Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences

Dr. Barta studies vertebrate growth, development, and intraspecific variation through the application of bone histology, computed tomography, and phylogenetic methods. He focuses primarily on the anatomy of dinosaurs (including birds), and other vertebrates from the Triassic and Permian periods. He is also interested in amniote eggs and nesting.

Dr. Julie Croff is a Professor at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and a nationally recognized leader in substance use research, with a focus on prenatal exposures and early life adversity. She is Principal Investigator of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA) and serves as the contact PI for the Oklahoma site of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a landmark national study examining how early environments and experiences shape child development.

Dr. Croff has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2014 and has secured more than $43 million in extramural funding. Her research spans observational studies, clinical trials, and implementation science to advance evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery systems, with a focus on translating science into real-world impact across rural and underserved communities. Her work is particularly focused on understanding how experiences during pregnancy and early childhood influence health and development and on building systems that improve outcomes for individuals, families, and communities.

In addition her leadership at the OSU HBCD site, Dr. Croff serves in national leadership roles within the HBCD consortium, including as co-chair of the Biospecimen Working Group and previously as co-chair of the Rural and Sovereign Nations Working Group. These roles reflect her broader commitment to ensuring that large-scale research is scientifically rigorous while representing the experiences of rural and tribal communities.

Dr. Croff has contributed to state-level policy and legal efforts addressing substance use and is a member of Leadership Oklahoma Class 39. She is a Fellow and Past President of the American Academy of Health Behavior (AAHB) and previously served as a Governing Councilor of the American Public Health Association (APHA), contributing to national efforts to advance public health research and practice.

Outside of work, Dr. Croff enjoys volunteering with local organizations, cycling, and swimming. She and her husband, Ben, are raising two teenage children and share their home with an opinionated wirehaired dachshund.

Dr. Dursun Delen is the holder of the William S. Spears Endowed Chair in Business Administration, Patterson Family Endowed Chair in Business Analytics, Director of Research for the Center for Health Systems Innovation, and Regents Professor of Management Science and Information Systems in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. Prior to his academic tenure at OSU, he worked for a privately owned research and consultancy company as a research scientist for five years, during which he led a number of advanced analytics research projects funded by federal agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), among others. Dr. Delen has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and 12 books and textbooks in the fields of Data Mining, Business Intelligence, Business Analytics, AI/Machine Learning, and Data Science. He is often invited to companies for consultancy engagements and national and international conferences for keynote addresses. He regularly chairs tracks and minitracks at various business analytics and information systems conferences. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Business Analytics and the Journal of AI in Business (in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence), senior editor for the Journal of Decision Support Systems, Decision Sciences, and Journal of Business Research, associate editor for Decision Analytics and International Journal of RF Technologies, and is on the editorial boards of several other academic journals. He has been the recipient of several research and teaching awards, including the prestigious Fulbright Scholar, regents' Distinguished Teacher and Researcher, president's Outstanding Researcher, and Big Data Mentor awards.

Research Interests:

Data Mining; Business Intelligence; AI/Machine Learning; Business Analytics; Data Science; Decision Support Systems; Knowledge Management; Business Process Modeling and Evaluation; Database Design and Implementation