Meet the Team

Antje Harnisch
Assistant Vice Provost for Research, Research

Phone: +1 (508) 8315000 x4196

Antje is the Assistant Vice Provost for Research and in this capacity, she supports the university’s research and technology commercialization enterprises. She directs WPI's research development services and assists in the administration and operations of centers and institutes, internal grant programs, and core instrumentation facilities.  She participates in the negotiation of major research contracts and coordinates corporate research strategy and support with the Academic and Corporate Engagement and the University Advancement divisions.     Prior to joining WPI ...

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Sujatha Koduvayur
Director of Research Development, Research

Sujatha P. Koduvayur manages the research development activities of the Institute by supporting, coordinating and expanding multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary and multi-center collaborative programs that enhance WPI’s research portfolio. Prior to her current role at WPI, Sujatha led the research development activities of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Penn State College of Medicine. She is a New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame inductee with a wide range of research interests spanning basic science to designing drug targets and adapting electronic ...

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Benjamin Nephew
Assistant Research Professor-Biology & Biotechnology, Biology & Biotechnology

I work with Dean Jean King, where our research is broadly focused on identifying and studying neurobehavioral mechanisms of mental illness and developing effective interventions.  We currently use functional MRI (fMRI) to identify the neural correlates of mindfulness based stress reduction as part of a stage IIa randomized clinical trial, and fMRI data combined with related clinical measures to develop machine learning based early predictors of severe depression and suicidality.  I developed a transgenerational social stress based rodent model of postpartum depression/anxiety, and related ...

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Ellen Piccioli
Director of Mfg Innovation, Research

Phone: +1 (508) 8315000 x4947

Ellen Grant Piccioli is directing the engagement and expansion of WPIs Manufacturing USA multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional and multi-center collaborative programs, and the development of new initiatives in the area of manufacturing innovation. Prior to WPI, Ellen consulted in the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) Program, and previously held leadership positions at Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Ellen is a member of Cornell University’s ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) Advisory Council, the Boston Museum of Science’s (MOS) ...

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Priscilla Vazquez
Proposal Development Manager, Research

Phone: +1 (508) 8315489

A certified proposal management professional (APMP), Priscilla is a purpose-driven professional helping researchers develop compliant and responsive proposals by providing proposal and graphics development services based on academic and industry best practices. Using her S2S proposal graphics development method, she help principal investigators (PIs) visually translate their research into easily understandable graphics for the general audience. Previous to WPI, Priscilla was a Business Partners Service Specialist at ForHealth Consulting at UMass Chan Medical School, and an Academic ...

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