Presenter(s): Ken Johnson
Session Block A, 11:05 AM - 11:30 AM
Location: 1170 West
Of the 7.8 billion people inhabiting the earth, one out of every nine are malnourished. By the year 2050, the population will increase to 9.7 billion, and predictions for global food security are dire.FlexFarm is an initial step toward solving nutrition and food security by 2050. It creates the ability to respond to hunger and malnutrition in any climate, any geographic setting, and any culture. The project includes the development of agricultural seeds and plants, maximized for nutrition and growth; configurable shipping containers; and FlexFarm system modules, which are wholly configurable and support a wide variety of plant types, heights, densities, and growing needs. FlexFarm can also handle a range of food quantity needs to feed population sizes from a single-family to an urban community. Because of technology, one container-based FlexFarm can produce more unspoiled fruits and vegetables in a year than an acre of traditional farmland. The system can be deployed to areas of urgent need, providing an already seeded and growing farm. The FlexFarm system is based on technology and concepts developed by our partners and extends that to meet the nutritional needs of any community in which it is placed.
Download whitepaper
Presenter(s): Peter March
Location: 2225 West
Intelligent tools are changing the world, our lives, and our work in expected and unexpected ways. They have led to advancements in our health, livelihood, and overall quality of life. At the same time, their misuse can have harmful individual and societal outcomes such as loss of privacy, algorithmic bias, group marginalization, and the propagation of misinformation. Today’s interconnected world requires intelligence in science and technology to simultaneously support growing needs and safeguard us from unintended consequences. Minds and Machines is a visionary interdisciplinary effort that will jointly push the frontiers of science and responsible innovation through intelligence to achieve the transformational advancements necessary for economic change and public good in a world with intelligent machines. It will build on existing strengths at Rutgers to position us as a hub in emerging areas of digital technology done in partnership with industry and government agencies, and through engagement with the general public. At the core of our work will be the education of the next generation of scientists, business people, and civic leaders who will play a crucial role in mitigating threats, meeting the challenges, and exploiting the social opportunities of a new era.
Presenter(s): Richard Marlink
Location: 2125 West
Globally, about 70 percent of cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. In Botswana, a middle-income African country, cancer mortality is almost 75 percent. There are minimal prevention and support services, long delays in detection and diagnosis, deficiencies in the availability of medications, unreliable data registries, and severe shortages in the specialty-trained health workforce.When the AIDS epidemic devastated Botswana in the 1990s, the country’s government responded by engaging with universities, foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and civil society. Through global partnerships, Botswana launched the first full-scale, national response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. This early demonstration played a significant role in the establishment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—a U.S. initiative that remains the most substantial financial commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history.Together with the Government of Botswana as well as schools and units across Rutgers and beyond, Rutgers Global Health Institute aims to help Botswana build Sub-Saharan Africa’s first national, comprehensive cancer care and prevention program. This program will save lives and create a new model for nationwide cancer care in other developing countries.
Presenter(s): Timothy K. Eatman
Location: 2400 East
In our knowledge economy, educational attainment is critical in determining our life’s trajectory. Yet inequality is rising as we lose promising young people, especially in our cities, and often because the lenses we use to see talent are clouded by tradition. College admissions practices are part of the problem, systematically eclipsing opportunities for many young people of promise. The HLLC at Rutgers-Newark engages these challenges directly, rethinking notions of merit and who is deserving of higher education to identify and cultivate our nation’s diverse talent pool. It models how to intensify the admissions process to look much deeper into student potential than is possible using traditional methods and offers a curriculum honoring the vast array of talents, skills, and knowledge that diverse new generations of students—especially from Newark and its metropolitan area—have to offer. Pivoting on the theme “local citizenship in a global world,” the HLLC challenges its Scholars with a robust 18-credit interdisciplinary curriculum focused on social justice, grounded in problem solving side by side with partners in the community. This session presents the HLLC vision and strategy including narratives about its evolution and achievements.
Presenter(s): Ravit Golan Duncan
Location: 4225 East
A thriving society depends on evidence. Democratic decision making, public policy, personal health choices: all depend critically on citizens sharing and using evidence effectively. Democracies depend on informed policies, a bipartisan aim captured in Madison’s appeal that citizens rest their arguments on facts, instead of assertions and conjectures. In today’s digital world, the use of evidence is imperiled. The lack of shared standards for evaluating evidence enables the spread of false narratives that deepen social and political polarization and thwart solutions to threats like global conflicts, inequality, and climate change.This Big Idea will make Rutgers a local, national, and global hub for research, education, and outreach that enables evidence-based decision making. The Institute brings together researchers in policy, education, communications, science, and medicine to develop and disseminate interdisciplinary tools and strategies that advance the shared use of evidence. Our combined expertise will empower people to make better personal and collective decisions and overcome partisan barriers through the shared use of evidence. The Institute’s breakthroughs will strengthen our democracy, contribute to change on all levels of society, and enable Rutgers to deepen its engagement with a range of societal issues.
Presenter(s): Cyril Reade & Kenneth Elliott
Location: 2160 West
Communities thrive where there is a vibrant arts scene: the Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts (VMPA) and the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts (RCCA) are proposing an arts complex to serve as an educator, incubator and presenter for all of South Jersey. Funded by public/private partnerships and incorporating various revenue streams, this arts complex will provide an essential cultural thrust to the current institutional and corporate reinvestment in the City of Camden.VMPA and RCCA are strengthening traditional approaches and expanding digital facilities for all the arts: animation, art history, dance, film, graphic design, museum studies, music, painting, photography, sculpture, and theater. Investment in graduate programs and educational and community resources will ensure innovative cross-pollination across the disciplines. The expansion of presentation capabilities in art galleries, concert halls, and theaters will provide professional and technical opportunities for program graduates and city residents. New facilities will allow community groups to incubate their ideas and present productions in the arts, making the campus civic engagement spirit an integral component of the arts complex.
Presenter(s): Stephen Crystal
Location: 1180 East
Since 2013, overdose deaths have exceeded those from auto accidents, suicide, and homicide. Each day, an estimated 192 Americans die of drug overdoses, most from opioids. For the first time since World War 1, the US has seen a decline in life expectancy for three years running—and opioids are a heavily contributing factor. Opioid overdoses now claim more lives annually than HIV/AIDS did at the height of that epidemic. New Jersey has been hit hard by the opioid crisis. In 2018, overdose rates skyrocketed more than 34 percent over 2017, resulting in an estimated 3,118 deaths. But there is hope. At Rutgers, we have the expertise, tools, and platform to combat opioid dependence. Our long-term vision is to create the Center for Substance Abuse Health Services and Policy Research, which would serve as a central source of research to eradicate the opioid crisis, grow healthier communities, and create systemic change. By launching a stakeholder-engaged research program, we can address the challenge at state and national levels. The center will harness talents from a multidisciplinary cohort of research and clinical experts, and establish a grand partnership with state governments, health systems, and community leaders to shape public policy. Support for this endeavor provides an opportunity to make a transformational impact on one of the most urgent social and health issues of our time.
Presenter(s): Alexander Gates
Session Block B, 11:45 AM - 12:10 PM
Climate change and rising seas have put our coastal cities in peril, a current reality as major storms strike with growing frequency—especially in cities surrounded by water or located by the region’s abundant waterways, such as Manhattan, Newark, Hoboken, Long Island. These increasingly vulnerable areas contain some of the costliest real estate and busiest transportation hubs in the country.Dr. Alexander Gates and Dr. Kevin Lyons propose a unique partnership among business, science, and policy to create the Urban Coastal Climate Change Institute: a multidisciplinary initiative to examine climate change in the context of economics, population, land usage, and resources. Protective strategies are essential for the well-being of affected communities and regional/national economies. Right now, they are being studied globally but less so on a regional basis. The institute will build critical collaborations and offer strategies to address threats on a block-by-block, lot-by-lot level to mitigate the consequences and minimize personal or financial disruption. The institute will be a forward-modeling center to predict impacts and promote resiliency, enabling stakeholders to address threats in the most effective, safest, and cost-efficient manner.
Presenter(s): Christopher Cartmill
We are living at an extraordinary moment in human history, comparable to the Gutenberg Revolution, which laid the groundwork for the modern world. To meet the challenges we face and seize the opportunities at hand, we must embrace and integrate creativity, connection, and innovation. Rutgers is a leading research university. At the Mason Gross School of the Arts, we believe in arts as research. We embody creativity. We cultivate connection, and we are intent on innovation. We propose the creation of a vibrant incubator for groundbreaking collaboration, experimentation, and expression in areas such as arts-supported scientific research, medical applications, emerging media in a constantly changing digital landscape as well as new performance and design technologies and utilities. We propose a center where ideas, actions, artists, and innovators meet: a hotbed for interdisciplinary investigation and collaboration, where we more powerfully model for our students the values of intellectual flexibility, imaginative play, and boundary-breaking entrepreneurship. The center will be a home for creative conversation, an archive of shared ideas, and a platform for transformative practice that sets Rutgers University at the center of 21st-century innovation.
Presenter(s): Courtney McAnuff
Location: 2225 East
The time is now. Amid continuing concern about college preparation, the high cost of higher education, student debt, and underemployment of new graduates, there is no better investment than in the future of our students.The pieces exist. Rutgers University—New Brunswick is an academic powerhouse with a uniquely diverse student body. We are the home to groundbreaking research and have unparalleled connection to industry. We have nationally-acclaimed college access programs and graduate high financial-need students at rates higher than our peers.The opportunity is clear. Dreams Fulfilled partners with donors to alter the trajectory of students’ lives through college preparation (as early as 4th grade), affordability (tuition grants and low-interest loans), decreased time to graduation (learning assistance and support) and increased career outcomes (internships, experiential learning, job placement).Let’s change the world. Dreams Fulfilled transforms the student experience, promotes diversity and inclusion, and empowers a generation to flourish. It propels Rutgers-New Brunswick to be an exemplar in higher education and become the standard against which other universities compare. It shifts the state’s economy and ensures industry looks to Rutgers as an incubator for the nation’s best talent.
Presenter(s): Brian C. Chu
Over 20 percent of youth and young adults in the United States will have a serious psychological disorder over their lifetime. Developmental and mental health conditions contribute to lower school achievement, increased strain on the child welfare system, and higher demands on the juvenile justice system. Only 25 to 30 percent of youths in need of mental health care services receive treatment. Barriers include lack of insurance coverage, high cost of treatment and medications, inadequate treatment resources, stigma, and poverty. The Rutgers University Institute for Youth Social Emotional Wellness will address these needs. Four collaborating university units—University Behavior Health Care, the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, the School of Education and the School of Social Work—are creating an interdisciplinary service, research, and training center to transform how youth mental wellness is addressed in New Jersey and beyond. This institute aims to become a scientific center of excellence that employs the best evidence-based practices in treatment, training, and dissemination of knowledge to address the mental health of our most vulnerable children and adolescents.
Presenter(s): Jill Friedman
Imagine being arrested, fingerprinted, searched, and locked in a jail cell. Then imagine being tried, convicted, and sentenced to decades in prison—for a crime you never committed. This nightmare is a reality for hundreds of people in New Jersey who are completely innocent but were convicted based on faulty evidence or law enforcement misconduct.Under the most conservative estimate, there are potentially 200 or more wrongfully convicted, imprisoned individuals in the Garden State. The Innocence Project, the iconic organization dedicated to freeing innocent people, has affiliated organizations in every state except New Jersey. We aim to change that.Wrongful incarceration of innocent people has devastating impacts on individuals, families, communities, and the larger society. Startling national statistics also indicate it disproportionately affects communities of color. And there is a compelling need for advocacy on behalf of the wrongfully incarcerated who lack the resources to prove their innocence.The mission of the Rutgers Innocence Project would be to seek the exoneration, release from prison, and restoration to society of persons who are innocent and have been wrongly convicted, and to provide practical training and experience to students in the fields of law, criminal justice, forensic science, and social work.
Presenter(s): Steven R. Brant
Experts from Rutgers University, physicians, nurses, and scientists, representing multiple disciplines from a variety of backgrounds, have set out to address a health epidemic — adolescent obesity.The World Health Organization has identified childhood and adolescent obesity as one of the greatest public health threats of the 21st Century. Obesity is associated with an array of life-threatening physical and psychological consequences, and places an enormous burden on the healthcare system, with estimated costs of $150 billion annually.Our experts believe as children enter adolescence, they begin to think independently and have more control over their behavior. With the creation of the Rutgers Obesity Institute, our experts can help change the lives of adolescent patients during a unique window of opportunity for intervention to reverse obesity.The team at the Institute will investigate and develop innovative treatment options that can be initiated at the bedside, translating newly gained knowledge into clinical practice. Such an interdisciplinary approach will enhance the understanding of clinicians worldwide about obesity and provide the scientific basis to better manage, and hopefully prevent, extreme obesity and the associated complications more effectively
Presenter(s): Stephanie Bonne
The ability of providers to measure and refine processes and outcomes of care has catalyzed recent success in medical care. To date, however, almost all systematic data collection is limited to results that occur in the hospital. Data collection relevant to outcomes after discharge is limited to small studies, such that it is impossible to understand how care can be modified to improve the quality of life following an illness.The focus on reducing disability and improving quality of life has paralleled a growing consensus that patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are vital to the assessment of quality and value from the patient perspective. PROMs are instruments completed by patients to provide information on aspects of health status relevant to the quality of life, including physical, mental, and social health. While current data infrastructure focuses on in-hospital complications or mortality, it is only PROMs that define a good outcome as experienced by the patient.The Rutgers Institute for Patient-Centered Outcomes in Healthcare will create an institute to widely collect PROMs, study best practices and quality improvement, and integrate PROMs into the fabric of the teaching infrastructure, creating a generation of healthcare providers focused on patient-centered outcomes
Presenter(s): Salamishah Tillet
Session Block C, 12:25 PM - 12:50 PM
Express Newark is a Big Idea, conceived as a university community arts center and incubator, a “third space,” where the university and community come together with equal voices and experiences. It is an institution in which art is valued for making spaces more creative, and for its ability to amplify marginalized voices, elevate critical issues, and foster community well-being and civic participation. This Big Idea addresses many of Rutgers’ strategic priorities. Express Newark’s robust, creative, and collaborative initiatives advance RU-N’s role as an “anchor” institution in Newark while promoting the city’s vibrant cultural and artistic communities. Currently, Express Newark is a place in which artists, students, faculty, and community members come together to collaborate on place-based outcomes and creatively address society’s most pressing challenges and most needed opportunities. Our dynamic partnerships with New Jersey’s premier cultural institutions such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark Public Library, Newark Museum, and Newark Arts High School has enabled Express Newark—within a short period of two years—to emerge as one of the Newark’s cornerstone art institutions.
Presenter(s): Alberto Cuitino
Hyper Personalized Smart Manufacturing (HPSM) is the emerging, exciting, and promising opportunity to sustainably manufacture one-of-a-kind products which incorporate personalized data in the manufacturing process. HPSM is only imaginable through the confluence of two mega-trends: Smart Manufacturing and Hyper-Personalized Data. HPSM will be a disruptive force forging new technologies, seeding distinct research needs, and posing new educational challenges. Rutgers has significant footprints in all related critical disciplines including manufacturing, robotics, automation, sensing, controls, smart materials, wireless communications, artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity and supply chain to tackle this unique opportunity. The Rutgers HPSM consortium will be established to focus on: 1) developing cutting-edge research programs which leverage the current investments and expertise in 3D and 4D printing, pharmaceuticals, 5G communication, digital twin, and artificial intelligence among others; and 2) nucleating industry and government towards ecosystems for economic development, entrepreneurial endeavors, and educational programs. This consortium will serve as an engine for creating new high-tech jobs which address unique environments in large metropolitan areas.
Presenter(s): Kimberlee S. Moran
The Rutgers University Crime Lab Unit (RU-CLU), a Rutgers-based, multi-agency forensic lab, will provide shared, streamlined services for Camden County and other New Jersey stakeholders—a one-stop-shop for the region’s crime investigation needs. Our goal is to provide real-time forensic testing in the areas of fingerprinting, firearms identification, forensic toxicology and chemistry, trace evidence, DNA identification, and forensic anthropology. We also will partner with the Rutgers Innocence Project to provide investigative assistance to public defenders.Our first services will begin in 2021 (fingerprints, toxicology, DNA), and a physical lab established by 2023 will add trace, firearms, drugs, and pathology testing.Not only will RU-CLU present an opportunity to practically serve the citizens of New Jersey, but it will also leverage external collaborations to fuel research, public policy, and opportunities for students to learn in a real-world environment through experience.The physical and visible presence of the RU-CLU building will be reassuring to residents and visitors, demonstrating that crime is being solved in Camden promptly. For prospective perpetrators of crimes, the unit will act as a deterrent. Studies have shown that the fear of getting caught is the most effective crime prevention tool.
Presenter(s): M. Maral Mouradian
Neurological disorders are the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of death worldwide. While the global burden of these diseases will continue to rise in the coming decades, no adequate treatments much less cures are available for many of them. RCN3D aims to address this unmet need. The most promising, innovative, and high-impact fundamental discoveries in the biomedical sciences come from academic research laboratories. Unfortunately, many of these discoveries go untested for their therapeutic value due to the capital and time required to discover and develop new drugs. By investing in early stages of the drug development life cycle that pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to undertake in-house, Rutgers is poised to leverage its organizational commitment to heal and its multidisciplinary intellectual capital to be a drug discovery powerhouse centrally located in the most densely populated bio-pharma region in the nation. Learn how RCN3D will fuel the region’s economic engine and change the landscape of drug discovery and development by accelerating the translation of scientific discoveries into therapies, forging industry partnerships, and fast-tracking commercialization of treatments to directly impact human health globally.
Presenter(s): Sunita G. Kramer
Rutgers is uniquely positioned to create a bold and new undergraduate experience that bridges innovation-minded faculty, the industry ecosystem that surrounds Rutgers, and students gearing up to change the world. The experience, titled Rutgers Research and Innovation Academy, will equip students with the skills to tackle the most critical problems of today and tomorrow. First- and second-year students will work alongside some of the most creative minds in academia and industry who have dedicated their lives to addressing the world’s grand challenges. The new Rutgers cohort will learn how to approach these challenges through the lens of a scientist, policymaker, and entrepreneur. Through team-based problem solving, they will draw on the strengths of each other’s backgrounds, majors, and perspectives. In its culminating act, the academy will offer the students hands-on experience by working with the most innovative companies and organizations in these spaces. Innovation academy graduates will be highly sought after for their aptitude at navigating and adapting to the ever-changing world around them.
Presenter(s): Carl Van Horn
Sweeping changes driven by innovations in technology are altering the way we work. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and intelligent machines that automate work functions pose critical challenges for individuals, employers, and institutions. This ambitious initiative aims to create innovative processes, practice, and technology to ensure that everyone can thrive in this future of work.Rapid technology-driven changes are causing significant dislocations of workers across all ages, education, and income levels. These changes also create opportunities to design new forms of work and career paths resulting from human-machine convergence. Our society must adopt more agile education and training strategies and more effective approaches to worker involvement in technology development and implementation. Our employment-based social safety net and employment laws must be reformed. Transportation and housing must be better aligned with where and how work is performed.A cross-disciplinary team of scholars from some of Rutgers’ leading research centers will lead the Future of Work Initiative. Our goal is to develop solutions that prepare the nation and the next generation of learners for a world in which work is increasingly defined by AI and human-machine convergence
Presenter(s): Maria Laura Gennaro
We strive to create the much-needed New Jersey Lung Health Institute (NJLHI), a new center of excellence that will make all of New Jersey breathe better. At NJLHI, health providers and scholars will work together with New Jersey communities to identify their lung health needs and to find causes and cures for their lung diseases. They will use cutting-edge technologies to test hypotheses by collecting and analyzing data from large segments of the population of New Jersey. NJLHI will create a new flow of communication to bring down barriers that too often separate different medical specialties and isolate health professionals from community leaders, educators, and policymakers. Our scientific discoveries will not take place in laboratories separated from the rest of the world. NJLHI has the vision to provide knowledge to the citizens of New Jersey—so that implementable solutions are found, public money gets used to address real needs, and communities and experts join in a common cause for better standards of life.Our Big Idea champion is Dr. Maria Laura Gennaro, who is leading an interdisciplinary team of health providers and scholars in biomedical, environmental, and social sciences across Rutgers University and from collaborating universities worldwide.
Presenter(s): James Brown
Session Block D, 2:15 PM - 2:40 PM
We might assume that as technology gets smaller and smarter, and data sets get larger, it becomes easier to address societal inequalities. Cheaper devices are accessible to those with fewer resources, smarter technology doesn’t require expert knowledge, and large datasets provide insight into severe problems. Unfortunately, while technology has helped us address specific issues, it has often contributed to inequalities. The Digital Equality initiative would address this issue by studying how digital technologies affect the equal distribution of resources and skills and by advocating for policies and design solutions to address inequality.In the 19th Century, Rutgers’ was designated a land-grant university so that its research and teaching in agriculture and engineering could directly benefit New Jerseyans. The Digital Equality Initiative updates that mission for the 21st century by identifying data as a public good and digital skills as crucial to civic life. We will study how access to technologies and capabilities can and do affect both urban and rural communities in South Jersey. In keeping with our Jersey Roots, Global Reach motto, this initiative sees South Jersey as an ideal local laboratory to study this global issue.
Presenter(s): Liping Zhao
Humans sustain a mutualistic relationship with their microbes, collectively called the microbiome. The diversity in the human microbiome is decreasing due to dramatic changes in lifestyle and exposures to toxicity in modern life. Many of us no longer harbor a microbiome that supports optimal health, which may be driving the rapid rise of more than 50 kinds of chronic diseases that plague society today.To save healthy microbiomes before they disappear forever, we will foster—in collaboration with universities across the world—regional collections of human microbiomes, which will serve as a cornerstone for conservation and research. We will identify the nutritional needs of microbiomes, and accordingly, develop a sustainable “from field to table” food system that provides personalized nutrition to support the healthy gut microbiomes of different peoples around the world. We will develop novel ways to “re-seed and restore” the healthy microbiome for patients who have lost it. We will develop novel microbiome-based methods for health assessment and monitoring to maximize a healthy human lifespan.This Big Idea will strengthen Rutgers as a world leader in the emerging field of microbiome science for changing the health of current and future generations of humans.
Presenter(s): Ted Baker
New Brunswick/ Newark
As more people move to cities and the gap between rich and poor grows larger, urban areas are increasingly home to grand challenges of poverty, education, health and nutrition. We study how entrepreneurs respond to resource constraints and structural disadvantage and create prosocial ventures that improve their communities and the circumstance of the people who live in them. RAISED provides an engaged entrepreneurship research platform to increase this activity and spur social mobility, with projects in the US, Africa and Latin America. We are a small group of researchers and doctoral students creating a community across disciplines at RU-N as the core of a global network of engaged scholars. We aim to make RAISED a Newark-centered but global institute producing fundamental and applied research and bringing our work to bear through scholarly and practice publications, teaching and hands-on new venture support. Our proposed strategy imagines investments in: creation of a global scholars program, research funding, student fellowships, two additional endowed chairs, support for teaching “entrepreneurship across the curriculum,” the Urban Solutions Lab at the HLLC and a Social Innovation Lab supporting the creation and growth of Newark-based prosocial ventures.
Presenter(s): Lara Delmolino Gatley
Autism prevalence in NJ is the highest in the nation, at 1 in 34 children. Despite advances in the field, individuals with autism do not have equal access to effective treatment and critical resources. Adults, racial and ethnic minorities, economically challenged communities, and individuals with severe and complex needs are under-served and under-represented in research. We aim to accelerate the development of services, training, and research specifically focused on the most challenging and under-served people with autism, their families, and their communities. It is our vision that Rutgers can, as one of NJ’s largest employers, create an inclusive environment where people with autism can be employed and thrive. As the premier public university in NJ, Rutgers can provide an inclusive educational environment for college students with autism. As a leading research institution, Rutgers can ensure that basic, biomedical, and applied researchers develop study procedures to include the full range of age and severity in their work. And, in service to our NJ communities, prepare a workforce of professionals trained to support these underserved groups. Through this Big Idea, Rutgers—and New Jersey—can establish a new national and international benchmark for autism research, services, and training.
Presenter(s): Brian Buckley
The World Trade Center attack, Hurricanes Sandy and Maria, and the Deep Water Horizon oil spill are examples of disasters that garnered substantial attention due to the rapid nature in which they destroyed lives and communities. Although disasters vary in type and complexity, all secondary response efforts require a risk assessment, intervention, and research to restore normalcy, bolster economic recovery, and prevent and reduce health risks from toxic exposures, physical risks, and psycho-social stressors. Learn how Rutgers is uniquely qualified to create the first comprehensive disaster response initiative in the nation; bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of toxicologists and exposure scientists, biomedical and structural engineers, environmental biologists, global health experts, medical practitioners, local community partners, and disaster response agencies to make a tangible impact on the lives of those affected by large-scale disasters. In line with Rutgers’ vision to improve human health and build sustainable communities, RuDRI will change the paradigm of traditional secondary disaster response by creating self-reliant communities, evaluating real-time health risks, aiding environmental and economic recovery, and building health equity in cities around the world.
Presenter(s): Sohail Contractor
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming medicine by changing the way healthcare professionals not only deliver patient care but also improving its efficiency and quality. While many think that AI will replace clinicians, the opposite is true. AI’s power rests in its ability to support clinicians by quickly accessing patient data to help doctors create patient-specific treatment plans and speeding up administrative tasks such as note-taking and inputting labs orders. Aiding doctors in this way allows them more face to face time with their patients.Rutgers is uniquely positioned to harness its vast resources—state-of the art research centers, two medical schools, and an award-winning and renowned faculty—to create a multidisciplinary center for AI applications in medicine.Dr. Sohail Contractor will focus on the current state of AI in medicine and propose the creation of an Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. By uniting professionals in the field of computer science, bioengineering, radiology, pathology and cardiology, Contractor and his colleagues aim to study specific questions about AI in medicine and combine their efforts to create groundbreaking solutions whose impact could reach worldwide.
Presenter(s): Perry N. Halkitis & Leslie M. Kantor
Structural and social inequities fuel health inequities, which lead to health disparities. Newark, the state’s largest city, is the ideal location for creating an urban public health model that addresses the macro-determinants of health—how family, neighborhood, and community protect or undermine the health of a population—and for partnering with communities to design interventions to mitigate these social burdens. Through this model, the university, city, businesses, and government will share data and work together rather than staying in their silos. The vision is a four-pronged approach: 1) train health leaders within target communities to enact science and practice, 2) bring university resources to bear in education, research, and programs, 3) expand data analysis to empower communities, and 4) design health approaches in partnership with communities to create adaptive interventions that are meaningful to the people whose lives they are intended to affect. The ultimate goal is to develop an urban health paradigm that improves health outcomes and can be used as a model in cities throughout the state and country.
Presenter(s): Denis Paré
Session Block E, 2:55 PM - 3:20 PM
Neuropsychiatric disorders like Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) disproportionally affect economically disadvantaged urban residents because their expression strongly depends on adverse environmental factors. The widespread occurrence of these factors among African Americans is thought to explain why their incidence of AD is nearly twice that of white Americans. Similarly, PTSD is precipitated by traumatic experiences and often leads to substance abuse. These disorders also impact caregivers and children, promoting transmission of neglect across generations. The NBHEI will address the problems caused by AD and PTSD in Newark using a multi-pronged approach including research on disease mechanisms, education campaigns and mental health interventions that can help people now as well as public policy analysis and advocacy. To make this possible, Dr. Paré has assembled a multidisciplinary team of researchers, scholars, and community activists who are committed to achieving NBHEI’s vision of justice. The NBHEI promises to revolutionize how research interacts with community advocacy to address the mental health problems that plague urban centers.
Presenter(s): XinQi Dong
The idealized concept of “aging gracefully” is something to strive for, but getting older is associated with a variety of issues. Imagine having a resource in New Jersey that supports and enhances research into evidence-based practice methods focused on older adults. The Rutgers Center for Healthy Aging will ensure the most vulnerable population has access to the best clinical care and services available in New Jersey and the nation. While New Jersey may rank among the top for wealth, the state fares much worse in health-related rankings. The state places 50th for hospital admissions, 34th for preventable hospitalizations, and 48th in primary care providers to populations. Older adults are disproportionately affected by these outcomes. According to the 2017 US Census, 19.45 percent of the state’s population—1,353,999 people—are considered older adults. This statistic indicates that one-fifth of the state’s population is at risk of receiving inadequate health care. Rutgers’ aging experts are spread across campuses and disciplines, limiting knowledge transfer or combined efforts. By establishing the Center for Healthy Aging, Rutgers will have a collaborative, multidisciplinary network to help shape policies and positively impact population health both in New Jersey and throughout the nation.
Residents of Newark face a 40 percent higher rate of premature death compared to those in other parts of New Jersey. The rate of diabetes is skyrocketing in a Mexican community in New Brunswick. Nearly one in three elementary school children has asthma in Camden. New Jersey is facing myriad health inequities that are preventing residents from living their healthiest life: especially those in the most impoverished communities.These health inequities need innovative, community-based efforts to create meaningful solutions. Solutions that tackle not only medical challenges but also intractable root causes of poor health, such as housing instability, lack of transportation, or living in a neighborhood without an affordable supermarket. For these solutions to be successful, it’s crucial to involve entities that know these problems intimately: the community members who live and work there.By creating multidisciplinary teams that comprise people from across Rutgers and from within underserved communities, RHISE NJ will strive to solve health inequities in New Jersey and beyond. Using a global health approach, this program will facilitate practical solutions proposed and carried out by the very same communities that bear the brunt of the inequities.
Presenter(s): Marco Zarbin
Trauma is the leading cause of death in patients under 45 years of age and results in more productive life years lost than cancer and heart disease combined. Trauma centers have improved overall survival, but survival is often associated with profound loss of function (e.g., blindness, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, mental disorders, and permanent disability). This Institute will accelerate the integration of laboratory-validated, function-restoring technologies into the clinical management of life-threatening, and severely disabling injuries to restore maximal functional recovery to injured patients. The competitive advantage of the Rutgers Trauma and Regenerative Medicine Institute can be summarized in one word: uniqueness. The RBHS-RWJ-Barnabas Health partnership establishes a link between mechanistic and translational research within RBHS system and clinical applications throughout a state-wide hospital network in a richly supportive commercial environment. There is no comparable institute in the northeastern United States. Philanthropy will be leveraged to acquire the additional human and physical resources needed to operationalize this vision.
Presenter(s): Donna M. Nickitas & Gloria Bonilla-Santiago
Innovation Community Hub (RICH) is to develop, cultivate, and disseminate innovative entrepreneurial solutions that address sustainable socio-economic growth in underserved, vulnerable communities. The Hub is presented as a model that is structurally local, then grows and expands nationally through Rutgers–Camden’s multi-sectorial partnerships to:
Presenter(s): Onur Bilgen
Remarkable technological advances place us at the doorstep of a new era of urban air mobility, and rapid aerial transportation of goods and data. Air taxis, food, medicine, first aid, emergency Wi-Fi service, and environmental monitoring provide only a few of many possibilities. However, despite recent developments, fundamental technological and public policy obstacles offer significant challenges. Large facilities and focused research are needed to develop, test, and launch reliable and practical autonomous flying machines. Such facilities currently do not exist.
A Drone Port would allow Rutgers:
Rutgers is located in the busiest metropolitan corridor in the U.S. with access to New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Boston, as well as to the talent pool, industrial capacity, and investment opportunities in these areas. This, combined with our existing investments in drone research, makes Rutgers the ideal location for the Drone Port.
Presenter(s): Sarah McMahon
Session Block F, 3:35 PM - 4:00 PM
Women have made great strides in advancing their status in society and traversing new frontiers, including the workplace, the sciences, and government. Women are still not afforded full participation: obstacles such as pay inequity, occupational segregation, violence, harassment, and barriers to education prevent them from realizing their potential. This is even more pronounced among women of color, and it plays out in all sectors of society. In higher education, for example, female faculty members are significantly underrepresented. The percentage of full-time female faculty in institutions in the Big 10 in 2017 ranged from 29 percent to 37 percent (Rutgers was at the high end). The disparity is even more pronounced among full professors and above. At Rutgers, only 27 percent of endowed chairs and 25 percent of Board of Governor's distinguished professorships are held by women. Rutgers aspires to be the place where solutions are created to advance women in society, beginning with leading scholars whose research will yield best practices to empower communities and remove the barriers facing our students. Join this session to learn how you can partner with Rutgers to forge the path ahead toward a more just and equitable society.
Presenter(s): Patrick Shafto & David Lopez
Large data sets and algorithms are reshaping our society, our politics, law, medicine, industry, and our personal lives while providing many opportunities if used responsibly. Increasingly innovation across all sectors of society involves proficiency in computing. Careers related to data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence offer some of the best opportunities for students throughout most fields of study, and it is difficult to imagine future career paths that would not benefit from an education in the collection, analyzation, and summarization of data using computation. Data and computational training are necessary but must be taught conscientiously in the context of the potential effects on society. Responsible teaching includes showing our students the legal, ethical, and socio-political ramifications of using algorithms so that data and computation are used to better our communities and society as a whole. With this responsible transfer of knowledge to students in varied fields of study, ethical and social norms as well as a legal, regulatory framework can be developed that support our diverse communities through fair data and algorithms.
Presenter(s): Mark Aakhus
Rutgers University has a rare opportunity to leap to the forefront of the world stage by addressing design. The expanding capacity to design our physical, biological, digital, and cultural existence challenges nearly every walk of life and field of knowledge. With these new realities, what is probable, plausible, possible, and preferable? RUDI—Rutgers University Design Institute—is a bold initiative for a highly innovative and interactive platform that embraces these pervasive challenges with a creative and courageous engagement into design and design thinking across existing and emerging fields of knowledge. Design—speculating, creating, inventing, innovating—is where diverse perspectives and intelligence come together to make-things-work and get-things-right. How to build that expertise remains elusive. RUDI establishes a new paradigm for collaboration in research, education, and engagement that articulates diverse new capabilities across the Rutgers universe while it catalyzes the broad community of Rutgers students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, and stakeholders in improving our individual and collective ability to design. It prepares today’s citizens for tomorrow’s challenges, utilizing New Jersey’s unique attributes as a microcosm of our 21st-century world.
Presenter(s): Robert E. Kopp
Humanity has become a geological force, catalyzing climate, and ecological crises that threaten Earth’s ability to support human well-being. While many of the last century’s environmental challenges were primarily local, today the local and global are intimately intertwined, with profound effects not just for health and ecology, but also for economy and security. These challenges demand the development of integrated scientific, technological, and social systems for environmental monitoring and management.Rutgers Earth 2100 will use the Raritan watershed, the state of New Jersey, and the broader Northeast megapolis area as living laboratories to pilot the observing and modeling networks needed to track and manage environmental changes affecting diverse megapolitan regions. Going beyond “smart city” concepts, Rutgers Earth 2100 aims to make the Northeast megapolis a model “smart bioregion.”Leveraging advances in transdisciplinary science and big data, Rutgers Earth 2100 will focus on challenges associated with assessing and managing (1) climate risk, (2) competing uses of coastal and marine resources, such as wind power and fisheries, (3) biodiversity impacts of land use, and (4) air and water pollution, while pursuing an ecologically stable, net zero-carbon future.
Presenter(s): Steven K. Libutti
There’s no question that immunology is on the minds of researchers nationwide. But the Rutgers Cancer Institute has the opportunity to bring a new and unique perspective to the table and truly transform the landscape of cancer care for patients everywhere. Rutgers Cancer Institute is home to a world-class group of researchers studying cancer cell metabolism. Led by deputy director Dr. Eileen White, researchers in the Cancer Metabolism and Growth Program study cancer as a metabolic disease, or in other words, how cancer cells grow by using energy and nutrients for sustenance. What if scientists could target the metabolism of cancer cells, and cut off their supply? There is now understanding that metabolism drives the bodies immune response. What potential treatments and cures exist if researchers can integrate cutting-edge findings in cancer metabolism with immunology? The goal of the Cancer Immunology and Metabolism Center of Excellence is to grow and link the leading work at Rutgers Cancer Institute in cancer metabolism with new work in cancer immunology to improve and increase therapies available to patients; develop cutting-edge facilities to create and test new interventions; facilitate commercial and university collaborations; and end cancer as we know it.
Presenter(s): Henry S. Turner
New Brunswick/ RBHS
The Rutgers Institute for the Advanced Study of Science, Medicine, and Human Values (RIAS) is a global hub that integrates researchers, educators, healthcare providers, policy-makers and creative professionals across the sciences, humanities and the arts. The institute will be a rigorous and active research epicenter that confronts shared societal challenges with the recognition that science, medicine, and technology, in and of itself, cannot adequately solve complex human problems. Neither medical science nor academic scholarship in the humanistic fields have—by themselves—adequately addressed the salient issues of our times. Modern challenges urgently demand new approaches and solutions which incorporate a diversity of perspective. The RIAS will have a transformative impact by integrating our most prominent institutional strengths—medicine, environmental sciences, humanities, arts, public policy, communications, and information technology—into a single campus-wide collaborative. By integrating the university’s extraordinary minds in these areas, we will provide vitally important information, training, resources, and collaborative capabilities to faculty, students, and the general public.