Lincoln Laboratory Provides a New Round of Funding to Support Student Researchers

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and MIT Lincoln Laboratory have a long and fruitful history together, including Lincoln Laboratory’s ongoing sponsorship of Major Qualifying Projects (MQPs), grants awarded to WPI researchers, and the hiring of WPI alums. A new round of $100,000 in funding for 2023 will allow WPI students to continue and complete sponsored-research projects and internships this summer.

“WPI’s work with Lincoln Lab provides the opportunity for WPI students to supplement their classes and lab work on campus with summer internships that allow them to expand and grow, and become the next generation of technological leaders, innovators, and problem solvers in the wireless domain, especially with technologies such as 5G and 6G,” said Alex Wyglinksi, associate dean of graduate studies and professor of electrical and computer engineering, who has led WPI’s partnership with Lincoln Lab since 2011. “It’s a win-win-win relationship – for WPI, the students and for Lincoln Lab.”

Lincoln Laboratory was founded in 1951 and was initially created to develop the country’s first air defense system. Its facilities currently include a semiconductor research and fabrication laboratory, a flight facility, and a supercomputing center. While managed by MIT and the Department of Defense, its research and development centers are funded by the federal government.

Carl Fossa, Group Leader for MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Tactical Networks Group said: “The relationship with WPI has provided Lincoln Laboratory with excellent opportunities to collaborate with both faculty and students.  The work that Professor Wyglinski’s students have done in the area of 5G/6G wireless communications has been particularly impressive.  The ‘hands-on’ teaching approach at WPI produces engineers who are a great match for the research and prototyping work at Lincoln Laboratory.  I’m excited about our opportunity to continue collaboration with WPI going forward.”

Currently, the students working on projects with Lincoln Lab include PhD students Maya Flores and Adriyel Nieves, and master’s students Donovan Tames and Mitch Jacobs. Each is working on research related to Securing future 5G/6G against attacks from adversaries who are attempting to gain unauthorized access to these networks by innovating new/custom machine learning algorithms and testing these algorithms using programmable wireless prototyping equipment such as software-defined radio.