Research An invisible shield

An invisible shield
7,200 miles above
Earth is blocking so-called "killer electrons," which whip around
the planet at near light speed and have been known to threaten
astronauts and fry satellites. The barrier to the particle motion
was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnutshaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons
and protons, according to Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker,
director of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics (LASP). Held in place by Earth’s magnetic field, the Van
Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to
incoming energy disturbances from the sun.
Research
and creative work
2014–15
Michael Kodas, associate director of the Center for Environmental
Journalism in the College of Media, Communication and
Information, interviewed and photographed local residents in
the Riau Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. During
his 2014 visit, he witnessed multiple fires set by local farmers
and corporations to burn away rainforests to expand palm oil
cultivation. The massive wildfires are the biggest contributor to the
“haze” blanketing southeast Asia, driving hundreds of thousands
of people to seek medical treatment, canceling airline flights and
forcing schools, businesses and hospitals to close. The burning
in Indonesia has also made the nation one of the world’s largest
emitters of greenhouse gases, helping to drive an increase in
wildfires around the planet, including in the United States. Kodas’s
story on palm oil and wildfire was Ensia magazine’s most read
story in 2014 and is part of his upcoming book, Megafire, to be
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
on the cover
K–12 students enrolled in a CU Science Discovery class built and
tested 3-D structures using Shrinky Dink plastic and heat lamps to
emulate cutting-edge “photo origami” research being conducted
in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The research
team is developing a light-controlled approach for “self-assembly”
mechanisms in advanced devices based on the same principles
used in the Japanese art of paper folding. The ability to transform
a flat polymer sheet into a sophisticated, mechanically robust 3-D
structure will enable new approaches to manufacturing and design
of devices from the microscopic to centimeter scales. The “photo
origami” is supported by the National Science Foundation’s
Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program, which
supports interdisciplinary teams working on rapidly advancing
frontiers of fundamental engineering research. Pictured is Eric
Carpenter, Science Discovery’s education designer.
CU-Boulder is a
Tier 1 research
university
research facts
2,000+
undergraduates
directly involved
in research
No. 1
No. 1
51
atomic, molecular
and optical physics
program in the
nation since 2006
(U.S. News &
World Report)
public university
recipient of NASA
research funding
CU-Boulder
startups have
headquarters or
research operations
in Colorado
$425.6
million
in sponsored
research in
FY 2014–15
No. 22
ranked worldwide
for scholarly
citations
and research
impact (Leiden
University, 2015)
according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions
of Higher Education, placing CU-Boulder in the same
category as MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard,
UC Berkeley and other high-quality institutions characterized by “very high research activity.”
An international
leader
in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)
education research and innovation
78
members of the National Academies
5
Nobel laureates (all since 1989)
8
MacArthur “genius grant” fellows
11 research
institutes
account for more than half of all sponsored
research dollars
The only research
institution in the
world
to have sent space instruments to every planet
in the solar system and Pluto
Acknowledgments
Published by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Office of Strategic Relations.
Stein Sture, former Vice Chancellor for Research
Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research
Patricia Rankin, Associate Vice Chancellor
for Research
Designer: Samantha Davies
Editor: Malinda Miller-Huey
Project Manager: Andi Fabri
Proofreader: Vicki Czech
Joseph Rosse, Associate Vice Chancellor
for Research
Karen Regan, Assistant Vice Chancellor
for Research
Denitta Ward, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and Director, Office of Contracts
and Grants
Frances Draper, Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Relations
Bronson Hilliard, Assistant Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Media Relations and Communications
Jon Leslie, Assistant Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Marketing
Writers: Kenna Bruner, Hannah Fletcher, Trent
Knoss, Elizabeth Lock, Julie Poppen, Jim Scott
and Clint Talbott
Photo credits: Courtesy of Boulder County (pg. 3),
Bernard Grant (pgs. 16-17), Dennis Schroeder/
NREL (pgs. 20-21), illustration by Andy Kale,
University of Alberta (back cover). All others,
University of Colorado ©.
Photographers: Glenn Asakawa, Patrick Campbell
and Casey A. Cass
Table of Contents
LETTER
PAGE 2
At the center of innovation
WEATHER
PAGES 3–5
Force of nature
HEALTH
PAGES 6–7
Off and running
ARTS & HUMANITIES
PAGES 14–15
A study in contrasts
CREATIVE WORK
PAGES 16–17
Shaking up step-ball-change
AEROSPACE
PAGES 18–19
Stormy with a chance of solar flares
NATIONAL SECURITY
PAGES 8–9
INDUSTRY
PAGES 20–21
Biomedical innovation
in the fast lane
Forecasting for dollars
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
PAGES 10–11
Steps to success
ACROSS THE STATE
PAGES 12–13
Colorado outreach
TECH TRANSFER
PAGES 22–23
Ready, set, shape
FISCAL YEAR 2015
PAGE 24
Reporting the numbers
At the center of innovation
Collaboration and high-quality research drive impact and economic development.
weather (pg. 18). College of Music students are integrally involved
in the process of staging new operas each summer (pg. 16). And,
new technology is being developed by students participating in
two of our key campus-based entrepreneurship programs—
Catalyze CU-Boulder and the New Venture Challenge (pg. 23).
It is my great pleasure to highlight the innovative research and
creative work of our exceptional faculty, research staff and students.
Last year, our faculty competed successfully for $425.6 million
in externally sponsored research awards and submitted 2,255
proposals with a dollar value of more than $1.5 billion. You’ll find
an overview of fiscal year 2014–15 on page 24.
Our highly collaborative environment enables us to tackle many of
the issues facing society by bringing together teams of experts—
often from multiple disciplines—to develop new approaches to
diverse social and scientific challenges such as addressing school
bullying through Shakespearean plays or adapting to changing
climate conditions. Our research partners include the federal labs
across the Front Range of Colorado, in addition to dozens of
research collaborations with industry, foundations and universities
from across the state, the nation and all over the world.
But the impact of the university’s research programs is not about
the numbers; the true value is to individuals who benefit from the
work of our researchers. U.S. Army Colonel Patricia Collins is
one of many veterans whose lives have been changed by Alena
Grabowski and others in CU-Boulder’s Applied Biomechanics Lab
with the development of more efficient electrically powered anklefoot prostheses (pg. 7). A powdered measles vaccine by Robert
Sievers of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental
Sciences will benefit populations in developing countries since
it will be delivered by a puff of air instead of the more expensive
traditional liquid method (pg. 6). Closer to home, the map on pages
12–13 shows the research and outreach going on across Colorado.
This fall I am stepping down as vice chancellor for research to focus
on my own research. I look forward to watching CU-Boulder’s
research impact continue to grow under the leadership of incoming
Vice Chancellor for Research Terri Fiez.
Undergraduate and graduate students are at the center of many
of these research and creative work projects. Twenty students—
mostly undergraduates—are managing crucial components
of the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission studying space
—Stein Sture
Vice Chancellor for Research
24
The University of Colorado Boulder is a globally leading, research-intensive
public university. It is the only institution in the Rocky Mountain region that
belongs to the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization
of 62 leading public and private research universities.
WASHINGTON
FEDERALLY FUNDED LABS
IN COLORADO, INCLUDING
10 IN BOULDER
MINNESOTA
MCGILL
OREGON
SUNY BUFFALO
ROCHESTER
MICHIGAN ST
MICHIGAN
IOWA ST
IOWA
UC BERKELEY
NORTHWESTERN
CHICAGO PURDUE
UC DAVIS
ILLINOIS
CU-BOULDER
PRINCETON
VIRGINIA
DUKE
N. CAROLINA
VANDERBILT
CA TECH
PENN
HOPKINS
MARYLAND
AAU
EMORY
UC SAN DIEGO
ARIZONA
GEORGIA
TECH
TEXAS A&M
TEXAS
2
OHIO ST
WASHINGTON U
UCSB
UCLA
USC
CASE
INDIANA
MISSOURI
KANSAS
STANFORD
UC IRVINE
SYRACUSE
HARVARD
CORNELL
MIT
BRANDEIS
YALE
PENN ST
BROWN
PITTSBURGH
SUNY SB
CMELLON
NYU
COLUMBIA
TORONTO
RICE
TULANE
FLORIDA
AAU UNIVERSITIES
PRIVATE
PUBLIC
Force of nature
PICTURED Boulder
Creek overflowing
its banks during the
2013 flood.
A monumental flood gives CU-Boulder researchers a rare opportunity to study the effects of extreme weather on erosion.
T
he historic September 2013 storm that triggered widespread flooding across Colorado’s Front Range and
caused devastating property damage in and around
Boulder and Larimer Counties was not without one
silver lining: it gave CU-Boulder researchers a rare
opportunity to study the landscape-altering effects of extreme
weather firsthand.
In the aftermath of the flooding, researchers at the Institute of
Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) discovered that the storm
eroded the equivalent of hundreds of years, if not closer to a thousand years, worth of accumulated sediment from the foothills west
of Boulder, a finding that casts new light on previous assumptions
about the evolution of natural features such as the rocky slopes
lining Boulder Canyon. Erosion, as it turns out, may not always
be a slow and steady process, but rather can occur in sudden,
rapid bursts due to extreme weather events such as hundred- and
thousand-year storms.
“In Boulder Canyon and similar areas, the majority of the sediment transfer down slopes occurs during these rare, punctuated events, following hundreds of years of weathering to produce the sediment,” said Suzanne Anderson, a research fellow
at INSTAAR. “The 2013 storm was a unique opportunity to catch
the sediment movement in action.”
3
WEATHER
observations
TORNADOES
30
miles per hour­—
average tornado
ground speed
The Oklahoma panhandle is infamous for
its “supercell” storms that spawn damaging
winds, large hail and deadly twisters. Now,
CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles group has received
permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to start flying unmanned aerial vehicles,
or drones, over a 54,000-acre swath of “Tornado Alley” in order to help researchers better
understand the origin and development of
severe storms. The consortium will dispatch a
Tempest drone to the edges of these powerful
twisters and measure their air pressure, temperature, relative humidity and wind velocities.
And that’s just the beginning of the group’s
next-gen tornado research. “The next step is
to integrate the technology from this project
into an unmanned aircraft system known as
TTwistor, which will be the successor to the
Tempest,” said Brian Argrow, a professor in
aerospace engineering sciences. “We are already looking forward to future deployments.”
WILDFIRES
631,434
total acres burned
by California
wildfires in 2014
4
The hot, dry Santa Ana winds of southern
California fuel some of the most destructive
wildfires in the American West, but researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service
and the Cooperative Institute for Research in
Environmental Sciences (CIRES) have discovered a key atmospheric clue to their origins
that may pave the way for better forecasting. Dry, ozone-rich funnels of air known
as “stratospheric intrusions” form hours in
advance of some wind-driven fires and help
fuel the blaze further. Monitoring for these
disturbances, however, may provide agencies
valuable lead time to issue air quality alerts,
reallocate firefighting resources and evacuate
residents in harm’s way. “The good news is
that with the right models and observations,
we can get an early warning out,” said Andrew
Langford, a research chemist at NOAA’s Earth
System Research.
WEATHER
Force of Nature, continued
“The long-term erosion rate in this area is
about two-tenths of an inch per century—
that is less than the thickness of a human
hair per year,” said Anderson. “It took a large
storm to mobilize accumulated sediment in
a way that we can measure directly.”
1,000 years
worth of
accumulated
sediment was
eroded by the storm
The 2013 storm dropped between 7–18
inches of precipitation across Colorado’s
Front Range over a five-day period, equivalent to the average yearly rainfall for much
of the region. The rain triggered more than
1,100 landslides of various sizes and produced flooding in every nearby river.
Anderson and her fellow researchers, in collaboration with the Boulder Creek Critical
Zone Observatory, examined 120 separate
landslides over a 39-square-mile area west
of Boulder and found that individual landslides ranged from small (around 350 cubic
feet of sediment removed) to large (about
740,000 cubic feet removed). The largest
landslides swept down slopes, incorporating additional water and sediment, creating
dangerous, fast-moving debris flows.
“We estimated the velocities of some of
these debris flows at about 10 meters per
second, which is as fast as sprinter Usain
Bolt runs,” said Anderson, who is also an
associate professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Geography. “They’re incredibly
destructive because they happen so quickly
and there’s no warning system once a flow
is triggered.”
The size and rapidity of debris flows contrast with the slow pace of the processes
that produce the sediment. “From isotope
measurements, we know what the normal
weathering rate is. To see so much sediment transported off the slopes in one event
means that these cannot happen frequently,” said Anderson.
PICTURED
No one knows when—if ever—a storm of
that magnitude will occur again. What began as a unique opportunity to study a
disaster firsthand ended up highlighting the
underrated importance of infrequent extreme weather in the formation of the slopes
in our backyard.
two-tenths of an
inch per century
is the long-term erosion rate in this
area—less than the thickness of a
human hair per year
1,100 landslides
were triggered by the rain
10 meters
per second
is the estimated velocity of some of
these debris flows—which is as fast as
sprinter Usain Bolt runs
Heavy flooding damaged
more than 150 miles of
roads in Boulder County.
5
HEALTH
findings
MEASLES VACCINE
145,000
estimated number
of measles deaths
worldwide in 2013
Measles remains one of the world’s most
contagious—and deadly—diseases, but researchers have developed a powdered vaccine that can be delivered via a simple puff
of air. The new dry vaccine is less expensive
than its liquid counterparts and can be stored
at room temperature for up to four years,
according to Robert Sievers, a fellow of the
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a professor in
the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The research, funded in part by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health,
could be a game changer for resource-starved
regions of the world.
OUTPACING AGE
10%
metabolic energy
conserved by
seniors who run
for 30 minutes or
more three times
per week
Want to tap into the fountain of youth? Start
running. Researchers have discovered that
senior citizens who run regularly for exercise
can move more easily than their sedentary
counterparts and expend the same amount of
energy walking as a typical 20-year-old. “The
bottom line is that running keeps you younger,
at least in terms of energy efficiency,” said
Rodger Kram, an associate professor in the
Department of Integrative Physiology, noting
that older runners also maintain a metabolic
edge over seniors who just walk. Consider
these findings one more persuasive reason to
sign up for that 5K.
DIRT VS. ASPHALT
96%
of Denver
elementary school
students surveyed
chose to play in
the woods versus
a playground or
athletic field
6
Compelling evidence for putting the “jungle”
back in “jungle gym”: A recent study found
that playgrounds featuring natural wooded
habitats—as opposed to asphalt and recreation equipment—reduced children’s stress
levels and boosted their attention spans.
In more than 700 hours of observation at a
Denver-area elementary school’s outdoor play
space, “zero uncivil behaviors were observed,”
said Louise Chawla, a professor in the Program in Environmental Design. When it comes
to effective teaching methods, Mother Nature
is still the master.
HEALTH
Off and running
Groundbreaking prosthetics research helps wounded veterans get back on their feet.
U
.S. Army Colonel Patricia Collins was determined not to let a
partial leg amputation spell the
end of her competitive athletic
career. Now, she’s running better than ever with the help of groundbreaking prosthetic limb research that’s designed
to help veteran amputees regain the greatest possible level of functionality.
Collins, a 2013 International Triathlon Union
Paratriathlon silver medalist and 2016
Paralympics hopeful, is one of several veterans working with faculty member Alena
Grabowski in CU-Boulder’s Applied Biomechanics Lab to develop more efficient electrically powered ankle-foot prostheses.
CU-Boulder undergraduates play a leading role in the research as well. “The best
part of the experience was taking theoretical principles of biomechanics and putting
them into practice,” said Rachel Klomhaus,
a recent graduate who worked in Grabowski’s lab during her senior year. “I learned
how to use tools and programs to make a
difference in someone’s life.”
“I am running faster, farther and more comfortably than I have since I’ve been an amputee, thanks to Alena and her team,” she
said. “Having the opportunity to try different running legs and test variables such as
weight and height alignment was revolutionary for me.”
“I am running faster, farther
and more comfortably than I
have since I’ve been an amputee,
thanks to Alena and her team.”
“The ability to walk and run should never
be taken for granted,” said Grabowski, an
assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology. She and her students
are working with the Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense
(DOD) to reduce prosthetic limb rehabilitation time and reduce related health care
costs, which will allow veteran amputees
to resume intensive physical activities and
even return to active duty if they so desire.
PICTURED
Alena Grabowski
demonstrates a custom
ankle-foot prosthesis
device in her laboratory
in the Department of
Integrative Physiology.
thesis called the BiOM. Developed by Personal Bionics in Bedford, Massachusetts, it
helps restore natural gait and balance and
lowers joint stress. For the first time in history, veterans with lower limb amputations
have regained nearly full functionality while
walking and running.
Her state-of-the-art lab, which is funded
in part by a five-year Career Development
Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation, Research and Development Service, includes a dual-belt treadmill,
a high-speed treadmill, an eight-camera
motion analysis system, sophisticated metabolic analysis machines and more than 60
running-specific prostheses.
“My students provide an enormous contribution to my research,” said Grabowski.
“Their creative energy is infectious and they
offer important insight into research development and implementation.”
Grabowski’s work was featured prominently during this year’s National Veterans Research Week, which calls attention to the
achievements of VA researchers and the
role they play in providing high-quality care
for veterans and advancing medical science.
“With the increasing number of veterans
with leg amputations, there is a heightened
demand for advanced prostheses,” said
Grabowski. “We believe our research will
improve advanced leg prostheses for walking and running, facilitating the reintegration
of veterans with amputations in all facets of
civilian life.”
With additional funding support from the
DOD’s Congressionally Directed Medical
Research Programs, Grabowski’s team
conducts its studies using a unique pros-
7
NATIONAL SECURITY
Biomedical innovation
in the fast lane
Researchers aim for speedier techniques to analyze cellular processes.
T
raditionally it has taken decades
to understand how particular
drugs affect an organism’s biological system.
A project funded by the U.S. Department of
Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and underway at CU-Boulder has
the potential to significantly change that.
“Our goal is to rapidly speed up this process,
identifying how the compounds work in just
weeks. This could lower the barriers to developing effective drugs that have minimal side
effects,” said Assistant Professor William Old
of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and
Developmental Biology (MCDB).
The project, Subcellular Pan-Omics for Advanced Rapid Threat Assessment (SPARTA),
targets the development of a new technological system to rapidly determine how drugs
or biological or chemical agents exert their
effects on human cells. And while the project was designed to help prevent or reduce
mortality during possible armed conflicts, the
larger goal is to develop new techniques to
analyze cellular processes for a variety of applications, including biomedicine.
Old is the principal investigator on a cooperative agreement expected to be worth roughly
$14 million to CU-Boulder over five years.
The team is well-armed with the latest technology to do the job: it has been building
and integrating complex instrument platforms to perform molecular analysis since
the DARPA cooperative agreement was
signed in January 2014. Key instruments
CU-Boulder is using for SPARTA include
mass spectrometers that can be used to
identify and measure the molecular components of cells at unprecedented scales.
The team is also developing microfluidic devices to automate sample preparation and
control and manipulate individual cell components in order to investigate how RNA, DNA
and protein molecules change in response to
8
a given drug or toxin. As part of the SPARTA project, a group of nine CU-Boulder engineering undergraduates led by mechanical
engineering Professor Y.C. Lee designed,
built and tested a microfluidic device during
a year-long senior design class.
Because of the quality, accuracy and novelty of the small, student-built device—a chip
roughly 3 inches by 1.5 inches—the university plans to apply for a U.S. patent on the new
technology, according to Old.
“Our goal is to rapidly speed
up this process, identifying how the
compounds work in just
weeks. This could lower the barriers to
developing effective drugs that
have minimal side effects.”
“We believe the technology developed under the DARPA agreement will go far beyond
military and commercial applications,” said
SPARTA program manager Emina Begovic.
“We envision powerful applications of these
new tools in a biomedical setting. Understanding how cells are affected by bacterial
infection, for example, could lead to the development of new treatments.”
Other SPARTA team members include
Associate Professor Michael Stowell of
MCDB and Professors Natalie Ahn and
Xuedong Liu of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. The team also includes
Associate Professor Nichole Reisdorph
of the University of Colorado Anschutz
Medical Campus.
In addition to developing breakthrough technologies for national security, DARPA has
developed a number of technologies used
by civilians, including the Internet, automated
voice-recognition systems, high-tech prosthetic devices and neurological therapies.
PICTURED
William Old in his lab.
NATIONAL SECURITY
safeguards
ANALYZING TERRORISM
For the past decade, Aaron Clauset of the
Department of Computer Science and the
BioFrontiers Institute has used Big Data to
analyze thousands of terrorist attacks across
the world. Surprisingly, the pattern he and his
colleagues see is the same pattern seen in the
frequency and severity of earthquakes—both
follow what’s called a “power law” distribution. “We can’t predict precisely which event
will happen next, or where it will happen,
but we can give some estimate that can be
used to guide policy and also guide responses
to terrorism.”
GUIDING CHIP
A new chip developed by faculty, researchers
and graduate students at CU-Boulder and the
Boulder spinoff company ColdQuanta, Inc. will
target applications like precision clocks and
advanced guidance systems for submarines
and aircraft. The optical lattice atom chip uses
ultra-cold matter known as Bose-Einstein
Condensate, created on campus in 1995 by
Nobel laureates Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell.
“The condensate’s quantum properties can
dramatically increase the performance of
devices like gyroscopes, accelerometers and
magnetometers,” said Professor Dana Z.
Anderson of the physics department and JILA,
who led the research.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
FUNDING
2015
$19,285,323
2014
$23,085,582
2013
$11,938,633
2012
$17,895,720
2011
$16,495,806
2010
$15,849,748
2009
$12,515,517
9
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Steps to success
Coordinated community programs in Montbello promote positive youth development.
I
t was through her church that Zuton
Lucero-Mills discovered Strengthening
Families, a Steps to Success program
run by CU-Boulder’s Center for the
Study and Prevention of Violence.
The sessions cemented her belief in the
importance of talking to your children and
sharing things about yourself.
“We work on things to say and how to say
them,” said Lucero-Mills, a mom raising 10
kids with her husband. “It’s good in easy
moments. When you hit difficult moments,
you kind of take a breath and remember
what you have learned.”
Beginning its fifth and final year, Steps to
Success is a collection of evidence-based
programs strategically focused on the
needs of Montbello, a northeast Denver
neighborhood of more than 30,000 residents that has experienced long-standing
problems with crime and gangs.
The program targets children ages 10 to
14 and their families and seeks to reduce
problem behaviors and improve parenting and family management practices and
communication skills.
Lucero-Mills and her children are among
the 3,061 youth and 137 adults served by
Steps to Success in the past two years
alone. The admittedly ambitious goal is to
reduce youth violence and problem behaviors such as substance abuse and delinquency by 10 percent by 2016.
Led by the center with $5.5 million from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the program relies heavily on many
partners, including the School of Medicine
at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, Children’s Hospital Colorado and others.
Denver Police Department community resource officer Sherikera Heflin Hererra is actively involved in Steps to Success meetings
with her partner. They came up with the idea
of creating a card with information about
the Steps to Success programs that officers
dealing with families in conflict can share
with them.
“With Steps to Success we are able to focus on those core issues before it gets to
that point where families need police involvement,” Hererra said.
While final data hasn’t been collected, some
teachers in Montbello are noticing behavior
shifts in young students. Where an argument or fight may have ensued, kids are
figuring out how to work out their problems.
Teens and younger siblings who at first
groused about participating in a program
aimed at improving family relationships
came to enjoy it and began incorporating
newly learned communications skills into
their daily lives.
“With Steps to Success we are
able to focus on those core issues
before it gets to that point where families
need police involvement.”
Small changes over time and across sectors—family, school, interactions with police, church—are at the root of the Steps to
Success program.
Researchers first surveyed more than 3,000
young people and 400 parents to pinpoint risk
and protective factors in Montbello. Attending religious services and positive recognition
emerged as the most promising protective
factors, while family conflict, early problem
behavior and weak social ties were found to
be factors leading to youth violence.
“Prevention isn’t sexy at all,” said Steps to
Success community site manager Shelli
Brown. “There is much more attention when
something blows up. Everyone swoops in and
wants to be involved, or there’s finger pointing. We are doing things based on what we
know will likely happen, based on what the
community is saying it needs.”
Learn more at www.stepstosuccessmontbello.com
10
PICTURED
Youth participating in
the Safe Schools Youth
Summit at the Boys and
Girls Club in Montbello.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
initiatives
MENTORING NATIVE
AMERICAN STUDENTS
Sustainable Building Research Experience
and Mentoring, a National Science Foundation-funded research and mentoring program
for Native American high school students,
demonstrates the power of engineering to
identify and solve tribal housing problems
while inspiring interest in science, technology, engineering and math. Over the summer, 12 students from the Rosebud Indian
Reservation spent a week in Boulder where
they attended faculty lectures on sustainability and engineering. They also participated in
engineering design challenges and hands-on
workshops on sustainable building materials
and energy systems.
GEOMETRY IN
THE PARK
CU-Boulder environmental design students
and researchers from the Center for STEM
Learning are working with the city of Lafayette
to create a STEM-inspired, hands-on geometry
feature in Romero Park funded by a National
Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in
Research and Innovation (EFRI) grant. The
exhibit will be a resource for teachers and
community members of all ages to informally
explore the mathematics of folding and other
STEM concepts. “When we bring mathematics
in a three-dimensional way to a permanent
park exhibit we’re becoming part of that community for the next 20 or 50 years,” said Beth
Stade, lead designer and a research assistant
in the Center for STEM Learning.
11
ACROSS THE STATE
CU-Boulder research, teaching and
creative work often span the boundaries of campus.
These examples pinpoint some of the CU-Boulder
initiatives and partnerships that impact the lives of
Coloradans and enrich the work of the faculty, staff
and students.
CU SCIENCE DISCOVERY
CU Science Discovery’s school and teacher programs
provide K–12 teachers with curricula, materials and
resources that connect students and teachers to
current CU science and create unforgettable learning
experiences across Colorado, including Craig.
AIR QUALITY
A mechanical engineering research group is
developing low-cost versatile air quality monitoring
systems in the North Fork Valley and working with
local schools on air quality education.
Craig
Winter
Park
COURSES AT CMU
A partnership between Colorado Mesa University in
Grand Junction and the College of Engineering and
Applied Science has made it possible for students
to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical
engineering from CU while attending courses at CMU.
Students take courses from CMU instructors during
their first two years and with CU faculty who live in
Grand Junction their second two years.
Cedaredge
Grand
Junction
Paonia
DANCE IN COMMUNITIES
CU Contemporary Dance Works is a touring company
that offers annual one-week residencies in Colorado
communities that are underserved in the arts. In
2015 the company, which is composed of dance
MFA candidates, was in residence in and around
the communities of Cedaredge, Delta, Hotchkiss
and Paonia.
LAW CLINIC
A group of law students in an American Indian Law
Clinic Tribal Outreach Project provide no-cost legal
services for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Towaoc.
Law students also provide low- or no-cost legal
services to Colorado’s acequia communities, where
water is distributed and shared equally.
BARK BEETLES
Professor Jeff Mitton has discussed his research on
bark beetles and the recent bark beetle epidemic
with alumni and local residents throughout Colorado,
including Longmont, Trinidad, Durango, Paonia,
Steamboat, Vail, Winter Park, Grand Junction and the
Roaring Fork Valley.
Towaoc
San Luis Valley
GAME DESIGN
Hundreds of middle school students in Pueblo are gaining critical computational
thinking skills by creating their own video games through CU-Boulder’s NSFfunded Scalable Game Design initiative. Teachers from two school districts have
undergone Scalable Game Design training under the grant so they can incorporate
game design instruction in required computer or technology courses, which reach
a diverse group of students including those typically underrepresented in STEM.
12
nter
k
ACROSS THE STATE
GREENBACK
CUTTHROAT TROUT
A genetic sleuthing effort that resulted in the identification of Colorado’s “true”
native greenback cutthroat trout two years ago has come full circle with the stocking
of the official state fish into Colorado’s high country. CU-Boulder researcher Jessica
Metcalf, an expert in ancient DNA forensics, located original South Platte River
headwaters specimens in museums and analyzed their genes.
HANDS-ON ARCHAEOLOGY
The Archaeology in the Classroom project provides
hands-on teaching kits containing real and reproduction artifacts, tools and standards-based curriculum
for teachers and schools around the state, including Fort Morgan.
Zimmerman Lake
Fort Morgan
Boulder
Denver
GOODNIGHT MOON IN 3-D
The Tactile Picture Books Project out of the College of
Engineering and Applied Science has created a 3-D
version of the children’s classic Goodnight Moon that
allows visually impaired children to touch objects in the
story, like the cow jumping over the moon, as it is read
aloud. The team is working with the Anchor Center for
Blind Children to perfect the project.
Colorado
Springs
MONTBELLO COMMUNITY
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is
working with the Montbello community on programs
to reduce violence and promote positive youth
development. In addition, Hip Hop in the Classroom
uses the beats and rhymes of rap music to help
students master language arts at Montbello High
School in Denver.
Pueblo
HEALTHY FOOD
Researchers and graduate students are helping
transform Denver’s Westwood neighborhood from a
low-income area that lacks easy access to healthy
food to a model of urban sustainability as part of their
Learning in the Food Movement project.
Trinidad
CU IN THE COMMUNITY
CONSTITUTIONAL LITERACY
CU in the Community is an educational community
partnership in Trinidad that features a variety of public
and school programs featuring the latest in faculty
research, arts and humanities, and science from
CU-Boulder.
The Byron R. White Center sends law students into
high schools all over Colorado, including Colorado
Springs, for Constitution Day.
13
ARTS & HUMANITIES
writings
PULITZER PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR
Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Encounters at
the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People caught Elizabeth Fenn off guard.
First she received an email from a New York
Times reporter. Soon her phone started ringing and colleagues showed up at her office
door. During the excitement, she received official notification from her editor. Fenn, chair
of the Department of History, worked for 10
years on the book the Pulitzer Board called
“an engrossing, original narrative showing
the Mandans, a Native American tribe in the
Dakotas, as a people with a history.” Remembered as the people Lewis and Clark stayed
with in the winter of 1804–05, the Mandans
“had to deal with a whole series of environmental challenges—drought, infectious disease from Europe including whooping cough,
smallpox and measles, and they also had to
deal with Norway rats, a new species from
China arriving via Europe,” she said.
STORIES IN THE BEADS
For hundreds of years, Eastern Woodlands
tribes have used delicate purple and white
shells called “wampum” to form intricately
woven belts. In Reading the Wampum, Penelope Kelsey, director of the Center for Native
American and Indigenous Studies, explores
the aesthetic appeal of the belts and provides
insightful analysis of how readings of wampum
belts can change our understanding of specific treaty rights and land exchanges. Wampum
belts can be used as a form of currency, but
they are primarily used as a means to record
significant oral narratives for future generations. “Today, Hodinöhsö:ni’ painters, filmmakers, craftspeople, authors and storytellers
use these wampum beads to tell new stories,
engaging a centuries-long tradition of wampum teachings and expressing how wampum
connects meaningfully with native peoples of
the present and future,” Kelsey said.
14
ARTS & HUMANITIES
A study in contrasts
Professor takes literature off the page and into the real world.
A
dam Bradley is a study in
contrasts. He’s a hip-hop expert who grew up in Salt Lake
City. He can dissect the literary devices of Shakespeare
in one breath and Slick Rick in the next.
He teaches in the Department of English,
but his Laboratory for Race and Popular
Culture — or RAP Lab — is in the Cristol
Chemistry Building, bustling with chemists
wearing lab coats and eye protection.
The RAP Lab is a “humanities hothouse” for
cutting-edge research, teaching and outreach. Here, Bradley and a cadre of student
and postdoctoral researchers are taking
on a number of projects, including looking
at the differences and similarities between
American hip hop and Polish hip hop.
“We want to understand what’s going on
with the language and the flow of lyrics, but
also what’s going on culturally when something like hip hop, which is born in an African American context, gets taken over to
a country like Poland, which is 98 percent
white,” Bradley said.
Bradley and a colleague in Poland are
compiling a global catalog of artists and
scholars. So far, they’ve found potential
collaborators in 26 countries who could
help explain how hip hop is expressed in
other cultures and countries.
PICTURED Adam
Bradley talking with a
student in the RAP lab.
After extensive discussions with the inmates, Bradley decided what they needed
was not “for me to go in and run my own
little show, but rather to support what they’d
already done.”
The inmates themselves have developed
GAP, “the idea being, quite radically, to
conceive of something driven by the inmates themselves rather than imposed
from the outside,” said Bradley. The core
principle is to “occupy but not abandon”
the gangs in the prisons.
This differs from most gang-related programs, which insist that inmates renounce
their gang affiliations, resulting in very low
rates of success.
The inmates have created a program that
allows for self-transformation, “sometimes
revolutionary change, without renunciation,” he said.
“...people are complex, far
more capacious than we
allow—they can contain contradictions and can transform
themselves.”
Closer to home, he’s striving to help Colorado prison inmates break the cycle of
destructive behavior without severing their
social ties.
Bradley and his students support the inmates’ work by sending them books, making connections with outside experts or
simply lending an ear. His students are also
researching other prison programs’ efficacy
so as to better support GAP’s development.
Lisi Owen, executive director of the Colorado Prison Law Project, heard Bradley
on Colorado Public Radio discussing his
Hip Hop in the Classroom initiative, which
helps students understand how hip hop
and literature employ many of the same
devices, thereby helping students relate to
and possibly even study literature.
Bradley emphasizes that the work with
inmates reflects a common theme in literature, “that people are complex, far
more capacious than we allow—they can
contain contradictions and can transform
themselves.”
Owen suggested that Bradley make a
hip-hop-related presentation to two inmates who had been developing the Gang
Awareness Program (GAP).
“We see it in literature. We allow it in
literature, but sometimes we don’t allow it
in life.”
To learn more about the RAP Lab, go to
raplab.colorado.edu
15
CREATIVE WORK
creations
GARDEN SCULPTURES
“The garden—its historical development,
myriad forms and metaphoric language—
has informed my work for years and is a
primary lens through which I understand my
environment,” artist Kim Dickey wrote in her
essay “The Garden as Model and Muse.” A
ceramics professor in the Department of Art
and Art History whose work has been widely
exhibited nationally and internationally, Dickey
translates this vision into intricate botanical
sculptures that consist of thousands of glazed
terracotta and porcelain pieces. “In some
ways gardens are like cinema or TV, a form of
illusion that transports us from real life into a
fantasy world.”
STAGING OPERA
Every summer, operatic professionals join
College of Music students on campus to stage
an opera from initial rehearsal to final performance. As part of CU NOW, or New Opera
Workshop, composers and performers work
together for three intense weeks through all
aspects of the process. “I can’t stress enough
how important programs like this are for
opera,” said Egemen Kesikli, who is pursuing
a doctorate in musical arts at CU-Boulder. “As
young composers today, the biggest challenge we have is that we cannot get enough
performances.” CU NOW is led by Eklund
Opera Program Director Leigh Holman, who
co-founded the program in order to provide
students with experience in developing new
music and new roles. When she started CU
NOW, programs devoted to opera were few
and far between. “It’s really important to keep
the genre alive,” she said.
16
CREATIVE WORK
Shaking up
step-ball-change
One-woman performances are a “combo platter” of media styles.
W
hen Michelle Ellsworth
was seven, the Ernest
Flat Dancers on The Carol Burnett Show caught
her attention.
Captivated by the jazz-dance performances
that served as segues between the show’s
segments, Ellsworth knew that was what
she wanted to do.
Now she uses dance as just one of a number of components in her one-woman
performances.
“I am not sufficiently articulate in any one
media to function effectively,” said Ellsworth, an associate professor of dance at
CU-Boulder. “I require a combo platter to
communicate. Dance is my first language
and love as an artist and is absolutely central to my efforts.”
A number of elements show up in her performances: improvised dialogue, performable websites, dance, drawings, videos
and physical objects. Some ideas lean toward movement, some toward performance
sculptures. Others are about the body colliding with technology and the stage.
Ellsworth asks herself a question to begin
a piece. Then she experiments, makes observations and refines her question—over
and over. As new information surfaces in
the world, she regularly changes and adds
content to a number of “finished” works.
PICTURED
“The seed idea for a piece is arbitrary in a
certain way and I have very little loyalty to
it,” she said. “Some people watch my work
and think that I am talking about the tyranny
of rectangles or the post-9/11 world; others think I’m funny, while others think that
I have well-trained legs, and others think
other things.”
Michelle Ellsworth
performing Preparation
for the Obsolescence of
the Y Chromosome.
She describes her work as using humor and
technology to explore such themes as gender, genetics, politics and ecology.
“Dance, for me, is inextricably linked to politics and social issues,” she said. “To talk
about these neighborhoods without including the body has always seemed odd to me.
I don’t have an agenda for my audience. I
feel grateful that they even show up!”
Her 2015 Clytigation: State of Exception
work explores protocols for avoiding surveillance, interpersonal drama and death. Crafted as a performance and an installation art
piece, the work incorporates audience-run
mechanical devices, like a coin-operated
apparatus that shares a short phrase of
movement for 25 cents and an exercise bike
that controls a video’s speed and direction.
“Dance is my first language and
love as an artist and is absolutely central to my efforts.”
Her work is gaining recognition. In 2011, she
won a $50,000 USA Fellowship Grant, designed to put unrestricted grants “into the
hands of America’s finest artists” and this
summer she was one of six dancers nationwide to win an $80,000 Doris Duke Impact
Award. The award recognized her “radical
experimentation” in unconventional displays of dance.
Ellsworth, who received her Master of Fine
Arts in dance from CU-Boulder and has
been on the faculty since 2000, is unique
among the dance faculty for combining
dance, science, music and film and collaborating with colleagues from engineering, environmental science, film studies, computer
science, art history and ATLAS (Alliance for
Technology, Learning and Society).
“Being at CU profoundly impacts my work,”
she said. “My colleagues in the theatre and
dance department have an extremely contemporary and interdisciplinary definition
of dance and have always encouraged my
most experimental impulses.”
17
AEROSPACE
Stormy with a chance
of solar flares
CU-Boulder students helm an ambitious NASA space weather mission.
W
hen NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Spacecraft (MMS) launched
successfully from Cape
Canaveral, Florida, in
early March, reaching Earth’s low orbit in a
matter of seconds, congratulatory hugs and
shouts broke out in the operations center
inside CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).
The celebrants, however, were not typical
mission control veterans, but rather a team
of 20 CU-Boulder students—mostly undergraduates—who have been given the unique
opportunity to manage crucial components
of a $15 million mission that will study geomagnetic storms, solar flares and other energetic phenomena throughout the universe.
“I knew about CU-Boulder’s reputation in
the space sciences,” said Esteben Rodriguez, a junior in aerospace engineering sciences from South Dakota and a member of
the MMS instrument control team. “What I
didn’t know was this is one of the few places
in the world where undergraduates can get
real mission operations experience.”
During the mission’s first six months, students will monitor the craft around the clock
in four-hour shifts to assess the health of
all 100 instruments on board. Each mission
controller has successfully completed an intensive 10-week training program.
“We are the ones at the consoles, sending
instrument commands and working closely
with the flight controllers at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center,” said Evan Grazer, a junior in aerospace engineering sciences who
helped develop software for the MMS.
The four identical, octagonal MMS spacecraft are flying in pyramidal formation
through Earth’s magnetosphere to study the
effects of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which contain billions of tons of solar
particles that can potentially interfere with
GPS satellites, power grids and radio communications and threaten astronaut safety.
18
The MMS instruments produce 3-D images by recording data more than 10 times
faster than the blink of an eye. LASP students helped create an electronics package
known as the Digital Fields Board, which is
considered to be the “brains” of the equipment on board each spacecraft.
The MMS spacecraft will fly in a highly elliptical orbit between about 4,400 miles and
47,000 miles in altitude before eventually extending to about 93,000 miles above Earth.
Planning a large-scale space research
mission is one thing. Putting undergraduates in the driver’s seat, however, is
what sets MMS apart from other recent
spaceflight endeavors.
“I knew about CU-Boulder’s reputation in the space sciences....
What I didn’t know was this is one
of the few places in the
world where undergraduates can
get real mission operations
experience.”
“This is one of NASA’s flagship missions and
our students have the opportunity to be the
first people ever to send commands and
monitor the health of MMS instruments,”
said Bill Possel, director of LASP Mission
Operations and Data Systems. “It’s a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“When I came to CU-Boulder, I didn’t know
about these kinds of opportunities,” said junior Maggie Williams of Highlands Ranch,
Colorado, an MMS student controller who
had previously worked on a student satellite
project at the CU-Boulder-headquartered
Colorado Space Grant Consortium. “I feel
very fortunate.”
PICTURED
Undergraduate students
(left to right) Lucas
Migliorini (mechanical
engineering), Matt
Muszynski (astrophysics)
and Hui Kang Ma
(aerospace engineering)
work in the MMS
control room in LASP at
CU-Boulder.
AEROSPACE
explorations
BIOSERVE
50
number of BioServe
missions flown
since 1987
From antibiotics to ant farms, BioServe Space
Technologies is taking K–12 education to new
heights—literally. The NASA-funded center,
based in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, has designed, built and
administered microgravity life science experiments on shuttles and space stations alike,
reaching hundreds of thousands of students
around the world and partnering with over
100 companies. “We are continually searching for spaceflight opportunities and new ways
of conducting experiments that will push the
boundaries of both research and education,”
said Louis Stodieck, director of BioServe.
MAVEN
$300 million
estimated MAVEN
contribution to
Colorado’s economy
Can an interplanetary spaceflight project feel
homegrown? For NASA’s Mars Atmosphere
and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission—
which entered the Red Planet’s orbit in September 2014—the answer is decidedly yes.
CU-Boulder is leading primary science operations and has two instruments on board,
while Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Littleton built the spacecraft and is responsible
for mission operations, and United Launch
Alliance of Centennial provided the launch
vehicle. CU-Boulder students have also been
involved. “A high-priority goal for us is to educate and train the next generation of space
scientists and engineers,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator and a
professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric
and Space Physics.
NEW HORIZONS
750,000
miles per day—
estimated speed
of New Horizons
spacecraft
In July, Pluto got its long-awaited closeup when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft
made a successful flyby after a nine-year,
3-billion-mile journey, beaming back stunning images that made front-page headlines
worldwide. The spacecraft is also carrying the
Student Dust Counter, an instrument built by
CU-Boulder students and designed to analyze
the remnants of collisions between cosmic
objects and provide insight into the evolution
of the solar system. Fran Bagenal, a professor
in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, summed it up best: “We’ve
been waiting nearly a decade, but as everyone
can see, it certainly was worth the effort.”
19
INDUSTRY
Forecasting for dollars
Improved wind forecasts aim to bolster power grid efficiencies.
T
hough we may know wind is
coming within a 24-hour period, what time, how strong it
will be or how long it will last
are often unknowns.
For those caught in sudden gales, the matter
can be an inconvenience. For the renewable
energy industry, a vague weather forecast can
translate to lost dollars.
A recent $2.5 million grant from the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) to a coalition
of organizations including CU-Boulder aims
to boost wind forecast models, making wind
predictions—and energy production from
turbines—more reliable and efficient.
Advances could not only set up wind farms
and power grid operators to be more successful, they also could lead to lower costs
for consumers and strengthen nationwide
efforts to transition to more low-carbon
sources of electricity.
“We’re skilled at predicting that there will
be significant increases or decreases in
wind speed, but we have a lot of challenges anticipating the exact timing and magnitude,” said Julie Lundquist, an assistant
professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and the CU-Boulder lead on the DOE project.
The grant is led by Vaisala, an international
company based in Finland with offices in Louisville, Colorado, that specializes in environmental and industrial measurements.
Other partners include the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, the
Louisville office of Lockheed Martin, Texas
Tech University, the University of Notre Dame
and the environmental consulting firm Sharply
Focused, of Portland, Oregon.
The research ahead is made even more formidable by the fact that the large group of scientists and technicians involved are zeroing in on
some of the most complex terrain in which to
forecast wind, the Columbia River Gorge region of Washington and Oregon, where thousands of wind turbines are already deployed.
20
“Weather patterns in and around mountains,
canyons, gorges and coastlines are difficult
to predict,” said Lundquist. “So if we can fix
the models and improve their performance
in challenging areas like the Columbia River
Gorge, then we should also improve their performance in easier locations.”
Armed with hefty super-computing power,
the researchers will tackle the complex terrain by using a high-resolution technique to
look at weather patterns there. Using advanced meteorological equipment, they’ll
be able to examine what’s happening in a
small area, such as a half-mile section as
opposed to a 13-mile section.
“We’re skilled at predicting that
there will be significant increases or decreases in
wind speed, but we have a lot
of challenges anticipating the exact
timing and magnitude.”
Additionally, the researchers will run models more rapidly—every hour—to compare
projected and actual atmospheric conditions, making corrections to data along the
way for better forecasting accuracy.
CU-Boulder graduate students are participating in the research, and project measurements
will also be incorporated into Lundquist’s undergraduate class, Wind Energy Meteorology.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
and CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for
Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)
also are participating in the research.
“In order to address challenges with the wind,
we also have to address other aspects of the
weather,” said Lundquist. “We hope to improve representations of other physics that
are applicable to other industries such as
transportation and recreation.”
PICTURED
Julie Lundquist visits a
Colorado wind farm.
INDUSTRY
advances
FLEXIBLE PHONES
10
technologies
became startups
with CU Tech
Transfer in
FY 2014–15
With all that advanced electronic devices can
do—connect people in opposite hemispheres,
count one’s every step, deliver information
and entertainment, and more—it’s no wonder
the temperature of their components could
rise. Heat is a limiting factor, affecting thickness and flexibility, in the design of workhorse
electronics like wearable technology, smartphones, tablets and computers. But luckily,
the technology involving thermal management
is getting sleeker. Y.C. Lee and Ronggui Yang,
both professors of mechanical engineering
and co-founders of Kelvin Thermal Technologies, worked with the CU Technology Transfer
Office at the beginning of 2015 to license a
cutting-edge heat mitigation system. The
system could enable the development of ultra-thin and flexible smartphones, wearable
electronics and other commercial and military
items. The new approach—which has the potential to enhance product reliability and efficiency—replaces conventional materials like
graphite, copper and aluminum.
INDUSTRY
SAFETY TRAINING
796
worker fatalities
in 2013 were in
the construction
industry, making
it one of the
most dangerous
occupational fields
As part of a five-year $2 million grant from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Stefanie Johnson at CU-Boulder’s Leeds
School of Business is researching the impact
of leadership training on safety outcomes
across construction job sites. The goal is to
use the data to enhance the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration’s 30-hour
construction training course. The existing
course is widely used across the United States
with over 700,000 attendees annually, but
lacks a module on leadership. This is problematic in that leadership has been shown to be a
key driver of safety outcomes in construction.
21
TECH TRANSFER
innovations
2014–15
89
invention disclosures
159
28
patents filed
patents issued
30
licenses and options
11
exclusive licenses
12
nonexclusive licenses
7
options
10 startups
Click Nucleic Acids Inc.
gaugewear Inc.
Kelvin Thermal Technologies
Mallinda LLC
MyRoomSolutions LLC
Orbital Micro Systems Inc.
PRAAN Biosciences Inc.
Red Cloud Communication Inc.
SilLion LLC
Ubivision LLC
22
TECH TRANSFER
Ready, set, shape
Two CU-Boulder alumni explore the market possibilities for shape-shifting plastic.
P
lastic is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, as well
as design friendly and waterproof. But for the most part,
once molded its shape is set.
Chris Kaffer and Philip Taynton, co-founders of Mallinda, have an alternative. They
started the spinoff—named from components of the words “malleable” and “industries”—after Taynton discovered a new
type of plastic while he was a doctoral student in the lab of Wei Zhang, a CU-Boulder associate professor of chemistry and
biochemistry.
Most plastics require being heated to between 400 and 600 degrees Fahrenheit to
be molded. But when the Mallinda plastic is
dipped in water as low as 50 to 175 degrees
Fahrenheit, the material—cool enough to
handle with one’s hands—­can be reshaped
in seconds.
“What’s unique is that it can be reshaped
by the end user, but once it cools, it goes
back to being really durable and hard,” said
Kaffer, who graduated from CU-Boulder in
2014 with an MBA. He also holds a doctoral
degree in molecular and cell biology from
the University of California, Berkeley.
The pair was selected for the inaugural cohort of Catalyze CU-Boulder and then won
CU-Boulder’s New Venture Challenge in
2014. They also are part of Innosphere, a
Fort Collins-based incubator.
PICTURED
Chris Kaffer (left) and
Philip Taynton (right)
examine liquid polymer
in a bottle–the material
used to make their
innovative plastic.
Kaffer and Taynton are now in discussions
with makers of athletic gear to explore
customizable apparel, a highly desirable
niche in the market. One idea involves super-strong, ultrathin shinguards that can
be sculpted in seconds to the user’s legs.
Other concepts that could involve Mallinda
plastic and composites are head protection
and torso protection for motocross racers
and football players.
Taynton, chief technical officer of the
company, and Kaffer, chief executive officer—with Zhang serving as an advisory
co-founder—are in the process of licensing
the plastic, working with CU’s Technology
Transfer Office.
They recently received a $150,000 Small
Business Innovation Research grant from
the National Science Foundation and
opened a lab at the Fitzsimons Innovation
Campus in Aurora, adding a full-time staff
member to their team.
The same qualities that make the plastic so
versatile—which could improve user value
and product life span—could also benefit
the environment.
“What’s unique is that it can be
reshaped by the end user, but
once it cools, it goes back to being
really durable and hard.”
“Our material can not only be molded and
remolded at relatively low temperatures,
but it’s also intrinsically recyclable,” said
Kaffer. “We can grind it down into a powder
and then re-form it with pressure and heat.”
To add to the innovation of their plastic,
Kaffer and Taynton are compositing it with
woven carbon fiber, which is stronger than
steel and widely used in aerospace, automotive, wind energy and other industries.
Next up is a Texas-sized competition. The
Mallinda team was recently selected to
pitch alongside companies from around
the world in the South By Southwest Eco
Startup Showcase.
23
$
FISCAL YEAR 2014–15
Reporting the numbers
International, Nonprofits
and Other
$76,592,205
Total Awards Received in Fiscal Year 2015 (2,026)
18%
Other Universities
$33,675,534
8%
Industry
$16,557,726
4%
Sources of
Research Funding
State of Colorado
$5,558,972
Federal Agencies
$293,209,505
1%
69%
Research Awards
by Fiscal Year
Research Funding
by Federal Agency
$293,209,505
NASA 25%
NSF 25%
Commerce 18%
NIH 14%
24
www.colorado.edu/ocg/annual-report
$266,088,557
$280,009,342
$339,684,761
$454,386,816
$359,129,077
$380,704,593
$351,875,107
$412,101,412
$425,593,942
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
A complete financial annual report for fiscal year
2015 is available through the Office of Contracts
and Grants website:
2007
Other Federal
Agencies 4%
Education 2%
$256,452,911
Energy 5%
2006
Defense 7%
* ARRA funding contributed to a significant increase in 2010.
Michael Kodas, associate director of the Center for Environmental
Journalism in the College of Media, Communication and
Information, interviewed and photographed local residents in
the Riau Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. During
his 2014 visit, he witnessed multiple fires set by local farmers
and corporations to burn away rainforests to expand palm oil
cultivation. The massive wildfires are the biggest contributor to the
“haze” blanketing southeast Asia, driving hundreds of thousands
of people to seek medical treatment, canceling airline flights and
forcing schools, businesses and hospitals to close. The burning
in Indonesia has also made the nation one of the world’s largest
emitters of greenhouse gases, helping to drive an increase in
wildfires around the planet, including in the United States. Kodas’s
story on palm oil and wildfire was Ensia magazine’s most read
story in 2014 and is part of his upcoming book, Megafire, to be
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
on the cover
K–12 students enrolled in a CU Science Discovery class built and
tested 3-D structures using Shrinky Dink plastic and heat lamps to
emulate cutting-edge “photo origami” research being conducted
in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The research
team is developing a light-controlled approach for “self-assembly”
mechanisms in advanced devices based on the same principles
used in the Japanese art of paper folding. The ability to transform
a flat polymer sheet into a sophisticated, mechanically robust 3-D
structure will enable new approaches to manufacturing and design
of devices from the microscopic to centimeter scales. The “photo
origami” is supported by the National Science Foundation’s
Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program, which
supports interdisciplinary teams working on rapidly advancing
frontiers of fundamental engineering research. Pictured is Eric
Carpenter, Science Discovery’s education designer.
CU-Boulder is a
Tier 1 research
university
research facts
2,000+
undergraduates
directly involved
in research
No. 1
No. 1
51
atomic, molecular
and optical physics
program in the
nation since 2006
(U.S. News &
World Report)
public university
recipient of NASA
research funding
CU-Boulder
startups have
headquarters or
research operations
in Colorado
$425.6
million
in sponsored
research in
FY 2014–15
No. 22
ranked worldwide
for scholarly
citations
and research
impact (Leiden
University, 2015)
according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions
of Higher Education, placing CU-Boulder in the same
category as MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard,
UC Berkeley and other high-quality institutions characterized by “very high research activity.”
An international
leader
in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)
education research and innovation
78
members of the National Academies
5
Nobel laureates (all since 1989)
8
MacArthur “genius grant” fellows
11 research
institutes
account for more than half of all sponsored
research dollars
The only research
institution in the
world
to have sent space instruments to every planet
in the solar system and Pluto
Acknowledgments
Published by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Office of Strategic Relations.
Stein Sture, former Vice Chancellor for Research
Terri Fiez, Vice Chancellor for Research
Patricia Rankin, Associate Vice Chancellor
for Research
Designer: Samantha Davies
Editor: Malinda Miller-Huey
Project Manager: Andi Fabri
Proofreader: Vicki Czech
Joseph Rosse, Associate Vice Chancellor
for Research
Karen Regan, Assistant Vice Chancellor
for Research
Denitta Ward, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research and Director, Office of Contracts
and Grants
Frances Draper, Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Relations
Bronson Hilliard, Assistant Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Media Relations and Communications
Jon Leslie, Assistant Vice Chancellor for
Strategic Marketing
Writers: Kenna Bruner, Hannah Fletcher, Trent
Knoss, Elizabeth Lock, Julie Poppen, Jim Scott
and Clint Talbott
Photo credits: Courtesy of Boulder County (pg. 3),
Bernard Grant (pgs. 16-17), Dennis Schroeder/
NREL (pgs. 20-21), illustration by Andy Kale,
University of Alberta (back cover). All others,
University of Colorado ©.
Photographers: Glenn Asakawa, Patrick Campbell
and Casey A. Cass
An invisible shield
7,200 miles above
Earth is blocking so-called "killer electrons," which whip around
the planet at near light speed and have been known to threaten
astronauts and fry satellites. The barrier to the particle motion
was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnutshaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons
and protons, according to Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker,
director of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics (LASP). Held in place by Earth’s magnetic field, the Van
Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to
incoming energy disturbances from the sun.
Research
and creative work
2014–15