Myrtle Beach, SC --- The WPI baseball team swept its doubleheader against Bridgewater State on Thursday night, taking game one 10-5 before securing a 7-4 victory in the nightcap at Ripken Field in Myrtle Beach. With the wins, the Engineers improved to 4-3 on the season, while the Bears dropped to 2-6.

Washington, DC --- The WPI softball team continued its offensive onslaught with a 15-3 victory over Gallaudet Thursday afternoon as the team's journey to the Mid-Atlantic region continues.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) spent a record $71.6 million on research and development activities during the 2024 academic year, up 8% over the previous year, as expenditures grew on projects funded by federal agencies and nonprofit organizations. University researchers also launched 234 multiyear projects in 2024 and received a record $60 million in public and private awards for research activities.  “WPI’s extraordinary faculty, staff, and students are conducting research that tackles some of the world’s most pressing problems, and the awards they have received from government, corporate, and private funders are a testament to their innovative thinking,” said Bogdan Vernescu, WPI vice president and vice provost for research and innovation. WPI’s research growth follows a decade of investment and work by students, faculty, and staff. The university was recently designated an R1 institution, the top tier of American research colleges and universities, based on its 2023 research spending and doctorate degrees.  Newer data shows that WPI’s expansion of research and development continued in 2024. Information on research expenditures was recently submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF), and WPI published award data in late 2024. About 83% of all research dollars awarded to WPI during 2024 were provided by the federal government. The Department of Defense sponsored more than $15 million in awards to WPI, followed by the NSF with nearly $14 million in awards, and the Department of Health and Human Services with more than $9 million in awards. Other large federal funders included the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, each with more than $2 million in awards to WPI researchers.  State and local governments sponsored about 10% of the research funds awarded to WPI, and the remaining awards were sponsored by corporate, foundation, and other sponsors.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute researchers believe a new robotic technology they’re developing can help save lives by improving the process of matching kidney donors with people awaiting a transplant. Their approach seeks to advance medical evaluations that determine whether a donated kidney is viable to be transplanted.  According to the National Kidney Foundation, 90,000 people in the United States are on a kidney waitlist; each day, 12 die before a transplant can happen. While a shortage of donors is one reason for the long waitlist, another major factor is the number of donated kidneys that get discarded. Assessing a kidney for transplant involves examining the organ after it’s been removed from the donor to ensure the kidney is free of disease or structural anomalies.  Current methods for this assessment include either a biopsy, which involves a review of cells taken from a small sample of the kidney, or optical coherence tomography (OCT), a light-based handheld imaging technology that can provide a high-resolution snapshot of a limited section of the organ. Xihan Ma, robotics engineering PhD student, and Haichong (Kai) Zhang, associate professor of robotics engineering and biomedical engineering The assessment process risks wasting the organ because these exams take time and provide information about only a small portion of the kidney; both factors may hamper clinicians’ ability to accurately assess the organ and approve it for transplant while it is still viable.  Haichong (Kai) Zhang, associate professor of robotics engineering and biomedical engineering, and Xihan Ma, a robotics engineering PhD student, are using innovations in medical robotics to address this problem.  “With our robotic system, we can capture a scan of the whole kidney,” said Zhang. “With current approaches, the area of the kidney that can be assessed is inherently limited by either the size of the biopsy needle or the size of the OCT imaging probe, and thus the assessment of the organ is biased by which small part of the kidney the operator chooses to focus on.” Zhang and Ma have developed a robotic OCT system, which is a fully automated method of imaging an entire donated kidney to help a clinician make an assessment. The system was developed at WPI’s Medical FUSION (Frontier Ultrasound Imaging and Robotic Instrumentation) Lab. “Our motivation is to think about how we can streamline the process used to evaluate the viability of donated kidneys to be more reliable and accurate, and to not waste kidneys that potentially can be used to save lives of patients,” said Zhang. “We are integrating the strengths of medical robots to make imaging of donor kidneys more accessible and less user-dependent and to acquire images over a wider area of the organ, which can provide more concise and direct feedback to clinicians so they can make better clinical decisions.”

Come join us on Wednesday, 3/19 at 2:00PM ET for our webinar, Information Security Journey. It is about how members of WPI's Information Security team arrived in their roles. Plenty of time to ask questions, or submit in advance at registration! Please register on this Microsoft Form to receive the Zoom link. For more information about cybersecurity careers, check out SECURE IT - March 2025.

Applications for Undergraduate Awards Kranich & Two Towers awards are due on Friday, March 21st. Don't miss out on the opportunity to be recognized for your outstanding work. If you have additional questions, please contact undergradstudies@wpi.edu.      

Come join us on Wednesday, 3/19 at 2:00PM ET for our webinar, Information Security Journey. It is about how members of WPI's Information Security team arrived in their roles. Plenty of time to ask questions, or submit in advance at registration! Please register on this Microsoft Form to receive the Zoom link. For more information about cybersecurity careers, check out SECURE IT - March 2025.

Applications for Undergraduate Awards Kranich & Two Towers awards are due on Friday, March 21st. Don't miss out on the opportunity to be recognized for your outstanding work. If you have additional questions, please contact undergradstudies@wpi.edu.