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For scientific inquiries, please contact Dr. Benjamin Nephew at bnephew@wpi.edu
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Chronic pain impacts 50 million adults in the United States, with annual costs of $635 billion due to medical expenditures and loss of productivity. The adverse effects of chronic pain and the beneficial effects of treatments for pain in various populations will be more comprehensively understood using advanced genetics, neuroimaging, and sensor-based assessment of daily activities with machine learning data analytics in an integrative biopsychosocial framework.
The Evidence-Based Predictive Pain Integrative Center (EPPIC) at WPI will synergistically leverage advanced machine learning methods to identify reliable, highly accurate predictors for chronic pain and develop models that predict which patients will respond to various treatments, with an ultimate objective of enhancing the prevention, diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of chronic pain.
For scientific inquiries, please contact Dr. Benjamin Nephew at bnephew@wpi.edu
WPI is collaborating with the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), New England School of Acupuncture at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), and Harvard Medical School. This will harness the expertise of an interdisciplinary team of 17 researchers including clinicians, interventionists (acupuncture, mindfulness, psychiatry, psychologists) and technologists (omics, machine learning, sensing, neuroscience, data science and artificial intelligence experts).
EPICC will also leverage the laboratory and research capabilities of a number of facilities at WPI, as well as dedicated communities of faculty, staff, and researchers, including:
Drawing on the university’s strengths in bioinformatics, data science, and machine learning, WPI's new transdisciplinary master's degree in Neuroscience includes a unique focus on computational neuroscience. The program will prepare neuroscientists with the broad interdisciplinary skills needed to tackle one the most important scientific challenges of our age and develop a new generation of treatments.
The Julia Kasparian Fund for Neuroscience Research supports a collaborative research project between neuroscientists, clinicians, and computer scientist students and faculty at WPI and McLean Hospital aimed at improving the prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness, with a focus on dissociative disorder, depression and suicidality. The students involved in this research use clinical and neuroimaging data to develop highly accurate predictors of depression and suicidality. Learn more.
Current students include:
WPI faculty members and students are engaged in advanced, interdisciplinary research across a broad range of fields. From cutting-edge work in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, to explorations of the technological and policy issues surrounding cybersecurity, to studies of issues as diverse as firefighter health and security and the fire safety challenges of green buildings, this fundamental and applied research is addressing vital societal problems and technological challenges and producing innovations and insights that are helping build a better world.