Bogdan Vernescu

Bogdan Vernescu is the Vice Provost for Research, and a Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Since 2014, under his leadership as chief research officer, WPI  enhanced its research infrastructure resulting in doubling the university’s research funding.  At WPI he co-founded and lead the Center for Industrial Mathematics and Statistics, a research center dedicated to using mathematics and statistics for solving corporate problems. He also served for a decade as the Department Head of the Mathematical Sciences Department. With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, he established and was the Founding President of the National Professional Science Masters Association, an NGO focused on supporting universities across the US in engaging businesses, industries, nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, and trade associations in the development of novel graduate programs that directly respond to workforce needs. 

He currently serves on the boards of several government agencies and non-profits including the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the National Defense Industry Association New England Chapter, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau. He also sits at the Council on Competitiveness on the Technology Leadership & Strategy Initiative, a group that draws CTOs from industry, academia and national labs to make the business case for strategic investments supporting tech-based innovation.

His research in applied mathematics focuses on multiscale materials sciences, for the modeling of material properties of composites, porous media, suspensions, emulsions and smart materials. His work in research and education was published in over 70 research papers, a monograph, and a proceedings volume, and was funded by the NSF, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the GE Foundation, and by several corporations. Prior to joining WPI in 1991, Mr. Vernescu was a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy. He held visiting positions at MIT and at several universities in France and Italy. He earned a BS/MS degree in applied mathematics from the University of Bucharest, and a PhD in mathematics from the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy.