Science & Technology

Symposium advances structural engineering toward zero carbon

Megan Maneval — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:19:50 +0000

Symposium advances structural engineering toward zero carbon Megan Maneval Wed, 07/09/2025 - 07:19

College of Engineering and Applied Science

A recent event, which drew 166 participants to the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder campus, marked an industry-wide step toward cutting emissions tied to building materials like steel and concrete.

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That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea

Megan Maneval — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:04:45 +0000

That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea Megan Maneval Wed, 07/09/2025 - 07:04

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

In research recently published in Science, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientists detail how light—rather than energy-intensive heat—can efficiently and sustainably catalyze chemical transformations.

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Draper Scholar to explore 3D-printed lens design

Megan Maneval — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 14:58:41 +0000

Draper Scholar to explore 3D-printed lens design Megan Maneval Thu, 07/03/2025 - 08:58

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Samuel Silberman, an incoming doctoral student in electrical engineering, has landed a prestigious fellowship to support research into radio frequency lens design using advanced 3D printing and additive manufacturing.

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Profs partner on cybernetic human advancement research with New Frontiers Grant

Megan Maneval — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:18:07 +0000

Profs partner on cybernetic human advancement research with New Frontiers Grant Megan Maneval Wed, 06/25/2025 - 11:18

Nanomaterials and neuroscience researchers aim to build brain-body interfaces that enhance performance, improve health monitoring and support mobility.

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Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up

Megan Maneval — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:12:44 +0000

Healing Indigenous communities from the ground up Megan Maneval Wed, 06/25/2025 - 11:12

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Mushroom mycelium can help clean up soil. Can it also help Indigenous people reconnect to the land? �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Natalie Avalos aims to find out.

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Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry

Megan Maneval — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:52:09 +0000

Understanding light-driven production of hydrogen could unlock future insights for harnessing light for chemistry Megan Maneval Fri, 06/13/2025 - 08:52

Improved understanding of the light-driven production of hydrogen holds the promise not just to make the reaction more efficient in producing a fuel but also to offer a framework to better understand future light-driven chemistries.

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A common heart failure treatment comes with high risk of stroke. But a new discovery could make it safer

Amber Elise Carlson — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 23:47:51 +0000

A common heart failure treatment comes with high risk of stroke. But a new discovery could make it safer Amber Elise Carlson Wed, 06/11/2025 - 17:47

Amber Carlson

For people with advanced heart failure, left ventricular assist devices, or LVADs, can be a literal lifesaver.

The implantable devices, which improve blood flow throughout the body, are often the last treatment option for patients with advanced heart failure. More than 14,000 people have one, and with heart failure impacting 26 million people globally, their use is likely to grow.

Yet they come with risks: Compared to the general population, people with LVADs face an 11% to 47% higher risk of developing blood clots that can travel to the brain and cause a stroke.

Debanjan Mukherjee, center, speaks with research assistant Ricardo Roopnarinesingh, left, and graduate student Nick Rovito, right, in Mukherjee's computing lab. The digital twins from this study are displayed on the screen at right. (Credit: Patrick Campbell)

It’s not clear why some LVAD patients have strokes while others don’t. But a new study led by engineers and researchers at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, �鶹��Ѱ��Anschutz and the University of Washington suggests the answer could lie in hemodynamics—the patterns of blood flow within the body.

The researchers created “digital twins” of real patients with LVADs to map their blood flow. Their findings revealed new insights into how strokes might emerge.

“We are in an age where there is quite a bit of data that we have access to, and we know a lot about how fluid moves through the arteries and veins,” said Debanjan Mukherjee, senior author of the study and assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “We are looking at blood flow patterns as information that currently is not incorporated in clinical practice.”

Engineering concepts like fluid dynamics can offer a unique lens for looking at complex medical issues and provide information that other diagnostic tools might miss, the authors said.

“Knowledge gained from this study can help us develop patient-specific implant techniques to reduce the likelihood of stroke in patients with durable LVADs,” said Jay Pal, professor and chief of cardiac surgery at the University of Washington, and a co-author of the study.

Heart failure, LVADs and the risk of stroke

The above illustration shows a human heart with an LVAD attached. The pumping mechanism pushes blood up and into the aorta, where it is distributed to the rest of the body. (Credit: Blausen Medical Communications, Inc., CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The body relies on a constant supply of fresh blood and oxygen to function. Heart failure occurs when the heart can no longer pump the amount of blood the rest of the body needs.

During a healthy heartbeat, the left ventricle of the heart constricts and pushes blood into the arteries, where it travels to the body’s organs, muscles and bones.

But in people with heart failure, the left ventricle can become weak and ineffective. An LVAD attaches directly to the heart, bypasses the left ventricle and pumps blood straight into the aorta, the biggest artery in the body.

LVADs can help patients live longer, healthier lives, but they can also raise the risk of blood clots. When blood stagnates in areas like the left ventricle, clots can easily form there and enter major blood vessels.

These clots can travel through the body and land in a variety of places, but the arteries supplying blood to the brain are an especially dangerous spot. Clots that get stuck there can restrict or cut off blood flow to parts of the brain and cause a stroke.

In the current study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and CU’s AB Nexus initiative, Mukherjee and his colleagues explored whether different blood flow patterns in people with LVADs could explain who does and doesn’t get strokes.

To answer this question, the research team, led by former graduate student Akshita Sahni of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, collected data from 12 people with LVADs. Six had developed strokes after their LVAD implantation, and six had not.

The group created 3D digital twins of each LVAD patient using detailed imaging of the aorta, nearby blood vessels and the part of the LVAD that attaches to it. The researchers also integrated individual’s clinical information, such as blood pressure and heart rate, into the models.

“We are basically digitally recreating something that's going on inside the body,” Mukherjee said.

Using the twins, the group was able to estimate the patterns of blood flow through each person’s aorta. They also simulated how blood might flow through the same people before they got their LVADs.

The researchers found differences in blood flow patterns between the patients who had strokes and those who did not, both before and after they had LVADs implanted.

The team also found the LVADs changed the blood flow patterns in each patient, creating a “jet” that pushed blood into the aorta at a different angle than normal blood flow from the heart.

What this means for the future

Such differences in blood flow could help shed light on LVAD patients’ risk level for stroke. For example, varied blood flow patterns might make some people more prone to areas of stagnation, where blood platelets may more easily stick onto gel-like networks of proteins in the blood and form clots.

The findings could help improve treatments and outcomes for people with heart failure. With this information, health care providers can personalize how they surgically implant and monitor LVADs in their patients. They might also be able to anticipate their patients’ level of risk and provide more customized treatments for each person.

Mukherjee and his collaborators are planning additional research on the topic, but he emphasized that some of this work will only be possible with federal support and funding.

“In these times, it is important to remember how much federal agency support means to getting studies like these completed and developed further,” he said.

Other co-authors of the study from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder included postdoctoral researcher Sreeparna Majee and undergraduate student Kelly Cao. Physician assistant and instructor Erin E. McIntyre at �鶹��Ѱ��Anschutz was also a co-author.

Beyond the story

Our bioscience impact by the numbers:

Top 7% university for National Science Foundation research funding
No. 30 global university system granted U.S. patents
89-plus biotech startups with roots at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in past 20 years

Follow �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder on LinkedIn

Studying patient blood flow patterns could help determine who’s at risk of dangerous side effects from left ventricular assist devices and lead to improvements that could make them safer, new research suggests.

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New quantum navigation device uses atoms to measure acceleration in 3D

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 17:00:38 +0000

New quantum navigation device uses atoms to measure acceleration in 3D Daniel William… Wed, 06/11/2025 - 11:00

Daniel Strain

Kendall Mehling, left, and Catie LeDesma, right, with a new kind of atom "interferometer" on the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder campus. (Credit: Glenn Asakawa/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

In a new study, physicists at the �鶹��Ѱ�� have used a cloud of atoms chilled down to incredibly cold temperatures to simultaneously measure acceleration in three dimensions—a feat that many scientists didn’t think was possible.

The device, a new type of atom “interferometer,” could one day help people navigate submarines, spacecraft, cars and other vehicles more precisely.

“Traditional atom interferometers can only measure acceleration in a single dimension, but we live within a three-dimensional world,” said Kendall Mehling, a co-author of the new study and a graduate student in the Department of Physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “To know where I'm going, and to know where I’ve been, I need to track my acceleration in all three dimensions.”

The researchers published their paper, titled “Vector atom accelerometry in an optical lattice,” this month in the journal Science Advances. The team included Mehling; Catie LeDesma, a postdoctoral researcher in physics; and Murray Holland, professor of physics and fellow of JILA, a joint research institute between �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

In 2023, NASA awarded the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researchers a $5.5 million grant through the agency’s Quantum Pathways Institute to continue developing the sensor technology.

The new device is a marvel of engineering: Holland and his colleagues employ six lasers as thin as a human hair to pin a cloud of tens of thousands of rubidium atoms in place. Then, with help from artificial intelligence, they manipulate those lasers in complex patterns—allowing the team to measure the behavior of the atoms as they react to small accelerations, like pressing the gas pedal down in your car.

Today, most vehicles track acceleration using GPS and traditional, or “classical,” electronic devices known as accelerometers. The team’s quantum device has a long way to go before it can compete with these tools. But the researchers see a lot of promise for navigation technology based on atoms.

From left to right, Kendall Mehling, Murray Holland and Catie LeDesma in their lab at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. (Credit: Glenn Asakawa/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

“If you leave a classical sensor out in different environments for years, it will age and decay,” Mehling said. “The springs in your clock will change and warp. Atoms don’t age.”

Fingerprints of motion

Interferometers, in some form or another, have been around for centuries—and they’ve been used to do everything from transporting information over optical fibers to searching for gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of the universe.

The general idea involves splitting things apart and bringing them back together, not unlike unzipping, then zipping back up a jacket.

In laser interferometry, for example, scientists first shine a laser light, then split it into two, identical beams that travel over two separate paths. Eventually, they bring the beams back together. If the lasers have experienced diverging effects along their journeys, such as gravity acting in different ways, they may not mesh perfectly when they recombine. Put differently, the zipper might get stuck. Researchers can make measurements based on how the two beams, once identical, now interfere with each other—hence the name.

In the current study, the team achieved the same feat, but with atoms instead of light.

Here’s how it works: The device currently fits on a bench about the size of an air hockey table. First, the researchers cool a collection of rubidium atoms down to temperatures just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

In that frigid realm, the atoms form a mysterious quantum state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC). Carl Wieman, then a physicist at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, and Eric Cornell of JILA won a Nobel Prize in 2001 for creating the first BEC.

Next, the team uses laser light to jiggle the atoms, splitting them apart. In this case, that doesn’t mean that groups of atoms are separating. Instead, each individual atom exists in a ghostly quantum state called a superposition, in which it can be simultaneously in two places at the same time.

When the atoms split and separate, those ghosts travel away from each other following two different paths. (In the current experiment, the researchers didn’t actually move the device itself but used lasers to push on the atoms, causing acceleration).

“Our Bose-Einstein Condensate is a matter-wave pond made of atoms, and we throw stones made of little packets of light into the pond, sending ripples both left and right,” Holland said. “Once the ripples have spread out, we reflect them and bring them back together where they interfere.”

When the atoms snap back together, they form a unique pattern, just like the two beams of laser light zipping together but more complex. The result resembles a thumb print on a glass.

“We can decode that fingerprint and extract the acceleration that the atoms experienced,” Holland said.

Planning with computers

The group spent almost three years building the device to achieve this feat.

“For what it is, the current experimental device is incredibly compact. Even though we have 18 laser beams passing through the vacuum system that contains our atom cloud, the entire experiment is small enough that we could deploy in the field one day,” LeDesma said.

One of the secrets to that success comes down to an artificial intelligence technique called machine learning. Holland explained that splitting and recombining the rubidium atoms requires adjusting the lasers through a complex, multi-step process. To streamline the process, the group trained a computer program that can plan out those moves in advance.

So far, the device can only measure accelerations several thousand times smaller than the force of Earth’s gravity. Currently available technologies can do a lot better.

But the group is continuing to improve its engineering and hopes to increase the performance of its quantum device many times over in the coming years. Still, the technology is a testament to just how useful atoms can be.

“We’re not exactly sure of all the possible ramifications of this research, because it opens up a door,” Holland said.

Beyond the story

Our quantum impact by the numbers:

60-plus years as the regional epicenter for quantum research
4 Nobel prizes in physics awarded to university researchers
No. 11 quantum physics program in the nation and co-leader on the new Quantum Incubator facility

Follow �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder on LinkedIn

A new quantum device could one day help spacecraft travel beyond Earth's orbit or aid submarines as they navigate deep under the ocean with more precision than ever before.

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Tree rings offer clues to small-population growth

Megan Maneval — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:11:07 +0000

Tree rings offer clues to small-population growth Megan Maneval Wed, 06/11/2025 - 09:11

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

In a recently published paper, doctoral student Ellen Waddle and her coauthors provide some clarity on a decades-old problem.

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Robots and chemistry aren't just a fun combo—for Carson Bruns, they're the future

Megan Maneval — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:01:00 +0000

Robots and chemistry aren't just a fun combo—for Carson Bruns, they're the future Megan Maneval Wed, 06/11/2025 - 09:01

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Assistant Professor Carson Bruns is leading the charge on an NSF-funded project that he and his team like to call "robochemistry." Their goal is to create robotic sidekicks that can assist chemists with burdensome or unsafe tasks routinely encountered in a wet lab. But that's not all.

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