Faculty & Staff

Berk's research primarily focuses on problems related to robotic manipulation, which is a key functionality largely missing from the current state of the art in robotics for unstructured environments, including homes, modern warehouses, and collaborative manufacturing stations. He develops multi-modal robotic manipulation strategies mainly focusing on the role of vision feedback for coping with uncertainties of unstructured environments. He integrates advanced control methods, active vision framework, machine learning and intelligent mechanical design to provide robust dexterous manipulation ...

I am an Assistant Professor in Robotics Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2023 at Rice University, working under the supervision of Dr. Lydia Kavraki and Dr. Anshumali Shrivastava. I am honored to have received an NSF-GRFP fellowship for my doctoral studies. I received my Diploma from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki as an Electrical and Computer Engineer in 2017.My research interests lie in algorithmic robotics, focusing on integrating learning-based methods with classic robotic planning algorithms. The current research directions I ...

Professor Fatemeh Emdad completed her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics with a concentration in Applied Mathematics at Colorado State University. She is the recipient of the top-ranked student academic award from the President of Shiraz University. She is the author of the book High Dimensional Data Analysis and more than 20 journal and conference articles. She completed her postdoctoral degree with the University of Texas Medical Branch and Shriners Hospital for Children Burn Unit when she was the NIH postdoctoral scientist fellow (under Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from ...

My research interests are in the application of robotics and computer science to enhance medicine, and particularly surgery. What gets me out of bed in the morning is the prospect of helping doctors save lives and improve the quality of life of their patients. My students and I work side-by-side with clinical collaborators to create technology that presents a tangible clinical value – for instance, making an existing surgical procedure more accurate or enabling new procedures that are not feasible with current instrumentation. Close interaction with medical doctors is a fundamental component ...

During his doctoral research efforts, Dr. Ghoshal developed three novel methods to expand the usability of convolutional neural networks beyond image data. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Science with a Computer Science major from the University of Mississippi in 2020. He then joined Lyon College as a Visiting Assistant Professor and led the development of their brand new data science program. His research interests include feature engineering, deep learning, and natural language processing. He also worked at Dow Jones where he developed machine learning models for the Wall Street Journal ...

Professor Kong’s research interests focus on data mining and machine learning, with emphasis on addressing the data science problems in biomedical and social applications. Data today involves an increasing number of data types that need to be handled differently from conventional data records, and an increasing number of data sources that need to be fused together. Dr. Kong is particularly interested in designing algorithms to tame data variety issues in various research fields, such as biomedical research, social computing, neuroscience, and business intelligence. He has been working on ...

Dr. Lee’s research interests are in information retrieval, natural language processing, social computing, machine learning, and cybersecurity over large-scale networked information systems like the Web and social media. He focuses on threats to these systems and design methods to mitigate negative behaviors (e.g., misinformation, hate speech), and looks for positive opportunities to mine and analyze these systems for developing next generation algorithms and architectures (e.g., recommender system, natural language understanding). He also focuses on AI for social good (e.g., ...

Kevin Leahy is an Assistant Professor in Robotics Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His current work involves AI for autonomous systems, with an emphasis on formal methods and multi-agent systems. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2017, his MS degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2016, and his BA in Economics in 2009, all from Boston University. From 2017 to 2023, he was a member of the Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory he focused on a variety of domains, including learning decentralized control strategies for multi-agent ...

Raha Moraffah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Prior to joining WPI, she earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Arizona State University. Raha's research spans machine learning, data mining, artificial intelligence, and causal inference, with a specific focus on developing trustworthy and responsible machine learning and generative AI algorithms. She is also interested in integrating a causality perspective into machine learning, paving the way for the advancement of causal machine learning. Her scholarly contributions ...

My research bridges the gap between human-robot interaction and human movement science. I am particularly interested in the design of human-robot interfaces and assistive robot autonomy, based on the understanding of the perception-action coupling of humans and cyber-human systems. At WPI, I primarily work on tele-nursing robots and assisted teleoperation interfaces. I also have extensive experience in exoskeletons for rehabilitation and tele-surgical robots.

Yanhua Li is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and Data Science Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research interests focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, with applications in smart cities in many contexts, including spatial-temporal data analytics, urban planning and optimization. Recently, his research has an emphasis on advancing imitation learning and meta learning in AI for learning and influencing the decision-making strategies of urban human agents, such as passenger-seeking strategies of taxi drivers and transit mode/route ...

Dr. Xiaozhong Liu is an Associate Professor at Computer Science and Data Science, WPI. Before that, he was Associate Professor at School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include natural language processing (NLP), text/graph mining, information retrieval/recommendation, metadata, and computational social science. His dissertation at Syracuse University (advisor Dr. Elizabeth D. Liddy) explored an innovative ranking method that weighted the retrieved results by leveraging dynamic community interests. His recent research is ...

I design and analyze optimization and Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithms, with provable runtime, robustness, and privacy guarantees for applications in Machine Learning,  Data Science, and Statistics.  In doing so, I aim to introduce new mathematical tools from physics and geometry to the design and analysis of optimization and sampling algorithms used in ML. I am especially interested in Markov chain and stochastic gradient-based optimization and sampling algorithms.  These algorithms are used to rapidly explore a high-dimensional or non-convex function or probability ...

Before joining WPI Data Science/Computer Science, Fabricio Murai was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at  University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2016. His research lies in the application of mathematical modeling, statistics and machine learning to computer, informational and social networks. He has published in top scientific journals such as Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, ACM TKDD and PLOS ONE. ...

I completed my Ph.D. in Information Technology from the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University. Before that, I received MBA in Management Information Systems from California State University, Chico and BEng in Electronic Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology respectively. My teaching interests include Database Management Systems, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, Machine/Deep Learning, Data Analytics, Decision Support System, Data Structures, Computational Algorithms, and Software Application Programming. My research interests are ...

My research focuses on compressed sensing, machine learning, signal processing, and the interaction between mathematics, computer science and software engineering. My interests range from theoretical results to algorithms for tackling practical applied problems, and I enjoy problems most when mathematical results lead to efficient software implementations for big data. I am looking forward to working with students at all levels and backgrounds who share an interest in mathematics, software, or data. Some problems that have captured my interest include network analysis for cyber defense, and ...

The focus of my research is designing innovative tools for swarm robotics. I am developing Buzz, a programming language specifically designed for real-world robot swarms. During my Ph.D., I have designed ARGoS, which is currently the fastest general-purpose robot simulator in the literature. Recent work focuses on human-swarm interaction and multi-robot learning. I am also working on swarm robotics solutions for disaster response scenarios, such as search-and-rescue and firefighting.

Carolina Ruiz is the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Harold L. Jurist ’61 and Heather E. Jurist Dean's Professor of Computer Science. She joined the WPI faculty in 1997. Prof. Ruiz’s research is in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining, and their applications to Medicine and Health. She has worked on several clinical domains including sleep, stroke, obesity and pancreatic cancer. Prof. Ruiz and her research group have developed novel, high-performing machine learning methods, including deep learning networks, for analyzing physiological sleep data; and machine ...

As founding Head of the interdisciplinary Data Science program here at WPI, I take great pleasure in doing all in my power to support the Data Science community in all its facets from research collaborations, and new educational initiatives to our innovative industry-sponsored and mentored Graduate Qualifying projects at the graduate level.Having served as the primary advisor and mentor of over 43 Ph.D. students who have secured successful professional careers in computing, I'm proud of all the great accomplishments of students I have had the opportunity to collaborate with. With an h-index of ...

I envision a future where we are surrounded by small robots doing various tasks such as pollinating flowers, searching for survivors, carrying payloads, entertaining us and even as our personal pets/companions. To advance autonomy on these tiny mobile robots with on-board sensing and computation, we draw inspiration from nature’s experts – insects, birds and other small beings. My doctoral work culminated in building the world’s first prototype of a RoboBeeHive that involved hummingbird-sized nano-quadrotors capable of pollinating flowers, where all the sensing ...

 My research is in human-computer interaction and human-AI interaction. One focus of my research is on next-generation interaction techniques, such as brain-computer interfaces, physiological computing, textile sensing, radar sensing, and reality-based interaction. My students and I design, build and evaluate interactive computing systems that use machine learning approaches to adapt and support the user’s changing cognitive state and context. I also investigate novel paradigms for designing with accessibility in mind, particularly for the Deaf community. Much of my work also explores ...

Before joining WPI, Roee Shraga was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Khoury College of Computer Science at Northeastern University in Boston. His research mainly revolves around data discovery and integration and combines techniques from data management, machine learning, information retrieval and human-in-the-loop. His research has been published in top-tier conferences such as SIGMOD, VLDB, SIGIR, WWW, and ICDE. He is a recipient of the Council for Higher Education [VATAT] scholarship for outstanding data science postdocs. He is also a recipient of several PhD fellowships including the Leonard ...

My research spans robotics, haptics, multi-modal perception, and artificial intelligence, at the intersection of computer science and engineering. There are two highly related themes in my robotics research: one is the focus on “contact sport”, i.e., the contact and interaction between a robot or a part/tool it holds and the environment, and the other is real-time adaptiveness of robots to uncertainty and uncertain changes in an environment based on perception. Under the first theme, my work includes compliant motion planning involving complex contact scenarios for high-precision robotic ...

The research program led by Dr. Haichong (Kai) Zhang focuses on the interface of medical robotics, sensing, and imaging, and to develop a novel biomedical imaging systems that delineates both anatomical and physiological properties of a biological tissue that have been inaccessible. In addition, we will develop robotic assisted imaging systems as well as image-guided robotic interventional platforms, where ultrasound and photoacoustic (PA) imaging are two key modalities to be investigated and integrated with robotics.The scope of innovation includes (1) co-robotic imaging, where a robotic ...

Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat received his PhD from Colorado State University in 2002. He is the Author of the textbook "Electrical Engineering: Concepts and Applications" published by Pearson, and the editor of the book “Handbook of Position Location: Theory, Practice and Advances,” published by Wiley/IEEE. He holds a patent on an active Wireless Remote Positioning System. Zekavat has also co-authored two books “Multi-Carrier Technologies for Wireless Communications,” published by Kluwer, and “High Dimensional Data Analysis,” published by VDM Verlag; and ten book chapters in the areas of adaptive ...

I genuinely enjoy teaching and interacting with students. I am both an instructor and a researcher at heart and believe that teaching and research are complementary as they advance one another.Teaching: As an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Robotics Engineering Department at WPI, I teach a range of courses, including Kinematics, Dynamics, and Controls courses in both undergraduate and graduate levels. I do believe that teaching entails much more than merely instructing and imparting knowledge on how to solve particular problems related to particular ...

Emmanuel Agu is currently a professor in the computer science department at WPI having received his Masters and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His research interests are in the areas of computer graphics, mobile computing, and wireless networks. He is especially interested in research into how to use a smartphone as a platform to deliver better healthcare. In collaboration with researchers at WPI and at UMass Medical School, he is currently working on NIH-funded research project to create a mobile application for chronic wound care ...

Vincent Aloi is an Associate Teaching Professor with a background in continuum roboitcs. Their doctoral degree was awarded from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2022. They received their bachelors of science in mechanical engineering but began a robotics focus in graduate school. Their research interests include mechanical modeling, sensing, and controlling flexible structures. This research was performed with the REACH lab at UTK, and has been published and presented to various robotics conferences and journals. Currently, Vince has shifted focus to engineering education and helping ...

My research focuses on inverse problems and uncertainty quantification, incorporating elements of applied and computational mathematics, statistics, and scientific computing.  Broadly speaking, inverse problems involve finding the unknown causes of observed effects, and uncertainty quantification plays a key role in understanding the reliability of predicted effects due to variability in the causes.  In the problems that I consider, these causes are typically the unknown inputs (or parameters) of a system, and the effects are some partial, noisy observations of the system components.  The ...

D. Richard Brown III received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from The University of Connecticut in 1992 and 1996, respectively, and received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 2000. From 1992-1997, he was with General Electric Electrical Distribution and Control. Since August 2000, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he is currently a Professor and Department Head. He is the current Weston Hadden Endowed Professor in ...

Professor Fischer is the William Smith Dean's Professor and a faculty member in Robotics Engineering with a appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at WPI. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgery. At WPI he has been an integral part of developing the Robotics Engineering program and teaches primarily junior-level and graduate courses in Robotics. He is the founding director of the Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) ...

Neil T. Heffernan enjoys doing educational data mining and running the ASSISTments system. ASSISTments helps schools teach better. It’s a web service hosted at WPI that allows teachers to assign nightly homework or daily class work. Students get instant feedback while teachers get live reports. Professor Heffernan enjoys supervising WPI students in creating ASSISTments content and features. He has  6 dozens paper in educational data mining, and 20+ papers in comparing different ways to optimize student learning. Professor Heffernan also Directs the Learning Science and Technologies ...

Bashima Islam is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research falls in the intersection of Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing, Machine Learning, and Cyber-Physical Systems. She focuses on the usability, intelligence, and processing capabilities of tiny, low-power computing devices, with a goal of developing computers for applications such as wearable health and agriculture. Islam is most recently a visiting postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. She received her BSc from Bangladesh University of ...

Nima Kordzadeh is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the WPI Business School. He is also affiliated with the Data Science Program. Joining WPI in 2017, Professor Kordzadeh was drawn by the university's commitment to blending theory with practice, aligning perfectly with his educational philosophy. Teaching at WPI is particularly rewarding for him because it enables engagement with students poised to use technology to shape a better world. He continually innovates in his courses, focusing on engaging, interactive, and practical learning that prepares students to be professionals ...

My research is interdisciplinary and spans the fields of bioinformatics of complex diseases, computational genomics, systems biology, and biomedical data analytics. We bring expertise in machine learning, data mining, and massive data analytics to study molecular mechanisms underlying genetic disorders, such as cancer, diabetes, and autism, and deadly infections, such as pandemic flu. Our approaches benefit from integrating multi-omic, systems, and structural biology data. We also develop hardware-optimized algorithms to understand the evolution of animal and plant genomes on the large scale. ...

Dr. Lewin is the Associate Head of Robotics Engineering. He teaches courses that focus on system integration, sensor and data processing, and system design. Prior to joining WPI, Dr. Lewin was an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, where he directed the Technology Leaders Program, an interdisciplinary engineering program focusing on the design of cyber-physical systems. He has performed research and development of sensor systems, turbomachinery, energy systems, and robots in both academic and industrial settings. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling and he’ll be happy to tell ...

I joined the faculty of the ECE Department in 1991 after leaving Raytheon Company, where I spent approximately 12 years involved with the development of embedded computers for guidance, communications, and data processing systems for spaceborne and terrestrial applications. At WPI I perform research and teach in the areas of navigation, communications, and computer system design. I supervise the WPI Center for Advanced Integrated Radio Navigation (CAIRN), where I am developing a Public Safety Integration Center focused on the integration of communications, navigation, and information ...

I am a data mining researcher who investigates how to develop and leverage ground-breaking techniques to explore time series datasets at the confluence of theoretical computer science and application domains like medicine, neuroscience, economics, transportation, and complex decision making. With more than fifteen years of teaching experience in various academic institutions, I am committed to using my love and talent for teaching and research to empower others through education to make a difference in the world . I am one of the WPI faculty included in the inaugural cohort of WPI’s new ...

An integral part of a rewarding academic career is being an educator. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with students and guide their development to fulfill their potential. I enjoy teaching the fundamentals of robotics engineering, science and technology as well as training students in advanced independent research. I aim to teach students about research-based thinking and problem solving, to give them a real career choice to determine their future in further research or the industry. With its hands-on culture and students taking responsibility for their own learning, WPI is the perfect ...

I have completed my PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2014. Afterwards, I have been a postdoc at Cornell, UC Berkeley and Princeton.  I am interested in how theoretical insights from computer science, discrete mathematics and probability theory can lead to better algorithms in the domains of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Recently I have been studying theoretical questions related to Neural Networks.  

I deeply enjoy teaching courses where students combine theoretical components to a practical application. I have been a faculty at ShanghaiTech University, China, for five years, where I created syllabi and taught two courses on Robotics for over four years. While in China I organized outreach activities, teaching Scratch programming to children from low-income neighborhoods in Shanghai. Here in WPI my MQPs usually combine machine learning algorithms with robots and manipulators, or cool/innovative inventions that my students may have! I focus on the design of robots and soft robots, ...

I am Professor of Operations and Industrial Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), with courtesy appointments in Mathematical Sciences, Data Science, and Computer Science. I hold a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. My objective is to use science and technology to assist real human need by improving systems that serve vulnerable peoples, such as refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and children in the foster care system.I believe that the convergence of novel analytical technologies and open-source software can create ...

My research interests are in applied machine learning, computer vision, data science and their applications to education, affective computing, and human behavior recognition. My work is highly interdisciplinary and frequently intersects cognitive science, psychology, and education. Before joining WPI, I was a research scientist at the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning at Harvard University. In 2012, I co-founded Emotient, a San Diego-based startup company for automatic emotion and facial expression recognition. I also love teaching and have lectured, mentored, and tutored ...

Professor Wu's research interest lies in applying the power of statistical science to promote biomedical researches. In statistical genetics, he is developing novel statistical theory and methodology to analyze genome-wide association (GWA) data and deep (re)sequencing data to hunt new genetic factors for complex human diseases. In epigenetics, he is studying gene expression regulation mechanisms through chromatin interaction, and RNA silencing pathways in the developmental stages of germ-line cells. In clinical studies, he is establishing statistical models to predict carotid atherosclerotic ...

Dr. Ziming Zhang is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Before joining WPI he was a research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in 2016-2019. Prior to that, he was a research assistant professor at Boston University. Dr. Zhang received his PhD in 2013 from Oxford Brookes University, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Philip H. S. Torr (now in the University of Oxford). His research areas lie in computer vision and machine learning, especially in object recognition/detection, data-efficient learning (e.g. zero-shot learning) and applications ...

Kelsey is the Director of Programs & Strategic Initiatives for the Data Science Program. Her responsibilities include serving as the Graduate Coordinator, working with the Program Head on grant funded projects, supporting faculty and students, and collaborating with the Program Manager. Specifically, Kelsey provides administrative oversight for the NRT CEDAR Project, an interdisciplinary program that seeks to transform the next generation of technical leaders equipped with DS techniques and methods ready to solve critical engineering and science problems plaguing our society. In addition, ...

Ana Maria is the Program Manager for the Data Science Program. Her responsibilities include working with the Program Head, supporting faculty and students, collaborating across campus, and managing budgetary and financial matters. She previously worked at Becker College as the Director of Teaching & Learning Innovation. She holds a B.A. in Art Education from C.W. Post Long Island University, an M.A. in Diplomacy from Norwich University, and is working toward her Ed.D. in Leadership & Innovation from St. Thomas University. Ana Maria enjoys spending time with her family, drawing, ...