WPI has awarded seed funding from the President’s Research Catalyst Grants Program to three faculty-led groups that will develop proposals for large research centers focused on making advances in bioengineering, new materials, and mental health.
Each group will receive $50,000 from the Catalyst program, which launched in 2024. Recipients will use the 18-month grants to develop center-scale, interdisciplinary research proposals that will attract financial support from external sponsors. The program is designed to catalyze and facilitate the development and preparation of extramural grant applications that require extensive planning, exchange of ideas, collaboration, team building, partnering, and other activities that demand significant investments of faculty members’ time and effort.
“Pressing societal challenges call for large-scale, interdisciplinary, long-term research efforts,” says Grace Wang, WPI president. “These seed grants build on WPI’s research strengths and faculty expertise, supporting our faculty teams to collaboratively pursue high-impact research centers that hold the potential to push boundaries and advance knowledge and solutions to address significant challenges facing the world.”
The Catalyst program is partially funded by gifts from Trustee Emeritus Jim Baum ’86 and Bonnie and Jack Mollen, trustee emeritus and former board chair who was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2023. Their gifts have been designated to support research at WPI, including but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI).
“Developing a center-scale proposal represents a significant investment of time and effort by WPI faculty,” says Bogdan Vernescu, vice president and vice provost for research and innovation. “Teams must do extensive planning and collaborating. The President’s Research Catalyst Grants Program provides the financial support that can lead to successful proposals.”
Grants were awarded to the following proposals and teams:
