Dr. Fritz is a nurse scientist whose work focuses building and using intelligent machines in the delivery of healthcare with a specific concentration on building a smart home to assist older adults with aging-in-place. Dr. Fritz’s nursing career spans 3 decades with nearly 20 years spent on the frontline working in public health, emergency nursing, and hospital administration. She is a former National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research and Training Fellow and has served as a publicly elected Commissioner and Chairwoman for a Washington State Public Hospital District. Dr. Fritz is a repeated invited speaker on the role of sensor-based data and machine learning for symptom management at NINRs Smart Health Smart Technology Bootcamp, and she advises multiple health technology start-ups. Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Science Foundation, Sigma Theta Tau, Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators, and several private foundations.

Her goal is to develop an unobtrusive, real-time home health monitoring system that is an FDA approved medical device, which could be prescribed for home use and paid for by Medicare. Dr. Fritz would like to see more nurses at technology design tables and is building a nurse-driven health technology lab to prepare future nurse innovators with the skills necessary for employment in the technology industry.

Catherine R Van Son PhD, RN, ANEF, FGSA, FAAN is the Lindblad Distinguished Professor in Geriatrics at WSU College of Nursing. She has worked as a nurse in long-term care, the Veterans Administration, Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), home health and hospice, assisted living and other senior living settings. Her research focuses on how culture influences the management of chronic conditions, adoption of assistive technologies by older adults and new models of caregiving for people living with dementia. She has published in multiple peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to several media venues. She has several decades of gerontological teaching experience leading to affiliate professorships with the University of Minnesota, Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence, the University of Haifa, Israel and WSU’s Granger Cobb Institute of Senior Living. Her current work is exploring the acceptability and use of bidet toilet attachments by older adults and their caregivers.

Connie Kim Yen Nguyen-Truong, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN (she/her/they), is a tenured Associate Professor at Washington State University College of Nursing. She is Vietnamese with a Guamanian Micronesian Islander background, raised in an immigrant and refugee family, and dedicated to improving health and belonging among culturally diverse communities. She is a Senior Fellow of the Coalition of Communities of Color Leaders Bridges and an elected Council Advisor of the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center. Her multi-disciplinary and cross-sector work as a nurse scientist, mentor, and advisor is under the umbrella of health equity, anti-racism, and community-based participatory and action research and community-engaged research: diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. 1) Advocacy and action-oriented coalitions – culturally specific, disaggregated data and community organizing with diverse communities for health promotion across the lifespan. 2) A founding director of the Health & Education Program for Micronesian and Pacific Islanders – advocacy and system changes in health and education. 3) Addressing bias in artificial intelligence and community-based smart health technology adoption and data. Her and partnerships translated funded research initiatives and advocacy leadership–ally-ship with diverse communities helped drove changes that improved the wrap around healthcare and services delivery infrastructures and informed by disaggregated data. These resulted in addressing complex experiences of historical trauma-diaspora, race-based stress, and racial trauma and building on strengths of communities. She has over 100+ publications, conference abstract proceedings, and presentations, including with partners. This included web op-eds on innovative culturally safe research engagement curricula/models, including transformative mentoring of community leaders and nurses prepared to advance health equity through paradigm shifting of community cultural wealth and anti-racism, that were adopted regionally / nationally / internationally. She is a co-founder of N-TECH Lab. She led multiple initiatives in partnership with WSU’s founding N-TECH director Dr. Roschelle Fritz and nursing and community researchers, including on older Asian immigrants’ perceptions of smart home monitoring adoption, Interactive Co-Learning for Research Engagement and Education Curriculum on technology research, re-building a virtual senior center, and Community-Based Smart Health System Techquity Curriculum. She is a health equity and DEI co-investigator in partnership with Dr. Fritz and the Center of Advanced Studies in Adaptive System to address bias in AI– bioethics and a co-PI in partnership with Dr. Fritz on unobtrusive, real-time home health monitoring smart health system. Research is supported by ODE – Early Childhood Equity Fund; NIH NINR; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Sigma Theta Tau; Health & Education Fund Impact Partnerships, including Northwest Health Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Care Oregon, and Oregon Community Foundation; Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon Communities United Fund through the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation; Collins Foundation; Oncology Nursing Society Foundation; City of Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life; Micronesian Islander Community; American Cancer Society; and multiple additional funding

Marian Wilson PhD, MPH, RN, PMGT-BC is an Associate Professor at Washington State University College of Nursing and registered nurse with certification in pain management nursing. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed studies with the majority focused on use of non-pharmacological options for pain management and reducing opioid use and misuse. Her research on the use of web-enabled pain management interventions was the first to document reduction in opioid misuse behaviors using an online program and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and others.

She led the first study using smart home sensors to detect overnight opioid withdrawal symptoms in adults with opioid use disorder in partnership with Washington State University’s founding N-TECH director Dr. Shelly Fritz and the Center of Advanced Studies in Adaptive System. Dr. Wilson has also collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to create virtual interprofessional education programs on pain management and substance use for health science students and working clinicians funded by the U.S. Department of Health’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) and Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA).

Dr. Julie Postma earned her BSN from the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Ann Arbor, MI. She started clinical practice on the Cardiothoracic Intermediate Care Unit at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester MN, and worked later at the University of Washington Medical Center as a cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit nurse.

She studied occupational and environmental health nursing and earned a PhD in nursing science at the University of Washington School of Nursing in Seattle, WA. She completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at UW before starting her faculty position at WSU where she is currently a professor and the Associate Dean for Research. Her scholarship is focused on reducing risks associated with environmental health threats. She uses multiple research methods to engage patients, parents, clinical and community partners in collaborative research and advocacy.

Recent federally funded research projects include:

1. “Environmental Health Research Institute for Nurse and Clinician Scientists (EHRI-NCS).” R25, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Role: Co-Investigator (2020-2025)
2. “The Association Between Maternal Exposure to Wildfire Smoke and Neonatal Outcomes.” F31, National Research Service Award, National Institute of Nursing Research. Role: Co-sponsor (2021-2023)
3. “Promoting risk reduction among young adults with asthma during wildfire smoke events.” R21, National Institute of Nursing Research. Role: Primary Investigator (2020-2022)

Other recent research funding includes:

1. “Employer Perspectives on Wildfire Smoke Hazards in the Agricultural Workplace.” Professional Training Opportunities Program in Occupational Health, UW, Role: mentor for PhD student (2022-2023)
2. “Monitoring and Communicating Wildfire Smoke Hazards in the Agricultural Workplace.” WSU Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health, Role: PI 2022 – 2023.

Dr. Postma teaches and mentors graduate nursing students, serves on the WSU Institutional Review Board, and is on the editorial board of Public Health Nursing, the official journal of the Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations.