Vladimir Vantsevich is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. He serves as co-Director and Principal Investigator of the Autonomous Vehicle Mobility Institute (AVMI). Prior to WPI, he worked as a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Lawrence Technological University (LTU) in Michigan. Before LTU, Dr. Vantsevich was a professor of Belarusian National Technical University and the Head of Research and Design Group on Multi-Wheel Drive Vehicles that designed and developed mechatronic and mechanical driveline systems for various purpose vehicles ...

Lee Moradi, PhD, PEWPI School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering (MME) Lee Moradi joined WPI in February 2022 as a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering (MME).  He is also the Co-Director of the Autonomous Vehicle Mobility Institute (AVMI).  Prior to WPI, Lee had 18 years of experience with industry and 25 years as a faculty and director at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).  Lee held several leadership positions at UAB including:1.     Director of Engineering & Innovative Technology ...

Dr. Siyuan (Hunter) Zhang is the Research Engineer of Autonomous Vehicle Mobility at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He also serves as the lab manager at AVMI. His research areas contain virtualization of unstructured terrain environment and dynamics of mechanical and mechatronic systems of autonomous ground vehicles, including i) dynamics of distributed/virtual electric driveline systems of fully electric vehicles and ii) vehicle performance control systems. He has been coordinating and supervising five industry collaborative research projects (~$1Million) and successfully presented ...

Dr. Masood Ghasemi is a Research Scientist member of Autonomous Vehicle Mobility at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) since October 2022. Dr. Ghasemi's background is in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis on systems dynamics and control. Prior joining WPI, he was a lead/quad member of several Automotive Research Center's projects as well as Simulator's of Autonomous Mobility at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Ghasemi was a Senior Control Systems Engineer at FG Innovations, Inc. He has served as a Technical Lead at DENSO International America, Inc., as well as he was a ...

Jesse Paldan joined WPI as a Research Associate for the Autonomous Vehicle Mobility Institute (AVMI) in 2022. Before WPI, he worked as a graduate research assistant for the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Lawrence Technological University in Michigan. He received a Master's degree in Mechatronics Systems Engineering from Lawrence Technological University in 2010. He has over ten years of experience working on projects focusing on vehicle dynamics, hybrid and electric vehicles, and modeling and simulation of mechatronic systems.

Dr. Parth Y. Patel is the research engineer of the Autonomous Vehicle Mobility Institute (AVMI) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research and engineering area focuses on simulating and virtualizing off-road autonomous vehicle dynamics (Terramechanics) in unstructured terrain environments, severe weather conditions, and control. His research and design in autonomous ground vehicles include but are not limited to wheel power distribution optimization to enhance autonomous vehicle terrain mobility, maneuvering, and energy efficiency. Additionally, his work involves developing ...

Gillian Smith, an award-winning game designer, joined WPI in 2017. Her interdisciplinary work merges technical research in AI and HCI with creative practice in textiles and games, with a view towards addressing social issues and broadening participation and perspectives on computing. Their research interests are in computational creativity, game design, computer science education, and the intersection of traditional crafts and computation. In 2021 Professor Smith was appointed director of WPI’s Interactive Media and Games Development program – one of the earliest gaming programs in the ...

Dr. Alexander M. Wyglinski is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at WPI since 2021.  In this role, Dr. Wyglinski's activities primarily focus on devising sustainable, scalable, and innovative solutions for enabling individuals to pursue graduate degree programs in support of their professional development goals.  Several of these activities include the creation of an Experiential PhD framework enabling full-time industry practitioners to simultaneously pursue part-time doctoral studies, implementation of interdisciplinary PhD programs focused on emerging areas involving cross-cutting ...

Konstantin's research has, since the early '60s, been focused on optimal control of distributed systems, specifically, on optimal material design. The journal papers and books he published since laid a solid foundation of this discipline, as we know it today. The need for optimal design comes from everyday life and from various technological requirements that put forth numerous challenges demanding better quality, less weight, lower cost, faster operation, etc. Today, these demands cannot be addressed on intuitive basis alone, as was true through centuries of world civilization, but appear to ...