For 35 years, excluding the Covid-affected ones, the WPI Department of Mathematical Sciences has been hosting an annual competition for high school students across New England. This outreach initiative is intricately connected to the Master of Mathematics for Educators (MME) program and serves as an essential bridge to the local high school community. The 35th Annual Math Meet competition was held on October 17, 2025.  It involved 175 students and their advisors for a total of 44 teams (one team for each participating high school). The top winners for this year were: 1st Place Team - Nashua High School South 2nd Place Team - TIE St. Mark's School and Worcester Academy 3rd Place Team - No award We also congratulate the top 3 individual scorers: in first place, Pratham Mukewar from Nashua High School South; in second place, Vaibhav Rastogi from Bishop Brady High School, and in a tie for third place, Alex Ding from Worcester Academy and April Sun from Lynnfield High School. The success of Math Meet owes much to the dedication of our department, graduate students, staff, and the Math Meet committee. A huge thank you to everyone that helped to make this event a great success! Pictured above is the top-scoring team, Nashua High School South, from Nashua, NH. A big congratulations to the team members, Ameya Kharade, Pratham Mukewar, Samarth Sharma, and Hannah Thomas, and to their advisor and teacher, Kellie Gabriel!

As part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, WPI Police collaborated with the YWCA to host An Empty Place at the Table exhibition at the Campus Center from October 20 – 24.  This tribute of remembrance honors those who have lost their lives to domestic violence in the past year in Massachusetts. The names of every victim are inscribed onto place settings, creating a powerful display. An Empty Place at the Table gives an opportunity to inform member of our community about the important signs and dangers of domestic violence.  For resources and additional information, visit YWCA Domestic Violence Awareness. 

WPI Projects Net Two of Seven State Grants in Competition Two WPI projects that harness artificial intelligence to advance clean technology have been selected as winners of the Massachusetts AI Models Innovation Challenge. The competitive grant program, established in February, is an initiative of the Massachusetts AI Hub, supported by Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. The challenge supports the development of artificial intelligence models to unlock breakthroughs in the state’s key industry sectors, including robotics, climate technology, and advanced manufacturing. The Awardees A team led by Michael Timko, William B. Smith Professor of Chemical Engineering and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, was awarded $381,931 for the project “Machine Learning Digital Twins to Transform Waste to Renewable Energy.” The project seeks to help Massachusetts meet its goals of reducing municipal solid waste, which is the trash generated by homes, businesses, and institutions that ends up in landfills.  Timko’s project will develop a digital twin that simulates a complex chemical process known as hydrothermal liquefaction, which turns waste into energy. By utilizing data from thousands of experiments and machine learning, the digital twin predicts the outcomes of using hydrothermal liquefaction in less time and at less cost than running laboratory experiments or through trial and error. Timko believes the digital simulation will allow waste processors and companies to be better informed about and lower the investment risk associated with adopting sustainable approaches to energy generation. Other Department of Chemical Engineering faculty working on the project include Andrew Teixeira, associate professor, Nikolaos Kazantzis, professor, and Geoffrey Tompsett, assistant research professor. A team led by Berk Calli, associate professor in the Robotics Engineering Department, received $279,731 for the project “Automated Dataset Generation for Training High-Performance Classification and Segmentation Models in Industrial Recycling Applications.” The project intends to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills by increasing recycling through the development of a less complex and arduous sorting process. Calli’s team will develop an AI-powered robotic system to identify and properly gather materials for recycling at recovery facilities so that fewer materials become waste.  The system would learn to identify materials from video footage of workers sorting manually in these facilities. The automated learning means workers would not be required to go through the tedious process of manual labelling, which involves looking at images of items in the waste stream and then marking and classifying millions of them one by one. To achieve the goal of more accurate and efficient sorting of materials, the system will rely on workers to help it learn how to properly sort new types of materials it hasn’t seen before, and workers will also maximize sorting accuracy by processing items that robotic machinery cannot handle. Calli believes this approach could revolutionize recycling and advance efforts to reuse and regenerate materials in support of the circular economy. WPI undergraduate and graduate students will participate in these projects to gain hands-on experience in the development and application of artificial intelligence. The research efforts exemplify the university’s commitment to technological innovation and addressing societal challenges by taking knowledge developed in the laboratory and bringing it into the world. Galen Brown, PhD candidate in computer science, presenting recycling research project on behalf of Berk Calli's team at Massachusetts AI Hub awards ceremony The WPI projects were two of seven that won the state challenge. The winners were named at an awards ceremony in Boston on October 16, hosted by the Massachusetts AI Hub. Read more about the Massachusetts AI Models Innovation Challenge in this press release. Michael Timko presenting digital twin research project at Massachusetts AI Hub awards ceremony

The Research @ WPI October 2025 Newsletter has arrived in inboxes.  In This Issue Magnet industry outlook: Team maps challenges and opportunities in rare earth magnet recycling Maternal health: Research on lab-based placenta models aims to improve detection and treatment of pregnancy complications Studying neuropeptides: Microbial approach could guide development of new peptide therapies Muscle mechanics: Mathematical model explains muscle force and cellular behavior Explosion safety: Training experts to prevent and mitigate destructive explosions Capstone long-term impacts: Research demonstrates link between project work and successful careers View the entire issue online here. If you missed it and you would like to sign up for the next newsletter, you can fill out this form.

The Center for Advanced Research in Drying (CARD) had its 10^th year Industry Advisory Board meeting at WPI on October 8-10, 2025.  There were 75 participants with more than half from industry and the rest students and faculty from WPI and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (CARD co-site).  CARD is an NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Center that was established in 2016.

This month's focus is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI), In SECURE IT we highlight best practices, and provide a few cautions. October is also Cybersecurity Awareness month!  We are grateful to Raha Moraffah, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, for this month’s feature article on Social Engineering Attacks in the Era of Generative AI. In this issue: From WPI's CISTO: AI Interim Policy Using AI at WPI Social Engineering Attacks in the Era of Generative AI Cybersecurity Awareness Month & Where to Find Information Security? Examples of AI in Everyday Life AI Creating Hard to Detect Phishing Emails Learning with Laughter Meet LeeAnn LeClerc! Featured Videos & In the News By the Numbers Diversity in Cybersecurity Additional WPI Resources