Innovation Showcase 2025

20 25

INNOVATION DAY

INNOVATION SHOWCASE Join us for an inspiring event dedicated to reimagining, refreshing, and revitalizing your research and creative activities, teaching, and/or department. This gathering is an excellent opportunity to connect with colleagues, share insights, and explore innovative strategies, practices, and solutions. Together, we will engage in dynamic discussions and collaborative activities designed to foster creativity and drive meaningful change. Whether you're looking to enhance your current methods or explore new approaches, this event will provide valuable resources and networking opportunities to help you succeed. Don't miss this chance to energize your professional practice and contribute to the advancement of your field.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

02

Table of contents

03

Message from Innovation Day Organizing Committee

04

Projects

MESSAGE FROM INNOVATION DAY ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

The Innovation Showcase offers a unique opportunity to explore cutting-edge products, services, and solutions.

Contributors will present their creative innovations that address both industry challenges and societal needs. Attendees can engage directly with these innovations in an interactive, open forum featuring a range of dedicated booths.

The Innovation Day Organizing Committee

The Innovation Showcase will feature over 30 demonstrations of innovative and innovative products, services, and solutions developed by DePaul faculty, staff, and students. The projects will be presented during the Innovation Showcase session of the Innovation Day, on Friday, January 31, 2025, 3:20pm – 4:30pm. Hope you can join us to get inspired, imagine, and initiate new projects with colleagues from DePaul and partnering institutions.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Ambarien Alqadar Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Representation Matters Using examples from my documentaries and fictional films, this presentation explores how cinema is a tool to create empathy and social change.

Brian Andrews Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Virtual Production LED Volume at Cinespace Virtual production is a filmmaking technique that combines the physical and digital worlds to create in-camera visual effects in real time. This showcase is an overview of the expanded LED volume for virtual production at Cinespace.

Lizette Arroyo, Gabriela Cordova, Mustafa Qazi, Olya Glantsman, Luciano Berardi, & Pablo Gonzales-Caino Access & Attainment Research Lab

The Impact of Technology and AI Use on Students’ Experiences: Wave 1 and 2 of the Longitudinal Study In recent years, technological advancements have reshaped higher education, changing how institutions provide instruction, foster student engagement, and assess learning outcomes (Marshall et al., 2024). The growing prevalence of technology in education indicates the need for a better understanding of how its use affects students' college experiences, academic performance, and post-graduation readiness. The data for this symposium come from a large cross-cultural mixed methods study conducted by a team of college students (n=12) and faculty (n=4) from the US and Argentina. Qualitative data were collected in focus groups at a large private university in Chicago and a large private university in Buenos Aires. Focus groups were conducted with 25 college students (US n=13; Argentina n=12) in the Spring and Summer of 2024 using a protocol of questions developed for English and Spanish speakers. Here, we present preliminary results for US focus groups and the implications for faculty.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Sara Bayat Hashemi, Max Held, Richard Wetzel, Christie Klimas, Monica Ramos, Howard Rosing School of Design (CDM), Environmental Science and Studies Department (CSH), Egan Office for Urban Education and Community Partnerships (Steans Center), 100K Strong in the Americas

Virtual Reality for Conservation and Restauration The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration across DePaul. It investigates how virtual reality could be used to raise awareness about and interest in conservation and restauration. During a student exchange to the La Primavera forest in Mexico, a 360 degree video documentary was created that can be experienced in virtual reality. At the same time, a "traditional" interactive VR experience allows users to conduct their own conservation activities.

Casey Bennett Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Conversational Speech System for Robots Interacting with People with Dementia Project is a collaboration between DePaul with Rush and Indiana University that is developing a custom version of a conversational speech system that can effectively interact with people living with Dementia (PLwD),and provide useful info about their cognitive health to their caregivers. PLwD have "changed" speech patterns due to the cognitive changes in their brain, which result in conversations with off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) failing at the task and the PLwD often refusing to use them. Thus, the need for specialized systems.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

College of Science and Health Innovating Student Success Through Hands-On Learning, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and CuttingEdge Technology Our table will showcase the College of Science and Health’s (CSH) innovative approaches to enhancing student experience, academic excellence, and community engagement. Visitors will explore how we integrate active learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, diversity in STEM, and advanced technologies to prepare students for future success.

Driehaus College of Business Innovation in Driehaus College of Business The Driehaus College of Business is featuring Business Education in Technology and Analytics (BETA) Hub, Cybersecurity Clinic, Driehaus Cup, and Institute for Housing Studies in this year’s Innovation Day. The Business Education in Technology and Analytics (BETA) Hub features advanced hardware and software for research and teaching. Key initiatives include the Driehaus Research Speaker Series, industry partnerships, support for business school research, classroom engagement, student-driven projects, and workshops. The Cybersecurity Clinic is an interdisciplinary initiative that will involve students from the College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM), the Driehaus College of Business (COB), and the College of Law (COL) at DePaul, providing cybersecurity services to community-based nonprofits and small businesses in the Chicagoland area. It offers experiential learning opportunities, allowing students to develop technical and soft skills. The Driehaus Cup is a pitch competition for BUS 101 students, offering scholarship prizes and the chance to present to industry professionals. It also encourages creative and innovative thinking among students. The Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) at DePaul specializes in affordable housing and neighborhood investment research. It provides technical assistance to community partners, delivering data analysis and web-based tools to support data-driven decisionmaking. IHS collaborates with various stakeholders to address emerging community development needs.

Grace Fitzgerald College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Patriotism as a Concept v. a Political Tool Research depicting how historiography of the term "patriotism" has changed over time, but the general conception of patriotism has not changed. Through analyzing historical accounts of the patriotism and patriots, this research explains the common misconceptions of the word patriotism and how historians have changed their approach to depicting patriotism.

Modern historians have worked to remedy the misconceptions and as a way of advocacy for the misrepresented and underrepresented groups who were excluded from common representations of patriotism.

After explaining the misconceptions of the term patriotism, this paper then analyzes how nationalistic political rhetoric has led to the persistence of the misremembered national memory of patriotism although the work of historians to change the conception.

Nandhini Gulasingam Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Curriculum Learning to Improve Malignancy Predictions on the Out-of-Distribution Medical Dataset To ensure accurate predictions, machine learning models should be trained with Out-of-Distribution (OoD) data to account for data variability. Curriculum learning, a method that incrementally trains models from easier to more challenging cases, can improve model performance even in cases of expert disagreement.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Euan Hague College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Student Urban Research Corps Formed in 2021, the Student Urban Research Corps (SURC) is housed in The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and is made up of graduate and undergraduate student researchers.

Corps members work as part of the multidisciplinary Urban Collaborative and participate in data collection, management, and analysis, including the creation of data visualizations, for urban and community-based studies and projects. SURC members contribute to projects brought to the Urban Collaborative by community organizations and municipalities.

Such projects might include demographic and neighborhood analyses, program evaluation, mapping, and the like. As a member of the Corps, DePaul students will work on these requests, producing deliverables to share with and present to those making the request.

Kelly Hallisy Library

DePaul Scholars, DePaul’s New Research Information Management System DePaul Scholars is the University's new research profile database. Faculty and staff can compile and promote a complete view of their scholarship, grants, awards and activities in publicly-accessible profiles, which opens up DePaul’s expertise to the outside world. They can also easily create customized CVs and NIH Biosketches. DePaul Scholars features: Publication outputs and metrics, Awarded sponsored grants and contracts, Information about academic appointments, Research expertise; Press and media mentions, Additional scholarly accomplishments and affiliations

Robyn Hoecker College of Communication

DePaul Student Photo Agency DSPA allows DePaul clients to hire student photographers to cover events. Our student photographers are responsible, skilled and have access to professional gear. Hiring students gives budding photographers opportunities to practice their skills while also earning some additional income. Providing high quality images helps our DePaul clients tell their story to the wider community.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Jyrell Keys Office of Research Services

Illinois Intellectual Property Alliance (ILIPA) The mission of the Illinois Intellectual Property Alliance (Alliance) is to serve as a connecting hub for local and regional organizations, fostering an effective ecosystem and marketplace to facilitate the creation, protection, and enablement of intellectual property. This connecting hub will encourage innovation for the economic and social well-being of Illinois citizens.

Donna Kiel College of Education

BRIDGE: Building Resilient, Inclusive Development through Guided Engagement - A micro-credential to support Newcomer Migrant K-12 students The BRIDGE Initiative represents an innovative, multi-tiered approach to supporting newcomer migrant students while simultaneously enriching the professional development pathway for emerging educators and school leaders thus creating an innovative pathway toward education enrollment.

This comprehensive program creates a sustainable ecosystem of support that benefits all stakeholders: migrant students, teacher candidates, aspiring principals, and current K-12 students and operationalizes the DePaul Vincentian mission and positions DePaul as a leader in education and social justice.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Donna Kiel College of Education

Future-Ready

Education:

Societal Needs Credentials

Through

Meeting

Individual

Transdisciplinary

and

Micro-

The Office of Innovative Professional Learning (OIPL) within the College of Education pioneers a revolutionary approach to higher education through strategically designed microcredentials. By working with individuals and organizations to identify needs and critical societal challenges, OIPL creates customized and targeted learning experiences that transcend traditional academic boundaries and are transdiciplinary linking several disciplines within and outside of the field of education. The "Skills for Navigating Uncertainty and Creating Belonging" micro-credential exemplifies this approach, addressing urgent needs while building essential competencies. This innovative framework allows learners to customize their educational journey, acquire immediately applicable skills, and contribute meaningfully to their communities and professions. OIPL's micro-credential pathways represent a forward-thinking model that adapts to evolving societal needs while operationalizing DePaul's Vincentian mission and commitment to academic excellence and social impact.

Jes Klass Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

DePaul Instructional Game & Innovation (DIGI) Lab The DePaul Instructional Game & Innovation (DIGI) Lab is an inhouse educational game studio at DePaul. DIGI collaborates with instructors, university partners, and external collaborators to create learning games and materials to be used in the classroom, around campus, and beyond. DIGI creates games/experiences of all types, including XR (Extended Reality), Analog (board/tapletop games), Puzzle Hunts, Digital Games, and more. Students who work with DIGI learn how to operate and work in a small game studio and get prepared to enter the games industry through their experience.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Interdisciplinary Innovation: College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Transforming Research & Teaching The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (LAS) at DePaul University, supported by over $2.2 million in external grant funding, promotes initiatives aligned with the Vincentian mission by integrating faculty expertise, student experiences, and community partnerships. This showcase will highlight a variety of LAS initiatives, including a poster presentation of the "Hidden Narratives at Graceland Cemetery" project, which uncovers omitted stories about Chicago's history. This project represents the first of its kind with a collaboration between a university and a cemetery. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to learn about two initiatives -Civics and the Social Transformation Research Collaborative. Another highlight of the showcase will offer an opportunity to engage with how our LAS Centers and Institutes explore pedagogy and scholarship. As part of its 2024-25 theme, “Crossroads: At the Intersection of the Humanities and Technology,” the DePaul Humanities Center, in collaboration with the Jarvis Center for Innovation and Collaboration and the Center for Teaching and Learning’s DIGI Lab will provide a demonstration of VR examples used to facilitate best practices in teaching. Together, these initiatives highlight a few of our LAS projects advancing interdisciplinary research, experiential learning, community engagement, and technology to address societal issues.

Alexandru Orhean Alexandru Orhean Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Neurobazaar: Efficient Interactive Visualization and Exploration of Large Datasets Neurobazaar is an open-source and scalable platform that aims to bridge the gap in terms of visualization between HighPerformance Computing, Data Science and Domain Specific Sciences (such as Medical Science). Neurobazaar uses modern Web, Cloud and High-Performance Computing techniques to provide to users a user-friendly interface and an automatic and scalable data management and visualization management system, through which they can efficiently upload, access and interactively visualize large datasets. The users can deploy Neurobazaar in a cluster and can access the interfaces using any consumer-grade computer, since Neurobazaar uses VTK for high-performance remote rendering. The Neurobazaar platform is currently used to implement a visualizer application for exploring Out-of-Distribution data, which is test data that is different from training data, and where both are being generated from a larger dataset, that is used to train Machine Learning models.

Charmi Patel Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Artificial Intelligence as a Catalyst for Improved Computer-Aided Diagnosis in Healthcare Modern technologies are revolutionizing healthcare by transforming computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems into more efficient and accurate tools for medical professionals. This study focuses on a critical aspect of AI-driven CAD systems: augmenting medical data. Acquiring high-quality medical images is often expensive and challenging in real-world scenarios. Our research addresses this limitation by generating synthetic data that resembles the real data and enhances AI model’s performance and fairness. We show that by using a Variational Auto Encoder (VAE) approach, we improve the classification of spiculated lung nodules in Computed Tomography images. These findings are significant because spiculation is an important semantic characteristic used in the diagnostic decision making. In the long term, AI-driven CAD systems have the potential to transform clinical practice by improving diagnostic accuracy, reducing the workload for healthcare professionals, and facilitating early disease detection and treatment. These advancements will empower healthcare professionals with precise diagnostic tools and informed treatment options, paving the way for clinically meaningful, AI-driven support systems

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Mark Potosnak College of Science and Health

Metropolitan Chicago Data-science Corps: Engaging Students with Data Science Through Community Partnerships MCDC is a collaboration of non-profit or community organizations and data science students and experts from several Chicago-area universities addressing challenges and opportunities around extracting insights, deemed relevant by the community, from data.

PUSH Studio Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Bringing the World to Life The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum's 7-foot digital globe, a highlight of its sustainability center, initially fell short of its potential due to underutilization and lack of interactivity.

Recognizing its value, the museum partnered with PUSH Studio to transform the globe into an engaging educational platform that combined interactivity with real-time data visualization, AI image generation, and gamified learning. The redesign aligned with the museum's mission to promote accessible sustainability education and inspire visitors of all ages to contribute to resilient and sustainable communities.

PUSH Studio Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Campus Safety Virtual Training (CSVT) Campus safety is a complex task, and PUSH Studio, in collaboration with DePaul Campus Safety, developed CSVT to enhance officer preparation through immersive virtual reality essential (soft) skill training. CSVT simulates realistic campus incidents, such as theft or battery, enabling officers to role-play and practice decision-making, de-escalation, emotional response management, and information gathering in the moment. This hands-on approach complements existing training methods, building confidence through repetition and recommendations for managing real-life situations effectively.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

PUSH Studio Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Augmented Reality Campus Explorer (ARC) PUSH Studio originally developed the Augmented Reality Campus Explorer to help students locate safety resources on the Lincoln Park campus. Over time, the app has expanded to include a wider range of resources, offering an interactive way to explore campus buildings and services by integrating digital information with the physical environment. In collaboration with DePaul tour guides, the app highlights key locations and resources, enhancing campus orientation and providing a comprehensive understanding of the surroundings. Tour guides will test the app's ability to improve tours, offering visitors a more engaging experience while building confidence in campus safety and other resources.

PUSH Studio Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Exploring Creative Interactions with BCI Technology This project explores the creative potential of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology, specifically using the Emotiv headset, to develop novel interactive systems for games and artistic applications. The project aims to bridge digital and tangible interfaces by designing and testing a series of lowresolution prototypes that incorporate BCI and physical computing elements. The goal is to better understand the affordances for BCIs in creative contexts.

David Ramsey Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

The Forge: An Immersive Freshman System-Building Community The Forge is a new kind of introductory class for computer science freshmen, which empowers them to get their hands dirty and use/develop technical skills to express themselves creatively. This class mirrors a famous class called 'How To Make Almost Anything' from the MIT Media Lab, and has just launched this year. Students undertake a new skill/challenge each week, and dedicate 8 credit hours to master it and use it to deliver a completed project, documented fully on a website of their making (their week #1 project). We will show the inspiration/pedagogy behind this approach and demonstrate a few of the projects our first batch of students have created.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Sveta Stoytcheva Price & Grace Spiewak University LIbrary

Facilitating Open Science at the University Library This poster presentation features draft materials for a graphic/illustrated novel style pamphlet arguing the need to restore a standard parole system in Illinois, and discussing the ways in which lengthy sentencing can undermine public safety.

The pamphlet is intended to inform lawmakers, scholars, and the general public about these issues in a way that is factual, accessible, and engaging. It also offers perspectives that are often dismissed. Authors are incarcerated participants in DePaul's college programming at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet.

The Theatre School Interdisciplinary Work at TTS The Theatre School is collaborating with departments across the University to highlight the applicable skills of their students.

Acting students are serving as standardized patients for the occupational therapy program, comedy students are collaborating with game design students on ideation, and the studio for creative practice promises to help scientists visualize their work through creative storytelling.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

Allen Turner Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

DePaul Orignals Game Studio DePaul Originals Game Studio is a Lab in the School of Design that focuses on creating game related interactive experiences.

We will be showcasing our current projects which are Haunted Jarvis which is a VR experience set in a virtual recreation of the Jarvis Collaboration Center and Sankofa Seasons which is a virtual meditative exploration of Black People's survival stories.

Nur Uysal College of Communication

Bridging Communication and AI: Insights from the Center for Communication Engagement The Center for Communication Engagement, housed in the College of Communication, continues to demonstrate its leadership and innovation through a groundbreaking AI-human communication research project in collaboration with the Communication Leaders of Chicago (CLC). Through a mixedmethods study—including a survey, focus groups with senior industry leaders—researchers examined how AI is being applied across strategic communication domains like research, creative processes, strategy development, and campaign execution. In February 2024, the Center hosted the flagship CLC AI event, drawing over 60 senior PR executives from across Chicagoland. The event showcased findings from a comprehensive survey of more than 80 CLC leaders, positioning DePaul University as a frontrunner in AI communication research. The initiative actively involves students in cuttingedge studies and is being featured in various outlets.

INNOVATION SHOWCASE

LeAnne Wagner Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

The SPARK Center The SPARK Center at DePaul University is a state-of-the-art innovation space for pioneering data-related research that tackles critical socioeconomic challenges affecting Chicago communities. By convening nonprofit, government, industry and academia, The SPARK Center is where the community will have the opportunity to connect with faculty across all disciplines and collaborate to solve the pressing needs of our day. The center uses data science, design, and AI to model and visualize the history of a challenge, as well as multiple predicted scenarios for the future. SPARK uses storytelling and data visualization to turn research into digestible, comprehensive materials that invite non-experts into informed conversations.

Capability like this has the potential to have far-reaching impact on the community and the creation of solutions that benefit our local, national, and global communities.

Rosalee Wolfe Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

The American Sign Language Avatar Project Deafness is not just a barrier of sound; it is a barrier of language.

Our project is working to improve deaf / hearing communication through the automated, non-invasive technology of signing avatars. Our avatar “Paula” can portray all aspects of ASL as computer animation. She has earned high marks for clarity and naturalness from people fluent in ASL. Paula is currently at work in several related projects, from Deaf education and interpreter training, to tutoring caregivers for Illinois citizens who are both deaf and mentally challenged.

Paula is now broadening her horizons – she is learning German, French and Greek sign languages! Stop by our booth to watch her in action!

INNOVATION DAY SHOWCASE

Learn more about Innovation Day 2025

Friday, January 31, 2025