Research & Creative Inquiry

Andrea Grottoli, professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is conducting some of the world’s leading research on what drives coral reef resilience amid rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.

Dana Haynie, professor of sociology and director of the Criminal Justice Research Center, is fighting the opioid epidemic through her groundbreaking research on online criminal drug markets. Haynie and sociology PhD candidate Scott Duxbury are tracking and analyzing the social networks that sustain these markets, which have seen a significant growing demand for opioids. The team’s research suggests that new law enforcement strategies targeting vendor-buyer trust could be critical in curbing the growth of online drug trafficking.

Market forces are pushing for smaller and smaller devices, but magnetic information storage tends to become less efficient as it decreases in size. To meet the intensifying need for a solution, a team of researchers based at Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials has received a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). With the award, the team will develop novel magnetic materials for high-performance information storage by unlocking the power of skyrmions, which are nanoscale spin textures with great promise for smaller magnetic storage that is still stable and efficient.

LabanLens is an augmented reality software that allows the Department of Dance to revolutionize the way faculty and students create and analyze dances in historical, contemporary, documentary and generative contexts. The dancer uses a drag-and-drop system to manipulate Labanotation symbols — a notation system for recording, describing and analyzing human movement — onto a vertical bar in an augmented reality realm. LabanLens’ benefits and applications range from research to creative, and the software will be available in limited capacities for use in the department this year.

The Herodotos Project brings together faculty members from the Departments of Linguistics and Classics to develop an enthohistory of the ancient world. With the help of a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Advancement Grant, researchers are creating a catalog of groups and individuals mentioned in ancient sources, focusing on the historical role played by those other than “great actors” (the important individuals, states or empires singled out in historic texts).

More than 40 Ohio State faculty and staff members across all disciplines honed their singing skills to join the School of Music and the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) in a multimedia performance of “Carmina Burana,” the iconic cantata composed by Carl Orff in 1935-1936. The unique, first-of-its-kind collaboration incorporated an unforgettable digital-visual design that was projected onto the ceiling during the musical production.

One of the largest black art collections in the United States and recognized by the Association of Black Cultural Centers as one of the top collections in the country, the Hale Black Cultural Center’s art collection features work by hundreds of artists in a wide variety of media, offering an unparalleled look at the black experience.

The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded another grant to support the American Religious Sounds Project, a collaborative, multidisciplinary project housed in the Center for the Study of Religion that documents religious expression in the U.S. The project will create a digital archive of religious sounds and an interactive website that will allow people to listen to clips from the collection.