This survey, which will run until April 29, is designed to better understand the current graduate student experience 

How do you feel about your graduate student experience? 

That’s the question that the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Graduate Student Survey, known as the gradSERU Survey, is seeking to understand when it launches next week. 

Survey Details

Dates: March 11 - April 29

Time: 20 mins

Search your email for "gradSERU" for your unique URL. All respondents will be entered to win one of 20 $100 Amazon gift cards.

The survey, which runs March 11 to April 29, is designed to examine students' experiences across the entire spectrum of their graduate career: academic, research, teaching, professional development, well-being and sense of community. A unique survey URL will be distributed over email to almost all non-professional graduate students—and those who respond will be automatically entered into a drawing with a chance to win one of 20 $100 gift cards. 

Information gleaned from previous gradSERU surveys, administered in spring 2021 and 2023, helped facilitate stipend increases for graduate students, an expansion of embedded counselors in all schools and colleges across the university, and the hiring of a diversity, equity and inclusion faculty director within the Graduate School. Results from the survey also assisted in informing some of the Graduate School’s strategic plan goals. 

The Graduate School is now interested in what has changed—and what has not—since the last iteration two years ago.

“Collecting this wide range of information from our graduate students helps us get a sense of how they are doing in a variety of different circumstances,” said Scott Adler, dean of the Graduate School. “Are we now doing better or worse? How do we compare to our peer institutions? Those are the types of questions that we look to answer with this survey.” 

A link to the survey will be emailed on March 11 to graduate students within participating programs. In addition to the core questions that will be compared to other SERU institutions within the consortium, the survey will also include a small number of questions that are specific to �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder graduate students and programs. 

Through its administration every other year, the gradSERU survey provides an ongoing way to track changes and improvements in academic programs and the utility of various support services for the Graduate School. Individual graduate programs can also use the results of the survey to better understand their own student satisfaction in a wide range of categories. 

“We learned quite a bit of valuable information from the survey in 2021 and 2023 and we expect to learn even more as we track these items over time,” Adler added. “We want to know the accomplishments and triumphs, as well as the challenges and obstacles, that our graduate students are experiencing.” 

Off

Ten students participated in this year’s final competition for a chance at prize money and a chance to represent �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder at the regional competition

Drones as teammates, landing safely from space, and local control of school districts were a few of the topics presented during the eighth annual Three Minute Thesis Competition on Feb. 13, 2025.

This event challenges graduate students to craft a three-minute elevator pitch for their complex—and sometimes difficult to make sense of—research in a way that even an everyday person could understand.

This year, the ten competitors did just that to a packed Glenn Miller Ballroom and a panel of judges who evaluated the competitors on comprehension, content, engagement and communication.

“It is of vital importance that the public understand the valuable work that graduate students are doing every day, and how it can impact them in lasting and positive ways, and the Three Minute Thesis competition does just that,” said Scott Adler, dean of the Graduate School. “Congratulations to those that won and to everyone that participated. You all did amazing and make me proud to be dean of the Graduate School.”

The 2025 winners are:

First Place

Aoife Henry, electrical, computer and energy engineering, Directing Wind Turbines with Foresight: The Shepherd and the Sheepdog Find a Crystal Ball

Second Place

Casey Middleton, computer science, Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

People’s Choice

Heather Kenny-Duddela, ecology and evolutionary biology, Feathered Flings: The Dating Lives of Barn Swallows

Henry will receive $1500 in prize money and will represent �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder at the Western Association of Graduate Schools competition. Middleton and Kenny-Duddela will receive $750 and $500 in research funds, respectively.

Judges for this year’s event are Waleed Abdalati, executive director of the Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and professor of geography; Jared Bahir Browsh, director of critical sports studies and an assistant teaching professor; Robert Streeter, site supervisor at Polar Field Services and 3MT 2023 winner; and Sonia DeLuca Fernández, senior vice chancellor for leadership support and programming. Bud Coleman, professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance, will be the event’s emcee.

More information about the 2026 Three Minute Thesis Competition will be available on the Three Minute Thesis competition webpage this fall.

Off

This annual event, which showcases graduate student’s ability to distill their nine-hour thesis down to three minutes, comes back Feb. 13 at 4 p.m.

What is the best way to distill a multitude of information into just three minutes?

That’s the question that 11 graduate students will be wrestling with as part of the Graduate School’s eighth annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) final competition, which will be held in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom on Feb. 13, 2025, from 4 to 6 p.m.

This event challenges students to explain their thesis to the general public. They are then judged by a panel of judges from across the university. Winners of the event will be announced at the end of the program and the audience will have the opportunity to vote for the People’s Choice award.

While the event is free and open to the public, space is limited and  for in-person attendance. The event .

  If you go

Date: Feb. 13, 2025
Time: 4 - 6 p.m.
Location: University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom

This year’s competitors include:

• Anna Deese, educational foundations, policy and practice, “When Students & School-Voters Differ: The Promise and Peril of Local Control”
• Celeste Guiles, aerospace engineering, “Bringing You Safely Home from Outer Space”
• Aoife Henry, electrical, computer and energy engineering, “Directing Turbine with Foresight: The Shepherd and the Sheepdog find a Crystal Ball.”
• Casey Hunt, ATLAS Institute, “Building a Shared Future: A Toolkit for Collaborative Robot Design”
• Heiko Kabutz, mechanical engineering, “Enhancing Locomotion through Shape Morphing in Insect Robots”
• Heather Kenny-Duddela, ecology and evolutionary biology, “Feathered Flings: The Dating Lives of Barn Swallows”
• Casey Middleton, computer science, “Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3”
• Nandi Pointer, media studies, “Exit to Entry: Black Expatriates and Teaching English as Fugitive, Liberatory Praxis”
• Hunter Ray, aerospace engineering, “Drones to the Rescue: From Tools to Teammates in Public Safety”
• Anna Turner, media studies, “Building Bridges through Popular Media”
• Marwa Yacouti, aerospace engineering, “Unveiling the Hidden Stories of Materials”

The 3MT event began in 2008 when the state of Queensland, Australia, suffered from a severe drought. To conserve water, residents were encouraged to time their showers, and many people had a three-minute egg timer fixed to the wall in their bathroom. The then-Dean of the University of Queensland Graduate School, Emeritus Professor Alan Lawson, decided to apply the same approach with his students in a first of its kind competition.

3MT challenges graduate students to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. To prepare, beginning last fall, 31 graduate students participated in a series of workshops focusing on storytelling, writing, presentation skills and improv comedy techniques. They then held a preliminary competition at the end of the fall 2024 semester and whittled the competition down to eleven finalists.

The graduate students competing at this year’s 3MT finals will be evaluated by a panel of judges on their comprehension, content, engagement and communication.

The winner of the competition will receive $1,500 in prize money and will have the chance to compete at the regional competition as the �鶹��Ѱ�����’s representative. The runner-up and the People’s Choice winner, voted on by the live audience, will also receive funding.

Judges for this year’s event are Waleed Abdalati, executive director of the Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and professor of geography; Jared Bahir Browsh, director of critical sports studies and an assistant teaching professor; Robert Streeter, site supervisor at Polar Field Services and 3MT 2023 winner; and Sonia DeLuca Fernández, senior vice chancellor for leadership support and programming. Bud Coleman, professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance, will be the event’s emcee.

More information about the competition is available on the Graduate School's 3MT web page.

Off

This annual competition offers participants from across the �鶹��Ѱ�����system the chance to compete for $125,000.

Kian Lopez first became interested in water purification while doing an internship as an undergraduate in Amann, Jordan.

“That’s where I learned about wastewater reuse and using gray or reclaimed water to grow agriculture in a very water scarce region,” said Lopez, a NASA graduate research fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. “It’s what got me on this path.”

It was that path that eventually brought him to the �鶹��Ѱ����� where he’s been developing a new membrane-separation process (a method for blocking some substances while allowing others through) for water treatment. This new approach, he says, is “more energy efficient and selective for certain contaminants than the existing state-of-the-art water treatment membrane-based processes currently used today.”

While the hope of this new technology is to one day help alleviate global water scarcity, he’s currently researching other uses for it to prove its effectiveness—from water reuse on short space flights to semiconductor manufacturing.

The latter of which spurred Lopez’s new company, , to be born.

And this past year, OsmoPure Technologies was recognized by the Lab Venture Challenge for its innovative distillation-driven process, which produces high-purity product water with ten times higher energy efficiency.

As one of only four graduate students funded, he’s thankful for the opportunity—and encourages other students to also pursue the opportunity.

“I feel like the first year, when you graduate, is a very tumultuous time for start-ups, especially spinouts of the university,” said Lopez. “There’s a lot that can go wrong, and (the Lab Venture Challenge) helps to mitigate that risk.”

The Lab Venture Challenge

The Lab Venture Challenge offers researchers from the �鶹��Ѱ�����, Denver and Colorado Springs the chance to compete for grants up to $125,000. This competition, a partnership of Venture Partners at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder and the, supports projects that “address a commercial need, have a clear path to a compelling market and have strong scientific support.”

Since its inception, the Lab Venture Challenge has funded more than 117 projects through 64 new companies that provide technology solutions to scientific or engineering challenges, or deep-tech start-ups. In turn, these companies have raised over $349 million to date in follow-on financing. Previous recipients include TorDan, a company that’s developing an improved technique for femoral surgery, and Mana Battery, a company that’s creating sodium-ion batteries that are cheaper and safer than standard lithium-ion ones.

Applications open in July each year and the Lab Venture Challenge hosts Shark-Tank-style pitches across two nights in October where finalists deliver pitches to a panel of business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors. Afterwards, the winners continue to work and collaborate with Venture Partners on their path to commercialization, which is the process of bringing something to market.

The Lab Venture Challenge is part of a broader push by the university toward promoting an innovative culture. And that push has yielded real results.

Commercialization from �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder has had an $8 billion-dollar economic impact nationally, and $5.2 billion in Colorado between 2018 and 2022. In 2024 alone, the university launched 35 new start-ups—a record. The �鶹��Ѱ�����system also ranked fifth nationally for start-up creation and 14th globally for patents issued.

“A lot of us (researchers) don’t really have an understanding of how commercialization works,” said Qizhong Liang, another of this year’s graduate student recipients for his project Flari Tech. “I think (the Lab Venture Challenge) is like the bridge that’s helping entrepreneurs, who have a lot of experience in marketing and turning something into a market, connect with us, creating a double-win situation for both parties.”

Lopez echoed that sentiment.

“(Your technology) can work in the lab, but you also need to talk to potential customers and people in the industry to get relevant feedback,” said Lopez. “It’s really important for bridging the gap between research and actually creating a product that people will buy.”

Detecting Disease Using Breath

Flari Tech’s story began long before Liang came to �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder as a physics PhD student.

For more than a decade, it’s been known that molecules exhaled from breath could potentially be used for noninvasive, low-cost, and rapid medical diagnostics for multiple medical conditions. However, measuring these molecules at their low concentrations proved difficult largely due to the lack of sensitivity of the instruments.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck at the end of 2019, though, this research, which had been dormant for over a decade, reared its head once more. There were two motivations, Liang says, for the return: “First, our laser technology is much more powerful than that back in 2008 when our research group demonstrated the first breath measurements; second, there’s a COVID outbreak. We wanted to see whether or not we could do something to help society.”

The lab worked together with researchers from the BioFrontiers Institute and �鶹��Ѱ�����Anschutz Medical Campus to test �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder students and employees’ breath. They wanted to see if exhaled breath could be used as a noninvasive alternative to standard tests like the nasal swabs that were used to detect COVID-19. What they found is that they could, and with an 85% rate of accuracy validated over a cohort of 170 participants, which is considered excellent.

They then decided to continue this research to see what other medical conditions can also be detected from breath, and Flari Tech was born.

Flari Tech’s mission is to build a laser-based breathalyzer to detect lung cancer noninvasively and rapidly with high sensitivity. The research is powered by CU's Nobel Prize-winning optical frequency comb, which is a specialized laser tool that allows them to sense gas molecules in complex breath samples.

Their desire is to eventually see the laser breathalyzer in hospitals and with healthcare providers and patients to prevent, diagnose and monitor lung cancer.

“I think the patents that we have filed are going to be vital to commercialization and can facilitate our technique’s wide-spread utilization,” said Liang, adding, “Commercialization will help advance the science behind breath diagnostics.”

This year’s LVC was additionally made possible by Berg Hill Greenleaf Ruscitti LLP, Wilson Sonsini, Cooley and Cozen O'Connor. Information about how to get involved in next year’s competition is available on the Venture Partners at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder website.

Off

Editor's Note: This interview was conducted in late 2024 and is meant to look at long-term changes in graduate education, not short-term.

�鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder Provost Russell Moore announced last fall that he would be stepping down as Provost at the close of the 2024-25 academic year, as soon as a new provost can be onboarded following a national search. Moore has served as provost for 14 years, making him the longest continuously serving provost among AAU institutions. We sat down with him to get his thoughts on the past, present, and future of graduate education at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder and in American higher education. 

What do you think are the major achievements in graduate education at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder during your time as provost? 

A: The first is how the Graduate School has transformed in the range of its degrees offered. Today we offer 57 PhD programs, 62 traditional master’s programs, 31 professional master’s programs, and 10 fully online graduate programs. Over the last 10 years, our applications have grown 40% and our overall graduate enrollment has grown 30%. 

Besides these metrics, I like how our graduate student experience has transformed under Deans Schmiesing and Adler—it’s a more human-centered, personable, grounded experience. We’ve worked to improve pay and benefits, reduce fees, and to improve the relationship between faculty and graduate students to become one of true mentorship. We place the human and interactive aspects of graduate education at the forefront of what we offer; it’s not just about acquiring expertise, it’s about learning to share expertise in a more impactful, human, and lasting way.

What is unique about the graduate education experience at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder?

A: At a lot of research institutions, graduate education is a gauntlet students have to pass through, and in some of them, leaders take pride in how many students drop out as some kind of measure of excellence and difficulty. 

Here, our first strategic imperative in graduate education is to promote access, inclusivity, and community. We want students to succeed. With that value in mind, we focus on the partnerships that forge that success—partnerships with graduate faculty, partnerships among students, partnerships of the deans with Dean Adler and his team. 

We have work to do, of course, in extending these partnerships, but the ethos of our graduate programs isn’t anchored in detached notions of elite achievement and difficulty. We anchor our challenge in breaking through all that—being partnership and success-oriented, taking pride in how many graduate students succeed in their programs. 

What are the immediate challenges for graduate education at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder in the current moment? 

A: We’ve got to continue to make it accessible and affordable—especially in a place like Boulder. Chancellor Schwartz has made it clear to us that we need to move faster in creating more graduate housing and healthcare. We are exploring opportunities for health insurance for graduate students’ spouses and dependents, expanding medical and mental health resources that include no-cost telehealth (counseling and urgent care) for graduate students’ families, and providing a new service to support graduate student families to obtain alternative options for health insurance and healthcare, particularly for those with financial need.

We’ve also got new ground to break in online graduate education—offering more degrees in that space both on our own and with our partner, Coursera. We need to make sure graduate education is a speartip in breaking down academic silos and offering interdisciplinary master’s degrees that mirror what our campus is great at and where its programs are going, particularly in the area of sustainability and the environment, but also in the humanities and performing arts. 

Look into your Crystal Ball—what does graduate education look like at �鶹��Ѱ�����in 20 years? 

A: I think you’ll see an even more dynamic, interactive, partnership-oriented graduate experience, with fewer barriers to all degrees and with, for example, far more interdisciplinary master’s degrees. You’ll see great interplay between our online and professional master’s degrees, and perhaps even with our traditional PhD programs. I think you’ll see easier processes to earning master’s degrees, and a more exciting, self-invented set of pathways to both master’s degrees and PhDs. 

I think we’ll see graduate students doing things they’ve never done before, working more closely than ever with faculty in partnerships and mentorships. I think you’ll see more diverse graduate students from all walks of life—and from all places in Colorado—coming to their state’s flagship institution in �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder, which will also be, I hope, among the most-talked about research institutions, and enriching themselves, our university, and their communities. 

Truly, I think it’s going to be amazing. 

Off

This fellowship provides support for students that are conducting research and creative work in African, African American or African diaspora studies. 

Nigerian immigrants in Japan and formerly segregated state parks were the focus of this year’s Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) summer fellowships. 

The CAAAS summer fellowships recognize �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder graduate students that are conducting research and creative work in African, African American or African diaspora studies. The goal of the fellowship, which is co-sponsored by , is to connect �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder graduate students with a librarian while providing additional research funding so they can explore a topic of their choosing. 

This year’s recipients are Ubochi Igbokwe, a musicology PhD student who researches Igbo African masquerade music and the cultural impacts of the Igbo African émigrés in Japan, and Trevor Egerton, a history doctoral candidate studying race and outdoor recreation in the 20th century American South. 

Read more about Igbokwe and her work on the CAAAS website.

Read More

Read more about Egerton and his work on the CAAAS website. 

Read More

Learn more about the fellowship on the CAAAS website. To donate to keep the CAAAS Fellowships going, go to the and choose “General Funds” with a note that it is directed to the CAAAS Fellowship. 

Off

This annual event, which showcases graduate students' ability to distill their nine-hour thesis down to three minutes, returns to campus

  If you go

Who: Everyone
What: Three Minute Thesis final competition
When: Feb. 13, 4 to 6 p.m.
Where: Glenn Miller Ballroom (UMC)

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, an annual tradition that celebrates graduate students while they explain their thesis research in three minutes or less, will take place on Feb. 13, 2025, from 4 to 6 p.m., in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom.

Eleven students will be competing in this event, which is free and open to the public, but . This year’s competitors include:

• Anna Deese, educational foundations, policy and practice
• Celeste Guiles, aerospace engineering
• Aoife Henry, electrical, computer and energy engineering
• Casey Hunt, ATLAS Institute
• Heiko Kabutz, mechanical engineering
• Heather Kenny-Duddela, ecology and evolutionary biology
• Casey Middleton, computer science
• Nandi Pointer, media studies
• Hunter Ray, aerospace engineering
• Anna Turner, media studies
• Marwa Yacouti, aerospace engineering

The 3MT event began in 2008 when the state of Queensland, Australia, suffered from a severe drought. To conserve water, residents were encouraged to time their showers, and many people had a three-minute egg timer fixed to the wall in their bathroom. The then-Dean of the University of Queensland Graduate School, Emeritus Professor Alan Lawson, decided to apply the same approach with his students in a first of its kind competition.

3MT challenges graduate students to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. To prepare, beginning last fall, 31 students were asked to participate in a series of workshops focusing on storytelling, writing, presentation skills and improv comedy techniques. They then held a preliminary competition for the 16 remaining and whittled the competition down to eleven finalists.

The graduate students competing during this year’s 3MT finals will be evaluated by a panel of judges on their comprehension, content, engagement and communication. Judges for this year’s event are Waleed Abdalati, executive director of the Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and professor of geography; Jared Bahir Browsh, director of critical sports studies and an assistant teaching professor; Robert Streeter, site supervisor at Polar Field Services and 3MT 2023 winner; and Sonia DeLuca Fernández, senior vice chancellor for leadership support and programming.

The winner of the competition will receive $1,500 in prize money and will have the chance to compete at the state and regional competitions as the �鶹��Ѱ�����’s representative. The runner-up and the People’s Choice winner, voted on by the live audience, will also receive funding.

More information about the competition is available on the Three Minute Thesis web page.

Off

The application for the Three Minute Thesis competition i�� for interested doctoral students.

3MT is an academic competition that challenges students to summarize their thesis in three minutes for a general audience and a panel of judges, who rate their performance. The three winners of the competition, along with a people’s choice winner, receive prize money, with the first-place recipient receiving $1,500 and a chance to represent the university at the regional, national and international competitions.

To participate, you must be a �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder doctoral student admitted to candidacy by December 1, 2024, and be enrolled for spring 2025 and expect to graduate in May 2025 or later. Graduates or alumni are not eligible. The deadline for registering is Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 11:59 p.m. 

Application closes Oct. 1

“Amazing research happens every day by graduate students, but it often flies under the radar. The Three Minute Thesis competition is an opportunity to showcase that creative and innovative work and the talented students that make it happen,” Scott Adler, the dean of the Graduate School, said previously.

The 3MT event began in 2008 when the state of Queensland, Australia, suffered from a severe drought. To conserve water, residents were encouraged to time their showers, and many people had a three-minute egg timer fixed to the wall in their bathroom. The then-dean of the University of Queensland Graduate School, Emeritus Professor Alan Lawson, decided to apply the same approach with his students in a first of its kind competition.

It has since spread across the globe, including to �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder.

Prior to �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder’s competition, which takes place every February and is one of the Graduate School’s signature events, students participate in a series of workshops to improve their presentation and research communication skills, helping them to effectively (and succinctly) explain the significance of their research. These workshops also provide a chance for students to forge connections within a like-minded cohort from across the disciplines.

One such workshop or presentation scheduled for this year, among others discussing things like storytelling framework and improvisation techniques, is an exclusive talk by international 3MT winner, and Marvin H. Caruthers Endowed Chair for Early-Career Faculty Assistant Professor Samuel Ramsey on science communication. Watch Dr. Sammy’s .

For more information, including seeing the past winners, refer to the 3MT website. For all other questions, contact Hailey Herman at hailey.herman@colorado.edu. 

Off

This Sept. 6 workshop will feature past winners, writing instructors and NSF GRFP proposal reviewers.

If you go

Date: Sept 6

Time: 10 - 11:30 a.m.

Location: Zoom

Registration is now open for a Sept. 6 workshop meant to prepare eligible graduate students to apply for one of the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s most prestigious fellowships: the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

The GRFP recognizes outstanding graduate students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields by providing three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $37,000, as well as professional development and research opportunities. By doing so, this fellowship paves the way for continued work exploring some of the most complex and pressing issues of our time.

The �鶹��Ѱ����� consistently ranks in the top fifteen universities in terms of the number of GRFPs awarded to students. A major contributor to that success is this annual workshop, which is open to all eligible students interested in applying.

This year’s workshop will be Sept. 6 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. over Zoom. It will feature faculty who have served as GRFP proposal reviewers at NSF and writing instructors, and recent GRFP winners. even if you cannot attend the workshop day of (the session will be recorded).

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about how to join.

More information about the NSF GRFP opportunity, including discipline-specific deadlines, can be found on the . A video recording of the workshop will be available to registered participants after it is completed. 

Off

This interdisciplinary program moved from the Graduate School to the College of Engineering and Applied Science on July 1

The Master of Science in Data Science (MS-DS) program has moved to the College of Engineering and Applied Science, effective July 1. Brian Zaharatos has been named the program’s new director.

Launched in 2021, this interdisciplinary program brought together the departments of applied mathematics, computer science and information science, among others, to create an advanced degree in one of the fastest-growing career fields. The goal was to make the program more accessible through a streamlined, performance-based admissions process—which allows students a chance to prove their ability to complete coursework instead of filling out an application—and a more affordable tuition.

Since the program began, more than 1,300 students have enrolled per session both in person and on the global online learning platform Coursera.

Zaharatos, the new director, is a full teaching professor and the professional master's director for the Department of Applied Mathematics. He served as the interim director after founding director, Jane Wall, retired.

More information on the MS-DS program is available on their website.

Off