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Hard-technology web-discovery refactor

Branch: development Date: 2026-06-14 Source packet: sources/inbox/2026-06-14-hard-tech-candidate-web-discovery/ Trigger: Hard-technology discovery audit → user directive to web-search the candidates, import sources, and re-evaluate promotion. Related: Repository-wide refactor governance · Source evaluation policy

1. Executive summary

Natural-language web searches were run for every hard-technology candidate from the audit. Each was checked for an official institutional / lab / faculty page documenting facility existence, leadership, and (where available) equipment. The audit's central problem — discovery works, promotion is the bottleneck — has now been substantially cleared: five candidates were promoted and a significant data error was corrected, all on evidence-backed institutional sources.

Metric Count
New hard-technology resource pages created 4 (CDM-023, CDM-024, CSH-020, COM-001)
Existing facility corrected/enriched 1 (CDM-006 RAL Lab)
New external Argonne sub-facility page 1 (EXT-012 ATLAS — needs_review, not under DePaul's User Agreement)
New people registered 4 (PER-119 Connolly, PER-120 Rogers, PER-121 Booth, PER-122 McEwan)
New grant→resource links 5 (GRL-020…024)
New person→grant links 3 (PGL-188…190; resolved 2 unresolved PIs)
New person→resource (faculty-lead) links 7 (via people.yaml)
New college prefix introduced 1 (COM — College of Communication)
Candidates held 1 (RC-001 Immersion Lab)
New candidates preserved 5 (RAISE Lab, Center for Data Science, Center for Communication Engagement, ME Lab, Streaming Lab)

Validation: ./sync_docs.sh clean, pytest 44 passed, mkdocs build --strict clean.

2. Promotions

CDM-023 — DePaul Cybersecurity Clinic (from RC-005)

  • Evidence: dedicated official site cyberclinic.depaul.edu (Director Janine Spears), DePaul Newsroom, BS-in-Cybersecurity program page.
  • Wiring: new page; access/verification (confirmed, 90); Spears (PER-008) faculty_lead; GRL-020 from AGIF GRA-920; related to CyberLabs (CDM-004).
  • New links surfaced: interdisciplinary collaborators across School of Computing, Driehaus Business, College of Law, Steans Center (recorded in Notes; not invented as edges).

CDM-024 — Computational Biology & Applied Bioinformatics (CoBaAB) Lab (from RC-002)

  • Evidence: DePaul Center for Data Science affiliated-labs page; lab site. PIs Ramaraj (PER-016) & John Rogers (new PER-120).
  • Wiring: new page; confirmed/88; both PIs faculty_lead; GRL-021 from AGIF GRA-897; related to VIDA/MedIX (CDM-011).
  • Disambiguation resolved: CoBaAB is a distinct lab (own membership/contact/CDS affiliation), not part of CDM-011.

CSH-020 — Connolly Lab (Herpesvirus Entry & Membrane Fusion) (from RC-006)

  • Evidence: official DePaul faculty page describing "the Connolly lab"; Find-an-Expert; NIH R01 publications.
  • Wiring: new page; confirmed/88; registered Sarah Connolly (PER-119) as Professor & Chair of Health Sciences and faculty_lead; resolved GRA-279 PI; GRL-024 + PGL-188.

COM-001 — Virtual & Augmented Reality Communication (VARC) Lab (from RC-003)

  • Evidence: official College of Communication VARC page (location Room 111-112, leadership, equipment inventory, booking); founding coverage.
  • Wiring: new COM College of Communication prefix (unit page + generator mapping + nav); confirmed/90; Booth (PER-121) faculty_lead, McEwan (PER-122) affiliated; resolved GRA-886 PIs; GRL-023 + PGL-189/190.
  • Equipment captured: Meta Quest Pro/2/1, HTC Vive Focus Plus, Microsoft HoloLens 2, 360 cameras.

CDM-006 — Robotic Assisted Locomotion (RAL) Lab — correction (resolves RC-004)

  • Finding: authoritative DePaul sources (Huzaifa's faculty page; BS-in-Robotics page) establish the RAL Lab as Muhammad Umer Huzaifa's (PER-007) group. The page previously named Jay Cunningham, who actually directs the separate RAISE Lab.
  • Wiring: faculty lead corrected to Huzaifa (access/verification/contacts/people updated, verification now confirmed/88); GRL-022 from AGIF GRA-913; resolves relationship candidates REL-001/REL-004.

EXT-012 — Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) — needs_review

  • Evidence: ATLAS DOE user-facility site (facility confirmed). Per curator clarification, ATLAS is NOT covered by DePaul's Argonne User Agreement.
  • Framing: the DePaul–ATLAS tie is an emerging collaboration (anticipated joint publications, MS theses, shared students) whose evidence will surface later; the page is held at needs_review (confidence 60). It is included specifically to model that a national lab has multiple sub-facilities reached through different agreements/contacts.
  • Contrast (EXT-003 APS): DePaul holds a validated, curator-verified private University–Argonne User Agreement covering Argonne's user facilities — APS, the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), and ALCF (EXT-004) — recorded on EXT-003 (private document, restricted upload pending). CNM preserved as candidate RC-025.

3. Held as candidate

  • RC-001 Immersion Lab — the AGIF award is confirmed, but David Ramsay (PER-001) is documented as director of the Idea Realization Lab (CDM-001) and instructor of the Forge "Immersive System-Building Lab" courses (CSE 201/301). No standalone "Immersion Lab" facility page was found. Held pending an institutional lab page documenting it as a discrete operating space.

4. New resources/relationships discovered (preserved as candidates)

ID Candidate Why preserved (not promoted)
RC-020 RAISE Lab (Jay Cunningham) Newly discovered while correcting CDM-006; has its own site — recommend a CDM page next pass
RC-021 Center for Data Science (CDS) Umbrella center over CDM-011 (VIDA/MedIX) and CDM-024 (CoBaAB) — recommend a CDM center page
RC-022 Center for Communication Engagement Parent of COM-001 and sibling labs — recommend a COM center page
RC-023 Media Engagement Research Laboratory (ME Lab) Named on CCE initiatives page; capture lab page before promotion
RC-024 The Streaming Lab Named on CCE initiatives page; capture lab page before promotion

5. Provenance & governance

  • All promotions cite the packet 2026-06-14-hard-tech-candidate-web-discovery (source_snapshot/captured/web-evidence.md) with the originating institutional URLs.
  • No facility ownership inferred from topic similarity; no collaboration edges invented from coauthorship. Interdisciplinary collaborators (e.g., Cybersecurity Clinic) are recorded in prose, not as fabricated typed edges.
  • The CDM-006 correction preserves the displaced attribution by recording Jay Cunningham's actual lab (RAISE) as a candidate rather than deleting the signal.
  • Argonne sub-facility structure (curator correction): DePaul's validated private User Agreement covers Argonne user facilities (APS, CNM, ALCF) — recorded on EXT-003. ATLAS is a separate Argonne facility outside that agreement; its DePaul tie is emerging and held at needs_review until joint-publication / MS-thesis / shared-student evidence surfaces. This models that external partners can have internal sub-structures accessed through different agreements and contacts.
  1. Promote the parent centers (CDS, Center for Communication Engagement) and RAISE Lab from candidates RC-020…022.
  2. Capture ME Lab and Streaming Lab pages (RC-023/024).
  3. Equipment layer is still thin outside VARC — a core-facilities / shared-instrumentation catalog remains the highest-value untapped source.
  4. Attach a concrete DePaul ATLAS experiment/proposal citation to EXT-012 to upgrade it from curator-asserted to document-cited.