Research, Creative Activities & Innovation > Research Highlights > Featured Research

Featured Research

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The research culture at DePaul is typified by the pervasiveness of new ideas, the stimulation of dialogue, and a commitment to engaged scholarship. The below featured research provides a brief a vignette of select projects that typify faculty members contributions to our campus community and their disciplines.


July 2023 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

DePaul University's  Mellon Foundation-funded  Social Transformation Research Collaborative, housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences has  announced it second cohort of fellows.  Faculty  members Rocío Ferreira, Juan Mora-Torres, Maria Ferrera, and Jacqueline Lazú will spend their fellowships studying topics involving Peruvian culture, Mexican neighborhoods in Chicago, narratives of asylees, and developing and managing archival collections.  The collaborative supports faculty and students who study how the humanities can be a source of justice and healing for communities historically shaped by, and continuously facing, racism, violence and dispossession.  Read More

June 2023 - School of Music

 

Tom Miller

Dr. Miller's film score to the 1927 classic film Metropolis was premiered with picture in surround sound on March 4, 2023, to a packed house by the DePaul Wind Ensemble under the direction of Professor Michael Lewanski. The premiere was recorded and videotaped in the Holtschneider Performance Center Gannon Hall, it featured 30 student musicians and the composer handling the theremin solo.    Learn More

May 2023 - College of Education

A five-year, $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education aims to prepare more than 800 DePaul University graduates to serve as teachers in high-need Chicago Public Schools. The effort builds on an eight-year partnership between the Academy for Urban School Leadership’s Chicago Teacher Residency program and DePaul’s College of Education.  Read More.

April 2023 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

 

Spalding Book Cover

 

Professor Rose Spalding has released a new book entitled Breaking Ground: From Extraction Booms to Mining Bans in Latin America (Oxford University Press 2023).  The book examines metallic mining policy practices in four Central American countries—Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, specifically exploring the interconnection of mining policies, politics, social movements, and the environment to identify distinct pathways to reform. This project was supported by funding from URC, the Society of Vincent DePaul Professors, and a Center of Latino Research Fellowship.  Read More

 

April 2023 - School of Music

Assistant Professor Ann Marie Brink, delivered a Lecture Recital at International Viola Society/ American Viola Society Festival and Congress.  Brink discussed and performed several works for viola and piano by Hans Sitt, a noted pedagogue who taught violin, viola, composition and conducting at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1884-1921. These Romantic compositions are rarely performed, yet fulfill a much-needed body of repertoire for intermediate-level viola students.

 

February 2023 - College of Science and Health

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Jason $842,000 to further his research on ME/CFS with Lurie Children’s Hospital, bringing a focus on long COVID into the longitudinal study. Jason is also editor of a book on long COVID set to be released this spring. With both projects, Jason seeks to catalyze global knowledge about virally induced chronic illness and push forward discovery.  Read More.

January 2023 - Driehaus College of Business

The Driehaus College of Business opened the BETA Hub – short for Business Education in Technology and Analytics Hub —  to infuse emerging technologies into student classwork and faculty research.  The BETA Hub offers a collection of teaching and research resources that includes virtual reality headsets; a blog creators’ studio; a Neurobusiness Lab for conducting research based on eye-tracking and other neuroscience indicators; and a Big Data Analytics Computer Lab with tools for data and text analyses.  Read More.

January 2023 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Megan Alderden of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences was awarded $75,000 by the United States Department of Justice to fund the provision of evaluation services on the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership's Road Home Reentry Initiative grant. The Road Home Reentry Initiative serves to be the region’s response to the difficult realities presented when people exit incarceration. The program aims to implement the foundations of a coordinated reentry system by convening one of the most comprehensive reentry stakeholder bodies in the region.

January 2023 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Margaret Storey and Euan Hague of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences were awarded $340,000 by the Julian Grace Foundation to fund teams of faculty, student and external partners to pursue cutting edge research as part of DePaul’s Urban Collaborative (UC). The funds cover the period of January 2023 to June 2025. Community Project-Based Learning Internship Scholarships and the Student Urban Research Corps offer real-world experiences to build essential skills to make students more marketable graduates and financial support allows students to pursue meaningful projects otherwise off-limits due to limited resources.

January 2023 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Assistant Professor Danielle Vance-McMullen, an assistant professor in the School of Public Service, is part of a research team that recently received a $750,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the most wide-ranging research project on donor-advised funds to date.

January 2023 - College of Science and Health

A study from DePaul University researcher Noé de la Sancha models new dimensions of biodiversity among small mammal populations, as a function of how far they dwell from the forest’s edge.  Noé de la Sancha's work is funded by the Walder Foundation.  Read More.

DePaul University and Rosalind Franklin University of Science and Medicine are funding three faculty research projects that bring together artificial intelligence, biomedical discovery and health care.  Faculty teams include experts in bioinformatics, machine learning, robotics, geography, biology.  Read More

"Breaking Barriers Through Creative Collaboration,"  was the theme of the 2023 annual celebration of innovation at DePaul.  The January 27, 2023 event  which coalesced the DePaul community, focused on bringing a creative spirit to research to find unexpected partnerships and approaches to solve problems.  Read More.

Three DePaul faculty whose research is driving innovation have been named Researchers to Know by the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition. Ecologist Jalene LaMontagne, environmental scientist Mark Potosnak and cybersecurity expert Filipo Sharevski made the fifth annual list, which draws nominations from throughout the state. ISTC’s list highlights researchers who have achieved milestones, such as publishing an influential paper, receiving national recognition, or commercializing a new innovation.  Read More.

December 2022 - College of Law

This Colleg of Law initiative will bring together students, lawyers, researchers, policymakers and activists to collaborate on community-driven solutions to advance racial justice, specifically in Chicago and Illinois. Working at the nexus of public policy and the legal system, RJI will take an interdisciplinary approach to tackling racial injustice and inequity in policing, housing, economic opportunity, education, health and voting rights.  Manoj Mate  will serve as the inaugural faculty director and Nathan Fleming will serve as fellow of DePaul Law's Racial Justice Initiative.  Read More.

January 2023 - Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

 

Insert Coin Movie Poster

Josh Tsui, director of innovation at Jarvis CDM, created and directed the film "Insert Coin" to chronicle Chicago's historic role as an epicenter of video game development. After a successful film festival run, including at South by Southwest, "Insert Coin" made its Chicago debut at the Music Box Theatre in January 2023.

November 2022 - Student Affairs

 

Luciano Berardi

Dr. Luciano Berardi of DePaul’s Access, Attainment and TRIO department has secured a $261K grant, per year for the next five years, from the U.S. Department of Education in support of DePaul 's McNair Scholar's Program. DePaul's award, one of 189 new awards to institutions of higher education across the United States, is designed to assist historically underrepresented college students (i.e., ethnic minority, low-income and first-generation college students) effectively prepare for and access a doctoral-level education.

The McNair Program is one of seven federal TRIO programs, targeted to serve and assist historically underrepresented students in higher education, and individuals with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to post-baccalaureate programs. This initiative aims to increase the number of TRIO eligible students in both post-graduate programs and the professoriate career.

October 2022 - Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

 

Black Country Music Cover

After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions, the first book on Black country music by a Black writer, Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre.

Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster's book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner's first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On, Lil Nas X''s "Old Town Road" and Rhiannon Giddens and Our Native Daughter's Black banjo reclamation, Songs of Our Native Daughters.

October 2022- Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

 

Tanu Malik

Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media Associate Professor Tanu Malik has a secured $1.38M multi-year grant from NASA entitled “Reproducible Containers for Advancing Process-oriented Collaborative Analytics” . This project aims to establish reproducible scientific containers that will transparently encapsulate complex, data-intensive, process-oriented model analytics to share easily and efficiently between collaborators, and will enable reproducibility in heterogeneous environments. On a related note, Dr. Malik and her students recent paper "Reproducible Notebook Containers with Application Virtualization" was recognized as the Best Paper at IEEE eScience 2022.

Read More

August 2022 - College of Communication

 

Kelly Chu

Diversity and Multicultural Issues in Advertising is a topic of Professor Kelly Chu in the College of Communication's research. Her other research areas include social media, electronic word-of-mouth, corporate social responsibility, and cross-cultural consumer behavior.

Chu's recent research has identified that of research articles published in advertising journals from 2011 to 2020 suggests only 8.03% used diversity and multicultural variables in their conceptualization. Chu believes that examining diversity in advertising through the lens of new technology and digital media is timely and necessary. She hopes that this article will help brands, marketers, and agencies identify issues in diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion and provide useful strategies to implement the needed change.

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June 2022 - Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Michael Flores, Assistant Professor in DePaul’s Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media, has secured funding from CHA's Springboard to Success to conduct 2022 summer programming for select CHA high school students on filmmaking, screenwriting, and photography. At the core, the programs are designed to provide new economic pathways for minority youth and to arm them with the tools to become effective visual storytellers. This year’s programs will be taught in-person on DePaul’s Loop Campus from June 27th through August 4th, 2022.

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June 2022 - Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences has released a new edition of Creating Knowledge, a journal of undergraduate scholarship and creative activity. Essays and artwork are a product of advanced coursework during the 2021-2022 Academic Year. First published in 2008, Creating Knowledge showcases the best student work produced across LAS programs of study. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Barry)

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March 2022 - Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Dr. Zhen Huang, Assistant Professor in the Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media has secured a National Science Foundation (NSF) CRII award for his project SaTC: Towards Detecting and Mitigating Vulnerabilities. The project promotes a novel research agenda that seeks to improve software vulnerability detection and mitigation. A diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students are participating in the project and developing their interests and expertise in software security. The NSF CRII Award is a prestigious, highly-competitive grant that is awarded to young Assistant Professors at the beginning of their academic careers. An estimated 60 CRII proposals are funded by NSF annually.

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March 2022 - Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Dr. Roselyne Tchoua, Assistant Professor in the Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media has secured a fellowship from Sinai Urban Health Institute to pursue health equity research. The Fellowship award will allow Tchoua the opportunity to apply machine learning techniques to health data, including quantifying the impact of social determinants of health in the prediction of patient readmission to the Emergency Department.

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January 2022 - College of Education

Renowned mathematics education scholar, Akihiko Takahashi, Associate Professor in the College of Education, engaging book Teaching Mathematics Through Problem-Solving: A Pedagogical Approach from Japan offers an in-depth introduction to teaching mathematics through problem-solving, providing lessons and techniques that can be used in classrooms for both primary and lower secondary grades. Based on the innovative and successful Japanese approaches of Teaching Through Problem-Solving (TTP) and Collaborative Lesson Research (CLR), Takahashi demonstrates how these teaching methods can be successfully adapted in schools outside of Japan.

January 2022 - College of Science and Health

Jalene LaMontagne, Associate Professor in the College of Science and Health, together with an international team of researchers has released an article, North American tree migration paced by climate in the West, lagging in the East, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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January 2022 - College of Communication

Blair Davis, Associate Professor in the College of Communication’s book, Comic Book Women, coauthored with Peyton Brunet, offers a feminist history of the golden age of comics, revising our understanding of how numerous genres emerged and upending narratives of how male auteurs built their careers.

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January 2022 - College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Alex G Papadopoulos, Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ book, Hellenic Statecraft and the Geopolitics of Difference, co-authored with Triantafyllos G. Petridis, has been nominated for the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award for the best book published in 2021 in the field of political geography.

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January 2022 - Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Partnering with Hanyang University (South Korea) and Indiana University, Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media professor, Raffaella Settimi has received U.S. State Department funding for the Data Science South Korea/US (DSKUS) Global Lab, a student exchange program focused on forging strategic data science & AI partnerships between the US and South Korea.

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Additional Featured Research

For a greater view of our funded research, please consult the lists of projects from 2022 below. These lists are representative of the scope of the internally and externally funded research currently ongoing at DePaul.  Also detailed below is a link to initiatives previously featured on this page.

Previously Featured Highlights

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