Novel Medical Imaging
Alexey Tonyushkin, Ph.D., conducts research in instrumentation and clinical applications of Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI). MPI is an emerging biomedical imaging technique similar to Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), but it has the potential to meet clinical and research needs without the risks of ionizing radiation or toxic tracers. This makes it valuable for cancer detection and staging. Traditionally, medical imaging advancements have relied on major technological innovations to bring new modalities into clinical use. For instance, MRI required superconducting magnets to become a practical diagnostic tool. Superconducting technology solved the problem of high power needs for scanning. Unlike MRI, MPI cannot use superconducting technology for its rapidly switching magnetic fields; this results in high power demands for typical whole-body scanners. Through his research, Dr. Tonyushkin and his team address these challenges with innovative approaches in physics, engineering and imaging techniques to develop a highly sensitive, non-invasive tool for breast cancer diagnosis. This could improve biopsy accuracy and long-term treatment outcomes, significantly impacting women’s health.

Electric Vehicles and AI
Electric vehicles (EVs) are projected to make up 31% of the global fleet by 2050, with each vehicle reducing over 3,000 kg of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Despite considerable development over the past decade, EVs continue to face challenges related to driving range, thermal efficiency and the environmental impact associated with retired EV batteries. To address these issues, the ELectrified and Intelligent Systems Automation (ELISA) Lab at Oakland University focuses on developing advanced AI and control techniques to improve the efficiency, safety and comfort of EVs, and more broadly, intelligent cyber-physical systems. Led by Jun Chen, Ph.D., the ELISA Lab is developing innovative model predictive control and reinforcement learning-based algorithms, with applications in battery state estimation, balancing control, thermal management and second-life EV batteries. This research contributes to the advancement of control theory, optimization, artificial intelligence and statistics.

Environmental Flow Modeling
The vast majority of flows that occur in nature and engineering are extremely complex. They often include several types of interconnected physics and many contain more than a single state of matter — for example, the solid particles that are expelled out of a volcano along with its hot gas or the conversion of solid agricultural waste or microalgae into biofuels. Because these systems are intrinsically difficult to study, models that predict them have historically fallen short. To address this, Sarah Beetham, Ph.D., and her team leverage high performance computing and data-driven modeling techniques to both advance our understanding and develop improved models for complex flows of environmental and societal importance. In particular, her lab’s current research focus is on predicting the most hazardous volcanic process (pyroclastic density currents) and developing models to guide increasingly efficient algae production for biodiesel feedstock.

Studying Traditional Cultures of Health
As a health researcher, Deidre Hurse, Ph.D., examines the influence of social and cultural factors on health. Her recent area of focus is on African American communities, particularly among descendants of West and Central Africans in the coastal South. Her work highlights how traditions like plant-based healing, food sovereignty, spiritual practices and kinship networks have supported well-being across generations. Currently, Dr. Hurse is leading a study titled Rooted in Resilience: Exploring Health and Heritage in Gullah Geechee Communities. Through in-depth interviews with members of the Gullah Geechee community, she gathers stories and perspectives on how health and heritage are intertwined. Rather than focusing on gaps or deficits, her research highlights the resilience and health protective practices embedded in cultural identity. Elevating these traditions will promote respectful health care practices and inclusive public health policy, preserving the legacy of healing in Black communities as a foundation for health equity.

Mathematics Identity
As an educator, Dawn M. Woods, Ph.D., noticed that many PK-16 students have few opportunities to engage in learning experiences supporting them to identify as doers of mathematics, characterized by seeing sense in mathematics, perceiving it as useful, and believing that steady effort in learning mathematics pays off. Because of this, her research is twofold: understanding the role mathematics identity (i.e., one’s participation in and across activities in mathematical learning spaces and the sense one makes of oneself in relation to these activities) plays in the learning of mathematics; and supporting pre- and in-service teachers to design and enact equitable high-quality mathematics instruction. Currently, Dr. Woods is working on a five-year National Science Foundation funded project, entitled “Sparking ‘Number Talks’ to Strengthen Mathematical Identities.” In collaboration with students, families, and school and community partners, Woods leverages everyday, out-of-school activities to design number talks (i.e., 10-to-15 minute math discussions where students mentally solve mathematics problems and share their mathematical reasoning) fostering the growth of students’ mathematical identities and skills.

Genome Evolution
Taras K. Oleksyk, Ph.D., focuses on genomics, evolutionary genetics and comparative genomics, with a particular interest in genome evolution and its implications for adaptation and disease. Through all these efforts, connected by genomics and bioinformatics data analysis, Dr. Oleksyk wants to understand diversity in the context of recent human evolution and contribute to personalized medicine. His training was in analyzing genome diversity in admixed populations, contributing to analyses identifying candidate genes through GWAS and admixture scans. His collaborations with the 1000 Genomes Project and the 1+ Million Genomes Initiatives led to population genomic studies in Puerto Rico and Ukraine, highlighting the potential for novel genetic discoveries in understudied regions. Currently, Oleksyk’s lab develops genomic research in Eastern European countries to uncover genetic factors influencing Type 1 diabetes, aiming to improve disease prediction and therapy. Additionally, he is dedicated to the genetics of endangered species, using genome assembly, variant analysis, and selection scans in both wild and domesticated animals to help design conservation strategies.

Medical Imaging
Compared to other medical imaging methods, ultrasound is widely considered to be low-cost and portable. However, it requires significant training and expertise to collect and interpret these images with high accuracy, limiting where and how ultrasound is used in medicine. Therefore, the goal of the Medical Acoustics for Global Health, Imaging, and Clinical translation (MAGIC) lab at Oakland University is to use engineering to improve the availability and quality of ultrasound and other similar imaging methods. To accomplish this, Alycen Wiacek, Ph.D., and her team are developing innovative signal processing and artificial intelligence-based algorithms and applying them to real and simulated patient data. The applications for their technologies are still expanding and currently include pain free breast cancer screening, noninvasive visualization and characterization of blood clots, methods to guide physical therapy treatment, and improved biopsy accuracy with augmented reality. Overall, her work has the potential to change the places and ways that health care professionals can help patients, increasing access to high quality, noninvasive medical imaging technologies.

Organic Chemistry
Ngong Kodiah Beyeh, Ph.D., conducts research that focuses on structural, organic, and supramolecular chemistry and bio materials. His team is particularly interested in utilizing weak bonds to connect and assemble soft hybrid polymeric materials with many applications. Current research focus includes; exploration of halogen bonding for the design of self-healing materials; identifying organic macrocyclic compounds as potential therapeutic agents for treating diseases such as cataracts; designing new protein-based materials to separate a range of pollutants from heavy metals to hazardous organics from water, and; using suitable organic macrocycles as dispersants for petroleum asphaltenes to help facilitate the flow and transportation of petroleum products. All projects sit at the chemistry, polymer science, materials science and biology interface.

Autism and Trace Elements
Zijuan Liu, Ph.D. is interested in exploring the roles of biometal transporters in neurological disorders such as autism, dementia and Alzheimer's. Trace elements, including essential and toxic elements, such as zinc, manganese, arsenic, selenium, and copper, are closely associated with human diseases, and their brain access is tightly controlled by respective membrane transporters. Dr. Liu’s research focuses on the expression and regulation of these essential transporters under various neurological pathological conditions. Liu’s long-term goal is to discover prevention and therapeutic approaches for those hard-to-treat human diseases.

DNA Repair
Colin Wu, Ph.D., conducts lab research that focuses on the mechanisms of DNA repair. His lab is interested in understanding how repair proteins recognize and remove damaged DNA structures in human cells. Malfunctions of these proteins are associated with the early onset of genetic diseases including cancer and heart disease. However, there are many unclassified protein variants that have unknown health risks. Dr. Wu’s long-term goal is to develop novel strategies to identify and stratify variants that are especially harmful. By accomplishing this, he aspires to enhance the fundamental understanding of DNA repair proteins and ultimately contribute to the development of targeted interventions and treatments.

Behavior Analysis
Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) often engage in problem behavior, such as aggression or self-injury, to communicate their wants and needs. Michael Kranak, Ph.D., conducts translational and clinical research to help those individuals with IDD find their voice. Importantly, Dr. Kranak focuses on improving behavioral treatments for individuals with IDD so their treatment gains are long lasting in their natural environments, leading to the highest qualities of life possible. His work has been funded by both the NIH and contractually through local school districts.

Neurovascular Injury
Amany Tawfik, M.D., studies molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurovascular injury in retinopathies, including diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. In particular, the role of nutritional deficiencies, specifically folic acid and vitamin B12, and their relation with amino acid homocysteine in the impairment of vision. Dr. Tawfik uses basic research techniques to enhance the understanding of how elevated levels of homocysteine contribute to the development and progression of diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, the most common causes of blindness worldwide.

History
Erin Dwyer, Ph.D., is working on a project about slavery and poison in the Atlantic World, tentatively titled “Bitter to the Taste.” It builds on her first book, “Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States,” to further explore the emotional politics of fear, focusing on enslaved poisoners in the United States and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Bitter to the Taste” examines slaveholders’ anxieties about being poisoned by those they enslaved, including how these real and imagined fears manifested in culture, laws, courtrooms, and daily interactions between slaveholders and enslaved people.

Ghana Public Health
Dr. Sakyi’s current research seeks to develop a peer health intervention to support families of children with disabilities. The goal is to improve quality of life, increase access to services and reduce depression among families of children with disabilities in Ghana. Caregivers of children with a disability would be provided with training and resources to deliver counseling, deliver basic rehabilitation services, promote stigma reduction strategies and link families to resources.

Freshwater Ecology
Freshwaters such as wetlands, streams and rivers are hotspots for biodiversity that provide societies across the globe with indispensable goods and services. Increasingly, however, these ecosystems are impacted by human activities, reducing biodiversity and compromising the ability of freshwaters to provide vital ‘ecoservices’ such as clean drinking water, protein provisioning and recreation. Dr. Tiegs and his team in the Aquatic Ecology Lab employ fi eld-based experiments and observations to better understand how human activities impact freshwater ecosystems, and how undesired effects can be ameliorated through ecological restoration. Recent projects investigated the effects of warming on small streams in Iceland and Ecuador, the impacts of invasive snails on trout streams in the Great Lakes region and how light pollution alters freshwater and terrestrial insect communities in southeast Michigan.

The Michigan ELNEC Initiative
Dr. Glover is the principal investigator for The End of Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) undergraduate program, a Michigan initiative funded by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. The program will help 2,000 nursing students achieve the primary palliative care skills they need to enter professional practice. While almost every nurse will care for a dying patient at some point during their career, the need for primary palliative nursing care is vital. ELNEC undergraduate program was developed by experts to facilitate nursing student’s acquisition of primary palliative care competencies. Upon completion, nurses will have the requisite skills to care and advocate for patients with serious illness and their families.

Preparing Future Teachers
Dr. Ligocki’s research covers a wide range, from the need for critical media literacy in K12 schools, to the best approaches to preparing future teachers in becoming transformative educators. However, it all falls under the umbrella of making changes in education. Previous studies have focused on how young people engage with and understand all types of media and texts. Ligocki’s current work focuses more on what new teachers need in order to be successful in their first years of teaching, while also working to make changes in regard to systemic issues in formal education.

Bioethics and Philosophy
Dr. Navin’s work addresses ethics issues in public health and clinical medicine, and it often incorporates original social science research. Along with a colleague from University of Western Australia (Kaite Attwell), Navin is currently finishing a book for Oxford University Press about the ethics and politics of childhood vaccine mandates. He is also working on multiple papers about clinical decision making for people with cognitive disabilities or mental illness.

Neuroscience and Cerebrovascular Disorders
Dr. Cucullo’s research interests are largely focused on the cross interactions between the cellular elements of the neurovascular unit; the development of multidrug resistance at the blood-brain barrier (BBB); biomarkers of BBB disruption; environmental and cellular modulation of BBB functions, and their relevance to the onset of neuroinflammation, stroke/ischemia and the pathogenesis of secondary brain injury. In the past 10 years, his research has focused on characterizing the impact of chronic smoking and vaping on the cerebrovascular system and its potential impact on promoting neurological disorders and worsening the outcomes of brain injuries related to stroke, traumatic brain injury, neuroinflammation and, more recently, COVID-19.

Health Care Equity
Dr. Papadimitriou is a sociologist and medical rehabilitation researcher interested in how people with disabilities and their caregivers make meaning of their health care experiences. She uses what she learns from their experiences to develop more inclusive and collaborative health care practices. Dr. Papadimitriou works with multidisciplinary and interprofessional teams to study peer support — people with physical disabilities trained to support peers with disabilities to improve community participation and health care outcomes — and relationship-centered assessment — for persons experiencing disorders of consciousness due to brain injury to improve shared decision-making between health care providers and family caregivers. This work leads to greater shared benefits for persons with disabilities, their caregivers and health care providers.

Vision Health
Photoreceptors live in your retina, at the back of your eye, and they have a very distinct shape — without which healthy vision is impossible. Dr. Goldberg has devoted much of his career to studying the molecular basis for how this unique shape is achieved. One of the biggest challenges to treating diseases involving rods and cones (the two types of photoreceptors) has been a lack of understanding about their fundamental structure when healthy. By discovering how normal rod and cone structures are achieved, Dr. Goldberg and colleagues are laying the groundwork for the development of treatments that could be deployed much earlier in disease progression.

Electrochemical Transformations
Seeing is believing — Dr. Yang’s research focuses on developing platforms to visualize and probe electrochemical transformations on site and during operations. These platforms will integrate a range of advanced testing methodologies and characterization techniques to allow simultaneous visualization, sensing and analysis. With these in-situ (i.e., on site) and operando (i.e., during operations) platforms, Dr. Yang’s team aims to understand, predict and ultimately control energy materials and their electrochemical transformations in their native environments and at the most fundamental levels. This research will impact the design and performance of energy-storage devices, which are critical for many important technologies including portable electronics, transportations and integration of renewable energy.

Supramolecular Chemistry
Focusing on organic and biomaterial chemistry, Dr. Beyeh’s research team is particularly interested in using weak interactions to self-assemble soft hybrid polymeric materials with many applications. Dr. Beyeh’s current research focuses on the design of self-healing hybrid materials through halogen bonds, identifying cavity containing organic compounds as potential therapeutic agents for treating eye cataracts, designing new protein-based materials as water sensors for heavy metals and hazardous organics, and using special organic compounds as unique dispersants for petroleum asphaltenes, which can help mitigate crude oil transportation challenges. These projects sit at the chemistry, polymer science, materials science, and biology interface.

Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence
Dr. Malik’s research interests include trustworthy and decentralized neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity and health care. In cybersecurity, he focuses on developing forensic examiners for authenticity, integrity and veracity of audio and videos by using explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). He also works on hybrid cryptographic and generative AI models for secure group communication. In health care, he focuses on prediction of neurological disorders with focus on subarachnoid hemorrhage prediction, and infectious diseases using clinical text and medical imaging by using neuro-symbolic learning and automated knowledge graph generation, XAI and fairness-enabled AI, and federated learning. Dr. Malik’s research is supported by various international, federal and state agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Brain Aneurysm Foundation, and Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization Innovation Hub.

Biochemistry
Denha works in Adam Avery, Ph.D., lab, researching how mutations in a protein called ßIII-spectrin causes the neurodegenerative disease spinocerebellar ataxia type 5 (SCA5). SCA5 affects the cerebellum, which is responsible for balance and movement coordination. Understanding the underlying mechanism by which mutant ßIII-spectrin affects the normal function of the neurons helps in developing future therapeutics for the currently untreatable SCA5. To understand the disease mechanism, Denha employs a unique combination of assays ranging from biochemistry and biophysics, to fruit fly genetics.

Learn more about Denha's research.