If we’re going to just try to work within the capacity that we have that, to me, seems like a logical solution,” she said of the Baker proposal.

WBUR radio aired a segment about Adam Powell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who is testing a new type of welding that may make car joints more resistant to corrosion, leading to lighter and more fuel efficient cars. Powell said the welding process is ideal for car doors, which are “especially beneficial for a car with reduced weight in some other parts that need just another 20 or 40 pounds of additional weight reduction to get to that smaller engine.”

WBZ Radio reported on Adam Powell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, testing a new type of welding that may make the joint between light metal alloys more resistant to corrosion, including salt spray, leading to future designs of durable, next-generation metal car joints used in ultra-light car doors and other vehicle body applications. This “could cut the weight in half of a lot of major parts of a vehicle,” Powell told WBZ.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation quoted Professor Albert Simeoni, fire protection engineering, in this article. He said Canadian findings in a new paper from Natural Resources Canada scientists quantify and add direct evidence to what he and others have seen in other places, including in eucalyptus forests in Australia . “We have observed that repeated heat insults to vegetation and the soil was damaging and this corroborates this observation," Simeoni told the CBC.

MassLive reported on WPI's research to help cars survive New England's salt-covered winter roads. ​Adam Powell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, was awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office for the research.

The Christian Science Monitor ran a lengthy story about test-optional practices at universities nationwide, and included comments from Andrew Palumbo, dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, and WPI sophomore Hezekiah Owuor. The story explores how universities are increasingly reinforcing the importance of students’ talents and character.

The Worcester Business Journal reported that WPI, which has the largest enrollment of any college in Central Massachusetts, saw its student body grow from 4,002 in the fall of 2010 to 5,371 in the fall of 2018, the latest year for which information is available through the Worcester Business Journal's research department.

WBUR talked to Erin Ottmar, assistant professor of learning sciences and psychology, about the NSF grant she and other WPI researchers received to develop a website that children can use to design and play math games that develop computational thinking skills. "Currently, there's very few K-8 teachers who are trained in computer science, so part of the idea is to bridge that gap and be able to increase computational thinking for our students," Ottmar said.

The Robot Report quoted Gregory Fischer, professor of mechanical engineering, in its coverage of the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum in California. He described the work done at WPI’s PracticePoint development and testing facility on robotic systems that can work on a patient inside an MRI machine. “We’re adding cooperative control like that for an autonomous car, with the doctor pushing the gas and the robot steering,” said Fischer, who is also director of PracticePoint. “PracticePoint is working in real time in clinical environments.” 

Time interviewed Craig Shue, associate professor of computer science, for this article (scroll down to 8th graph).  Shue told Time he agrees hackers are likely getting Rings users’ account information from third parties. “I would also encourage everybody to do their own form of risk assessment and determine what they need in these devices and whether it’s worth the risk to have that functionality,” he added.