Academics and Research

WPI professors are as committed to breaking new ground in their fields as they are to inspiring and developing their students. Oftentimes, undergraduate and graduate student teams work together with faculty on their purpose-driven research—whether in innovating self-healing concrete, upcycling lithium-ion batteries, or converting bamboo into fuel—and all students are expected to work together in diverse teams to solve critical problems that span disciplines. They are supported and sustained by a robust research ecosystem that includes state-of-the-art research centers, a wealth of shared facilities, and a rich complement of high-performance computing capabilities.

This approach is nothing new to WPI—project-based learning is at the heart of the WPI Plan launched 50 years ago. When you support WPI academics and research, you enable faculty and students alike to solve problems and help create positive change for people everywhere.

Your Gift in Action

Mitigating climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world’s population. Now, a team of WPI researchers has developed an entirely new material that’s a low-cost, high-impact sustainable solution to address one of the largest contributors to climate change—concrete.

As published in the journal Matter, the research at WPI has led to the creation of a self-healing Enzymatic Construction Material (ECM), which the research team describes as a “living material” that “provides a pathway to repair or even replace [traditional] concrete in the future.”.