DePaul University Research Services > Research Development > Research & Innovation Leadership Fellows Program > Meet Our Fellows

Meet Our Fellows

​​​​​Eric C. Landahl, 

Professor of Physics and Astrophysics
2025-2026 Fellow

Eric Landahl
“I enjoy the hands-on, collaborative stages of applied research, where ideas turn into instruments, prototypes, and partnerships. This fellowship allows me to focus on the structures that support technical work and help it move outward, through people, into practice."


This fellowship advances two aims: shared hardware infrastructure and external research partnerships.

In many research areas, the barriers to building hardware continue to fall. What matters now is speed: access to tools, rapid iteration, and the ability to test ideas in real settings. This work focuses on physical systems and instruments, prototypes that generate data or operate in the world. Shared facilities enable this by bringing equipment, expertise, and people together. On campus, this includes spaces such as the Idea Realization Labs (IRLs), where faculty and students design, build, and refine real systems. Externally, it connects those same teams to startup incubators, industry testbeds, and national laboratory user facilities that operate on the same shared-access model at larger scale.

Students are central to both efforts. They move between facilities, build working systems, and carry practical knowledge across institutional boundaries.

In the near term, this work improves access to shared facilities and supports applied, external-facing collaborations. Over time, it aligns infrastructure, partnerships, and student participation so hardware-based research moves quickly from concept to use, leads to deployable systems and durable external relationships, and prepares students for practice-oriented work that serves society beyond campus.

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Robert Steel, 

Professor, Post Production, Multimedia, Animation
2023-2024 Fellow

Robert Steel
"One of the most rewarding aspects of serving as a Research and Innovation Fellow is the opportunity to engage in collaborative efforts with diverse units across the academic landscape of DePaul.  The university's community is a vibrant tapestry o​​f talent and experience, and I am genuinely excited about the prospect of connecting with individuals from different units."


 The focus of this fellowship will be collaboration. I am organizing a learning community, fostering an environment conducive to collaborative exploration. Simultaneously, I am building teams to create media content, that will capture the essence of DePaul's research and creative collaborations. My efforts extend to reviewing and benchmarking collaborative structures at peer institutions, informing the identification and development of strategies to market and institutionalize collaborations. Delving into the landscape, I seek both internal and external collaboration prospects across units. Documenting cross-unit collaborations spanning the last 5 years is a focal point, contributing to a comprehensive understanding. As the journey unfolds, unforeseen tasks organically emerge, adding depth and dynamism to our overarching objectives.

As a Research and Innovation Fellow I am actively involved in the development of collaboration structures and the documentation process, which not only enhances the efficiency of our collaborative endeavors but also contributes to the overall synergy within the university. This collaborative approach allows for an exchange of ideas, fosters interdisciplinary cooperation, and creates a cohesive framework for advancing the university's research and innovation mission. 



Bradley Hoot, 

Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages, Director
2022-2023 Fellow

Bradley Hoot
"This Fellowship has been a chance to have a positive impact on the institution while also learning more about research development and administration. I have enjoyed working with the team in ORS to create opportunities for scholars at DePaul."




As the 2023 Research and Innovation Leadership Fellow, Prof. Hoot worked to identify needs for professional development to support scholarship and creative activities and to propose initiatives to meet those needs. He interviewed more than sixty research leaders at DePaul, conducted a quantitative survey with 350 faculty respondents, and compared DePaul’s programming with benchmark institutions. As a result of this data collection, he identified four major needs: resources and procedural improvements, connection and collaboration, professional development and skillbuilding, and improved information flow. To address these needs, he proposed eight concrete programs, including a revamped ORS newsletter, a faculty advisory board for research development, collaboration events, and webinars. These proposals are being incorporated into the ORS strategic plan, and Prof. Hoot has worked on creating materials and laying the groundwork to launch them.

The data collected for this project has already informed work by the Office of Continuous Improvement and ORS in several areas, and in the next year it will result in some concrete new programs being piloted, including a webinar series and learning community program. In the longer term, the impact of this work is that it will shape the ORS strategic plan, which will guide the office’s development for the next three years. Its data-driven program proposals help ORS respond to the areas of most pressing needs as expressed by faculty themselves, and the inclusion of concrete initiatives helps make the strategic plan more actionable.



Kathryn Ibata-Arens, 

Vincent DePaul Professor in the Department of Political Science 
2021-2022 Fellow

Kathryn Ibata-Arens
"I am enjoying meeting and collaborating with key university stakeholders supporting faculty scholarship and the recognition of our faculty engaged in mission-informed research tied to community service. This includes faculty and staff in the Office of Research Services, Faculty Scholarship Collaborative in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, University Library, and Office of Public Relations and Communications, among others."

We are designing and pilot testing a data analytic framework to identify and support faculty scholarship based on a comprehensive data list of keywords that faculty have used to describe their research and scholarly activities. We plan to visualize thematic and other clusters of DePaul faculty scholarship using the visualization tools in Tableau and other data analytic platforms to share with internal and external audiences. Prospective students, current students, and our alumni might learn about current faculty activities through the presentation of such data graphics in an easy to read yet data rich format.

Well, we are still at the early stages of this proof-of-concept aiming to develop new ways to support faculty research and scholarship. In the short term, we hope to identify nascent clusters of faculty scholarship, for example identifying faculty who share similar interests in helping improve human health from different data- natural- and social- science perspectives. Once certain thematic clusters are identified we might in the long term strategize how to match potential sources of external funds to sub-clusters of faculty. Another outcome of the project is to recognize and communicate – using data and infographics – the important contributions our faculty are making to DePaul’s Vincentian mission, here in Chicago and globally.



Marty Martin, 
Professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship 
2021-2022 Fellow

Marty Martin
"The best part of being a fellow is to serve as a catalyst to initiate and strengthen our existing efforts in the areas of creative activities, research, scholarship and innovation. The other part that is enjoyable is to seek to create a structure, system and process that continues beyond my time as a Fellow. Finally, working with old and new colleagues at DePaul but beyond DePaul has been a joy."

The overarching aim of the project is to expand and strengthen the existing innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization ecosystem at DePaul along with key partners ranging from the Illinois Science & Technology Institute to Sinai Urban Health Institute. Specifically, this project focuses upon what happens in the classroom and outside the classroom. Furthermore, this project emphasizes how research and scholarship can be translated into opportunities for commercialization.

At the six-month mark, most of the achievements to date are process outcomes such as updating the 2014 Report of the Task Force on Technology Transfer to partnering with key stakeholders at DePaul and Rosalind Franklin University to envision a joint focus on life sciences innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

A sample of other notable achievements include the following:

• Design of a coaching process for select AGIF fellows as a pilot
• Development of a course on “Health & Life Sciences Entrepreneurship” at the undergraduate level to be taught in the Spring of 2022
• Facilitation of interactive sessions with DePaul faculty and staff focusing on futurism and strategic visioning
• Collaboration with ORS colleagues to launch the first Lunch n’ Learn Series
• Meet with the Deans to identify internal best practices in the areas of innovation, creative activities, research and scholarship
• Work across schools and colleges to formalize some of the informal connections as a way of bringing more focused talent and resources to challenges and opportunities which span the boundaries of schools and colleges
• Partnership with Sinai Urban Health and Rush Center on Community Health Equity to incorporate entrepreneurship into their respective missions, programs and services