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Oct 22

From Craters and Calculus to Lehr und Kunst

We use terms like “cutting edge” and “groundbreaking” to describe WPI’s approach to science, technology, engineering, and math education. But do we need to understand the past in order to develop a better future? People have debated that question for hundreds, if not thousands, of years—since long before the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science was even a glimmer in John Boynton and Ichabod Washburn’s eyes. A fitting way to answer the question here at the most immersive STEM university in the United States is to turn to a foundational STEM axiom: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction. When considered in tandem with WPI’s focus on future innovation, Newton’s third law of motion says it’s not only helpful, but necessary, to consider what came before. Believing that the history of science is a vital part of the future of science is what recently inspired a retired engineer from Hudson, Mass., to donate some rare books and journals to the Gordon Library’s Archives and Special Collections. The donation earlier this year from Owen Gallagher included two monographs from 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher and five volumes of the journal American Electrician dating from 1890 to 1901 that contain articles on early hybrid vehicle technology. One of the donated books, Mundus Subterraneus, is believed to be the earliest known geology textbook, according to Emily Ping O’Brien, head of archives and special collections and digital collections librarian at WPI. A German Jesuit priest, Kircher is reported to have descended into the crater of Vesuvius, in southern Italy, while researching the book. “There is a fascinating cut-away illustration of the Earth showing what Kircher thought the volcano system looked like,” O’Brien says. “Students can decide for themselves whether these ideas were fantastical or ahead of their time.” Direct experience with historical texts can help researchers gain a fuller understanding of their topic, she adds. “We want people, especially our students, to see firsthand how early ideas were formed, and how those ideas were the beginning of the study of the sciences.” Adding context For Dashiell Elliott ’27, MS ’27, taking that kind of long-term perspective has deepened his understanding of and interest in topics he’s studied at WPI. During A-Term of his first year, he took Theoretical Calculus III with Joseph Fehribach, a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Whenever Fehribach teaches that course or Calculus IV—both of which touch on the origins of calculus—he invites students to the Special Collections Reading Room to see an original copy of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The offer piqued Elliott’s interest. “Professor Fehribach makes a point of bringing up history in his classes because it adds context,” Elliott says, noting that he’d been surprised to learn that WPI has a copy of Newton’s masterpiece. “I knew a little bit about the history of the formalization of math, and I wanted to learn more because Principia is just a neat part of history.” When Newton was writing the first edition in the late 1600s, “calculus was still in its infancy, and he wasn’t sure he believed it, so he actually did calculations in such a way as to avoid using calculus,” says Fehribach. Even though the text of the book is in Latin and the main focus—despite the title—is on physics and not math, he adds, Newton used theorems and proofs that look very familiar to math students today. “And if someone in the group can read Latin, I take them to the page where Newton writes down his three laws of motion. They are pretty much verbatim what you learn today,” Fehribach says. “Nothing in there has really changed.” Case in point: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction (as mentioned above). Spanning disciplines Not many people are aware that WPI’s library contains rare books, but Principia and Mundus Subterraneus are only two of the almost 8,000 volumes in its Special Collections. The Robert D. Fellman Collection on Charles Dickens, which is more widely recognized, features not only first editions of all of Dickens’ novels but also original serial installments of several works, including A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, Great Expectations, and Bleak House. The full collection of rare books is more extensive and spans hard sciences and humanities in a way that is uniquely WPI. In addition to a 16th-century book on metallurgy and mining, for example, there’s a 14 76 collection of writings by Pope Gregory I. That volume—one of the oldest in WPI’s collection—was published just a couple decades after the printing press revolutionized European society by allowing books to be produced and replicated en masse. By today’s standards, even those print runs were small: Only 1,250 copies of the third edition of Principia were ever printed. WPI has one of them thanks to a gift in 1916 from the widow of Levi Conant, a longtime faculty member who served as head of the math department and interim president of the university. Just because the books are rare, though, doesn’t mean they should sit on a shelf and be forgotten, says O’Brien. Gallagher, who donated the Kircher books, agrees. “We don’t want them to gather dust,” he says. “Read them!” And as he considers his education at WPI, Elliott appreciates that he’s had the opportunity to do so during his time here. Reflecting on what he’s gotten out of doing so, he naturally turns to WPI’s own history. “In a way, it feels like the theory and practice,” he says, referencing the English translation of the university’s motto: Lehr und Kunst. “You need to do some things—and then you need to back up those things by knowing the theory behind them.”
Oct 15

Spotting Skin Cancer

Researchers in the laboratory of Xinming Huang who are developing a tool to analyze skin images for signs of skin cancer have finished third in an international artificial intelligence (AI) competition aimed at improving early diagnosis of melanoma, a potentially lethal type of skin cancer. The team’s model combined two types of AI to finish third in the competition, which was organized by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC). The challenge drew 181 teams of academic and corporate researchers. “Melanoma can be difficult for primary care doctors, especially those who are not skin experts, to identify in its early stages,” says Huang, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “AI has the potential to help those physicians spot patients who need to be referred to specialists.” TwinSight, the model under development in Huang’s lab, builds on research that PhD student Antony Garcia Gonzalez and Huang reported in 2025 in the peer-reviewed journal Cancers. TwinSight analyzes the visual characteristics of a lesion using both a convolutional neural network and a vision transformer, two different deep-learning computer programs that examine complex patterns in data. The TwinSight model seeks to address a critical problem: Melanoma, especially in its early stages, can be difficult to visually distinguish from benign skin moles, and delays in diagnosis and treatment raise the risk that the cancer will spread. Primary care physicians will often refer patients with suspicious lesions to dermatologists, who will typically examine the lesions using a dermoscope, a magnifying tool, and perform a skin biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. In 2024, U.S. regulators approved an AI-powered tool for use in evaluating skin lesions and providing information to primary care physicians. Yet developing an AI tool that can match the skill of a dermatologist remains elusive. The WPI team says that, in fact, they do not expect AI to replace dermatologists. “We are aiming to create a handheld tool that primary care physicians could use during a routine visit to image a suspicious lesion and get an immediate AI assessment,” says Garcia, a Fulbright scholar who is also a research associate on the electrical engineering faculty at the Technological University of Panama. “That could help them decide which patients to refer to dermatologists and potentially lead to earlier diagnosis of skin cancer.” AI models need large amounts of data to identify patterns in images. Research teams participating in the ISIC challenge each received a dataset of 5,294 anonymous images to train their models and a second dataset of 479 anonymous images to analyze. The WPI team also used a dataset of 187 images, obtained from a hospital in Florida, to validate their model. In the ISIC competition, TwinSight earned a score of 0.662 on the Dice coefficient, the measure the challenge used to rank how closely each model’s diagnoses matched those of experts. The WPI team is continuing to develop TwinSight for potential use in clinical settings. Huang says the team envisions a handheld device tethered to a laptop or computer tablet. A clinician would place the device on a patient’s skin to collect a finely detailed photograph that would be analyzed with AI. The team is collaborating with dermatologists in Florida to develop and test the tool. “The ultimate goal is to help doctors make faster and more confident decisions when they are examining patients,” says Huang. “To do that, AI tools need to evolve.”
Oct 14

WPI Researchers Identify Bamboo as Fuel Alternative

A new study from researchers, including those in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Department of Chemical Engineering, has found the fastest-growing plant on Earth may offer a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to petroleum-derived transportation fuels. The researchers, including Michael Timko, the William B. Smith Professor of chemical engineering and head of the department, and Timothy Woodard, MS’23, PhD ’26, have demonstrated that bamboo could serve as a highly promising raw material for the production of sustainable liquid fuels to power vehicles, planes, and trains. The team’s study, published in the journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels, finds that bamboo can be turned into fuel at a production cost that is competitive to conventional petroleum fuels and with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions. The study combined laboratory experiments measuring bamboo-to-biocrude conversion efficiency with economic and life-cycle assessment modeling. “Our study suggests bamboo has a role to play in the future of fuel,” says Timko. “I think this research is especially timely and important because fuel prices are high and the transportation sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. than any other. Bamboo would use different land than we are using for food production, so there is no food versus fuel trade-off. Farmers win, consumers win.” Key factors in the study are the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) technology that converts biomass to fuel and the choice of feedstock. Using bamboo for fuel can reduce greenhouse gasses in two ways: The process to convert it into biocrude is more efficient than when using other feedstocks, and bamboo itself captures and stores large amounts of carbon both above and below ground. Because of the plant’s fast growth even in poor soil conditions, the study finds that converting bamboo into fuel through HTL could match the level of corn-ethanol production in the U.S. while also using roughly 13% as much cultivated land. Unlike annual crops used for many biofuels, bamboo is a perennial grass that can produce large amounts of biomass with relatively low agricultural inputs. And, compared with other perennial grasses, bamboo has very low ash content (less than 1% by dry weight), meaning that the conversion process generates negligible waste. Economic modeling indicates that bamboo-based fuel could sell for as little as $2.75 per gasoline-gallon equivalent under mature commercial-scale conditions, accounting for the money required to build and operate the fuel plant, suggesting strong economic competitiveness as the renewable-fuel industry expands. The team’s analysis also finds that using bamboo as a fuel source creates a level of greenhouse gas emissions 26 times lower than those of conventional petroleum diesel fuel: A life-cycle assessment, considering the ability of bamboo to store large amounts of carbon in its underground rhizomes , finds producing fuel from bamboo and its use would generate a greenhouse gas intensity of 3.5 grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent per megajoule of energy. In addition, the study suggests bamboo as a strong choice as a fuel source because it can grow faster and on smaller plots of land than other fuel feedstocks. “The U.S. has enormous land area under cultivation for corn ethanol, a fuel which is often blended into gasoline,” says Timko. “Freeing up at least some of that land could allow for more food production and reduce the burden on the environment.” The researchers also point out that bamboo can be cultivated on former industrial land or heavily farmed properties where other crops and vegetation may struggle to grow. “Bamboo may eventually offer industry a way to generate low-carbon liquid fuels at scale,” says Timko. “With further research and development, bamboo could be a compelling option for decarbonization in sectors that are difficult to electrify, including heavy-duty transport and aviation fuel supply chains.” Timko and Woodard co-authored the research study with Charles Cai, associate professor in the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems at Aalto University in Finland, and James Walters, CEO of Avos BioEnergy.
Sep 30

Seeking Clues to Problems in Tiny Hearts

Worcester Polytechnic Institute researcher Zhenglun “Alan” Wei is aiming to improve prenatal diagnosis of the most common cardiac birth defect by going with the flow … of blood in tiny hearts. Wei, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is leading a four-year project funded with $2,915,519 from the National Institutes of Health to develop a personalized model that will use detailed blood flow information collected from noninvasive tests to detect obstructions of the aorta in fetuses. The project aims to improve prenatal testing so that doctors can spot problems in the aorta, a large blood vessel that carries oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the body, before a baby is born and recommend treatments. Current testing relies on anatomic information, rather than blood-flow data, to assess fetal heart health. “Standard prenatal testing and even specialized imaging often fail to detect anatomical problems in the fetal aorta,” Wei says. “By integrating detailed blood flow parameters, we will give doctors a more precise tool to use when diagnosing congenital heart defects.” Wei is working on the project with Professor Zhongqiang Zhang and Associate Professor Fangfang Wang, both of WPI’s Department of Mathematical Sciences, and Dr. Shuping Ge, a pediatric cardiologist and researcher with the Geisinger healthcare system in Pennsylvania. The researchers are focusing on a specific condition called coarctation of the aorta, which involves a narrowing, or pinch, in the aorta as it leaves the heart. Coarctation of the aorta restricts blood flow to the body and forces the heart to work harder to pump blood. The condition accounts for an estimated 6% to 8% of all cardiac birth defects. Diagnosing coarctation of the aorta, especially before birth, can be challenging. Standard ultrasound testing and specialized echocardiograms, noninvasive tests that use sound waves to create images and generate data about a fetus, often fail to detect anatomical and blood flow abnormalities in a developing heart. In addition, ultrasound-based tests sometimes falsely suggest that an abnormality is present even when no such defect exists. If not diagnosed early and repaired with surgery, infants with coarctation of the aorta can suffer lifelong health problems, such as high blood pressure, or even die. The researchers led by Wei will improve detection by building a digital twin model, a viewable digital replica of an individual patient’s cardiovascular system. The model will integrate multidimensional, patient-specific data to support clinical decision-making, including assessment of whether a fetal heart defect is present. The team will build their model using fetal heart data collected at more than 15 cardiology programs across North America that are part of the Fetal Heart Society. The database includes information collected during two-dimensional and three-dimensional ultrasound tests that were performed on hundreds of racially and ethnically diverse pregnant women, including some whose babies were confirmed after birth to have heart defects. Wei and his team have already used information in the database to create a model that represents blood flow in healthy fetal hearts. Going forward, the team will build its new model by focusing on measurements that reflect force on fetal blood vessel walls, pressure and flow through a narrowed fetal artery, and the resistance that can occur when freshly pumped blood collides with other blood in a vessel. The researchers will then test the accuracy of their model in laboratory experiments using 3D-printed silicone models of fetal aortas, fluid, and pumping mechanisms. Finally, data from the Geisinger database will be used to evaluate blood flow metrics for better diagnosis of aorta narrowing in the future. The work builds on Wei’s development of computational and experimental models for blood flow mechanics. His fetus-related research has been supported by the American Heart Association’s Second Century Faculty Independence Award and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Trailblazer Award, prestigious honors recognizing the innovation, significance, and potential clinical impact of his work. He also has collaborated on research to develop pediatric medical devices and 3D-printed blood vessels for heart bypass surgery. Wei says that development of a validated digital twin model for coarctation of the fetal aorta will lay a solid foundation for future human studies that could lead to more accurate screening tools and better health outcomes for children with the birth defect. “Surgeons can repair many heart problems in babies, but the first, and most important, step is detecting problems,” Wei said. “The earlier we can identify a condition, the more time clinicians and families have to plan for the baby’s care. The goal of my lab is to improve the detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease and, ultimately, to help ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time.”
Sep 23

New National Rankings Recognize Strength of WPI’s Immersive STEM Education

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has moved significantly higher in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings, entering the top 75 national universities at No. 73, and ranking No. 42 among the nation’s 1,500 private colleges surveyed. The gains reflect WPI’s continued focus on strong student outcomes through immersive STEM education and purpose-driven learning and research. W.P.I. also earned high marks in several areas central to the student experience, ranking No. 6 in the nation for senior capstone projects, No. 13 for co-ops and internships, and No. 50 among the nation’s most innovative schools. It also ranked No. 58 on the Best Value Schools list. The university was further recognized with new or improved rankings for its undergraduate programs in teaching (No. 49), engineering (No. 57), computer science (No. 65), and business (No. 176). “This recognition reflects the strength of a W.P.I. education and, most importantly, the accomplishments of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni,” said WPI President Grace Wang. “Our students learn by applying knowledge to meaningful challenges, working across disciplines, and developing the skills and character to lead responsibly. Those experiences prepare them to make an impact from the moment they graduate.” Hands-on learning has been at the center of WPI’s educational model for more than half a century. Every undergraduate completes projects throughout their time at WPI, including three substantial academic projects—similar to a capstone or co-op—each with a distinct focus and purpose. Students frequently work in teams and collaborate with community or corporate partners at more than 50 project centers around the world to address specific challenges with real-world relevance. Beyond these signature experiences, nearly two-thirds of WPI alumni report completing project work in at least half of their undergraduate courses. That repeated, hands-on learning helps students build the technical expertise, collaboration and communication skills, adaptability, and sense of purpose needed for a rapidly changing world. In WPI’s most recent alumni survey, 93% of respondents said their project experiences enhanced their ability to work effectively on a team, while 88% said the approach helped them develop stronger personal character. Other national rankings have underscored the long-term value of a WPI degree. That recognition echoes a March 2025 U.S. News & World Report ranking that placed WPI No. 18 among Colleges with the Best Return on Investment, citing an independent estimated 40-year return on investment of $3.4 million for a W.P.I. education, measured in 2023 dollars. The latest rankings build on WPI’s broader record of preparing graduates to succeed in their careers and contribute to their communities. That record also includes WPI’s designation as an R1 university in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, recognized as the highest level of research spending and doctorate production. While rankings represent only one measure of a university’s impact, WPI’s recognition across several categories underscore the value of an education that connects rigorous academics and high-impact research with immersive experience, innovation, and purpose.
Sep 23

WPI’s Model of Academically Rigorous Project-Based Education Taking Root in Paraguay

For decades WPI has been showing educators how to incorporate hands-on projects into coursework, knowing that when students work on real-world problems, the lessons they learn in the classroom are more likely to stick. Over the summer Kris Wobbe served as a Fulbright Specialist in Paraguay, where she was invited to help with a reverse concern: strengthening the academic rigor and classroom engagement in schools that already have a solid hands-on component. Through this global educational partnership, Wobbe—the director of WPI’s Center for Project-Based Learning and interim dean of The Global School—planted a seed that her hosts hope will grow into improved academic and career outcomes for students at three high schools run by the Paraguay Development Foundation, that country’s largest nonprofit organization. Hands-on work is already part of the model at these schools, where students live on site and run a hotel, a farm, and other businesses as part of their coursework. Graduates leave with a technical certification with specialties in areas such as hospitality, agriculture, or forestry, as well as a standard high school diploma. Wobbe’s efforts as a Fulbright Specialist focused on strengthening the academic foundation of that diploma to help launch graduates further. “The underlying mission of these schools is to teach the students the skills and abilities that are going to raise them out of poverty,” Wobbe says. “They see project-based learning as providing them with the skills of leadership and handling ambiguous situations and critical thinking and problem solving—while also helping to make that learning stickier.” WPI’s own data backs up Wobbe’s point: 91% of respondents to the 2021 survey of WPI alumni said that high-quality project work helped them develop a strong base of knowledge, even when the projects were in areas other than their major. One way that project-based learning contributes to students mastering academic content, Wobbe says, is by making concepts taught in classrooms less abstract. For example, the Cerrito Agricultural School, where she stayed during her time in Paraguay, has goats and cows. Some students are now beginning to work on a project that will explore ways to increase the milk yield from those animals. Not only will that project give students opportunities to practice building and testing scientific hypotheses, it will also “demonstrate the value of what they’re learning in their academic classes by having it tied to the success of the school itself,” says Wobbe, noting that the tuition-free school is self-sustaining, meaning it receives no funds from the Paraguayan government. “It matters how much milk they produce because that pays the teachers. It pays for their food. It pays for their electricity.” That direct connection between students’ technical work and the existence of the school makes project-based learning a natural fit at Cerrito and the other two schools run by the Paraguay Development Foundation, says Martin Burt, the foundation’s director and co-founder, as well as a distinguished visiting professor of entrepreneurship and social innovation in WPI’s School of Arts and Sciences. “We’ve shown that education can pay for itself through our practical activities. Now we want to prove that a school like ours, that serves ultra poor students, can also have gold standards in academics,” he says, adding that he wanted to incorporate WPI’s project-based learning model into the academic curriculum of the Foundation schools because of how highly “WPI is respected and trusted.” Students, faculty, and administrators at the Cerrito Agricultural School are already familiar with the basic PBL model, thanks to the Asunción, Paraguay, Project Center, which has been hosting WPI students working on their Interactive Qualifying Projects since 2014. And for the last few years, Cerrito students have used the Experiential Robotics Platform, which WPI helped develop, in their STEM classes. Now, thanks to the partnership established through the Fulbright program, local faculty have begun incorporating Wobbe’s recommendations to more fully integrate project-based learning into the academic curriculum at the Cerrito Agricultural School. Once WPI’s approach to blending theory and practice firmly takes root there, Burt and others from the Foundation will cultivate the concept at their two additional schools, helping the model that started in Worcester spread throughout Paraguay.
Sep 22

Training Undergraduate Researchers

WPI researcher Solomon Mensah has been awarded a three-year grant of $532,935 from the National Institutes of Health to provide research experiences to undergraduates who will work on projects determining how sepsis, a life-threatening infection, can trigger severe blood clotting. Mensah, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, will offer students opportunities to do course-related research projects, individual research work, and Major Qualifying Projects, capstone projects that all WPI undergraduates must complete to graduate. The goal of the research is to determine the molecular mechanisms that link sepsis-induced inflammation to clotting that can potentially block blood vessels and lead to stroke. “As a first-generation student from Africa, I benefitted academically and professionally from mentors,” Mensah says. “Mentors guided me as I prepared for doctoral studies and shaped my path as a researcher. I want to pay these experiences forward to students by mentoring them and offering them meaningful opportunities to conduct research.” Sepsis is a systemic infection that causes widespread inflammation and dysfunction in the body, including damage to the endothelial cells that line blood vessels. Mensah’s team will define the molecular mechanisms that degrade glycocalyx, a protective coating on healthy endothelial cells, during a systemic infection. They also will identify components that ordinarily tether a protein called von Willebrand factor to healthy endothelial cells. During infection, von Willebrand factor detaches from endothelial cells, circulates in the blood, and recruits blood cells known as platelets, which can drive the development of clots. Finally, Mensah and student researchers in his lab will determine if it is possible to rescue a damaged glycocalyx barrier, a step that could pave the way for sepsis treatments. The project builds on Mensah’s research into the role of the glycocalyx in heart and lung disease. Mensah is a fellow of the American Heart Association and has worked on the development of low-cost medical devices for healthcare in low- to middle-income countries. The project is one of several new research initiatives launched at WPI with funding from the NIH’s Academic Research Enhancement Award program, which supports research training for undergraduate students. Mensah expects his award will provide research opportunities to 12 WPI undergraduates. “These projects supported by the NIH provide excellent training for students while also advancing fundamental understanding of human health,” Mensah says. “The work will establish an educational pipeline at WPI, enabling us to train students in biology and train the next generation of biomedical engineers.”
Sep 17

Could Nature Help Turn Industrial Waste into a New Source of Rare Earths?

Coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings are typically viewed as environmental liabilities. But locked inside these massive waste streams are valuable silica, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals. A Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)-led research team has received a $3.3 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Growing Convergence Research program to explore whether lessons from diatoms, sea sponges, and plants could help recover those resources using less energy and fewer harsh chemicals. The five-year, two-phase project is led by Mingjiang Tao, associate professor in the WPI Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, with Professors Carrick Eggleston and Yan Wang serving as co-principal investigators. Researchers from George Mason University, the University of California San Diego, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University at Buffalo will also be involved. “Recovering critical minerals is only part of the opportunity,” Tao said. “We want to develop a process that uses as much of each waste stream as possible, separating strategically important elements while converting the remaining material into useful products. That whole-material approach could fundamentally change how industries manage waste and obtain essential resources.” The research addresses two interconnected challenges. Producing many silicon-derived materials used in concrete, glass, ceramics, semiconductors, and silicones can require high temperatures, substantial energy, and intensive chemical processing. At the same time, industries generate enormous quantities of silicon-rich waste, including coal ash residue, red mud, mine tailings, concrete debris, waste glass, and metallurgical slag. Much of this waste is stored in landfills, ponds, impoundments, and large waste piles, even though it contains valuable silicon, critical minerals, and rare earth elements (REE). For example, the estimated 11 million tons of REEs trapped in U.S. coal ash landfills is worth $8.4 billion—nearly eight times the nation’s current raw domestic reserves. These materials are essential for electronics, clean-energy technologies, transportation, and national security. The researchers will look to nature for possible solutions. Diatoms, sea sponges, and certain plants use biological molecules and organic scaffolds to capture dissolved forms of silicon and assemble them into intricate silica structures under relatively mild conditions. By adapting these mechanisms, the team aims to develop lower-energy methods that break down the silica-rich components of industrial waste, convert the silica into useful materials, and free rare earth elements and other critical minerals trapped within the substances. The project brings together expertise in biology, geochemistry, materials science, metallurgy, engineering, computational chemistry, and artificial intelligence. Researchers will use advanced computational modeling and artificial intelligence to design specialized biomolecules, predict how those molecules will interact with silicon-rich waste, and accelerate the identification of promising pathways for mineral recovery and materials manufacturing. As lead principal investigator, Tao will oversee the project’s management and coordination while leading research on biosilicification, the process through which organisms form silica materials, and bio-enabled metallurgy for recovering rare earth elements from silicon-rich wastes. Eggleston, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering with expertise in geochemistry, will lead efforts to identify, understand, and optimize the chemical reactions involved in breaking down and rebuilding silicate materials. His work will examine the pathways and reaction rates associated with silicate dissolution, repolymerization, carbonation, glass formation, and silicone synthesis. Wang, the William B. Smith Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a widely recognized pioneer in battery recycling and sustainable manufacturing, will lead the development of bioengineered processes for recovering rare earth elements and other critical minerals. The team will also evaluate the economic and practical feasibility of scaling the technologies for industrial applications. If successful, the research could create new pathways for transforming large volumes of industrial waste into marketable products, reducing reliance on newly mined resources, lowering the environmental footprint of materials production, and strengthening domestic supplies of critical minerals and rare earth elements. WPI graduate and undergraduate students will be involved in the multiyear project as part of the university’s immersive STEM experience. The interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of sustainability, biotechnology, materials science, data science, and artificial intelligence. This project also aims to cultivate a broader bioengineered, silicon-based materials ecosystem by connecting researchers, industry partners, policymakers, educators, and future innovators across disciplines and sectors.

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