Supported by contributions from CAMD’s Advisory Board, the Dean’s Office is pleased to announce the Creative Catalyst Internal Seed Grant Program. In Fall 2025, six interdisciplinary teams were awarded Phase 1 seed grants. All CAMD faculty are invited to submit proposals for Phase 2 of the program, due on Monday, February 2, 2026.

The Creative Catalyst grant program is designed to support emerging collaborative research and creative work that will make substantial knowledge contributions and advance socially beneficial outcomes, demonstrating CAMD’s capacity for transformative leadership in research and creative practice. Faculty can access the full call for proposals and submission guidelines here.

Congratulations to the Phase 1 Creative Catalyst Seed Grant Recipients:

WalkSensePlace – Leveraging textile shoe insole sensors to generate new insights to connect the act of walking in cities with urban design and health communication
Kristian Kloeckl, Associate Professor, Department of Art + Design and Architecture
Amy Lu, Associate Professor, Communication Studies and Health Sciences
Eric Folmar, Associate Clinical Professor and Associate Chair, Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitative Sciences (Bouvé College of Health Sciences)

This project will examine how data from next generation shoe insole textile pressure sensors can be leveraged to detect different surface conditions (e.g. asphalt, sand, gravel, grass, etc.) and to advance understanding of the human experience of walking in urban environments and its impacts on human health, wellbeing, urban design and planning.

Tandem Mobi Insulin Pump Historical Data Sonification
Mike Frengel, Associate Academic Specialist, Music
Pedro Cruz, Associate Professor, Art + Design

This project will design a sonification and visualization system for data gathered from insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors to assist with management of Type-1 diabetes.

Listening to the River – Urban Underwater Soundscapes and Microbial Life
Dietmar Offenhuber, Professor and Chair, Art + Design
Katia Zolotovsky, Assistant Professor, Art + Design and Chemistry and Chemical Biology

This project will explore what underwater sound can convey about the infrastructural, microbial and climatic conditions of urban environments.

Creative Systems: Mapping Flow, Resilience, and Personality in Human–AI Collaboration
James Gutierrez, Assistant Teaching Professor, Music
Joshua Curtis, Assistant Professor, Counseling Psychology and Applied Psychology (Bouvé College of Health Sciences)
William Sharp, Teaching Professor, Psychology (College of Science)

This project will investigate how AI-assisted creativity shapes the emotional rewards (e.g. flow state) of the creative process, and to what degree individual differences in resilience and personality moderate these outcomes.

Voices of Freedom: Planning Digital Access to Elizabeth Freeman’s Legacy
Sylke Rene Meyer, Professor, Theater and Art + Design
Jennifer Gradecki, Associate Professor, Art + Design
Derek Curry, Associate Professor, Art + Design
Julia Flanders, Professor of the Practice and Director, Digital Scholarship Group (College of Social Sciences and Humanities)
Angela Tate, Chief Curator and Director of Collections, Museum of African American History, Boston

This grant will utilize AI and handwritten text recognition systems to address critical gaps in public access to materials documenting Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1744-1829), whose 1781 freedom suit Brom and Bett v. Ashley effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts.

Incongruency and Presence in XR
Wallace Lages, Assistant Professor, Art + Design and Khoury College
Aaron Seitz, Professor, Psychology and Art + Design (College of Science)

The goal of this proposal is to establish quantitative measures of Presence, a construct in XR applications that is associated with the sensation of being somewhere else and the illusion that events unfolding are really happening.