Rows of creative booths, posters and tables packed the floor of the George Washington University’s Charles E. Smith Center last Thursday, where the university’s inaugural InnovationFest brought together more than 150 scholars and inventors from all 10 schools to present their unique projects, demonstrate cutting edge research equipment, talk about books they’d authored, show off work at the intersection of art and science and more.
At one table, researchers from the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) Mind-Brain Institute invited attendees to match life-size brain models to the animals they represented. A few feet away, a robotic dog controlled by members of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Assistive Robotics and Tele-Medicine (ART-Med) Lab trotted up to participants to offer a paw for a surprisingly adorable handshake. Close to the entrance, the Art X Science Gallery displayed pieces that blurred the line between STEM and the humanities: a visualization of droplet spray from a cough that looked like a green figure breathing fire, or an abstract field of deep blues and vivid reds that actually showed a microscopic view of tissue cells.
On a large screen at one side of the space, Professor and Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health Susan C. Anenberg of the Milken Institute School of Public Health demonstrated her team’s global air pollution tracker, a comprehensive dashboard map on which users can see real-time satellite data of pollutant levels around the world, sorting across a variety of factors, like country, pollutant type and change over time. On another screen, volunteers tried out Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering Xiaodong Qu’s brain-controlled penguin racing game.
“InnovationFest reflects GW’s strategic commitment to advancing high-impact research, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and preparing the next generation of problem-solvers,” said President Ellen M. Granberg. “In the heart of the nation’s capital, our research enterprise is uniquely positioned to translate ideas into solutions that serve society—locally, nationally and globally.”
“GW’s inaugural InnovationFest was a significant opportunity for the university to signal our continued commitment to the advancement of our research enterprise,” Provost Christopher Alan Bracey said. “Through this unique and collaborative program, our community was able to engage with our scholars across disciplines and see firsthand the real-world impact their research and scholarship are having on global challenges.”
InnovationFest took place during a season of end-of-year research and capstone showcases at GW, including the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s R&D Showcase, the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ Research Showcase, the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design’s NEXT Festival and the Milken Institute School of Public Health’s Research Day.
Even among the colorful array packing the Smith Center, a booth manned by play therapy specialists from the Graduate School of Education and Human Development stood out. Their table was crowded with miniatures and figurines—dinosaurs, mermaids, porcelain shoes, weapon-toting soldiers, a tiny, glittering replica of Gustav Klimt’s painting “The Kiss.” The toys surrounded a blank tray of sand, in which attendees were invited to “create a world.” One participant had repurposed a tiny violin case as a coffin, inside which lay the supine figure of Charlie Brown from the “Peanuts” franchise. Another took Charlie Brown out of the coffin, placed him inside a ring of plastic “fire” and arranged a circle of miniature animals around him like reverent visitors.
Play therapists use this exercise and others to nonjudgmentally explore unconscious images blocked by the conscious mind, explained Clinical Assistant Professor of Counseling and Human Development Mary DeRaedt, who manned the booth alongside Co-Department Chair and Associate Professor of Counseling and Human Development Maggie Parker and graduate student Haley Giles.
Play therapy is a way of restoring the balance between our brain’s two basic modes of “fear-based” and “discovery-based” learning, DeRaedt said. Both are necessary—without fear-based learning, we might never learn not to touch hot stoves—but trauma and other factors can heighten the fear response, leading to anxiety, depression and unwillingness to try new things.
GW is the only accredited institution to provide specialized training in play therapy within its master’s in school counseling program, and InnovationFest offered an opportunity to demonstrate what that training looks like and what it can achieve for adults and children alike. Watching adults try the sand tray exercise, both at InnovationFest and in her classes, DeRaedt said she frequently sees fear and uncertainty take over. Adults are nervous about the open-ended instruction to “create a world;” they may worry that they’ve used too few or too many figurines, or fret that their choices are being judged by observers. As a therapist and a teacher, DeRaedt holds nonjudgmental space through those reactions, with the goal of helping the player achieve curiosity, rather than dread, about watching their own mind at work.
“I always acknowledge, when I’m doing sand trays with adults, that this can be scary,” DeRaedt said. “Our conscious mind is actively seeking to hide the unconscious content from us, because it feels dangerous. But if you don’t judge it, if you don’t assume that it means you’re bad or broken, you can look at it and go ‘Hey, this is how my brain works—holy cow, now I can change it if I don’t like it!”
The goal of InnovationFest was twofold: to showcase cutting-edge activities and to spark new collaborations on campus and beyond. The event was open to the public and welcomed alumni and leaders from industry, academia and government.“This is an incredibly important moment to recognize and celebrate GW’s innovators. This community has a lot to be proud of,” Interim Vice Provost for Research Robert Miller said. “InnovationFest was also a great platform for diverse GW scholars to connect and for external partners to engage with the groundbreaking work being done across this institution.”
On the section of the floor reserved for posters, two rotating groups of presenters discussed the work they’ve spent semesters or years on. Some came from study areas not necessarily associated with research—like dance minor Sahana Withanachchi, a junior majoring in political communications. Withananchchi’s paper examined how Japanese Americans reclaimed agency through cultural practices, including social dance and performance, after 122,000 of them were forced into internment camps during World War II. She also looked at how intergenerational trauma from that internment manifests in contemporary dance works.
Through mass incarceration and regulation of activities, the government became “a choreographer of bodies,” Withanachchi explained. And within the forced movement of the camps, there was also “voluntary movement,” as some internees took up traditional dance to pass time, strengthen social bonds and reconnect younger generations with their culture.
School of Business students Rohan Rajesh, Andrew Sotell and Dane Van Horn came to InnovationFest with student-led hackathon organization George Hacks. The trio won two awards at this spring’s 24-hour hackathon for Medical Wallet, an open-source, blockchain-based technology that provides first responders with secure, actionable medical information. GW Hacks gave the trio a unique opportunity to explore forward-thinking solutions to real world problems and to pitch those solutions to a heterogenous audience, they said.
“You can have the world’s best product, but if you’re not able to communicate with [people] from different disciplines, you can’t win,” Rajesh said.
That sentiment was echoed by fellow GWSB student Sam Loiterstein, a sophomore presenting nearby on the environmental impact and potential sustainable development of AI data centers around the world. His work, taken on through the interdisciplinary University Honors Program, was an exploration of the ways the expanding AI sector can align innovation with sustainability while achieving a better long-term bottom line.
“It might be hard right now to go to a boardroom and present environmental consciousness for the sake of environmental consciousness, but if you can put a balance sheet in front of them and explain that something is profitable, and it helps the planet, that’s good for both marketing and finance.”
Like his peers, Loiterstein said presenting at InnovationFest was an opportunity to get feedback from and exchange ideas with colleagues outside his own arena. “I hope that I can make this case and present it well so that people are optimistic and motivated. It’s a really rewarding experience, and I think really good practice for whatever comes next.”