Category: Faculty

Cordelia Running – Sweetness plays a powerful role in food preferences due to its innate, hedonic appeal even in the womb and infancy. However, although data consistently indicate sweetness triggers reward pathways in the brain, the practical measurement of “sweetness liking” shows wide variability.

Leanne Nieforth – What if the wag of a tail or a comforting purr could do more than make your day, it could help save your life? That’s the compelling idea behind a recent scoping review published in Healthcare, exploring whether pets might influence suicide risk. With suicide remaining a global health crisis, claiming over 700,000 lives annually, the search for effective prevention strategies has never been more urgent.

Sooyeon Jeong – Natural and idiomatic expressions are essential for fluent, everyday communication, yet many second-language learners struggle to acquire and spontaneously use casual slang despite strong formal proficiency. To address this gap, we designed and evaluated an LLM-powered, task-based role-playing game in which a GPT-4o-based Game Master guides learners through an immersive, three-phase spoken narrative.

Ellen Schellhase, clinical professor of pharmacy practice and director of international engagement, College of Pharmacy, was awarded the 2025 Outstanding Leadership in Globalization Award by Purdue’s Office of Global Partnerships and Global Academic Committee.

Laura Schawb Reese – As a teen growing up in an abusive household, Morgan coped daily with physical and emotional harm from her mother. However, she felt safe and supported when she posted about her experiences on a fake Instagram account. We are social work and public health researchers who study how people use digital technologies to seek help after they experience violence. We’ve found that social media has become a crucial outlet for young people to disclose abuse, connect with peers who’ve had similar experiences, and learn about safety strategies.

Xinran Lehto – This article offers a critical reappraisal of contemporary research at the intersection of aging, technology, and travel, drawing on tourism studies and interdisciplinary advancements in assistive technology, human factors engineering, and public health. It identifies key conceptual gaps in how tourism and hospitality have addressed the evolving needs, capacities, and aspirations of older travelers.

AJ Schwichtenberg – Sleep is a common concern raised at well-child visits, which may stem in part from parental uncertainty around what is expected for toddler sleep. Despite recent attempts to classify normative sleep using large samples, there are notable gaps in existing studies and how they inform parental sleep expectations.Sleep is a common concern raised at well-child visits, which may stem in part from parental uncertainty around what is expected for toddler sleep. Despite recent attempts to classify normative sleep using large samples, there are notable gaps in existing studies and how they inform parental sleep expectations.

Arielle Borovsky – We tested the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease (PD) impairs verbs’ event structures and/or sensory-motor semantic features, as suggested by theories of grounded cognition. Nineteen participants with PD and 16 age-matched Controls produced verbs and used a Likert scale to rate verbs’ event-based association with instruments (e.g. fork – eating versus bathing) and locations (e.g. airport – waiting versus singing).

Sooyeon Jeong – While the efficacy of social robots in supporting people in learning tasks has been extensively investigated, their potential impact in assisting students in self-studying contexts has not been investigated much. This study explores how a social robot can act as a peer study companion for college students during self-study tasks by delivering task-oriented goal reminder and positive emotional support.

Leanne Nieforth – Many organizations are seeking innovative options to promote workplace mental health and wellbeing, including the integration of employees’ pets into the workplace. While empirical research exists, there has not yet been a systematic analysis focused on the outcomes of pets in the workplace.