Research Briefs 2023

Team set to explore 5G communications security

Researchers from CU Boulder are working together on a unique military-oriented research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Eric Keller

Led by aerospace engineer Keith Gremban, along with co-PIs Tamara Lehman and Eric Keller of electrical, computer and energy engineering and Alexandra Siegel of political science, the project seeks to enable secure use of 5G networks that may be controlled by a military adversary. The goal is to ensure American soldiers and infrastructure operators can use hostile 5G cellular networks in other countries without those countries being able to extract valuable operational information in return.

The researchers will explore ways to disguise communications by generating continuous background noise on cellular networks and attempt to generate intentional false-flag communications to confuse enemies. Laboratory experiments will be done with industry partner Federated Wireless so that prototypes can be tested using real-world cellular equipment.

New lithography system soon available for campus use

The university has acquired a new electron beam lithography system through a joint proposal by researchers from the College of Engineering and Applied Science; the College of Arts and Sciences; JILA; and the Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization (COSINC) facility.听

The new industry-grade 100 kV electron beam writer will be the only open-access system of its type in Colorado. Professor Juliet Gopinath from the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering said the system has wide applicability in materials research and features nanometer-scale resolution along with the ability to produce high-quality devices through nanofabrication.听

She added that it will also provide hands on-training opportunities for CU Boulder students when operational in the East Campus Sustainability, Energy and Environment Laboratory building.

Quantum collaboration lab opens in Engineering Center

Researchers from CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be better able to coordinate their efforts with the recent opening of the Quantum Engineering Initiative (QEI) Collaboration Lab.听

Plans for the lab 鈥� located in the newly renovated north wing of the Engineering Center 鈥� go back to 2019 and are part of a broader effort by the college to improve infrastructure for quantum researchers and provide internal funding through the QEI.听

The new space will encourage cross-campus research and experiments into quantum computing, optical clocks, quantum sensors and networks, hybrid quantum systems and more.

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CU spinout to produce innovative EV battery

Solid Power, a CU Boulder spinout based in Louisville, Colorado, that develops solid-state batteries, recently announced it has begun to pilot manufacturing of its electric-vehicle batteries for internal testing.

car battery

The company also announced publicly that it will begin supplying batteries to partners Ford Motor Co. and BMW for testing and that mass production of the batteries could begin as soon as 2024.

Solid-state battery cells from the company promise to offer owners more range and shorter recharging times at a lower cost. The company said its batteries can be produced using the tooling and processes already in place at factories currently making lithium-ion battery cells 鈥� meaning they could be quickly mass-produced and available within just a few years.

The technology behind the company originated in the mechanical engineering labs of Conrad Stoldt and Se-hee Lee and was exclusively licensed through Venture Partners at CU Boulder.

New software may help in fight against cancer

For years, researchers have been trying to quickly and accurately identify the parts of DNA that lead to genetic disorders like cancer. A new software tool from Assistant Professor Ryan Layer鈥檚 group in the Department of Computer Science could improve that process and lead to more tailored treatment and understanding of cancers from patient to patient.

Ryan Layer headshot
Ryan Layer

Layer, who is also part of the BioFrontiers Institute, uses algorithms to decipher and understand large genomic data sets in his research. The new software was first described in Nature Methods and looks specifically at large structural variants that can lead to cancer.

It uses a secondary analysis technique to search the raw data from thousands of samples, aiming to quickly characterize whether a particular genetic sequence is common or rare and whether it is potentially causing diseases like cancer in those specific tumor cells.听

The goal is to provide patients with more tailored treatments based on findings from the sequences in their actual tumor compared to normal tissue. The technique simultaneously reduces the data storage needs and improves the query speed, speeding up analysis that would have previously taken months.

CU partners with industry on air mobility and sensing

Eric Frew headshot
Eric Frew

A major research center on autonomous air mobility and sensing has been founded at CU Boulder.

The Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensing will be housed in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and is organized under the NSF鈥檚 Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program (IUCRC). Professor Eric Frew will serve as the center鈥檚 director, with Associate Professor Nisar Ahmed serving as the CU Boulder site director.

Nisar headshot
Nisar Ahmed

The five-year, multi-university and industry partnership will integrate research from traditional engineering topics such as automatic control, aerodynamics, wireless communication and energy storage with new disciplines such as artificial intelligence, autonomy, machine learning and robotics.

The IUCRC framework is designed to help startups, large corporate partners and government agencies connect directly with university faculty and student researchers to solve common challenges in a low-risk environment. The goal is to develop new technology, leverage resources and 鈥� most importantly 鈥� build out the U.S. workforce in critical areas.

Making the web more accessible for visually impaired

ATLAS Institute alumna Abigale Stangl (PhDTMS鈥�19) recently helped lead a multi-university study into the ways humans and artificial intelligence could work together to improve online alt-text image descriptions for visually impaired users.

Alt-text description tags often provide visually impaired users with the context and detail needed to meaningfully, securely and efficiently interact with websites and social media platforms. However, website developers often forget to create these tags or fail to generate helpful ones.听

To address that gap, Stangl is working to see if artificial intelligence can be used to recognize image content and generate useful descriptions in a variety of common scenarios, such as online shopping. Her latest paper was co-authored by Assistant Professor Danna Gurari from computer science.听

A key takeaway was that the information visually impaired users want in an image description changes based on the scenario in which they are encountering the image. Other findings suggest that there are some types of information they want for an image across all scenarios, which means it may be possible to determine what image content should always be included in image descriptions.

CIRES partnership tackles biological effects of climate change

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded a major new data science and diversity effort on campus that is led by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and features strong connections to CU Engineering.

Claire Monteleoni headshot
Claire Monteleoni

Co-led by Associate Professor Claire Monteleoni of computer science, the $20 million center 鈥� known as the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab (ESIIL) 鈥� will enable work that illuminates the biological effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity.听

Funding from the NSF will support collaborative research and education involving huge science data sets and machine learning approaches to analysis. It will also facilitate collaboration among Native American tribes and tribal colleges, other academic institutions, government agencies and private organizations.

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