Developing Audio Tours at the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum

This project aimed to develop an audio guide for the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum to enhance exhibit interpretation and enrich the visitor experience. We visited museums across London and the United Kingdom and interviewed staff to understand the best practices regarding audio guide development and technologies. Additionally, we spoke with volunteers at the Pumphouse Museum to gather insights from their experiences, which helped shape our script development. As a result, we created 19 audio guides for a general audience and 20 for a younger audience. We recommend expanding the audio guide by migrating it to Bloomberg Connects, developing more interactive elements for children, and creating enthusiast audio guides for visitors.

Keyboard Killers

Third Culture Threads is an interactive art installation and research project that explores the lived realities of displacement, diaspora, and resilience within the Pakistani community. Rooted in my own experience as a third culture individual, the work blends tactile electronics, poetry, and visual storytelling to reframe the narrative around migration—not as a singular act of loss, but as a layered, ongoing negotiation of identity. Through conductive fabric panels, responsive lighting, and audio-visual elements triggered by human touch, the installation invites viewers to engage deeply with stories often flattened by data and politics

MOBILE Global Mobility Law

Transportation access is a critical factor in integrating newcomers into Danish society, as it provides opportunities for jobs and social activities. In Copenhagen, we determined and analyzed transportation access available to newcomer communities. Through the review of government resources, in-person surveys, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and software analysis, we found that communities higher in non-Western populations had limited transit access whereas more funding was being placed into the rest of Copenhagen. Established policies prioritized integration by splitting up newcomer communities rather than providing transit access and connection. To share our findings, we created an infographic for the WPI Mobility Justice Lab, sharing these gaps and barriers

Analyses of Kek1 binding to the EGFR

The Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a receptor tyrosine kinase, whose activation controls cell proliferation, survival, migration, and cell fate determination. As such, activating mutations to EGFR is associated with many cancers, including those of the breast, brain, and lung. Therapeutic approaches typically involve molecules designed to inhibit the receptor (Wieduwilt et al., 2008). Kekkon1 is an inhibitor of Drosophila EGFR (dEGFR) and is one of a family (Kek) of six transmembrane molecules in Drosophila. Interestingly, within the family only Kek1 inhibits the Drosophila receptor and the extracellular and transmembrane regions have been identified as the domains required for inhibition. The extracellular region consists of N-insert, seven LRRs, flanked by cysteine rich domains and an Ig domain. While the importance of the LRRs to Kek1’s ability to bind the receptor have been established, key questions remain. Are the cysteine rich flanking regions involved in binding, what LRR residues within the predicted binding pocket drive specificity of the interaction, and is the N-insert required for inhibition in vivo? To investigate these, I: undertook a combined phylogenetic and biochemical analyses of Kek1 orthologs, generated a Kek1 variant lacking the N-insert, Kek1∆N, for in vivo functional tests, and used in silico modeling to examine the predicted binding pocket. By better defining the key sequence features of the binding pocket, I hope to solve the binding pocket puzzle. This critical insight to the inhibitory mechanism of Kek1 could then provide the basis for future cancer therapeutics

Isolated-String Electric Guitar Transducers (Pickups)

This project presents the design and implementation of an amplitude-based signal isolation system for electric guitar performances. By capturing and analyzing the analog output of a multi-core guitar pickup, the system identifies and transmits the loudest string signal using a fully digital approach. Our proof-of-concept demonstrates that low-latency digital signal processing can enhance musical expression by allowing selective string output in real-time. Development was prototyped using the Moku:Go platform and our 3D printed rail, which facilitated rapid testing but introduced processing delays unsuitable for live performances. While our project can be adapted for many different applications, this project focused on outputting the loudest of the two lowest strings. Recommendations for future development include transitioning to a dedicated FPGA or microcontroller to minimize latency, designing a compact printed circuit board (PCB) for guitar integration, and conducting usability testing with professional guitarists. These improvements would help advance the system from a lab prototype to a performance-ready tool for musicians

The Study of 3D Architecture Through the Lens of House of Theseus

I am building House of Theseus, a game where architecture rewrites itself each time history changes. To test the idea, I built three versions: a paper prototype with a Twine narrative game, and two Unity sandboxes. Each build let me probe a different question—How fast can I swap motifs? How easily can players reshape space? How well does the frame‑rate hold when walls shatter? Along the way I explored Houdini house modules, I also explored Wave Function Collapse (WFC) in Unity, and finally layered fluid floods, sticky object mechanics, and Voronoi destruction on top. This paper documents the development process, pitfalls, technical decisions and future proposed work

Intensified Batch to Continuous Conversion of Highly Exothermic Multiphase Pharmaceutical Systems

The small-molecule pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries are undergoing a transition from batch to continuous flow operation for processes that can benefit from fast transport in microfluidic reactors. For the case of exothermic and biphasic reactions such as direct oxidation with molecular gases, high surface-to-volume ratio of microreactors provides fast heat transfer, thereby enabling safe and enhanced operation at elevated temperature and pressure. Higher temperatures exponentially increase kinetics, while pressure keeps the solvent in its condensed phase and increases the dissolved gas concentration, thus kinetics. Despite such opportunities, the successful implementation of flow chemistry is occurring at a slow pace, requiring relevant case studies and approaches based on fundamentals of transport and kinetic phenomena to efficiently evaluate the transition from batch to flow and determine optimal operating conditions from bench to production scale. In this work, we have intensified the highly exothermic, biphasic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide from batch to flow by combining heat transfer characterization with transport-kinetic modeling and experiments. Transitioning to continuous microreactors was shown to be a strong process intensification strategy due to orders of magnitude faster cooling, eliminating the risk of thermal runaway. The experimentally observed instability in batch and isothermal behavior in continuous-flow were accurately modeled by incorporating experimentally determined parameters into a transport-kinetic model that accounts for non-idealities like gas hold-up and deviations in heat transfer coefficients. The plug-flow reactor unlocked isothermal operation at extreme reaction conditions that cause major exotherms in batch, resulting in safer and higher throughput processes at scale-up compared to batch reactors of the same volume. We propose a nondimensional regime map based on the conservative Semenov criteria for thermal runaway as a tool to identify operating windows for stable and high throughput production when evaluating batch to continuous process conversion

Investigating Potential Markers of Ferroptosis from Artemisia annua in Breast Cancer Cells

Bioactive compounds from the Artemisia annua plant, including artemisinin and its derivatives, may induce cell death in cancer cells via ferroptosis, an iron-dependent cell death mechanism. Using immunoblotting, we identified markers of ferroptosis in T-47D and MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines in response to different doses of A. annua tea, including increased Transferrin Receptor 1 (TfR1) expression and decreased ferritin heavy chain (FTH1) expression. MTS assays used to determine live cell numbers produced inconclusive results, and further research and experiments are necessary to determine the impact of A. annua tea on cancer cell viability

Elevating Well-Being; A New Vision for Health and Fitness

This project is a new vision and approach to elevating well-being, health, and fitness through a structural addition to the WPI Recreation Center. Our team researched elements that negatively and positively affect mental health and determined the important correlation between physical activity and mental well-being. This project proposes a new structural addition to highlight elements found in our research. We completed a structural analysis, architectural design and plan, schedule, and estimate to aid the new structure. The addition includes a functional fitness turf, green roof, individual workout suites, wellness hub, mind body studio, juice bar, walking pads, golf simulator, sauna and steam room, locker rooms, and other recreation center upgrades that will contribute to student and community wellbeing. This project outlines the methods used to develop the final deliverables and provides the results of our work, with discussion on areas of the project our team feels there is room for expansion by another MQP team in following years, with a list of future recommendations

Cross-Level Analysis of Side-channel Leakage Assessment

Side-channel leakage assessment (SCLA) identifies unintended information leakage from hardware via power, timing, or electromagnetic emissions. Although traditionally performed post-silicon, pre-silicon SCLA enables early leakage detection through simulation across multiple design abstraction levels, including architecture, micro-architecture, and gate. This thesis introduces a simulation and analysis environment for performing pre-silicon SCLA across these abstraction levels, targeting RISC-V System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. We propose a methodology to identify two types of tracked components: leaky components, whose value changes depending on a Critical Security Parameter (CSP), and value-sensitive components, whose value directly depends on a CSP. Our approach uses both non-specific (e.g., TVLA) and specific (e.g., correlation-based) leakage tests. To support root-cause analysis, we automatically establish connections between components across abstraction levels and clock cycles, enabling the tracing of leakage propagation—even in pipelined designs. We evaluate our approach on the PicoRV32 and IBEX SoCs using benchmark programs and cryptographic operations. The results demonstrate improved leakage analysis capabilities, enabling the identification of both software- and hardware-level sources of leakage, including masking flaws and unintended register interactions in cryptographic implementations