-Mark Weinberg, Founding Dean

Godfrey Ogallo, MSES and IT graduate, works in the field on his water quality research.

Five faculty and staff teams received planning grants of up to $20,000 each and another four received major funding awards of approximately $1 million each through Ohio University's Innovation Strategy program. Three planning grant teams and three major funding award teams included members from the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs.

Launched in 2014, the Innovation Strategy program allocated up to $5 million for major awards and planning or seed grants in this round of funding to advance innovation in research, teaching and institutional operations at Ohio University. 

The teams who received a planning grant will have 12 months to complete their projects, and are eligible to apply for larger pools of funding available through the Innovation Strategy program's future cycles. The teams who received major funding awards will receive multiple years of funding, dispersed in installments and contingent on the teams' meeting intermediary milestones.

The Office of Environmental Management (EM) recently awarded grants to Ohio University and the University of Kentucky to develop publicly available information related to the cleanup of the Portsmouth and Paducah gaseous diffusion plant sites in Ohio and Kentucky.

The five-year, $2.5-million-dollar grants will also continue public outreach initiated under previous Department of Energy (DOE) grants, including informing stakeholders on cleanup activities and future use of the DOE sites. This work involves OU's Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs and its PORTSfuture project, and UK's Kentucky Research Consortium for Energy and the Environment (KRCEE).  

"The Department of Energy values these university partnerships that provide important research and outreach supporting the cleanup of our gaseous diffusion plants," Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office Acting Manager Robert Edwards said. "These institutions of higher learning play an important role in helping DOE and communities address challenges and identify opportunities associated with these historic sites."

With the new funding, OU will continue assisting the local community reuse organization and other site stakeholders to inform site cleanup and property transfer efforts while identifying viable opportunities for future use of the Portsmouth Site.  

This year's pitch format, Venture Connection, matched groups of entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and private investors based on their capital needs, industry and other key criteria, and placed them together at a table. Each group was then given 20 minutes to meet and pitch their investment prospects.

"TechGROWTH Ohio's coaching helped tremendously in preparing for the investor 'speed dating' format of this year's event," Tom Reid, CEO and lead inventor at The SEED Protocol, one of the clients in attendance, said. "After my first day in which I interviewed with six potential investors, I was able to further refine my pitch for an even more successful day two. I left with strong contacts for our current and future funding needs -- and perhaps just as importantly I became very good at pitching my company."

Campaign finance data is publicly available, but not everyone is an expert data analyst -- and, if you're looking to gain meaningful information, there's quite a lot of data to slog through. That's what inspired senior journalism student Danielle Keeton-Olsen and Abdalah El-Barrad, a junior dual majoring in applied mathematics and economics, to work with three other undergraduates to create an algorithm called ConnectWatch, which analyzes accessible databases to monitor how money influences elected officials and reveal questionable connections. 

"This data exists, but no one's really digging into it or unlocking the potential that it holds," Keeton-Olsen said.

Keeton-Olsen and El-Barrad work together as Undergraduate Research Scholars at the Voinovich School. Through their work, Keeton-Olsen became familiar with El-Barrad's skills and decided early in the course of the project to invite El-Barrad to join her team.

"We were looking for someone who could work on mechanizing the project and making the process faster," Keeton-Olsen said. "Abdalah is a lot better at the programming side than I am, and I'm better at thinking about the stories that the data can tell, because that's what I'm trained to do."

Many Voinovich School students are attracted to the School due to its focus on applied research, and second year Master of Public Administration (MPA) student, Maggie Clark, was no exception. However, Clark's experience at the School was certainly exceptional, leading her in directions and affording her opportunities that she would not have anticipated.

Maggie Clark earned her undergraduate degree at Ohio University in communication studies with a focus on political communications in 2014. Clark was initially unsure of what to do next, but was interested in finding a master of public administration program to continue her education. She looked into programs across the country. However, after shifting her focus to opportunities here in Athens, she discovered that the right program had been under her nose all along.

"I read a little bit more about the Voinovich School through the Ohio University website, and I really liked the applied learning element," Clark said. "I thought the program would be a really interesting way to learn more about government while also getting that applied learning experience."