Dear WPI Community,  When WPI acquired the Courtyard Marriott and Hampton Inn at Gateway Park in 2024, we planned to repurpose them as student residence halls, beginning with the Hampton Inn in 2026. However, we have now decided to postpone our planned conversion of the Hampton Inn. This decision was based on the shifting dynamics affecting WPI and higher education across the country—including significant reductions in federal research funding, anticipated declines in international student enrollment, and the continuing effects of a shrinking pool of domestic students.  The Hampton Inn will continue to serve WPI and the City of Worcester by operating as a full-capacity hotel under its existing management company. The revenue generated by the hotel will provide financial resiliency for WPI and continue to produce property and hotel taxes for the city.  The Courtyard Marriott will remain an operating hotel until at least 2030, as previously announced. We reevaluate our student housing needs annually, taking into account the current demand for housing, future needs and other factors, and we will review the status of the Hampton Inn as part of this process. WPI has updated officials in city government about the change in the timeline for the conversion.   WPI has been proud to call Worcester home for 160 years. Our students, faculty, and staff contribute every day to the city’s vibrancy and growth—through innovation, research, entrepreneurship, community service, and civic engagement.  We are equally proud of our economic contributions:  More than $140 million invested in Gateway Park since its inception Annual PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) currently exceeding $815,000 $9 million paid to the city since 2009, with a total of approximately $18 million projected through 2034 Technologies developed at WPI resulting in local and regional spin-off companies employing more than 400 people and over $1 billion in investment   WPI remains firmly rooted in Worcester and steadfast in our commitment to its future—bringing stability, opportunity, and shared success to both the campus and the city.  Sincerely,  Mike Horan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer  Philip Clay, Senior Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management   

MIEA Intro to Mindfulness is a four-week evidence-based mindfulness curriculum the Center for Well-Being is offering to WPI employees and graduate students at no cost.  Registration is now open for the in-person program that runs Tuesdays, 1:00 to 2:15 PM, July 15 to Aug 5 in the Center for Well-Being. Register here.

On Monday, June 30, the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering program launched its fourth cohort, welcoming eight middle and high school educators. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), RET is a six-week immersive program that provides K–12 teachers with research experiences in engineering, and led by Erin Solovey (PI), Kathy Chen (co-PI) and Donna Taylor. Participants are enhancing their disciplinary knowledge and developing classroom activities and curricula to broaden students’ awareness of and engagement with computing and engineering pathways.  (L-R) Demetrios Kennedy, Jesse Drozd, Abigail Prisby, Em Beeler, Tiffini Cornock, Deborah Baird, Michael Nixdorf Jared Quin This year’s cohort includes two recent WPI graduates, Demetrios Kennedy and Michael Nixdorf,  who completed the Teacher Preparation Program (TPP), as well as TPP alum ‘22, Em Beeler. The educators are mentored by WPI faculty members Scarlet Shell, Adam Powell, Andrew Teixeira, Michael T. Timko, Geoffref Tompsett, and Yihao Zheng. In addition to their research projects, RET teachers are participating in weekly professional development sessions led by the STEM Education Center. These sessions support the integration of their research experiences into real-world, standards-aligned STEM instruction, all while connecting to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and strengthening partnerships among WPI, K–12 schools, and industry. 2025 RET RESEARCH PROJECTS                                                       Research Project (UN SDG #) Research Project WPI Faculty Mentor, Department Teacher, Licensure, School Teacher, Licensure, School/Major #7 – Affordable & Clean Energy Magnesium Production and Recycling for Clean Energy Adam Powell (Mechanical & Materials Engineering / Chemical Engineering) Jared Quinn (Life Sciences, Overlook MS, Ashburnham) Demetrios Kennedy (HS Chemistry, WPI Chemistry) #3 – Good Heath and Well-Being Antibiotic Resistance in Mycobacteria Scarlet Shell (Biology & Biotechnology) Abigail Prisby (HS Biology, Groton-Dunstable HS) Em Beeler (HS Math, Burncoat HS, Worcester) #13 – Climate Action Removing PFAS from Contaminated Soils Andrew Teixeira & Mike Timko (Chemical Engineering) Tiffini Cornock (HS Chemistry, Carver MS/HS) Jesse Drozd (HS Chemistry, WPI Chemistry) #3 – Good Heath and Well-Being Engineering Bench-Top Testing of Interventional Devices for Cardiovascular Diseases Yihao Zheng (Mechanical & Materials Engineering, Robotics Engineering, Biomedical Engineering / MME, RBE & BME) Deborah Baird (MS Broad Meadows Middle School) Michael Nixdorf (MS Math, WPI Applied Physics) 

Constantinos Chamzas Professor Constantinos Chamzas, a faculty member in the Department of Robotics Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious $175,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research in robotic planning and manipulation. The award, part of the NSF’s highly competitive Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII), will help launch a project titled “CRII: Towards Real-World Robotic Manipulation: Learning Abstract State and Action Representations from Visual and Execution Data” which aims to revolutionize how robots learn and reason in complex, real-world environments.    Professor Chamzas’s inspiration for the project traces back to his doctoral research, where he explored how robots leverage past experiences to improve planning efficiency. “I’ve always been fascinated by how classical planning algorithms offer strong generalization in theory,” he explains, “but in practice, they require carefully designed spaces and significant manual effort to function effectively.” His curiosity led him to explore the intersection of symbolic planning and machine learning—two traditionally distinct approaches in robotics.  The core idea behind his project is deceptively simple: enable robots to reason more like humans. When we put clothes in a closet,  “We don’t consciously model every object or constraint,” Chamzas says. “We just follow an abstract plan: go to the closet, open the door, put the clothes inside.” But for a robot, that same task requires a detailed, manually encoded model. His research seeks to change that by allowing robots to learn abstract representations of tasks and actions directly from experience, rather than relying on human-specified models.    Technically, the project focuses on enabling robots to perform long-horizon manipulation tasks by learning symbolic abstractions from real-world data.  “Instead of assuming a perfect model of the world,” Professor Chamzas states, “the robot will autonomously collect and analyze its own experience to discover how to represent tasks and actions symbolically.” The result enables more adaptive and explainable robotic behavior.    The grant application process, Professor Chamzas notes, was both challenging and rewarding. “The CRII program is unique in how it supports early-career researchers,” he says. It gave him the “opportunity to distill my long-term research vision into a focused, high-impact proposal.” He credits the support of his colleagues in the Robotics Department and past CRII recipients for helping him refine his ideas and navigate the application process.     For other researchers seeking NSF funding, Professor Chamzas offers practical advice: “Start early and don’t be afraid to share your ideas with trusted peers and mentors. Treat the proposal not just as a funding opportunity, but as a chance to clarify and articulate your long-term research vision” He emphasizes the importance of grounding proposals in prior work and being open to feedback—even when it’s conflicting. Professor Chamzas says that open dialogue with colleagues is what helped him the most, and he strongly encourages open conversations.     With this NSF grant, Professor Chamzas is poised to make significant strides in the field of robotics, pushing the boundaries of how machines learn, plan, and interact with the world. The work supported by this award will contribute to broader developments in the field and provide valuable insights for the robotics community at large.  

Please click here to view the July 2025 benefits newsletter. 

Hire Date Employee Name  Position Department  6/2/2025 Abhishek Sharma Post-Doctoral Fellow School of Engineering  6/9/2025 Dorothy Gaby Senior Assistant Director, Admissions, Access & Outreach Student Affairs & Enrollment Management  6/9/2025 Zeyi Yao Post-Doctoral Fellow School of Engineering  6/23/2025 Anne Cushing Assistant Vice President, Marketing Communications Marketing Communications  6/23/2025 Lydia Sprague Research Associate School of Arts & Sciences