(DePaul University/Jeff Carrion)This quarter, the Office of the Provost welcomed two faculty members to its first cohort of the Research and Innovation Leadership Fellows Program. Kathryn Ibata-Arens, a Vincent de Paul Professor in the Department of Political Science; and William “Marty" Martin, a professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, will spend 12 months on projects related to DePaul's research and innovation mission.
“We are pleased to have launched this exciting new program," says Salma Ghanem, interim provost for the university. “We look forward to working with Kathryn and Marty to develop and transform research into impactful discoveries and insights for both DePaul and our broader campus community."
Throughout the program, Ibata-Arens and Martin will work closely with Daniela Stan Raicu, DePaul's associate provost for research.
"This fellowship gives faculty an opportunity to lead and foster community and collaboration across the university while leveraging their expertise in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship," she says.
At DePaul, Ibata-Arens' academic work focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship in Asia, science and technology policy, women's economic empowerment and inclusive innovation. In her project as a Research and Innovation Leadership Fellow, Ibata-Arens aims to create a standard of practice for identifying, recognizing and enhancing faculty scholarship while still in its early stage.
“We want to address how we can continue to invest in faculty scholarship success, especially at junior levels, that has a clear return-on-investment of our limited time, effort and resources, given our challenging budgetary environment," Ibata-Arens explains. “Right now, we measure faculty scholarship by output – publications and other artifacts – after the fact. With this project, we want to identify scholarship at the seed stage, and help it grow."
Ibata-Arens hopes to design, develop and share a university-level pilot study resulting in a data-based framework that can map a visualization of DePaul's intellectual capacities. Ultimately, this framework can help build bridges between faculty, academic units, internal networks and external funders.
“I am honored to have been selected for this program," she says. “DePaul has been my home for 20 years, and I am grateful to those who mentored me when I was a junior faculty. I look forward to engaging with our junior faculty across all colleges and brainstorming about how to develop DePaul's innovation ecosystem in support of their scholarship."
Martin is a licensed clinical psychologist whose research focuses on business ethics, healthcare management, disruptive behavior and entrepreneurship. His project for the Research and Innovation Leadership Fellows Program will concentrate on innovation commercialization with a social impact.
“DePaul has a wide variety of nationally ranked programs, from the Idea Realization Lab to the Women's Entrepreneurship Institute," he says. “In collaboration with stellar programs, this project aims to catalyze innovation, support entrepreneurship and, ideally, commercialize our inventions aimed at positively affecting society. We also hope to further develop our existing partnership with external partners, such as the Sinai Urban Health Institute and 1871."
Though Martin notes this project as the beginning of a long journey, he hopes to develop DePaul's enhanced brand for being the national model for technology commercialization that maintains a social impact.
“This fellowship brings my career nearly full-circle, but with an upward twist," he says. “In this role, I can serve as a catalyst and convener to create relationships within and outside the university focused on our innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem."