HARRISBURG, PA – Welcome to your February 2025 Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) Research Roundup! Our talented faculty and alumni have been busy presenting at conferences, publishing boundary-pushing research, and building fruitful partnerships with other schools, agencies, and organizations. It’s been another great month for research and recognition at HU, so let’s get to it!
1. Kelly Boudreau
Kelly Boudreau, Ph.D., Program Lead for Game Design and Associate Professor of Media, Games & Culture, was invited last month by the British Digital Games Research Association to discuss “cozy games” on their podcast “WordPlay” with other international scholars.
In this episode of WordPlay, Andra Ivănescu and Hadi Mehrpouya talk cosy with Dr. Kelly Boudreau, Programme Lead in Game Design at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, Agata Waszkiewicz, Associate Professor in the English Department at the Catholic University of Lublin, Bettina Bódi, Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Communication at the University of Birmingham, and ex-academic Joe Baxter-Webb, who compares his YouTube design consultancy channel Indie Games Clinic to a games version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
You can find the episode on Apple Podcasts.
2. Rebekah Harriger
Mindset in Motion, a podcast for university and college educators, career counselors, and leaders, recently featured Harrisburg University’s Rebekah Harriger, Senior Director of Career Services & Experiential Learning. The episode is entitled, “A Definition of Experiential Learning to Guide Your Campus.” Mindset in Motion is a partner of the Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education Journal.
Rebekah explained: “As the guest host, I chatted with Bill Henrich and Patrick Green about their article on their 20-month design thinking project on the definitions and principles of experiential learning.” The podcast highlights the following:
- Presents three new prototype definitions of experiential learning, for use across your college campus.
- Definitions aim to capture high-level planning and values as well as day-to-day operations and activities.
- Promotes an ecosystem approach to experiential learning, including a broad swath of educators, their deans/directors/chairs, associate provosts and vice presidents, and campus executives.
- Community partners – employers, alumni, legislatures, internship and community placement site hosts – play a key part in all the definitions.
- Advocates for participation in an EL ecosystem through both expert education and awareness of the need to promote EL at all levels of an institution.
You can listen to the entire podcast episode here.
3. Steven Jasinski
A group of researchers, including Harrisburg University Professor Dr. Steven Jasinski, has published a study on fossil carnivoran mammals from the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in North India. Dr. Jasinski, of HU’s Department of Environmental Science and Sustainability, and researchers from the Palaeo Research Society and Palaeo Museum (Ghumarwin, India), the University of Sialkot, and the University of the Punjab, described new fossil specimens of mammals that lived in India from around 10 to 4 million years ago.
These new fossil specimens add important new information to our knowledge of these carnivorous mammals, according to the new study published in the scientific publication Journal of Mammalian Evolution. Among these fossils, the researchers identified the first upper-jaw material of a rare mustelid named ‘Martes’ lydekkeri and rare material of a small fossil feline, in addition to two new species of fossil mammals: a mustelid and a viverrid.
“These new fossils are really helping give us a better idea of what the ecosystems at the base of the Himalayas would have been like around 5 million years ago,” said Dr. Jasinski. “Our research is helping us not only understand the biodiversity of our world but also providing us crucial information for how our world has changed. This is vital to our understanding of how our world will continue to change due to the shifting, potentially volatile, conditions we are currently dealing with.”
To read the team’s paper on fossil carnivorans from northern India, visit this link or contact Dr. Jasinski for a PDF version.
4. Greg Loring-Albright
On March 27, Greg Loring-Albright, Assistant Professor of Game Studies & Game Design, was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of British Columbia Ziegler Lecture Series, entitled, “Critical board game modification: changing board games to change the world.” According to the abstract:
Hobby board gaming, as theorized by scholars like Paul Booth (2018) and Stewart Woods (2012), continues to be a growing subculture, fandom, and market. Games like Catan (Teuber, 1995), Ticket to Ride (Moon, 2004), and Wingspan (Hargrave, 2019) are the result of design interventions by inspired designers. However, board games lag behind other entertainment media like film, TV, and video games when it comes to depicting social change and representing marginalized groups. Dr. Loring-Albright works to change this by designing and publishing new games (e.g. Bloc by Bloc: Uprising, 2022, co-designed with T.L. Simons; Keep the Faith, 2024) and by creating frameworks for modifying existing games (e.g. First Nations of Catan, 2015).
The lecture described the world of hobby board gaming, showcased some of its problematic dynamics (drawing upon Flanagan and Jakobsson, 2023, among others), and offered paths for other designers and interested amateurs to create their own interventions in the space by modifying the board games they already play. In addition, Dr. Loring-Albright proposed a theory of how board games incite social change, developed from close observation of hundreds of board gaming sessions, both in a research context and while playtesting games for publication.
You can learn more about Dr. Loring-Albright’s academic work and published games at GLoringAlbright.com.
5. Teray Johnson
Professor Teray Johnson, Ph.D., MS, MBA, recently co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the highly ranked Journal of Health Organization and Management, entitled, “Perceptions of organizational culture among non-patient-facing health system employees.” Dr. Johnson is not just an instructor of Analytics at Harrisburg University; she is also an HU alumnus.
“The COVID-19 pandemic changed healthcare for years to come,” explained Dr. Johnson. “I came up with the idea of exploring perceptions of organizational culture among non-patient-facing health system employees during the pandemic because, most times, physicians and nurses are studied in healthcare. However, employees play an important role in patient care even if they are not giving direct care. It is important to understand how they perceive their organization’s culture, especially since organizational culture is correlated with burnout and, thus, has downstream effects on patient care.”
The paper features exemplar quotes from employees, with a total of 23 interviewees, and results from an organizational culture survey. One of the most interesting takeaways is that the COVID-19 pandemic changed and drove the organizational culture, including for the better. “This is one of the only published articles to explore perceptions of culture during the COVID-19 pandemic among non-patient-facing employees; it is written with healthcare leaders in mind to think about how they can strengthen their culture to improve retention rates and create an environment in which people thrive and where people flock to work in.
“Special thanks to my late co-author, Mark Newman, who was a cornerstone at HU for many years, mentoring myself and others through the Ph.D. in Data Sciences and Master’s in Analytics programs; and Sameh Shamroukh, former Corporate Faculty of Analytics. This article could not have come to fruition without their input.”
6. Jonathan Ma
The Harrisburg University Data Analytics Summit took place on February 27, marking the popular event’s 11th consecutive year. HU’s campus transformed once again into a hub for educators, technologists, business and government leaders, students, and professionals to learn about the latest technologies and big ideas in data science and analytics. The event showcases HU’s academic programs and its relationships with government and industry experts. HU hosted over 300 participants for this hybrid event, nearly 200 of whom attended in person.
Jonathan (Jeng-Shiuan) Ma ‘25 an alumnus of HU’s Analytics Master’s Degree program, was one of the HU students who stole the show by presenting their original research.
“Our research integrates tonic pitch identification with deep learning and traditional machine learning algorithms to classify Carnatic Raga music,” Jonathan explained. “Signal processing, in combination with deep learning techniques, has not been extensively applied to Raga identification. By leveraging these approaches, we aim to address the inherent non-linearity challenges in Raga classification. Using Mel-spectrogram representations of audio data, we employ techniques such as transfer learning and ensemble learning to achieve high-accuracy classification of Carnatic Raga music.”
He continued: “Presenting this research at the Summit was an invaluable experience, allowing me to showcase months of dedicated work alongside my professors. Attending the 2024 HU Data Analytics Summit was a pivotal moment for me; seeing my professors present their research on stage inspired me to set a goal of presenting my own work the following year. This year, I am proud to have achieved that goal, contributing to the broader conversation on data analytics and its applications in music classification.”
7. Leena Pattarkine
Dr. Leena Pattarkine, Master’s Program Lead for Biotechnology (BTEC) and Director of the Capital Area Biotechnology Partnership (CABP), was recently invited to deliver a digital lecture at the March 21 International Conference on Computing, STEM, and Applied Sciences.
Dr. Pattarkine’s lecture was about biomedical devices and how nanobiotechnology has made tremendous impacts on healthcare through continuous innovations. It also highlighted how Harrisburg University’s Bachelor’s and Master’s BTEC programs address industry needs by embedding BTEC workforce skills into the curricula. HU’s BTEC programs are STEM-based, agile, and industry-aligned, offering a blend of biotechnology, nanobiotechnology, and job-readiness skills not typically seen in this combination.
Dr. Pattarkine’s laboratory has been involved in active research about DNA-based biosensor for MRSA detection and has received the Keystone Innovation Zone Innovation seed grant.
“Biotechnology is an extremely exciting field for students and graduates today, with breakthroughs occurring all the time,” explained Dr. Pattarkine. “Nanomaterials are an indispensable part of basic as well as applied research for various types of cancers, and several implantable and prosthetic devices have benefited from nanomaterial integration. The miniaturization made possible due to nanotechnology applications for biological systems has made great advancements in diagnosis, imaging, drug development, and prognosis of diseases. These innovations have made healthcare procedures more affordable, convenient, and timelier through reduced wait times. Additionally, pregnancy testing kits, glucometers for blood glucose monitoring, and COVID-19 at-home tests are all prime examples of diagnostic biomedical home tests. There’s truly no limit to how BTEC can improve lives and healthcare outcomes.”
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