Go Behind the Scenes at Polar Beverages!On Thursday, November 6, join us for an exclusive site visit to Polar Beverages, Worcester’s iconic company with a rich history of branding, innovation, and community impact.The bus departs at 10 AM and returns by 12 PM, giving participants a unique opportunity to see firsthand how Polar has built its reputation as a leader in the beverage industry. Learn about the company’s operations, explore its production process, and gain insights into how tradition and innovation come together to shape a lasting brand.This site visit is a highlight of Business Week, don’t miss the chance to experience a Worcester business legacy up close!Registration for this event is limited and preference will be given to students attending as part of a course assignment or experience. Click this link to register today!

Semidefinite Relaxations for Robot Perception and Control: From Theory to Practice and Back Abstract:Many problems in robot perception, control, and planning can be formulated as nonconvex polynomial optimization problems (POPs). The Moment–SOS (sums-of-squares) hierarchy provides a principled approach by relaxing a nonconvex POP into a sequence of convex semidefinite programs (SDPs) whose optimal values converge to that of the original problem. Despite its theoretical elegance, the framework is often viewed as impractical due to the need to solve large-scale and ill-conditioned SDPs.In the first part of this talk, I will show how problem-specific structure in robotics can be exploited to make Moment–SOS relaxations practical at scale. On the perception side, I will present XM, our structure-from-motion pipeline that leverages monocular depth prediction to cast bundle adjustment as a polynomial optimization problem. Using GPU-accelerated low-rank Riemannian optimization, XM solves bundle adjustment instances with thousands to tens of thousands of images. On the control side, I will introduce SPOT, a trajectory planning pipeline that exploits sparsity inherent in robot motion planning problems, such as Markov and kinematic chain structure. With a GPU-accelerated ADMM solver, SPOT is able to generate near–globally optimal trajectories within seconds, including contact-rich motions.In the second part, I will turn to theory, briefly highlighting our recent work on understanding and accelerating the convergence of first-order methods for SDPs. This includes proving local linear convergence of ADMM, designing a composite polynomial filter for approximate projection onto the positive semidefinite cone, and analyzing the slow-convergence regions of ADMM.Bio:Heng Yang is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2022 and his B.S. from Tsinghua University in 2015. He leads the Harvard Computational Robotics Group, which is broadly interested in the intersection of theory and practice, with a focus on computational algorithms that are robust, efficient, and equipped with strong performance guarantees. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Best Systems Paper Award at RSS 2025, a 2025 Best Paper Award Finalist from the IEEE Technical Committee on Model-based Optimization for Robotics, a Best Paper Award Finalist at RSS 2021, the Best Paper Award in Robot Vision at ICRA 2020, a Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters in 2020, and recognition as an RSS 2021 Pioneer.

Looking for a way to make your day less stressful and more mindful...take some much-needed time for yourself and join us for Mindful Thursdays! Drop-in meditation sessions are open to the entire WPI community, and no experience is necessary. A certified meditation teacher will offer guided meditations appropriate for both beginners as well as experienced meditators. People can join in person or via zoom. Mindful Thursdays: 2:15PM to 2:35PM Center for Well-Being, Daniels Hall 102E Zoom: https://wpi.zoom.us/j/186050714 Each Friday an email will be sent out to the group called Mindfulness Tools To-Go which will include information about meditations, poems shared during the week, and mindful resources. If you have questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact Robin Benoit, rbenoit@wpi.edu

The first event in the Gordon Library's 25-26 WPI Author Series, "For a Change," features Professor Mahamadou Lamine Sagna, faculty in the WPI Social Science and Policy Studies (SSPS) department, and Inaugural Director of Africana Studies.Prof. Sagna will discuss his book Cornel West Matters: Politics, Violence, Racism, and Religion in America (2024, WPI Press) with WPI Press Editor in Chief and Head, SSPS, Prof. Rob Krueger. Updated to reflect Cornel West’s independent candidacy in the 2024 US presidential campaign, this second edition explores West’s role as a philosopher, activist, and prominent intellectual with a singular dialectical and sometimes contradictory voice, echoing the title of West’s most influential books, Race Matters (1993) and Democracy Matters (2004). A zoom link will also be made available here. Please check back!Please note that the Gordon Library’s elevator remains out of service; visitors who wish to avoid using the stairs are welcome to join via zoom.

Global Asia Hub and HUA Music are hosting Prof. Ian Condry, MIT Cultural Anthropologist and MIT Spatial Sound Lab organizer. He explores global flows of media and culture, focusing on Japanese Hip-Hop, anime, and spatial audio for live performance.

Alumni & Student SocialJoin us on Thursday, November 6, from 5–7 PM in Odeum A/B for the Alumni & Student Social. This event brings together WPI alumni, students, and faculty for an evening of networking, conversation, and community building.Celebrate Business Week by strengthening connections, sharing experiences, and creating opportunities for future collaborations. Whether you’re a student eager to learn from alumni or an alum looking to give back and reconnect, this social is the perfect way to conclude the week.Don’t miss this chance to engage with the WPI Business School community!You can register by clicking this link.