Brittany Frederick became WPI’s new director of multicultural education and community engagement last winter, just as many colleges and universities were eliminating their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Her appointment reflects WPI’s ongoing commitment to fostering a kind and caring community. Frederick holds a PhD in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she focused on the intersection of race and gender in higher education through U.S. history. That context and perspective help Frederick take the long view when approaching her work with WPI’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multicultural Education (ODIME). As a self-described nerd who loves gaming and watching Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, she says she feels right at home at WPI. Keep reading to learn more about the Bronx, N.Y., native. Q: What drew you to this ODIME director position at WPI? A: It started while I was working on my PhD. I was always looking for educational opportunities outside of the classroom, which led me to take a graduate assistantship in the Office of Inclusion and Engagement at UMass Amherst. And I realized I really liked this type of work. It’s student affairs work, but outside of residential life, which is where I’d worked all through my undergraduate and graduate career. When I went to Penn State to complete my postdoctoral fellowship, there was an opening in the Fox Graduate School doing similar diversity-related work with students. I took that job but knew I could make more of an impact at a mid-size institution like WPI than I could at a huge school like Penn State. I wanted to be a person with a face. I wanted to lead and to make change. And once I understood more about WPI, I realized it would be a really good fit for me because you can be your own quirky person here. Q: Now that you’ve been here for a while, what are you most excited about in your role? A: ODIME is in an interesting place. It’s a difficult place, but it’s also a big, big area of opportunity because we have to re-envision what inclusion and belonging look like moving forward. We need to continue to make sure that our students know that this office is here for them. Q: Why is having an office like ODIME important for students? A: At the turn of the 19th century, and with the establishment of land grant institutions, you may have gone to your math class, your agriculture class, your Latin class, and then home. But then students felt as if they needed something else, some sort of enrichment adjacent to the academic experience but still educational. This is where we see the beginning of fraternal societies—and then social clubs more generally. What we now know as “student affairs” began because students and universities saw a benefit in programs that foster the growth of the whole student as a person, not just as an academic pupil. Without the work that student affairs does outside of the classroom, students do not thrive in the classroom. If students don’t have ways to express themselves, to process the things that they’re going through, to make friends and build community, they cannot succeed in the classroom. At first I thought I would not fit in at a STEM school like WPI. But I am not here to help anyone solve a math equation. Students come to me to talk about their study habits. They come to me about fitting in and making friends, about identity issues and who they are. These are all things that I can help with. And once students can address those concerns that they have outside of the classroom, they can thrive in the classroom. Q: Part of what ODIME has done historically is to help vulnerable members of our campus community feel seen and valued. How are you doing that while also complying with federal mandates to ensure that spaces and programs are open to everyone? A: We’re keeping the spirit of our programs and being much clearer that they are open to all. For example, the National Science Foundation’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) supported students underrepresented in STEM with career, mentorship, and peer-advising programs. The NSF ended that program, but we’re still providing those supports, and we’re ensuring all students have access. The Connections Pre-Orientation Program—which helps first-year students transition to college life—is another example of a program that has always been open to all, but we now say more explicitly that it is open for everybody. This didn’t change any of the programming that we did this summer during the week of Connections. We offered the same opportunities to build community, learn campus resources, and engage with faculty and staff. I don’t think our purpose and our function has changed, but we’ve had to be more clear in our language about what we offer and who we offer it to. Students, faculty, and staff may interpret that as some sort of capitulation, but we either remain in compliance with federal mandates or close the off...

Worcester Polytechnic Institute researcher Jeffrey Bourgeois has been awarded a $542,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to identify genetic factors that influence inflammation in humans who have been infected with the tick-borne bacterium that causes Lyme disease. The goal is to enable better prediction, prevention, and treatment of Lyme disease, which can lead to serious inflammatory conditions, such as arthritis, and long-term illness. “Some patients have mild inflammatory responses to Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, while others suffer severe symptoms, even well after treatment,” said Bourgeois, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Biotechnology. “It’s not clear why patients have such different experiences. We need a better understanding of how small differences in human genes across individuals may be driving inflammation.” Over three years, Bourgeois will build a library of human blood samples and develop a laboratory process to screen macrophages, a type of white blood cell, for genes that have been activated after exposure to B. burgdorferi. He will identify small changes in the DNA code within genes that are associated with the immune system’s response to infection, including disruptions in immune “memory” that leave some patients struggling with persistent symptoms. In addition, he will examine associations between differences in DNA sequences in blood samples collected from patients with longer-term symptoms. The grant is part of a military initiative to accelerate research that could lead to advances in preventing and treating Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases in military members, veterans, their families, and the public. Lyme disease was first identified in 1975 in Lyme, Conn., by researchers investigating a cluster of children with juvenile arthritis. An estimated 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease every year in the United States, and most cases occur in the Northeast and Midwest. The disease moves from animals to humans through black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks. The ticks feed on infected mice and birds, and the ticks then transmit the spiral-shaped bacteria to humans through a bite. One sign of infection is a telltale circular rash at the site of a tick bite. If treated with antibiotics soon after infection, Lyme disease patients typically recover rapidly and completely. However, some patients never develop a rash and may not know that they have been bitten until the illness has progressed to more severe symptoms. Bourgeois joined the WPI faculty in 2025 after earning his PhD at Duke University and completing post-doctoral research at Tufts University. A Rhode Island native, he earned his bachelor’s degree at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. For Bourgeois, focusing his research on B. burgdorferi is a chance to solve a puzzle and a personal matter. “B. burgdorferi is challenging,” Bourgeois said. “In nature, it exists only in ticks and vertebrates like mice. In labs, it is difficult to culture and study. Yet it causes so many health problems for humans. I grew up in New England, where Lyme disease was first recognized, and I have friends who’ve had Lyme disease, so I understand the impact this disease can have on people.” This work will be supported by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Tick-Borne Disease Research Program, endorsed by the Department of Defense under Award number HT9425-25-1-0547. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Department of Defense.

In this episode of The WPI Podcast, we explore how a group of Worcester Polytechnic Institute students are making a global impact and connections with a community in Ecuador. As part of a multiple-year project, WPI’s student chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA spent a week in May 2025 working with residents in Shungubug Grande to upgrade their aging water system and address water quality challenges.  Sophia Gross writes about the experience for an article in WPI Journal, the university’s magazine. Gross and Sarah Gardner, both members of the student organization, join the podcast to reflect on their time in South America, the extracurricular project that allowed them to exercise their engineering and problem-solving skills for the enhancement of society, the lasting memories they made with community members, and what it was like to document the trip for the magazine in writing and photos.  Also, Kris O’Reilly, editor of WPI Journal, shares a preview of other stories you’ll find in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of the magazine.   Related links: WPI Student Chapter, Engineers Without Borders USA Instagram: WPI Student Chapter, Engineers Without Borders USA WPI Journal, “Engineering a Cultural Connection,” by Sophia Gross  WPI Journal Fall/Winter 2025 issue  The Global Lab

Among the many things that can make the heart pound—a new love, a scary movie, a vigorous workout—an irregular heartbeat known as ventricular tachycardia is particularly dangerous. Errant electrical signals make the heart race, sometimes too fast to pump blood. Patients may faint, and prolonged arrhythmias can even cause death. All too often, ablation procedures that aim to scar small sections of heart tissue contributing to the arrhythmia simply fail to work. WPI researcher Shijie Zhou is working to change that by using large sets of data from noninvasive clinical tests, computational methods, and artificial intelligence to reconstruct cardiac events such as arrhythmias in digital models. His goal is to make ablation procedures safer and more accurate. With funding from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health, Zhou is developing technologies that can precisely map electrical circuits in the heart, pinpoint problem spots, and identify the best sites for treatment. “It is very challenging to treat ventricular tachycardia,” says Zhou, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “After ablation, ventricular tachycardia recurs about 30% to 70% of the time. However, with algorithms and data gathered from many patients, we can build tools that will enable clinicians to work toward better outcomes for patients.” Ventricular tachycardia originates in the lower chambers, or ventricles, of the heart and is often caused by heart disease. Treatments include drugs such as beta-blockers, implanted pacemakers, catheter ablation, and radiation. A minimally invasive procedure, catheter ablation involves inserting a long flexible tube into a blood vessel, guiding a probe to a specific spot in the heart, and then using radiofrequency energy or extreme cold to scar the tissue and block irregular signals. Zhou, who joined the WPI faculty in 2024, was a master’s student in computer engineering when a business executive encouraged him to develop a smartphone app for people with arrhythmias. As he learned about the challenges involved in treating ventricular tachycardia, Zhou pivoted into a PhD and biomedical engineering program at Dalhousie University in Canada that included two years of medical school courses. “My background includes both medical and engineering training, and my goal is to advance research from the laboratory to the clinic within a few years,” Zhou says. “Translational research is fascinating to conduct, but it’s also important for patients.” Now Zhou’s research builds on information collected about the heart through noninvasive methods, including sensors placed on the body to record electrical signals and computer tomography that stitches together two-dimensional scans to create three-dimensional images. Zhou received a Career Development Award from the AHA in March 2025 to develop software that uses scans and data to build a 3D computer model, or “digital twin,” of a patient’s heart. The three-year $231,000 project aims to build a system that can spot the exact location where an arrhythmia starts. Zhou and a collaborator will test the software in a pilot study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The AHA awarded Zhou a separate two-year $199,999 grant in June 2025 to develop an AI tool that automatically analyzes raw electrocardiogram signals. ECGs use electrodes placed on the skin to measure the electrical activity of the heart. Zhou’s project will develop a tool that can objectively and precisely predict optimal sites in a patient’s heart for ablation, potentially making procedures shorter and more accurate. More recently, the NIH awarded a $232,500 grant to Zhou in September 2025 for a two-year project to create a technology that will identify targets for cardiac stereotactic body radiotherapy. Also known as cSBRT, the noninvasive procedure uses highly focused beams of radiation to ablate abnormal tissue in the heart. Zhou will use a large clinical dataset, with personal details removed and accurate information from catheter ablations, to validate a noninvasive functional and structural localization approach to identifying targets for radiation. In his laboratory, Zhou projects colorful digital images of hearts on his computer screen, complete with depictions of muscle fiber and the electrical points where irregular signals are firing. The technology builds on work he launched during his PhD training at Dalhousie University, a clinical cardiac electrophysiology research fellowship with the Nova Scotia Health Authority, and postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, where he developed and patented several related inventions. “Some arrhythmia patients undergo ablation more than once because the procedure so often fails,” Zhou says. “At a certain point, patients can no longer receive ablation. It is important to improve this procedure and get real solutions into the hands of doctors.”

After hearing what our students, faculty, and staff had to say, we couldn't wait to share their heartfelt responses. Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason. 🧡 From all of us, we wish you and your families a happy holiday break filled with gratitude, warmth, and good company.

“How’s school going?” is the question every family asks at the dinner table.Watch our students give the real answer—breaking down what they’re actually learning and working on.#StudentLife #College #StudentProjects #WPI #Education

Episode 4 of the Time To Startup podcast, titled “Know How to Listen: How to Be a Mentor & Mentee?”, features guest Rob Sarnie in conversation with host Ardian Preci. In this episode, the discussion focuses on the importance of mentorship in entrepreneurial and professional development, exploring what makes an effective mentor, how individuals can become strong mentees, and why active listening is a core skill for both roles. Rob draws from his own leadership and industry experience to provide practical advice, real examples, and valuable insights that listeners can apply directly to their own growth, whether they are guiding others or navigating their own journey.

In this episode of Time to Startup, we explore why the best founders don’t start with a product — they start with a conversation. The i3 Lab team dives into the importance of customer discovery and how early-stage entrepreneurs can save time, money, and stress by deeply understanding the people they’re building for. From real examples to practical advice, this episode breaks down how to identify true customer pain points, test assumptions, and build solutions that matter. Whether you’re a student innovator or a seasoned builder, you’ll learn why talking first might just be the smartest step you take toward startup success.  

In this episode, we sit down with WPI’s Athletic Director to explore what it really means to be a student-athlete at one of the nation’s top STEM universities. With college sports making headlines nationwide, we take a closer look at the Division III experience at WPI — where academics come first, teamwork is essential, and the lessons learned on the field connect directly to WPI’s project-based learning approach. We talk about balance, motivation, competition, community, and why being part of a team at WPI is about much more than winning games. It’s about collaboration, leadership, and preparing students for life after graduation.

While many colleges and universities offer study abroad programs, few provide international experiential learning opportunities to the extent Worcester Polytechnic Institute does. Among the nation’s leading doctoral universities, WPI has the fifth highest rate of undergraduate participation in study abroad programs. According to the Open Doors 2025 Report on International Educational Exchange, 933 U.S. students at WPI participated in a study abroad program for credit during the 2023–24 academic year. The report estimates that 84.8% of U.S. undergraduate students at WPI study abroad. This is the second straight year that WPI has ranked fifth in this measurement. While the Open Doors report tallies U.S. students who study outside the country, an even larger portion of all WPI students go off campus, abroad or in the U.S., for hands-on learning: 89% of WPI’s undergraduate class of 2025 participated in the university’s Global Projects Program, which offers students opportunities for long-term immersive learning experiences at more than 50 WPI project centers on six continents. “Our students don’t just study the world—they go out and engage with it. Being recognized again as a top university for study abroad underscores WPI’s long-standing commitment to immersive, global, project-based learning,” said WPI President Grace Wang. “Through the Global Projects Program, our students apply their knowledge and skills in real-world settings, collaborate with community partners, and create solutions that truly matter to the society. These experiences shape resilient, empathetic, collaborative, and globally minded leaders and innovators who are exceptionally well prepared to deal with the complexity and ambiguity in our interconnected world.” In addition to widespread student participation and a 50-year history of off-campus learning through the Global Projects Program, WPI also stands out for the way it conducts international learning. Students who study abroad aren’t just doing so in a classroom. They’re gaining experience and learning by doing, which is central to WPI’s project-based learning educational model. When WPI students go abroad, they develop critically important skills for their future success by working in teams and in partnership with community or industry sponsors to take on meaningful challenges. They conduct professional-level research into a specific issue and work toward implementing viable and sustainable solutions in the field. These hands-on project experiences allow students to leverage their STEM knowledge and approach problems from across disciplines. The goal of this approach is to help future scientists, engineers, and leaders in technology and business to better understand societal issues and the implications of their work by experiencing these issues firsthand, immersing themselves in communities around the world, and taking on unstructured problems. A 2021 survey of WPI alumni demonstrates how valuable these real-world learning experiences are for students. Among respondents who completed at least one of their required projects off campus:• 94% reported improved ability to work effectively on a team • 94% reported a positive impact in solving problems • 91% reported a positive impact on viewing issues from different perspectives • 89% felt their project work contributed to their ability to function effectively in the real world Open Doors, released Nov. 17 as part of International Education Week, is a comprehensive information resource on a variety of topics including international students and scholars, as well as students studying abroad for academic credit. The report is published by the nonprofit Institute of International Education with support from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.