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WPI Awards President's Research Catalyst Grants to Three Teams

Funded Partly by Gifts, the Grants Aim to Attract Large-Scale External Funding
LISTEN 05:06
May 14, 2024

WPI has awarded seed funding from the President’s Research Catalyst Grants Program to three faculty-led groups that will develop proposals for large research centers focused on making advances in bioengineering, new materials, and mental health.

Each group will receive $50,000 from the Catalyst program, which launched in 2024. Recipients will use the 18-month grants to develop center-scale, interdisciplinary research proposals that will attract financial support from external sponsors. The program is designed to catalyze and facilitate the development and preparation of extramural grant applications that require extensive planning, exchange of ideas, collaboration, team building, partnering, and other activities that demand significant investments of faculty members’ time and effort.

“Pressing societal challenges call for large-scale, interdisciplinary, long-term research efforts,” says Grace Wang, WPI president. “These seed grants build on WPI’s research strengths and faculty expertise, supporting our faculty teams to collaboratively pursue high-impact research centers that hold the potential to push boundaries and advance knowledge and solutions to address significant challenges facing the world.”

The Catalyst program is partially funded by gifts from Trustee Emeritus Jim Baum ’86 and Bonnie and Jack Mollen, trustee emeritus and former board chair who was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2023. Their gifts have been designated to support research at WPI, including but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI).

“Developing a center-scale proposal represents a significant investment of time and effort by WPI faculty,” says Bogdan Vernescu, vice president and vice provost for research and innovation. “Teams must do extensive planning and collaborating. The President’s Research Catalyst Grants Program provides the financial support that can lead to successful proposals.”

Grants were awarded to the following proposals and teams:

AI4BIO: Center for AI-Enabled Bioengineering

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From left, Eric Young, Susan Roberts, Andrew Teixeira

From left, Eric Young, Susan Roberts, Andrew Teixeira

Assistant Professor Eric M. Young is principal investigator (PI). Co-PIs are Associate Professor Andrew Teixeira and Professor Susan Roberts. All are faculty members in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

HY-MATTER: Hybrid Materials Advancements for Technology and Research

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From left, Michael Timko, Jeannine Coburn, Aaron Deskins, Ronald Grim, John Obayemi, Pratap Rao, and Lyubov Titova

From left, Michael Timko, Jeannine Coburn, Aaron Deskins, Ronald Grimm, John Obayemi, Pratap Rao, and Lyubov Titova

Michael Timko is PI and professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Co-PIs are Associate Professor Jeannine Coburn and Assistant Teaching Professor John Obayemi, both of the Department of Biomedical Engineering; N. Aaron Deskins, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering; Ronald Grimm, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Pratap Rao, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering; and Lyubov Titova, associate professor in the Department of Physics.

Understanding and Preventing Adverse Effects of Social Media on Mental Health with AI

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Elke Rundensteiner research group

From left, Elke Rundensteiner, Dmitry Korkin, Nancy Byatt, David Cochran, Katherine Dixon-Gordon, Richard Lopez, and Benjamin Nephew.

PIs are Professor Elke Rundensteiner, who is head of WPI’s Data Science Program, and Professor Dmitry Korkin, both of the Department of Computer Science; and Katherine Dixon-Gordon, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Dr. David Cochran, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UMass Chan Medical School. Co-investigators are Benjamin Nephew, assistant research professor in the Department of Biology and Biotechnology; Richard Lopez, assistant professor in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies; and Nancy Byatt, professor of psychiatry, obstetrics, and gynecology and population and quantitative health sciences at UMass Chan.

 

Editor's Note

This news story was updated May 24, 2024, to correct Katherine Dixon-Gordon's title.

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