Contact RDSI

If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact the Office of Research Development and Strategic Initiatives at researchdev@kennesaw.edu.   ​

Dr. Heather Abbott-Lyon Headshot Photo

Dr. Heather Abbott-Lyon

Interim Director of Research Development & Strategic Initiatives

Associate Professor of Chemistry

Email: habbott@kennesaw.edu     
Phone: (470) 578-6140

  • Dr. Abbott-Lyon became Interim Director of Research Development & Strategic Initiatives in 2022, and has been at Kennesaw State University since 2011.
Sierra Hovet

Sierra Hovet

Research Development Specialist

Email: shovet@kennesaw.edu 
Phone: (470) 578-5753

  • Sierra Hovet possesses more than nine years of experience as a scientific editor and writer.

    For eight years, she worked with Dr. Zion Tse, the director of the Medical Robotics Lab at the University of Georgia and later at the University of York. She supported the lab’s activities by writing and editing research articles, grant applications, internal funding bids, and fellowship applications. Several of the successful grant applications she wrote for Dr. Tse allowed him to become a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and gain an Academy of Medical Sciences Professorship. When Dr. Tse co-founded the International Symposium on Medical Robotics, Sierra created a successful venture fund support request, and the first annual symposium went on to be hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

    In her current role as a Research Development Specialist for KSU, Sierra is committed to helping faculty learn how to identify grant opportunities and write competitive proposals. 

Dr. Dasha Chapman

Dr. Dasha Chapman

BEACON Faculty Fellow

Email: dchapm43@kennesaw.edu
Phone: (470) 578-2852

  • Dasha A. Chapman is currently Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at Kennesaw State University and the BEACON Faculty Fellow with Research Development and Strategic Initiatives in KSU’s Office of Research.

    Her work as BEACON Fellow aims to support and advocate for the research of faculty situated across the fields of Business, Education, Arts, Architecture, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Dasha can help faculty meet collaborators, seek appropriate funding, navigate KSU research support, and brainstorm ideas. Meet with Dasha during her office hours or invite her to speak with folks in your department!

    Dasha is an interdisciplinary dancer-scholar whose multi-modal research, teaching, curation, and performances interweave African, Caribbean, and African diaspora aesthetic practices, dance/performance studies, ethnography, queer/gender studies, and embodied practice. Dasha’s solo and co-authored writing appears in Americas: a Hemispheric Music Journal, The Black Scholar, Journal of Haitian Studies, The Dancer-Citizen, Dance Chronicle, Performance Matters, Radical Teacher, Theatre Journal, and Women & Performance. In her artistic work, Dasha collaboratively develops place-based performances with Haitian and American artists that activate histories, spaces, and dis/orientations. She has devised community-engaged performances in artistic residence at the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Gran d’Anse il faut Bouger in Jeremie, Haiti; at the Power Plant Gallery in Durham, NC; and at A Studio in the Woods|Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. Dasha also co-convenes the following transdisciplinary initiatives: The Haitian Studies Association’s Sexualities Working Group, Afro-Feminist Performance Routes, and Un/Commoning Pedagogies Collective. She regularly presents her scholarship and creative research at national and international conferences. Dasha has also participated in several notable international scholarly institutes, including the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute, Mellon Foundation Dance Studies Initiative, ​​Harvard University Mellon School for Theater and Performance Studies, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics ENCUENTRO, Five College Program for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas, and Northwestern University Performance Studies Institute. Dasha holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies and an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University. Previously, she held academic positions at Davidson College, Five College Dance/Hampshire College, and Duke University.