Explorer Challenge preliminary ideas announced

A total of 19 preliminary ideas have been submitted for consideration in the 2025-26 Explorer Challenge thus far.

Below are brief descriptions of each submission. To explore these innovative proposals, join an Innovation Sandpit on Tuesday, Feb. 10, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the 707 Hub.

This interactive session offers an opportunity to learn about each idea, form teams and receive guidance from members of the Innovation Council. The event is open to all, whether you are interested in joining a project team or want to discover the exciting ideas being developed across the Marquette community. Light refreshments will be provided.

1. This project aims to develop a lightweight, edge-intelligent Digital Health Twin that runs on a smartphone and connects to Bluetooth medical devices to monitor vital signs in real time. By processing data such as heart rate and blood pressure directly on the device, it can deliver instant, personalized insights without relying on constant internet access, making it practical for people in low-resource or connectivity-limited settings. The technology has the potential to provide earlier warnings about health risks, reduce preventable emergencies and expand access to digital health monitoring for vulnerable communities.

1. Individuals are susceptible to environmental health risks such as exposure to lead, radon, asbestos and other toxins; however, awareness of risk allows for intervention. This project aims to build a tool that, given an address, provides users with a list of environmental health risks potentially associated with a home, along with information on mitigation methods.

1. Attorneys and law students are facing a mental health crisis, and many who suffer silently are men. A major cause is a lack of community and spaces for men to openly discuss their struggles. This project proposes that the Law School launch a faculty-led, confidential peer group for male attorneys and students to discuss stressors, depression and substance use and to normalize seeking community support. A women's group could be developed, but this project focuses on fraternal rather than sororal camaraderie.

1. ED Pulse will use HCUP NEDS data, with ICD-9 and ICD-10 harmonization, to build an AI-enabled surveillance pipeline that detects and summarizes trends in youth substance-related emergency department visits. The project will generate near-real-time dashboards and interpretable alerts by age, geography, substance category and co-occurring mental health conditions to support prevention efforts and rapid public health response.

1. This project proposes leasing space currently used by The Brew to local or Marquette student entrepreneurs. The Brew locations represent prime real estate that could be used to develop stronger connections between Marquette and the surrounding community or to catalyze student leadership. The initiative would transform Marquette coffee shops from Starbucks affiliates into incubators of self-empowerment and culture.

1. This project proposes the use of a faculty-curated, holographic AI professor to provide students with 24/7 access to course-specific academic support. Drawing exclusively from instructor-approved materials stored on a local server, the display is designed as an extension of faculty teaching rather than a replacement. The proposal advances the Thriving Students priority by focusing on a scalable, student-centered educational resource that reduces barriers to engagement and promotes academic confidence.

1. This project proposes a student-led culinary innovation pilot that uses a small-scale food venture to test how intentional branding, aesthetics and community-informed design influence customer engagement and entrepreneurial viability. The pilot will generate a replicable model for experiential learning, community partnership and culturally responsive business development that Marquette can adapt and scale.

1. As data-driven technologies and digital platforms increasingly shape social life, institutions and decision-making, students need structured ways to engage with ethical and human consequences. This project supports the collaborative development and piloting of an interdisciplinary minor in Data, Ethics and Human Flourishing, bringing together faculty from computing, the humanities and applied disciplines. The minor will equip students with practical tools for ethical reflection, judgment and discernment while advancing Marquette's commitments to Thriving Students and Care for the World.

1. This project proposes an interdisciplinary partnership to enhance resilience against age-related cognitive decline, often referred to as cognitive reserve, by implementing a second-language acquisition intervention with older adults and documenting its cognitive and neural effects. Learning a second language requires complex cognitive control, activating and reinforcing high-level brain networks that are especially vulnerable to age-related decline. As the U.S. population continues to age, the project will demonstrate that second-language programs can serve as a critical tool for protecting cognition and independence in later life.

1. Humans are increasingly disconnected from community and the natural world, reducing opportunities for transformative relationships with the environment. This project imagines a nature center revitalized as a fully sustainable, living bed-and-breakfast where guests can stay alongside tropical frogs, bee colonies and bioluminescent algae pools. The Rainforest Rick experience blends ecology, education, technology and hospitality to create a 24-hour, multisensory urban third space that fosters human connection and environmental stewardship through hands-on conservation and cross-disciplinary education.

1. This project proposes a financial wellness app designed for college students to reduce money-related stress and build healthier financial habits. The platform combines simple budgeting tools with short educational lessons and a "talk to an associate" feature that allows students to chat with a real or AI budget coach for personalized guidance. More than a tracking tool, the app is designed as a supportive, community-driven experience for students developing financial independence.

1. This project examines how housing conditions, school communication practices and access to health care shape educational and health outcomes for Rohingya and Burmese youth ages five to 25 in Milwaukee. In collaboration with community leaders and partners, the study uses qualitative interviews with caregivers and young adults to identify institutional processes, such as language access, transportation and housing placement, that contribute to inequality. Findings will generate actionable, culturally grounded recommendations for schools, health care systems and local agencies to reduce barriers and improve support for refugee youth.

1. This project explores how hearing protection devices affect spoken language access and comprehension. As these devices become more prevalent, particularly among individuals with sensory sensitivities, it is important to understand their impact on language access. While prior research has examined benefits such as improved attention and behavior, limited research has explored potential risks associated with their use.

1. The Les Aspin Center is expanding the Kleczka Internship Program to include more project-based experiential learning. Rather than placing students in semester-long traditional internships, the new program would contract with local governments for teams of students to complete targeted research projects. Students would be compensated at a higher rate than most student employees and projects would follow more flexible timelines that could be shorter or longer than a traditional semester.

1. The College of Education will develop the Partnership and Pipeline for Urban Educators program, which will intentionally pair Marquette undergraduate education students with two Milwaukee Public Schools throughout their preparation. The program aims to address teacher shortages in hard-to-staff areas while supporting school improvement through faculty and staff professional development and research. The partnership model emphasizes long-term relationships and leverages faculty expertise in community schools, restorative practices and justice-oriented pedagogies to support MPS schools most in need.

1. This project aims to expand and enhance the Marquette Advisor Academy to ensure faculty and staff advisors feel confident, connected and prepared to meet advising expectations outlined in the Advisor Bulletin. By developing accessible, comprehensive and collaboratively designed training modules and shared practices, the initiative seeks to strengthen advisor readiness and consistency. Improved advising support is expected to contribute to gains in student retention, first-destination outcomes and graduation rates.

1. Wisconsin has the highest rate of falls-related deaths among older adults in the United States. Falls Free WI offers resources such as the Interactive Home Safety Challenge, but the number of recommended changes can be overwhelming. This project will engage stakeholders to refine a home safety implementation program that leverages existing resources and RCT-tested action-planning software to reduce falls, emergency medical calls and related deaths.

1. Student Wellness at Marquette is seeking to expand services by providing students access to a professional wellness counselor. The unit plans to partner with a faculty research lab to enhance action-planning software with web integration for a campus referral system and third-party platforms. The project will focus on software integration, pilot testing the referral system and measuring changes in self-reported student well-being.

1. SCALE, Social Determinants and Computational Analytics Using Large Datasets for Equity, aims to establish secure data access and analytics infrastructure to support interdisciplinary research on social determinants of health. The project will provide computing access for purchased datasets, including HCUP data, and shared methodological resources for secondary analysis and qualitative data integration. Initial research will examine mechanisms underlying documented health disparities using econometric methods such as the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and mixed-methods approaches.