Awards, Honors, and Recognitions

Matthew Thaler has been named WPI’s vice president and general counsel following an impactful tenure as deputy general counsel and interim general counsel. A trusted advisor and accomplished legal professional, Thaler has more than two decades of legal experience spanning private practice, industry leadership, and higher education. He has served WPI since 2018, offering strategic legal guidance on a wide range of matters and, most recently, providing steady leadership as interim general counsel since October 2024. As general counsel, Thaler will be the university’s chief legal officer, advising the president, Board of Trustees, and senior leadership. His portfolio includes oversight of litigation and dispute resolution, enterprise risk management, policy compliance, research compliance and innovation, employment and faculty affairs, contract negotiations, and institutional governance.

Thomas Driscoll ’85, retired managing director at Charles River Development and senior vice president at State Street, was recently elected to the WPI Board of Trustees. He started his five-year term on July 1, 2025. Driscoll built his career in sales, marketing, and strategic operations management, involving software products and services for the financial industry. He currently advises and serves on the boards of a number of companies primarily focused on financial technology. At Charles River, Driscoll oversaw global sales, marketing, and business development as well as Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East, and Africa operations. He joined the firm in 1994 and was instrumental in growing the company from 10 employees to over 1,300 when it was acquired by State Street in 2018.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection recognized two WPI faculty members as recipients of the department’s Educator Award: Corey Denenberg Dehner, associate professor of teaching in The Global School, and Paul Mathisen, associate professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering and WPI’s director of sustainability. The award celebrates their decade of work in upholding the department’s mission to ensure a clean environment and enhance natural resources in the state.

Dehner and Mathisen co-direct the Massachusetts Water Resource Outreach Center, a project center that allows student teams to partner with municipalities, local government agencies, and watershed organizations to work on water resource challenges. Dehner and Mathisen co-founded the center in 2015 with a goal of exposing students to the inner workings of state and local government and tackling water resource issues in Central and Eastern Massachusetts.