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Russ Moore, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, vividly recalls a town hall meeting introducing the Grand Challenge nearly a decade ago. With the chosen theme Our Space, Our Future, �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder was answering a national call for research universities and others to identify and pursue the so-called “grand challenges” of the 21st century—the big problems facing humanity—that would encourage ambitious innovations across campus.

Moore urged the audience to “think big,” he said, and not to let their ideas be constrained by anything, including budget. “It really was an opportunity to allow people to be entrepreneurial and innovative,” said Moore. “It was exciting and liberating to those folks who allowed themselves to let go and, for many, it was a cultural breakthrough to be bold and audacious.”

Integrated Remote and In-Situ Sensing (IRISS)

CoBabe-Ammann pointed to three of the most influential Grand Challenge initiatives as potent examples of the power of collaboration. IRISS is a multi-disciplinary team leading the design, development and deployment of novel remote and in-situ sensing systems. They’re transforming data collection with technologies including unmanned aircraft to improve climate and weather forecasting and better inform policy-making while preparing the 21st century workforce.

According to IRISS founder and director, Brian Argrow (Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences), “Collaboration has been a hallmark of our work as engineers, working with atmospheric scientists, and that back-and-forth is what makes this really great.” Argrow attributes the university’s initial investment in equipment as enabling his group to cover new ground. “There’s no other group in the country that can do what we do in terms of deploying aircraft,” he said.“And we certainly are making a dent in understanding the grand challenges associated with climate change and weather.”

Argrow is proud of rising to what he called “the grand, existential challenge” of climate change with small, inexpensive, battery-powered drones that have out-performed expectations, even in extreme conditions. “We’ve been beneath thunderstorms, next to tornadoes, and in hail and winds you can barely drive your car in,” he said. “We’ve helped meteorologists to better understand supercell thunderstorms, we’ve been at the North Pole, we’ve been all over the world, and our data are being archived for scientists to study.”

Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center (SWx TREC)

SWx TREC researchers are also Grand Challenge alums working across multiple departments, colleges and institutes. The group is enabling breakthroughs in understanding solar and space physics principles underlying space weather and its impacts on critical infrastructure systems. The initiative is also breaking barriers with innovative, engaging applications designed to make space weather data accessible, including a suite of  that empowers lay users to explore the latest space weather developments. One of SWx TREC’s pioneering, user-friendly resources, the Space Weather Data Portal developed with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), now allows students, researchers and operational forecasters alike to examine space weather events.

Earth Lab

A third, flourishing Grand Challenge endeavor is Earth Lab, a multi-pronged effort to harness the data revolution with research, analytics and education to help society better understand, manage and adapt to a fast-changing environment.

Earth Lab’s founding director, Jennifer Balch (Geography, CIRES), arrived at �鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder around the time the Grand Challenge was launched and she knew right away she wanted to pitch her idea for an environmental data synthesis center. “​​Given that there are so many data wizards, Earth nerds and space geeks in this town, I thought, ‘This is a perfect fit’.” CoBabe-Ammann agreed. “It’s really only through that kind of data synthesis that you’re actually going to be able to make predictions based on observations about what to expect in a changing world,” she said.

Balch envisioned Earth Lab, which is now part of CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) as a mechanism for both integrating data and bringing together people and ideas from across campus. “One of the huge challenges on our plates right now as a society is we are swimming in environmental data. How do we use that to move from the era of data to the era of insight and knowledge and wisdom?” she said. “It became a real motivator for team collaboration across campus and we touched dozens of departments and institutes,” she said.