MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | DIVISION OF RESEARCH & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
INNOVATIONWORKS FALL/WINTER 2021 | VOLUME 3
OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER NEWSLETTER
March is Women's History Month, and a number of national organizations are highlighting women innovators and entrepreneurs. This issue highlights two of Morgan's women innovators.
SKROWNOITAVONNI
CREATING GLOBAL CITIZENS
Always touted as the melting pot of the world, the United States has truly become the home to people from a wide array of cultural backgrounds. Learning a second language has proven to be more beneficial as the country becomes more and more diverse. The two to three years of a foreign language that students are required to take in high school, and in some undergraduate level programs, often provides a cursory introduction to the language. Many times, fluency in the language is not the outcome of those courses. So, what happens when you want to visit a country for an extended stay, immerse yourself in the culture, or court a love interest? You either wing it and hope for the best, or learn the language. Kimberly Warren, PhD, chose the latter.
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A personal trip to Guatemala to learn Spanish through a week-long immersive learning experience, that included one-on-one Spanish lessons, cultural enrichment activities, and a home stay, blossomed into a study abroad program. Dr. Warren realized that she had found a perfect venue to educate students beyond the borders of the United States and show them firsthand what health and health disparities look like in other parts of the world. As a component of her Health Psychology course, Dr. Warren developed a program that included community service in the form of free health screenings for adults and health promotion education to elementary school students to shed light on important global issues she felt were being ignored. Through funding from an OTT Grant, Dr. Warren developed an innovative Global Competency Experiential Learning program, which enables students to travel to another country such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and soon to Paraguay, to provide health screenings, volunteer, and teach classes on nutrition and hygiene. The students who travel to these countries are completely immersed in the culture through daily Spanish lessons, cultural activities, and excursions that teach them about the respective country they are visiting. Dr. Warren’s STEAM Abroad™ program is the first immersive learning and cultural experience for students. STEAM Abroad™ combines the traditional STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with an arts component to provide a wellrounded experience for all participants.
Dr. Warren & a STEAM Abroad™ cohort
Dr. Warren was recently awarded the Cultural Heroes Grant, which aligns students from underrepresented communities with the opportunity to participate in academic exchange programs in Latin America, which will also help extend the reach of the STEAM Abroad™ program. The Office of Technology Transfer matched this grant through funding from its IGAP program to help in expanding the curriculum and marry the nursing and psychology disciplines. The program will demonstrate how both fields can impact the community through service-learning projects. (continued on page 4)
WHAT DRIVES INNOVATION?
Innovation Drivers are the factors that drive both “big I” (new and potentially disruptive innovation), and “little i” (incremental) innovation. Common drivers of organizational innovation include: consumer need, improved quality, creation of new markets, reduced labor and material costs, improved efficiency, reduced environmental damage and energy consumption, and conformance to regulations. Innovators themselves may be driven by a personal or emotional connection. Each issue of Innovation Works will provide the reader a window on what drives Morgan’s innovators.
SAFETY FIRST
“Safety first” is often an adage embedded in our brains when we do several things, from crossing the street and looking both ways, to buckling our seat belt when we learn to drive. Those behaviors become so automatic that we often do them with little to no thought. Some of us develop a habit, while others may link the behavior to an experience of trauma or in the hopes of avoiding such a thing. Then there are some who turn the notion of safety into a passion that leads to a career path of innovation and giving back - meet Mansoureh Jeihani, PhD. Dr. Jeihani is an engineer by trade and currently serves as a professor in the Department of Transportation and Urban Infrastructure Studies in the School of Engineering and as Director of the National Transportation Center at Morgan State. Her passion for people’s safety and mobility, especially the most vulnerable populations, has contributed to the innovations she has developed with her colleagues and students. She has furthered two of those innovations as an awardee of I-GAP grants funded by OTT, including 1) The Integrated Automated Wheelchair and Adapted Automated Vehicle System and 2) Safety Applications for Work Zones.
Dr. Jeihani (left) & student collaborators working on a traffic model.
The Integrated Automated Wheelchair technology integrates two modes of travel with automated vehicle technology, allowing users with multiple disability types to make short distance trips independently. The wheelchair system is programmable and is enabled to navigate to its destination via the best route with limited direction and steering by the user. Dr. Jeihani and her team equipped the chair with ultrasonic and optical sensors to avoid any collisions, a real-time GPS tracker and a carrier for any baggage. The overall goal of the design, outside of functionality, was to provide comfort and convenience for people with disabilities. (continued on page 4)
MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY | DIVISION OF RESEARCH & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
CREATING GLOBAL CITIZENS
(continued from page 1)
SKROWNOITAVONNI
In contrast, the students enrolled in Dr. Warren’s health psychology course that can’t participate in the travel component, still have an opportunity to “study” away. These students use their teachings to provide health screenings to the local community and participate in other local activities with The Food Project in Baltimore, a local non-profit providing opportunities to the underserved community of Southwest Baltimore. At the height of the program’s planning, the COVID-19 pandemic began, and like many things, the program required a pivot. To ensure students didn’t lose the authenticity of the experience, the Virtual Global Learning Experience was developed, and the integrity of the program remained. Students were engaged virtually via Zoom with organizations in partnering countries and still able to have their global learning experience at home, including a tortilla making lesson, medicinal garden tour, salsa dance class, and Spanish lessons. Although the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has altered plans and postponed actual travel to partnering countries, Dr. Warren is continuing her efforts in Dr. Warren and her Psychology students bringing this opportunity to her students moving forward. As an extension of the STEAM Abroad™ program and the Virtual Global Learning Experience, she and her colleagues, Dr. Charlene Chester, Natasha Otto and Marisa Gray, are also establishing the Center for Research and Experiential Study Abroad (CRESA) to further the research and development of innovations related to study abroad programs supporting student experiential learning opportunities and student success. A recent I-Start project award funded by OTT will serve as seed funding for CRESA for testing of various study abroad programs, virtual global learning experiences and additional research and development of study abroad programs for future Morgan students. When passions and professional goals align, some call it a happy marriage. Dr. Kimberly Warren was able to merge her interest in learning Spanish and love for cultural experiences with her work as professor in the Psychology department here at Morgan to provide her students with exposure to global learning opportunities abroad and from the comfort of their own homes. A true embodiment of our mission of “Growing the Future, Leading the World,” one trip abroad at a time.
SAFETY FIRST
(continued from page 1)
Since inception, the design has been modified in order to provide true autonomous operation. Dr. Jeihani and her students from her undergraduate and graduate level courses have been testing the wheelchair and incorporating changes as needed. The prototype has evolved to the point where it has attracted the interest of the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI); they want to serve as a testbed for the wheelchair and to transport passengers with a disability from check-in to their departure gate. Dr. Jeihani and her team are eager to move into the next phase of development of the automated wheelchair to bring independent, stress-free air travel possible for all disabled travelers. In addition to her work on the automated wheelchair, Dr. Jeihani has also been developing a mobile application for users to identify (construction) work zones in the area. One set of interfaces of the application allows commercial vehicle operators to see the work zones on their route, while another set of interfaces allows for contractors to input the location of the work area, including the duration of the construction, working hours, location, and work hours, among other details, and any changes to the pending work schedule. The framework of the application has been built and will ultimately be available in the Apple App Store and Android Store. It is also expected that companies that express an interest in Dr. Mansoureh Jeihani commercializing the technology may integrate this application into their own system. As with all her innovations, Dr. Jeihani has provided hands-on opportunities to her graduate and undergraduate students, and several of them have been included on the four currently pending U.S. Patent Applications that have originated at the National Transportation Center. Her enthusiasm and passion are truly visible in all of her efforts to ensure her students are advancing technologies in this field, enabling them to gain a competitive edge when they graduate from Morgan. As the aforementioned projects enter into their final stages, there is never a dull moment as she continues to innovate through projects on artificial intelligence, drones, smart cities to name a few as she engages her students, furthering the Morgan mission to “Grow the Future, Lead the World,” safely.
The Office of Technology Transfer hosts the Innovation of the Year awards annually to recognize and reward innovation taking place throughout Morgan.
2021 Innovation of the Year Award Winners David K. Wilson, President's Award for Innovation Innovation in Chorale Instruction & Performing Arts Dr. Eric Conway Life Science Corneal Topographic Diagnostic Indices Based on Fellow-Eye Differences Dr. Shiva Mehravaran Physical Science Mobile Multi-User MIMO Communications for Millimeter-Wave Networks Dr. Arlene Cole-Rhodes, Dr. Peter Taiwo Information Science Smart Antenna System Dr. Kevin Kornegay, Dr. Hailu Kassa Staff Innovator of the Year , Nancy Jackson Instructional Innovator of the Year , Dr. Harold Morales Student Innovator of The Year , Samson Gichuki Office of Technology Transfer Earl S. Richardson Library, Suite 207 443.885.1003 technology.transfer@morgan.edu www.morgan.edu/technologytransfer
Office of Technology Transfer Team: Wayne Swann, Director Ray Dizon, Technology Transfer Manager Alexa Morris, Programs & Marketing Manager Kanika Ellis, Administrative Assistant