BioPoint

Driving Innovation in Human Health and Healthcare Systems

The BioPoint team is dedicated to identifying key areas of collaboration with industry and government partners to advance research and development in the life sciences, bioengineering, and biomedical engineering. WPI is particularly well-positioned to help deliver positive outcomes to our partners.

BioPoint is also a program for graduate students, designed to complement traditional training in bioscience, digital and engineering fields. Students accepted into one of the home BioPoint departments have the flexibility to select research advisors and take electives in other departments to broaden their skills.

Research Expertise & Facilities

Our team of faculty (led by Suzanne Scarlata) has research interests that begin with the examination of health at the molecular, cellular, and tissue levels, and extend to patient health and behavior, medical diagnostics, and robotic surgery:

Biological Response Mechanisms & Detection: Focus on biological processes on the molecular level includes biomarkers, pharmaceuticals (Faculty leads: Anita Mattson, Tanja Dominko)
Cellular & Molecular Engineering: Focus on problems on the cellular level seeks to understand and engineer cell behavior (Faculty lead: Sue Roberts)
PracticePoint: Focus on cyber-physical systems; medical robotics for surgery, including integration and image processing (Faculty lead: Gregory Fischer)
Healthcare Delivery Institute: Focus on addressing healthcare challenges by applying digital technologies and IoT, process design and systems engineering, data intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, and enhanced user experience design (Faculty leads: Emmanuel Agu, Diane Strong)
Neuroscience/Engineering: Focus on all aspects of neuroscience from the molecular and cellular, to behavior, network analysis and imaging. (Faculty lead: Jean King)
Regenerative Medicine & Biomanufacturing: Focus on tissue engineering and repair. (Faculty lead: George Pins)

Current WPI Research News

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Office of Technology Commercialization

Gateway Lab

All graduate students in the following programs: Biology & Biotechnology, Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, Physics, Data Science, Robotics Engineering, and Foisie Business School programs are eligible to join the new BioPoint program. The program has been designed to complement traditional training in bioscience, digital, and engineering fields. Accepted students have the flexibility to select research advisors and take electives in other departments to broaden their skills. Additionally, they may select industry advisors in biomanufacturing to understand emerging life sciences industrial trends and grow a network.

Learn more

EXPLORE WPI AS A GRADUATE STUDENT

Current Strategic Partnerships

Strong network of industry and government partnerships, including membership in relevant USA Manufacturing Institutes such as NIIMBL, ARMI, and AIM Photonics.
Established research partnership with clinicians at University of Massachusetts Medical School.

State of the Art Facilities

WPI and our government and industry partners have invested in state-of-the-art facilities operated on our campuses, which are available for use by our industry partners.

PracticePoint: Facility for designing, prototyping, and evaluating medical devices.
Biomanufacturing Education & Training Center: An innovative partnership between academia and industry that creates customized workforce development solutions for forward-thinking biotechnology companies across the region and around the world.
Laboratory for Education & Application Prototypes (LEAP @ WPI/QCC): Tools for the realization, design, characterization testing, and reliability testing of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and devices.
LBSC Core Instrumentation Labs: Fee fore service available: Chemical Analysis, Microscopy, Histology, Vivarium.
Seaport Collaboration Center (Boston): A 6400-square-foot facility that accommodates tech suites, meeting areas, open-concept spaces, and working spaces.

Student Talent

WPI is extremely proud of the talent and capability of both our students and alumni. The university is committed to providing relevant, meaningful project and research experiences for our more than 6,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Projects are often proposed and sponsored by industry partners.

STUDENT PROJECTS: Access our database of student research and projects.

Dedicated Corporate Engagement Team

Engage with WPI. A strategic partnership is created based on your specific needs, business challenges, and unique goals.

Location

Our proximity to the heart of the Massachusetts biopharma supercluster and the demonstrated commitment of our state government to invest in the life sciences ($1.5 billion over 15 years) positions us to provide critical services to help drive innovation to improve human health and the healthcare system.

Haichong “Kai” Zhang is developing a light-and-sound-based image-guided robotics system to detect and monitor prostate cancer.

A biomedical engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is creating a new medical robot that uses minimally invasive technologies to safely and accurately detect and monitor prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among American men.

Surgical Robot

Jagan Srinivasan, associate professor of biology and biotechnology, reviews C. elegans images with research associate Elizabeth Diloreto

A WPI biologist has shown that a key biological component in a worm’s communication system can be repurposed to take on a different job, a critical finding about the workings of evolution that could one day affect research into drug interactions and agricultural bio-engineering.

Drug Interaction

WPI faculty members interested in joining the BioPoint Interdisciplinary Group may reach out to Suzanne Scarlata (sfscarlata@wpi.edu).