CU Innovators News
FY 2023-24 was another tremendous year for innovation and entrepreneurship at the CU. University researchers, inventors and creators began working with Venture Partners at CU «Ƶ to advance 144 breakthrough innovations, and 36 CU startups were launched through Venture Partners based on campus discoveries.
New CU «Ƶ research suggests a surprising tool that could help with weight loss: Exposure to beneficial bacteria. With assistance from Venture Partners, a new startup Kioga will pursue new microbe-based ingredients for preventing weight gain and promoting health.
Daily Camera—President Joe Biden awarded former CU «Ƶ professor Kristina Johnson with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Friday. Johnson’s research has led to 46 U.S. patents. Her optics inventions have enabled HDTV and modern 3D movies, which have been used in 25,000 theaters around the world and viewed by hundreds of millions of people.
ColoradoBiz—Agrawal, 29, moved from India to Colorado to study quantum computation at CU in 2019. “«Ƶ, in general, has the most thriving quantum ecosystem in the world,” she says. The overwhelming focus on quantum computing, however, paved the way for Agrawal to co-found CU «Ƶ Startup Mesa Quantum with Wale Lawal in early 2024.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute—Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an established control technique that is popular in the general control systems community. The MPC approach could have significant impacts on how wind turbines are controlled, not only improving their efficiency, but also reducing structural stress on the turbines and extending their lifetimes.
CU «Ƶ College of Engineering and Applied Science—Kristi Anseth, a Distinguished Professor and Tisone Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has been awarded the prestigious VinFuture Special Prize for Women Innovators in recognition of her pioneering research in tissue engineering. Winners were selected from nearly 1,500 scientific nominations spanning more than 80 countries and territories worldwide.
CU «Ƶ College of Engineering & Applied Science—The College of Engineering and Applied Science continues to establish itself as a leader in innovation, with 22 startups emerging from its research labs in the past fiscal year. This achievement reflects the college's commitment to translating transformative research into solutions that address real-world challenges.
CU «Ƶ College of Engineering and Applied Science—Students are constantly designing tools and technologies. Faculty members are launching successful startups on the backs of their own designs. In just the past two years, Venture Partners at CU «Ƶ has supported ten new startups featuring inventions designed by Mechanical Engineering faculty and students.
Founded by CU «Ƶ Professor Larry Gold in 2000, SomaLogic revolutionized protein measurement by developing a faster, cost-effective process to monitor the vast number of proteins in the human body.
CU «Ƶ teams are among the first winners of the NSF-funded Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine, which supports innovative climate resilience projects across the region1. This initiative, backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation, aims to address key issues like water security, wildfire prediction, and extreme weather modeling through interdisciplinary collaboration.