This year’s annual celebration of innovation at DePaul focuses on bringing a creative spirit to research to find unexpected partnerships and approaches to solve problems. DePaul community members will come together to present research, discuss perspectives on innovation, and make connections across disciplines.
The Innovation Showcase is an opportunity to explore innovative and creative products, services, and solutions developed by DePaul faculty, staff, and students. The Planning Committee has selected 26 projects that will demonstrate how their creative innovations are meeting industry and societal needs. The demonstrations will be done in an open forum in which attendees can visit a variety of innovation “booths” during the two dedicated Innovation Showcase sessions (11:05-11:45, 2-2:45). The projects to be demonstrated are listed and can be downloaded below.
During the Showcase, Innovation Day attendees voted on “DePaul’s Innovation Award”. We are pleased to announce that Greg Scott, Professor in the College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences, was chosen for “DePaul’s Innovation Award” for his project, Somewhere Safe: A Multimodal Presentation of a Safer Drug Consumption Site. This project featured an immersive 360-degree 3D video documentary and a traditional documentary film that examines the inner workings of the first-ever unsanctioned supervised drug consumption site (SCS) in the United States. Participants had the option to explore the space in virtual reality (wearing an Oculus Quest headset) or by watching the 15m traditional short documentary, or both.
Information for Innovation Showcase presenters:
Participants will be required to set up their display between 7:45 – 8:45 am, prior to the Opening Remarks. The Showcase will run from 11:05 – 11:45 am and 2:00 – 2:45 pm. The organizing committee can provide assistance in printing posters through the DePaul Library and Showcase setup support.
Session Chair: Lauren K. Miller,
Director of Research and Innovation Strategies and
Chief of Staff of Office of Research Services
Lauren Miller joined DePaul as the Director of Research and Innovation Strategies and the Chief of Staff in the Office of Research Services in 2020. In this role, Dr. Miller oversees the administration of the URC, QIC, PSC, and AGIF internal grant programs, the URC and QIC Paid Leave programs, as well as other initiatives to promote the research and creative activities at DePaul. Prior to joining DePaul, Dr. Miller oversaw all institutional grants at Robert Morris University (RMU), including private foundation, state, and federal grant programs. She has collaborated with faculty to design and write grant proposals for funding, has experience with financial reporting and compliance, and currently serves as an Advanced Peer Reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission. Dr. Miller’s extensive experience in fostering partnerships, research and assessment provide both process-focused and outcome-focused evaluations to improve and grow higher education research enterprises.