research

Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 19:19:01 +0000

Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup Michael Kwolek Fri, 12/13/2024 - 12:19

Breaking up is hard to do — especially when you can't control what you see online. Anthony Pinter weighs in on how people manage their data after experiencing breakups.

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Textbook diagrams come to life with CU ��«��Ƶ AI tool

Michael Kwolek — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:23:20 +0000

Textbook diagrams come to life with CU ��«��Ƶ AI tool Michael Kwolek Thu, 12/05/2024 - 09:23

Ryo Suzuki, ATLAS assistant professor and director of the Programmable Reality Lab, has created an AI tool that can make static textbook images move on the page.

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3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 17:27:58 +0000

3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera Michael Kwolek Wed, 12/04/2024 - 10:27

The Utility Research Lab's work demonstrates possibilities for replacing traditional plastics in 3D printing with organic, compostable materials.

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Textbooks come alive with new, interactive AI tool

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 19:18:55 +0000

Textbooks come alive with new, interactive AI tool Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/01/2024 - 13:18

ATLAS assistant professor, Ryo Suzuki, makes textbooks more interactive with AI-powered tools that turn diagrams into effective simulations for more personalized and immersive learning.

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Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:40:15 +0000

Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/26/2024 - 09:40

Carnegie Mellon University alumni profile details how our Utility Research Lab director employs sustainable materials in place of plastics in 3D printing and textile development.

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Bruns receives Provost's Faculty Achievement Award

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 15:54:42 +0000

Bruns receives Provost's Faculty Achievement Award Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/20/2024 - 09:54

ATLAS assistant professor, Carson Bruns, was among a group of five CU ��«��Ƶ pre-tenure faculty recognized for excellence in teaching, scholarship, leadership and service. He was selected for his research on smart tattoos.

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Devendorf bridges engineering and craft communities with new initiative

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 15:54:01 +0000

Devendorf bridges engineering and craft communities with new initiative Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/13/2024 - 09:54

Michael Kwolek

Weaving and engineering might seem unrelated on the surface, but they in fact have a great deal in common. Laura Devendorf, assistant professor at the ATLAS Institute and Information Science, is determined to build bridges among practitioners across these disciplines to unlock the potential for new lines of scientific and creative innovation.

To support this work, Devendorf, who directs the Unstable Design Lab, was recently awarded a U.S. National Science Foundation grant of $297,630 for phase one of a larger project entitled, “Cultivating an Ecosystem for Interdisciplinary Smart Textiles Research.”

The research builds on software Devendorf and her team developed called, AdaCAD, an open-source tool they describe as an “experimental workspace that applies parametric design to the domain of weave drafting. It supports algorithmic and playful approaches to developing woven structures and cloth, for shaft and jacquard looms.”

The aim of this new research, as Devendorf describes it, is to, “take this software that we built for doing complex weave drafting and transition it to a project where it is sustained and grown by a larger community of weavers and [those] who we call ‘textile-adjacent engineers’.” That way, AdaCAD can develop and adapt to the needs of a wider user-base over time as all good open source software does.

This work exemplifies the radically interdisciplinary work that the ATLAS Institute champions. By bringing together disparate experts and communities—in this case, artists, artisans, engineers and researchers—we create new approaches to discovery.

From adjacent to integrated
Textiles are pervasive, yet often misunderstood in engineering spaces. The surprising mathematical complexity, materials knowledge and innovation that have arisen over centuries of textile practice are often overlooked. At the same time, weavers who come from a tradition of craftsmanship, art and design may be unfamiliar with meaningful advances in the engineering space.

By bringing together these two worlds, Devendorf hopes to open up opportunities for breakthroughs in technology and craft, whether that is in advancing electronic-textile science or pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

For example, an engineering team may seek ways to monitor health without the use of adhesives often required for electrodes, while weavers already have options for materials and techniques that could replace such adhesives. Yet both groups are often unaware of each other’s needs and skills. But overcoming this knowledge gap, Devendorf believes engineers and weavers could together achieve greater impact.

There are signs this is beginning to take place, and she aims to speed the process. Research labs at CalTech and MIT as well as industrial design studios around the globe have acquired digital looms to experiment with weaving advanced materials and experimental forms.

But first: listening
Phase I of this project will focus on fact-finding and planning. The team will lead community-engagement activities and trainings and gather points-of-view from craftspeople, designers, engineers and others across many communities.

Devendorf and her team have begun interviewing people from a range of overlapping disciplines. They include a weaver with a fine arts background who now works on woven implantables for a medical devices company and a textiles expert researching stronger, lighter woven materials for the aviation industry. Still others in the cohort are studying zero-waste, “whole garment” clothing manufacturing and human-computer interaction surfaces on the body. The range of applications for textiles is growing at an impressive pace.

Devendorf explains this recent uptick in interest: “Ten years ago, it was all about the maker movement and digital fabrication, and it took a while before people realized that textile machines are also fabrication machines that can do things that we're still trying to get 3D printers to do. Textiles are inherently multi-material. They are flexible, they can be made stiff, they can be soft. It's a totally different mindset to control a textile machine [compared] to a printer that is making stacks. There’s a big learning gap there, but you see a lot of fabrication people jumping in.”

The TC2 Loom by Digital Weaving Norway has also expanded access to advanced weaving techniques as a first-of-its-kind prototype-scale digital jacquard loom that is programmable with a bitmap image. Now you no longer need a factory-scale setup to experiment with textiles fabrication.

What’s next
For Phase II, the team will focus on cultivating the ecosystem through on-the-ground work with communities and creating opportunities for practitioners to share what they are making. Devendorf also aims to expand opportunities for craftspeople in scientific research and product design spaces.

She explains, “we have huge problems to tackle as a society. I believe that engineering can address some of those, but I don't think we can do it if we don't have access to every possible technique… We're overlooking a huge set of practices and people in communities that have knowledge we need to solve some of these bigger challenges. My hunch is that craftspeople understand materials, process and machinery where so much of engineering is happening at a simulation level [while] trying to engineer materials that behave like the simulations.”

By fostering interconnectivity between engineering and weaving communities, Devendorf and her team in the Unstable Design Lab will position textiles as a leading source for innovative solutions to global challenges.

The Unstable Design Lab director has embarked on the first phase of a years-long project to bring together engineering and craft communities to advance textile research across a range of scientific disciplines.

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Colorado-based Computer Graphics Professionals Make Their Mark at SIGGRAPH 2024

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 16:30:29 +0000

Colorado-based Computer Graphics Professionals Make Their Mark at SIGGRAPH 2024 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/02/2024 - 10:30

ATLAS community members, including professor Ellen Do and PhD student Ruhan Yang, presented at this year's conference in Denver.

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Public-private partnership drives attention for ATLAS research in augmented and mixed reality

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:41:59 +0000

Public-private partnership drives attention for ATLAS research in augmented and mixed reality Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/18/2024 - 10:41

Michael Kwolek

Partnerships between universities and industry can yield important research and commercial breakthroughs. ATLAS professor Ellen Do has worked to cultivate relationships between CU ��«��Ƶ and industry players, including as a member of the Pervasive Personalized Intelligence (PPI) Center, to support graduate students and enhance opportunities for commercialization of ATLAS research.

The PPI Center, which recently concluded its tenure, was founded “with a mission of bringing industry and university talent together to solve the intelligence challenges faced by software and computer engineers in Internet of Things systems." It operated under the supervision of the National Science Foundation and included members from NEC, Intel and Trimble.

“It’s been such a good experience. We’ve learned a lot. Ellen Do and her team have helped to expand our thinking and encouraged us to explore new areas.” - Dr. Haifeng Chen, Head of Data Science Department at NEC Laboratories, and his colleague Kai Ishikawa, Principal Researcher (PPI Center event recap)

The PPI Center’s Spring 2024 Industry Advisory Board Meeting in Portland, OR, included a research poster session, and ATLAS students were honored with three of the four awards industry attendees voted on at the event.

Suibi Che-Chuan Weng, PhD student, won "Most Industry Ready" for Editing Reality: Empowering Users to Manipulate Reality through Addition, Erasing, and Modification with Speech to Prompt in Mixed Reality.
Rishi Vanukuru, PhD student, won "Most Impactful" for Asynchronous spatial guidance using mobile devices and Augmented Reality.
Ada Zhao, MS student, won "Most Impactful" for The WizARd and Apprentice: Augmented Reality Expert Capture for Training Novices.

2 more ATLAS PhD students participated: Krithik Ranjan presented PuppetGuide: Tangible Personalized Museum Tour Guides using LLMs and David Hunter presented Tangible Interaction with Object Detection and Large Language Models.

As for the experience participating in the PPI Center, Do says, “it is good to know that the industry is interested in supporting research and considers our research relevant.” She sees ways ATLAS could form partnerships within several industry sectors on a range of themes due to the multidisciplinary nature of the research conducted here.

Since their involvement in PPI started, Do and her team have had a series of meetings with mentors from global technology firms, discussing collaborative research opportunities.

Vanukuru is currently doing an internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge focused on spatial computing in its VR/AR group. Weng and Zhao are working on research in the ACME Lab this summer, extending the Editing Reality (and PuppetGuide), and WizARd and Apprentice projects with interns from the CU SPUR program. Zhao is also conducting a pilot study, interviewing laser cutter operating experts about how they would demonstrate operations and how they can annotate their demonstration using the WizARd prototype for novice learners. Hunter has embarked on an internship with Trimble this summer, while he and Ranjan are also working in the ACME Lab.

ACME Lab members built relationships with industry players through the Pervasive Personalized Intelligence (PPI) Center by collaborating on solutions to challenges in building Internet of Things systems. Three ATLAS PhD students took home awards from the PPI Center's Spring 2024 Advisory Board Meeting.

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Wear it, then recycle: ATLAS Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 19:24:50 +0000

Wear it, then recycle: ATLAS Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/17/2024 - 13:24

In a new study, a team of ATLAS engineers and designers developed a DIY machine that spins textile fibers made of materials like sustainably sourced gelatin. The group’s “biofibers” feel a bit like flax fiber and dissolve in hot water in minutes to an hour.

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research

Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup

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Textbook diagrams come to life with CU ��«����Ƶ AI tool

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3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera

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Textbooks come alive with new, interactive AI tool

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Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds

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Bruns receives Provost's Faculty Achievement Award

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Devendorf bridges engineering and craft communities with new initiative

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Colorado-based Computer Graphics Professionals Make Their Mark at SIGGRAPH 2024

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Public-private partnership drives attention for ATLAS research in augmented and mixed reality

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Wear it, then recycle: ATLAS Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin

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Textbook diagrams come to life with CU ��«��Ƶ AI tool