Meet the Innovation Fellows
The CSUSM Faculty Innovation Fellows program aims to build and develop innovation
and entrepreneurial opportunities for students, faculty and community partners. Faculty
Innovation Fellows will accomplish this in two ways: 1) each fellow will lead their
own innovation, start up, or entrepreneurial project and 2) serve as an innovation
ambassador to their respective college or Library motivating other faculty to engage
in the process of innovating.
Five Fellows are selected to represent each college and the Library, and they will
work to translate research, discovery, and entrepreneurial vision into applications
and processes that impact society.
The Library
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Holly Hampton – Head of User Services, Library
Innovation Project: Social Innovation in Academic Libraries
Ms. Hampton’s philosophy includes ensuring the staff and faculty within her unit feel
supported, empowered, engaged, and fulfilled. Her research examines the endless ways
this philosophy can be applied and how each initiative changes the experience of library
employees and library users. Since starting at CSUSM in 2019, Holly has pursued this
philosophy by assisting with the implementation of Library Lockers, co-leading the Cougars Affordable Learning Materials initiative, serving on the Executive Board of the Black Faculty & Staff Association, co-creating the #BlackLivesMatter and Stop Asian Hate Resource Guides, collaborating with various departments on campus to teach students,
staff, and faculty about CSUSM Library and the library profession, and much more.
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Holly seeks to investigate and implement social innovations
in academic libraries which will result in a number of select innovations that can
be pursued by CSUSM Library as well as address a gap in the research in the library
profession. Upon identifying the types of social innovation in academic libraries
and the common challenges, Holly will work with a new Library Student Advisory Board
and other stakeholders to determine how they would like to pursue social innovation
at CSUSM Library. Specific interests include initiatives related to sustainability
and student services.
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CSTEM
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Carlos Luna Lopez - Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Innovation Project: Development of a face mask with targeted, aerosol-based drug delivery
Dr. Carlos Luna has a B.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering both from the
University of Maryland and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSD. His research laboratory
uses engineering and technology, such as bioprinting and microfabrication, to study
biological problems. He has been passionate about liposomes and their applications
in drug delivery since his days as an undergraduate researcher. He intends to pass
this passion for research to his students and use his knowledge to address today's
problems.
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Dr. Luna aims to incorporate drug delivery into face
masks. To do this, his lab will design aerosol generation devices to fit in a portable
face mask and then study the stability of lipid-based drug carriers after aerosolization.
He will work with CSUSM research students to take this important step towards incorporating
biotechnology into personal protective equipment.
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CEHHS
Matthew Mincey - Lecturer, Nursing
Innovation Project: Exploring the Potential of a Mobile Health Clinic
Mr. Mincey has been a full-time lecturer with the School of Nursing since Fall 2015.
His responsibilities include both teaching clinical coursework and serving as the
clinical placements coordinator, which involves working with community partners to
arrange required clinical experiences for more than 500 undergraduate students. His
ability to problem-solve and generate novel solutions led to an innovative approach
for maintaining clinical experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic when many other
schools had to interrupt or pause their program.
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Mr. Mincey will explore the educational and community
benefits of incorporating a mobile health unit into student learning experiences across
all schools and departments within CEHHS.
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CoBA
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Paola Ometto – Assistant Professor, Management
Innovation Project: Social Enterprises at CSUSM: Creating Opportunities for Social Innovation and for
Experimental Learning
Dr. Ometto is passionate about how businesses and organizations create social innovations
to tackle environmental and societal problems. In her research, she looked at how
university incubators deal with the conflicting goals of economic feasibility and
social impact when incubating social enterprises. Currently, she studies how community
characteristics impact the creation of social enterprises as well as how minority
individuals overcome barriers to become successful entrepreneurs. Prior to joining
CSUSM, she received her Ph.D. in Strategic Management and Organization at Alberta
Business School (University at Alberta) and a Ph.D. in Public Administration from
FGV-EAESP (Sao Paulo - Brazil). She has published her research at Business & Society,
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Social Responsibility Journals.
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, she aims to develop a social enterprise incubation
program with two main goals: (1) to disseminate and train students on what is social
innovation and social enterprises, and (2) to help students to create and run their
own social enterprise.
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CHABSS
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Lucy HG Solomon – Associate Professor, Media Design
Innovation Project: Ocean Biome Box
Lucy HG Solomon orients her teaching and research around the integration of art and
climate science, including working with students on the visualization of local and
remote climate data, the results of which are on display at the Data Stacks at Kellogg
Library. As a Fulbright scholar and collaborator with FeLT (Future of Living Technologies)
based out of Norway, Lucy HG Solomon is studying the microbiological terrain of the
Arctic. Cesar & Lois, her collective with collaborator Cesar Baio that integrates
art, science and technology, received the 2018 Lumen Prize in Artificial Intelligence,
a prize that celebrates digital art, and was recently selected for the 2022 Mercosul
Biennial in Brazil.
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Ms. Solomon seeks to convey the urgent dynamics of
the changing ocean, making global climate personal and inclusive. With the Ocean Biome Box, she will draw on the research of Dr. Betsy Read in Biological Sciences to simulate
the biotic elements of the ocean, including the unique algae that blooms in the sea
in response to environmental shifts. The project’s programmable water habitat will
reflect current oceanic readings to mirror a slice of ocean. She looks forward to integrating undergraduate research across art and science for
the development of this project.
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