Faculty and Staff

Patricia C. Agupusi (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at the School of Social Science and Policy Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Massachusetts, US. Her research interests include state capacity, political violence, and the political economy of development and inequality. Patricia is currently working on her second book – tentatively titled “State Capture and the Politics of the ‘Two Economies’ Debate in South Africa 25 Years After.” She also conducts fieldwork on the rise of domestic terrorism/insurgencies, and China/African relations. Patricia has ...

I compose, perform, record, mix and produce electroacoustic music; I am interested in how we can use the tools and techniques of audio production to explore new musical territory. I build mechatronic and robotic musical instruments; I am interested in how we can free electronic music from the world of speakers through computer-controlled automatic mechanical instruments. I conduct research and experiments that explore how our cognitive and perceptual processes affect our musical experience; I am interested in how we can use such research to guide our compositional and analytic activities. I am ...

Crystal Brown Simard earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oregon, specializing in Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Public Administration. She also holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Pennsylvania State University and a certificate in Data Analytics from Harvard University.She is an internationally focused scholar who examines the inclusivity of marginalized groups, including immigrants, people of color, and individuals of African descent/Black people, women, and other marginalized groups. As a computational social scientist, she employs ...

Lucy Caplan is an interdisciplinary historian of music, race, and culture in the United States. Her research and teaching interests include African American music, opera and musical theater, and cultural criticism. At present, she is writing a book about how early-twentieth-century African Americans redefined the genre of opera as a wellspring of antiracist activism, collective sociality, and aesthetic innovation. In conjunction with her academic work, Prof. Caplan enjoys writing program notes, creating educational materials for arts organizations, and speaking for public ...

Farley Chery specializes in simplifying artistic and technical concepts. Having a multidisciplinary background, he works with students in his specialized area of Technical art and other areas of experimentation like storytelling, and experimental game mechanics. Systems he created have been used in multiple games and films and are a core component of Epic games character pipeline and the basis for ART tools. His courses fuse representation, world-building, and character design; preparing students to be highly productive production artists.Before joining WPI he designed studio experiences for ...

One of Professor Cullon's students recently called him "strangely fascinating." He knew that he was strange but he was happy to learn that a student found his approach to teaching fascinating. He likes to encourage students to see history not as a mass of dead facts but as a vital mode of inquiry and a moral project that has the potential to inform the present as much as illuminate the past. Having previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dartmouth College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he finds teaching WPI students especially invigorating because of their abiding ...

Bwann Kellie Gwann is the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) for Talent and Inclusion at WPI. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President of DEIB, Bwann oversees the Inclusive Excellence Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), the Diversity Advocate (DA) program, and facilitates several DEIB related trainings and events for members of the WPI community.  Prior to her arrival at WPI, Bwann served as the Director of Multicultural Affairs and Social Inclusion at Lesley University. She developed countless programs for learning and engagement for faculty, students, and staff ...

Dr. Jean King is an active neuroscientist and Peterson Family Dean of Arts & Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Previously Dr. King was the Vice Provost of Biomedical Research and Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology, and Neurology (with tenure) at UMass Medical School, where she had been a faculty member since 1994.  Together with other administrative leaders at WPI, Dean King has launched new undergraduate and graduate programs in Learning Science, Neuroscience, Interactive Media and Game Development, and AI and has expanded undergraduate research opportunities.  Dr. King’s ...

Robert Krueger is a human geographer whose scholarship and teaching focus on creating sustainable, socially just, improvements to development projects in the global north and south. His work has taken him around the world. He has worked in countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, on issues of economic development and institutional change. His scholarship and teaching challenge conventional notions of economic development, economy-environment relationships, and social change. In his book, Adventures in Sustainable Urbanism (2019, SUNY Press, Krueger, Freytag and Mössner (eds)), ...

 Kathryn M. Moncrief is Paris Fletcher Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Head of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, MA. She was previously Professor and Chair of English at Washington College, in Chestertown, MD where she taught courses in Shakespeare, Milton, and early modern literature and culture and received the Washington College Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching. She serves as co-editor of the Shakespeare Life and Times section of the Internet Shakespeare Editions and has published widely on Shakespeare and ...

Romain Murenzi joined Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) as a full professor of Physics in January 2024. His research interests include Wavelets, Groups, Phase Space Representations, Coherent States: Links Between Quantum Physics; and Signal Processing in One and More Dimensions. In addition to STEM, Murenzi is interested in expanding his research to social science and policy. This includes areas such as Science, Technology, and Innovation policy for sustainable development, science for society, science diplomacy, and providing scientific advice to governments.Until November 2023, he served ...

Charlotte (Lottie) Richard is a historian specializing in transnational African Diaspora history with an emphasis on African American and Caribbean history in the era of the Long Freedom Movement. Dr. Richard’s scholarly focus is on the intersections of activism and political movements throughout the African Diaspora. Her work crosses geographical and geopolitical boundaries to connect movements, ideas, and struggles in the Caribbean, North America, and Africa. Dr. Richard’s research has been presented at international African Diaspora History conferences and has been published in ...

 Mahamadou Lamine Sagna has a PhD in Sociology, a degree in Business (financial management) and Ethnopsychiatry. He is the inaugural director of WPI's Africana Studies program, and is an associate researcher at the Laboratory for Social and Political Change (LSCP) at the University of Paris-Diderot. He conducts research on social networks, globalization, money, symbolism of exchanges, poverty and exclusion, and the use of technology and science by economically disadvantaged populations. In parallel to his experiences in the USA and France, he gives courses and conferences internationally ...

Kara Parks Fontenot is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Writing and Rhetoric. She has eighteen years of experience teaching a wide variety of undergraduate courses in writing, rhetoric, literature, and the humanities more broadly, including first-year composition, technical writing, African American and Ethnic American literature, folklore, world culture, and ethics. Kara's undergraduate coursework at the United States Air Force Academy gave her a general knowledge base in engineering disciplines and prepared her well for teaching at a STEM-focused ...

Dr. Gbetonmasse Somasse is an economist and applied econometrician with field experience as a development practitioner. He is  an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies. Prior to joining WPI, he was an instructor at Clark University. He also served as senior economist statistician at the Central Bank of West African States and a consultant for the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Development Program.His research is mostly policy-oriented and focuses on how economic theory and empirical ...