Meet the Innovation Fellows

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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.