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CU ��«��Ƶ Adhesive Research Could Boost Medicine, Electronics, and the Environment

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 21:58:44 +0000

CU ��«��Ƶ Adhesive Research Could Boost Medicine, Electronics, and the Environment Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/13/2023 - 15:58

Karan Dikshit (PhDMatSci’22) is the first author on a paper on new adhesive materials that allow for easy sticking and unsticking, and could eventually contribute to sustainability global efforts.

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Bruns Among 7 CU Engineering CAREER Award Winners in 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:02:39 +0000

Bruns Among 7 CU Engineering CAREER Award Winners in 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/28/2023 - 11:02

Seven faculty members from the College of Engineering and Applied Science have received CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation in 2023, including Carson Bruns, assistant professor and director of the Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials at ATLAS.

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Bruns lands prestigious NSF CAREER research award to usher in next generation of “smart tattoos”

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:29:35 +0000

Bruns lands prestigious NSF CAREER research award to usher in next generation of “smart tattoos” Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/04/2023 - 09:29

Assistant Professor Carson Bruns has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research that investigates how the art of tattooing can incorporate the latest advances in nanotechnology to improve human health.

The National Science Foundation CAREER Award recognizes exemplary faculty in the early stages of their career with awards given out over five consecutive years. Bruns’ award is for $605,000.

A faculty member of the ATLAS Institute and the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bruns traces his research back to a realization that ordinary tattoo pigments – which have been implanted in human skin for millennia using the simplest of tools – are essentially nanoparticles. And yet the modern tools of nanotechnology have scarcely been brought to bear on the practice of tattooing.

With this funding, Bruns wants to help make the next generation of tattoos not only beautiful but functional, too.

“Many different nanoscale sensors and devices are now available,” said Bruns, “and the skin offers an optimal site for implanting them, especially when you consider how they might give us the ability to sense and monitor vital health factors.”

Bruns has already begun to develop these “smart” tattoos. One health risk Bruns is tackling in his lab is skin cancer. Despite widespread public education about the risks of UV exposure, cases continue to rise every year in the United States, driving the search for new prevention strategies.

Bruns’ unique contribution to this effort is a tattoo ink that is invisible unless exposed to UV light, when it turns blue. When the ink is used to tattoo a “solar freckle” on, say, an individual’s arm, then its appearance is a signal to reapply sunscreen, making the freckle disappear.

Working through Venture Partners—a CU ��«��Ƶ office that helps commercialize faculty research and patents—Bruns and his former PhD Jess Butterfield co-founded HYPRSKN, a biotech company that will bring this and similar inventions to market.

“Bruns brings a degree of playfulness and energy to all of his projects,” Butterfield said. “He leads by example and inspires everyone around him to be a better researcher, scientist and human.”

Another product from HYPRSKN is Magic Ink. “This is exciting for body artists,” said Bruns, “since you can selectively activate which parts of the tattoo to turn on and off, changing the design of it at your will.”

Bruns is also working on a “thermometer” tattoo that uses temperature-sensitive inks. If tattooed somewhere on the body not affected by external temperature fluctuations, such as the inside lip, a scale of colored bars could indicate whether one is running a fever.

Although tattooing has been used safely for millennia, a major barrier to ushering in the next generation of “smart tattoos” is a lack of knowledge about their biocompatibility, which Bruns aims to change. “I want to lay the groundwork for scientists, so they can awaken to the benefits of nanoengineered skin implants,” he said.

With support from his NSF CAREER award, Bruns plans to create a library of nanoparticles with systematic variations in size, composition, surface chemistry, density and stiffness. He then plans to test how those variations impact factors like immunogenicity, toxicity and the tendency of the nanoparticles to migrate in the human body.

“For example, we want to see if larger, denser particles minimize migration,” said Bruns, “and if softer particles will be less pro-inflammatory by mimicking the mechanics of native tissue.”

Drawing from this store of knowledge, Bruns hopes to establish general guidelines that will ensure safety of both ordinary tattoo pigments and the next generation of “smart” tattoos.

Bruns also recognizes that his art-meets-science approach to research could help attract people who otherwise might not be interested in STEM fields. He plans to integrate research and teaching activities by offering a hands-on workshop called “Tattoo-a-Fruit,” which leads participants on an experiential journey from body art to biomedical research.

Bruns is one of six faculty members from the College of Engineering and Applied Science received NSF CAREER Awards in 2023.

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Interdisciplinary team receives $1.8 million for audacious robot-building project

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 23:55:00 +0000

Interdisciplinary team receives $1.8 million for audacious robot-building project Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2022 - 16:55

The work of chemists permeates almost every aspect of modern life, from engineering life-saving vaccines and medicines to supporting industry, agriculture, material science and the energy sector.

Given the importance of their work, it’s a little surprising that in an age of automation, some of the most time-consuming tasks chemists perform are accomplished much as they were a century ago: Lab processes are often manual and repetitive, and they frequently require a great deal of low-level task monitoring. Efforts to change this have been limited, primarily because chemistry labs are such high-risk environments—toxic chemical exposure, fires and explosions lead to tens of thousands of injuries each year.

However, a team of researchers at CU ��«��Ƶ was recently awarded $1.8 million by the National Science Foundation for a project, titled "Human-Robot Collaboration for the Future of Organic Synthesis," to help change this. Led by Carson Bruns, assistant professor of mechanical engineering with the ATLAS Institute, the team aims to shift some of the most time-consuming tasks to robots by developing new, open-source robot software and innovative hardware designs.

“Our goal is to develop technology that can be the hands of the chemists,” says Bruns, “freeing them up so they can do the hard cognitive work that only people can do.” Advances in robotic chemistry assistants could help transform synthetic chemistry worldwide, accelerating progress in critical fields like biomedicine, material science, and energy production and storage.

Divided over four years, the award falls under the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, an NSF initiative focused on augmenting human performance by developing more sophisticated human-technology partnerships. Bruns’ principal CU-based collaborator is Alessandro Roncone, assistant professor of computer science at CU ��«��Ƶ. A third partner on the project is Dan Szafir. A colleague of Bruns’ at the ATLAS Institute until Spring 2021, Szafir is now an assistant professor of computer science with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where his work will be supported with $600,000 of the total award amount.

This isn’t Bruns’s first foray into chemistry-related automation. For the last three years, a PhD candidate he advises, Kailey Shara, has been developing a lab robot that automates repetitive chemical reactions. Her latest prototype is able to heat, cool and stir precise quantities of wet and dry reagents—technology she's commercializing with the launch of a private company, Chembotix, which won awards from CU ��«��Ƶ’s New Venture Challenge (first place) and, in November 2022, Lab Venture Challenge.

Alessandro Roncone works with a student in his lab, the Human Interaction and Robotics Group.

Complementing Bruns’ knowledge in chemistry automation, Roncone brings critical skills to the project with expertise in human-robot interaction. Director of the Human Interaction and Robotics [HIRO] Group in the Department of Computer Science, Roncone specializes in developing robotic technologies that facilitate close, natural and extended cooperation with people.

However, designing a robot that can operate alongside people in cluttered and crowded spaces where dangerous chemicals are present, is no small challenge. Most mobile robots currently rely on visual cues for navigation, but when objects or people obscure lines of sight, visual information has limitations. To address this issue, Roncone plans to incorporate a flexible artificial skin on the robot that is equipped with accelerometers, along with proximity and pressure sensors. “For a robot to be effective in this context, its actions must build confidence and trust,” says Roncone. “It’s not enough that it never collides with anything or anyone; people must also feel comfortable and safe working alongside it.”

They will be adapting a sophisticated commercial robot that was purchased in 2019 with funds from a joint proposal submitted by Szafir and Bruns. While still at ATLAS, Szafir used the robot for several studies aimed at developing software to facilitate robot-human collaboration: One focused on improving a robot’s ability to select specific objects in a cluttered space based on verbal cues from a human. Another was aimed at helping robots recognize active group conversations that should not be interrupted. Szafir’s role will be to continue this work, shaping software to achieve the team’s objectives.

Final confirmation for the award came through from the NSF in September. It was a moment to celebrate to be sure, and also the moment when aspirations become a concrete challenge.

The team begins with a deep well of relevant experience and knowledge, and their work has the potential to accelerate chemistry research in many different fields. It will also have wide-ranging impacts on similar development in other fields—a robot that is able to move around a crowded chemistry lab, performing useful tasks while safely handling dangerous chemicals will be capable of many less challenging tasks.

Robots help build cars, fly planes, fight wars and provide healthcare; they play a role in countless industries, but for the most part, they don't work in chemistry labs. A team of CU ��«��Ƶ scientists plans to change that.

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How this celebrity tattoo artist created a tattoo you can turn on and off at will

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 19:10:36 +0000

How this celebrity tattoo artist created a tattoo you can turn on and off at will Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/03/2022 - 13:10

Bang Bang—who has inked the likes of Rihanna and LeBron—teamed up with research scientists Carson Bruns and Jesse Butterfield to develop a new kind of light-sensitive ink.

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Ellen Yi-Luen Do and Carson Bruns win graduate school awards for outstanding mentorship

Anonymous — Wed, 04 May 2022 19:10:41 +0000

Ellen Yi-Luen Do and Carson Bruns win graduate school awards for outstanding mentorship Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/04/2022 - 13:10

Praised by their graduate students for their scientific competence, work ethic, creativity and compassion, two ATLAS professors received Outstanding Faculty Mentor awards from CU ��«��Ƶ’s Graduate school on May 3, an honor bestowed this year on only 18 faculty members campus-wide.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor of computer science and director of the ACME Lab, and Carson Bruns, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, were both honored for outstanding contributions to mentoring individual graduate students and the quality of their interactions with them.

Their nomination materials showcased their many contributions in mentoring graduate students and supporting the mission of graduate education, while supporting their students’ career development and individual growth.

Carson Bruns
Bruns’ research focuses on emergent nanomaterials—engineering matter at the smallest of scales to create materials with particular properties. His group has received wide recognition for its work on “smart tattoos," which have the potential to impart new properties to skin.

Jesse Butterfield, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD candidate and alumnus of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, said that Bruns regularly comes up with “brilliant ideas for impactful scientific work.” One such idea—the use of invisible tattoo inks to protect skin from UV light and the cancers it causes—forms the backbone of Butterfield’s PhD studies.

“He spends more time with his grad students than any other advisor that I’m aware of, and with some of them by orders of magnitude,” Butterfield said. “He gives each of us his full attention.”

Bruns always pushes his students to work on their career goals, even when it slows progress within the lab, Butterfield adds, including when two students wanted to take time out to intern with companies of interest, and when Butterfield wanted to teach an undergraduate class.

Butterfield said Bruns’ kindness has been unwavering since they began working together in 2017. “I give the strongest recommendation possible for awarding Carson, in large part due to his capabilities and strengths in his work, but also for his personal qualities, which allow him to continuously raise up the people around him. He is one of those rare people who constantly makes those around him better.”

Ellen Yi-Luen Do
In Ellen Do’s ACME Lab, students are engaged in a wide range of projects, from alternative game control, to immersive musical jam sessions, to robotics for wellness, to visual analytics, toys to promote child development and generative art.

Despite the breadth of their work, she tells her nine PhD and two master’s students that she is always available: “only an email or door away.”

And on any given day, the ACME Lab is a busy central hub, buzzing and flowing with undergraduate and graduate students, says ATLAS PhD Student Sandra Bae. “Ellen has cultivated a lab culture where her students warmly welcome any student interested in research to join our weekly lab meetings, directly mentor undergraduate or master’s students for their capstone projects or simply invite others to socialize. She understands the importance of a social support system where the lab functions as a family.”

Bae points out that Do is excellent at harnessing and directing the interests of her students. “Her mentoring strength comes from how observant she is,” says Bae.

“As a PhD advisee of Ellen’s, her influence is imprinted on my life,” Bae said. “She is my academic mentor, who listened to my first conference presentation five times in a row; my senior, who taught me how to treat friends and myself with compassion; my spiritual leader, who motivates me with her delightful energy; my personal role model, who helps me, another Asian-American woman, be more confident that I belong and can succeed in academia.”

ATLAS Community Members Receiving 2022 Graduate School Awards

Fiona Bell, ATLAS PhD student, member of the Living Matter Lab; Dissertation Completion Fellowship, (one academic semester of financial support).

Carson Bruns, assistant professor, ATLAS Institute & Mechanical Engineering; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor, ATLAS Institute & Computer Science; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Sasha de Koninck, PhD candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance, member of the Unstable Design Lab; Graduate School Summer Fellowship ($6,000); Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

Varsha Koushik, PhD'22, Computer Science, member of the Superhuman Computing Lab; First-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition Winner.

Anthony Pinter, PhD'22, Information Science, ATLAS lecturer and incoming teaching assistant professor; Second-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition winner.

Purnendu, ATLAS PhD student; Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

Praised by their graduate students for their scientific competence, work ethic, creativity and compassion, two ATLAS professors received Outstanding Faculty Mentor awards from CU ��«��Ƶ’s Graduate School on May 3, an honor bestowed this year on only 18 faculty members campus-wide.

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Chembotix and Digital Wellness win awards at NVC Female Founders Prize Night

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 18:31:44 +0000

Chembotix and Digital Wellness win awards at NVC Female Founders Prize Night Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/22/2022 - 12:31

Kailey Shara

Two teams associated with the ATLAS Institute received awards at the 2022 New Venture Challenge (NVC) 15 Female Founders Prize Night held March 9 at Imig Music.

Kailey Shara, an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and her team won third place and $1,000 for Chembotix robotic automation platform, which is designed to dramatically speed up chemistry research and development.

As a three-time NVC participant, Chembotix was named the first-place winner at last year's NVC Female Founder Prize Night and received the Audience Favorite award at the 2021 championships. Shara also secured two first-place wins associated with CU ��«��Ƶ's New Venture Launch class ($11,500) taught by Jeff York, associate professor in the Leeds School of Business, and funded by the Robert & Kathleen Dobkin Intuitive Foundation.

Chembotix’s AutoSynth technology is based on Shara’s laboratory automation research. Developed by Shara in the laboratory of Assistant Professor Carson Bruns, the robot automates many of the tedious steps involved in synthesizing new molecules.

Annie Margaret

Annie Margaret, a teaching assistant professor with the ATLAS Institute, and her team placed fourth with Digital Wellness x NoSo November. Digital Wellness aims to help teens build self-esteem and develop skills to manage anxiety and social pressures by promoting an oasis away from social media pressures. In tandem, the NoSo “No Social Media” November campaign encourages everyone to take a month away from their phones and use that time to tend to personal wellness.

Margaret investigates the efficacy of specific psychotechnologies and contemplative practices as tools to counteract the negative impact of social media on our mental health and well-being. She is especially interested in social media’s effect on young women. Research suggests that this demographic has various negative mental health outcomes related to life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety. In a 2019 JAMA article, researchers stated that the surge in social media use may be at least in part to blame for the rise in suicide rates in adolescent females, which rose 151 percent from 2009 to 2019, in stark contrast to fairly consistent rates previously (1999-2009).

To address some of the underlying issues behind these disturbing trends, Margaret created Digital Wellness Summer Programs for middle-school girls ages 12-15, and a second group for high school girls, ages 16-18 that provides strategies adolescents can use to minimize the negative psychological impacts of social media. She and her team have spent the last year conducting focus groups with young women to investigate the effectiveness of various practices and to inform curriculum development, which they will use to make it more effective. The program is funded by a Community Impact Grant through CU ��«��Ƶ’s Office for Outreach & Engagement.

Kailey Shara, an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and her team, won third place and $1,000 for Chembotix robotic automation platform. Annie Margaret, teaching assistant professor with the ATLAS Institute, and her team, placed fourth with Digital Wellness x NoSo November.

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Touching Virtual Reality

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 19:51:05 +0000

Touching Virtual Reality Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/09/2022 - 12:51

Imagine yourself sipping coffee at a café wearing augmented reality glasses and summoning a virtual screen and keyboard that immediately appears in front of you. Wearing haptic feedback gloves, as you type, you feel each keystroke on your fingertips, and if you run your fingers along the edge of your keyboard, you feel its edges. You can also move the keyboard around on the table—it feels as if it's real, and the screen hovering at an ergonomically optimal height above the keyboard looks like a normal screen. However, to a passerby, the only thing in front of you is a cup of coffee. Your fingers are moving in thin air and you are looking intently at nothing.

Realizing technology that makes this possible is a goal of Reality Labs Research at Meta (previously Facebook), where ATLAS PhD student Purnendu has been helping develop soft, wearable devices, such as wristbands, rings and gloves, that deliver just the right level of haptic feedback to a wearer in response to contact with an object in virtual or augmented reality. Haptic feedback is created a variety of ways, including through tiny electric motors (actuators) and shape-changing materials.

"This is a great opportunity not only to build upon my earlier work at ATLAS, but also to be around people tasked with inventing the future of human interaction in augmented and virtual reality,” says Purnendu, who will remain at Meta in Redmond, Washington through August.

The work aligns with Purnendu's doctoral research on shaping materials using electrostatic fields and developing human-centered applications. During the internship, Purnendu plans to explore building body-worn solutions—leveraging insights from his past research which emphasized the shape-changing behavior of soft electrohydraulic actuators.

Purnendu holds an integrated master’s degree in physics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in India and has a background in material science and design. He is advised by Assistant Professor Carson Bruns and Associate Professor Gregory Whiting.

Normally virtual surfaces cannot be felt because they aren't there. But at Reality Labs Research at Meta, (previously known as Facebook), ATLAS PhD Student Purnendu is researching soft, wearable devices–such as wristbands, rings or gloves –that could enable tactile sensations in virtual/augmented reality environments.

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Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 19:01:10 +0000

Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/31/2022 - 12:01

SIGGRAPH sat down with Purnendu, a PhD student in the ATLAS Institute and a researcher at Meta Reality Labs, to talk about his team’s SIGGRAPH 2021 Labs project, “Electriflow: Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation Using Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators.” The team's actuator technology strives to augment animation within physical books.

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High-tech tattoos may help prevent skin cancer

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 19:18:06 +0000

High-tech tattoos may help prevent skin cancer Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/15/2021 - 12:18

Carson Bruns, assistant professor and director of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and his research team are collaborating with the CU Anschutz Medical Campus to test a tattoo ink that’s completely invisible—and could lower the risk of skin cancer, much like a “permanent sunscreen."

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CU ��«����Ƶ Adhesive Research Could Boost Medicine, Electronics, and the Environment

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Bruns Among 7 CU Engineering CAREER Award Winners in 2023

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Bruns lands prestigious NSF CAREER research award to usher in next generation of “smart tattoos”

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Interdisciplinary team receives $1.8 million for audacious robot-building project

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How this celebrity tattoo artist created a tattoo you can turn on and off at will

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Ellen Yi-Luen Do and Carson Bruns win graduate school awards for outstanding mentorship

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Chembotix and Digital Wellness win awards at NVC Female Founders Prize Night

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Touching Virtual Reality

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Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation

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High-tech tattoos may help prevent skin cancer

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CU ��«��Ƶ Adhesive Research Could Boost Medicine, Electronics, and the Environment