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 

Amity Manning Amity Manning, professor of biology and biotechnology, has been named as the inaugural Dr. Helen G. Vassallo Distinguished Presidential Professor. The professorship, established by a generous gift from Trae and Steve Vassallo ’93 in memory of Steve’s mother, honors the legacy of longtime, pioneering WPI faculty member Helen Vassallo MBA ’82. “Professor Amity Manning, the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Helen G. Vassallo Distinguished Presidential Professorship, exemplifies the values that Helen championed throughout her remarkable career,” says Reeta Rao, professor and Biology and Biotechnology Department head. “I nominated Amity for this honor because she is a brilliant scientist, a dynamic and engaging teacher, a thoughtful mentor, a collaborative leader—all qualities lived by Dr. Helen Vasallo. Amity is also a devoted mother to four wonderful boys. This professorship is especially meaningful to our department as it represents our very first endowed chair. Helen Vassallo paved the way for so many of us, and I’m honored to help carry forward her legacy through Amity’s appointment.” “We established this professorship to honor my mom and cement her legacy as one of WPI’s most generous and impactful professors. She was a true pioneer at nearly every stage of her life, and in every facet,” says Steve Vassallo. “Amity Manning’s record of excellence as a researcher working on the cutting edge and her reputation as a teacher and mentor among students makes her a perfect choice to be the first to hold the professorship that bears my mother’s name.” Manning’s research focuses on defining the cellular mechanisms that maintain genome stability in normal cells and understanding how those pathways are corrupted in cancer cells. Using a combination of molecular and cell biological approaches, together with bioinformatics and imaging techniques, her group aims to identify changes associated with genomic instability in cancer and exploit those changes to identify novel therapeutic targets and enhance cancer cell death. She has received significant grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health to support her research on cancer cell biology, genome stability, chromatin structure, and mitotic regulation. In the classroom and the lab, she is a dedicated teacher and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students, working with them to gain a better understanding of cancer cell biology and to make meaningful contributions to cancer research. In many ways, Manning reflects Dr. Helen Vassallo’s career. Vassallo joined the faculties of WPI’s Management and Biology and Biotechnology departments in 1982 after a distinguished career as an educator, researcher, and business leader in the fields of physiology, pharmacology, and anesthesia. She received a BS from Tufts University and an MS in pharmacology from Tufts University Medical School and then taught at Tufts, Brandeis University, Clark University, and WPI before joining Astra Pharmaceutical Products, where she would become director of scientific and professional information. While at Astra, she completed a PhD in physiology at Clark and an MBA at WPI and was a visiting fellow and special student at MIT’s Sloan Institute, where she studied organizational behavior. Helen Vassallo Dr. Vassallo made a mark during her time at WPI. She served as head of the Management Department from 1989 to 1995, was the longtime chief justice of the Campus Hearing Board, received the Trustees Award for Outstanding Teaching, was recognized as National Sorority Advisor of the Year, belonged to the President’s Council for the Advancement of Women and Minorities, and received the Woman of Consequence Award from the City of Worcester (in 2008). In 2013, she was honored with the Goat’s Head Lifetime Commitment Award from the WPI Alumni Association. She was also the first woman to be elected secretary of the faculty, the highest faculty post. In addition to raising 10 children, three of whom are WPI alumni, Dr. Vassallo also authored numerous articles, two books, one monograph, and is the co-holder of two patents. Along with her impact on the university, she also touched many people who crossed her path. “My mom’s bio clearly needs an intermission—she blazed many trails in her lifetime but never sought the limelight. Instead, her focus was always attuned to service, finding ways to help others achieve their goals and find their own personal, academic, and professional success,” says Steve Vassallo, who majored in mechanical engineering at WPI and then began his career as a design engineer at the global design firm IDEO. Vassallo then went on to lead the development of technologies and products for a broad array of companies including Apple, BMW, Cisco, and many others, and was awarded 77 patents along the way. In 2007, Vassallo joined Foundation Capital, a venture capital firm where he is a general partner and early-stage investor in more than 100 startups, helping them go from idea to IPO and beyond. “As I look back on the last 30 years, it’s clear that the education and life skills I gained at WPI both set the trajectory and elevated the ceiling of my career by providing me with a strong technical foundation combined with an invaluable set of project-based experiences,” he says. “My mom would occasionally remind us kids that it’s not about what you know, it’s about how enthusiastically you approach the things you don’t. This urgent curiosity—the rush to learn, to build, and to solve real problems in the world—is the spirit of WPI as well as the spirit of the start-up world I live in today. And it’s a part of her legacy, too.”

Global Lab Annual Report 24-25