Podcast

ON CUE Podcast: New Biomedical Engineering Degree Program

Anonymous — Fri, 29 May 2020 15:43:37 +0000

ON CUE Podcast: New Biomedical Engineering Degree Program Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/29/2020 - 09:43

Josh Rhoten

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Announcer

And now, from the University of Colorado in Boulder the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents On CUE.

Josh Rhoten:

Welcome to this edition of OnCue, I am Josh Rhoten.

Rhoten:

Biomedical Engineering is a multidisciplinary field that lies at the interface of medicine, biology and engineering with a focus on fundamentals in mechanics and electronics. Workers in the field will help to develop the next generation of life enhancing prosthetics, design sensors for use in the body or deploy new therapeutics.

�鶹��Ժ within the College of Engineering and Applied Science will take their first courses in this exciting field through a new Biomedical Engineering degree program which launches this fall. With it, undergrad and graduate students will take classes from across the university in engineering, biology and mathematics, learning from some of the best in the country along the way. The degrees are the first of their kind in the CU system, and no other university in the state offers a stand-alone undergraduate degree in the field.

Mark Borden is a professor in the Paul M. Rady department of mechanical engineering and the program director for the new program. He has a long history in the field dating back to his first career appointment coming out of school. He said like many other biomedical engineers, he is inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Mark Borden:

The Vitruvian by Leonardo Da Vinci is often a symbol of biomedical engineering. When one looks at the sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci, it is often clear that Leonardo was inspired by nature and the human body for the designs of his machines. I think many biomedical engineers are inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci. At least I am.

I think that the Human body is the most complex machine in the known universe. It offers us a rich context in which we can teach engineering principles. And also I think it has to be said that biomedical engineers have a profound desire to develop technology to diagnose and treat disease – that’s really what motivates us. But in my mind it's deeper than a one way transfer of knowledge from engineering to biology to medicine. Biomedical engineering is itself a context in which to teach engineering fundamentals. So for example one can learn statics from human bone – skeleton, tissue and the muscle structure of the body. One can teach dynamics by looking at human motion and performance. One can teach electronics by reverse engineering a pulse oximeter which measures oxygen and heart rate. And also, teaching control systems from the nervous systems – for example you have a very simple feedback control loop that pulls your hand back when you touch something hot. But you have a more complex logic control that regulates breathing.

Rhoten:

CU Boulder is one of the top engineering programs in the country and is world renowned for research – particularly in biomedical engineering said Borden. That, coupled with a deep strength in the mechanical, electrical and – most importantly – chemical and biological departments, set this program up well Borden said.

Borden:

At CU Boulder we’re lucky to have one of top Chemical and biological engineering programs in the nation and really the world. And in fact my bachelors and doctoral degrees are both in chemical engineering. And my first faculty appointment was in chemical engineering. So I know very well that chemical and biological engineers have a unique molecular level perspective which can be quite powerful actually in analyzing and solving problems in biology and medicine. Having that strength allows us to focus on mechanics and electronics. Again in the context in human anatomy physiology and medical technology and medical devices and so on. So our undergraduates will take no less than five mechanics courses and five electronics courses. That really provides depth in those fundamental areas so at CU we have all bases covered. In Chem/bio you have that molecular level fundamental approach, and in biomedical engineering we have fundamentals in mechanics and electronics. Both programs are collaborating together to provide a really rich and interdisciplinary undergraduate experience.

Rhoten:

Chemical and Biological Engineering Department Chair Charles Musgrave has been deeply involved in developing this new degree as well. Last year, his department was ranked at number 10 in the 2020 U.S. News and World Reports Best Graduate Schools rankings.

Charles Musgrave:

The chemical and biological engineering department is very highly ranked and recognized around the world as being one of the top departments for having fantastic faculty and facilities. We’re in a world class building that has world class labs where our faculty conduct research. Many of our students get to come in and as part of their undergraduate education actually do research that can be published. A nice advantage of being a chemical and biological engineering student here at the university, is not only do they get to take advantage of these great facilities – but the faculty are very strong and recognized around the world. And so you get to work on these problems that are at the very forefront, cutting edge areas of research.

Rhoten:

Musgrave said his department had a lot to add to the new program, building from their already strong position.

Musgrave:

Chemical engineering teaches the principles that cover a broad range of areas, many of which have nothing to do with biomedical engineering but those principles also do help in various aspects of biomedical engineering. So there's places where there's overlap and there's also places where there isn’t. So for example, In biomedical engineering – if you are going to design a new medical bed or artificial limb, that is something where chemical engineers typically wouldn’t have a whole lot to contribute to that particular engineering problem. But lets say you’re designing something such as a drug delivery device, or something you could implant that would release drug in a controlled way over time maybe with an external stimulus. Those kinds of things are the things that chemical engineers could contribute to. Or for example, chemical engineers have a broad range of knowledge in areas of kinetics and chemistry and chemical transport – all kinds of things that could go into areas of biomedical engineering related to for example pharmaceutical industry. Chemical engineers are uniquely prepared to deal with the kinds of systems that are related to medicine – not only at molecular level and how these particular drugs interact with body, but also how would you actually manufacture them.

Rhoten:

This new program will also unlock new avenues for partnership across the University of Colorado system, said Musgrave, strengthening the bonds between our college of engineering and CU Anschutz especially.

Musgrave:

Many of the types of problems worked on at the medical campus are the kinds of problems engineers can help with. So they might have some very interesting new technology that they want to develop and they know it can be very helpful for various medical applications and solving problems related to all kinds of things. It could be diabetes, it could be cancer, it could be a virus and the issue is the doctors are trained to do clinical research and oftentimes trained to understand the mechanisms by which a medicine may work. But they’re not trained in actually doing engineering. And so there’s a lot of opportunity for engineers from CU to work with doctors at Anschutz and basically solve some of the most critical and important problems facing society.

Rhoten:

Borden said he was excited to start the program and eager to see the impact students have on the world coming out of it.

Borden:

I would tell them to look in the intensive care unit and you’ll see all that instrumentation that's wall to wall that's used to diagnose, monitor and treat the patient and it's all designed and maintained by biomedical engineers. But I think we all know it needs improvement. We need to develop better medical technologies because there’s still many injuries and diseases that cant be adequately treated. In terms of coming to CU Boulder I would just point out that we have this world class research program here in Engineering at CU Boulder that’s probably the top of the Mountain West. And so many of our faculty are already participating in biomedical engineering. And now we finally have a degree program that's designed to convey all this research knowledge directly to our students.

Anouncer:

This has been ON CUE, for more information visit colorado.edu/engineering

Learn more about biomedical engineering

�鶹��Ժ within the College of Engineering and Applied Science will take their first courses in this exciting field through a new Biomedical Engineering degree program which launches this fall.

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On CUE Podcast: The Anti-Microbial Resistance Mediation Outreach Program (ARMOR)

Anonymous — Wed, 13 May 2020 18:36:42 +0000

On CUE Podcast: The Anti-Microbial Resistance Mediation Outreach Program (ARMOR) Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/13/2020 - 12:36

The Anti-Microbial Resistance Mediation Outreach Program, also known as ARMOR, is a graduate student led international effort to develop public awareness of and research into the threat of widespread anti-microbial resistance (AMR). The dedicated effort is being led out of the labs of professors Anushree Chatterjee and Prashant Nagpal right here on campus and in collaboration with ARC Laboratories. On today's episode of On CUE, we sit down with the team and discuss the global threat AMR poses, the origins of the ARMOR program and steps the team has taken to shed a light on an unseen issue.

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Announcer

And now, from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents: On CUE.

Jonathan Raab

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an international crisis, medical professionals and researchers are searching for ways to slow and ultimately stop the spread of this deadly virus. Prior to this pandemic, however, researchers at CU Boulder had been sounding the alarm on another potential threat, bacterial infections that are immune to current antibiotic treatments. Because bacteria change and evolve at an incredible pace, developing new effective treatments is a challenge. Anti-Microbial resistance or AMR is the ability of bacteria to resist antibiotic treatments. Bacteria develop AMR through repeated exposure to antimicrobials, which eliminate most but not all bacteria. The bacteria that survive replicate, thus creating new, more powerful strains. Antimicrobials are in widespread worldwide use, from hand sanitizer in your home to hospitals to industrial agriculture. Overuse of these treatments mean that we are rapidly reaching a point where bacterial infections may become untreatable. CU Boulder is ground zero for a new global movement to curb this existential threat. Born out of the labs of assistant professors Anushree Chatterjee and Prashant Nagpal and ARC Laboratories, the Anti-Microbial Resistance Mediation Outreach Program, or ARMOR, is a graduate student led international effort to develop public awareness of and research into new treatments to tackle a or bacteria. Professor Nagpal gave us some background on this research.

Prashant Nagpal

Right. So we've been hearing about antimicrobial resistance for a long time. In fact, even when I was a undergrad, you know, you could see all these articles about superbugs, how we do need to fill in this big gap of antibiotic innovation. Since 1970s, there's been no new class of antibiotics for negative pathogens, which ultimately has resulted now in sort of a perfect storm of superbugs. They're becoming smarter. We are so losing ground. And this is such a key technology, antibiotics, that it forms a bedrock of modern medicine. Any time we have a small cut while shaving, we wash hands, we have any surgery – all of it relies on the fact that anytime our last line of defense, the skin gets exposed, we rely on antibiotics. Otherwise there used to be a severe number of mortalities during surgeries. And so all of our modern medicine kind of relies on it. And so we are losing ground there. Now we are slowly entering post-antibiotic era, which would be a very frightening scenario. But more importantly, we decided that what's really required is this acceleration of taking pains from a bedside to a bedside, which is why last year in 2018 we formally kicked off the anti-microbial regeneration consortium, or ARC, because it's not a local problem, it's a global problem.

Raab

We then sat down with professor Chatterjee and our students to learn more about this innovative program.

Raab

What threat does anti-microbial resistant bacteria pose to us now and in the future? What's the scale of this threat?

Anushree Chatterjee

So anti-microbial resistance poses a major threat right now and it's only escalating into the future. Just to give you a perspective, you know, by 2050 it is projected that there'll be more than 10 million deaths caused due to drug resistant infections. And, you know, it's going to exceed cancer. And the problem is that we are not creating enough solutions right now to be able to, you know, not just catch up, but also solve the challenges that we're facing today in the hospitals. So it's a major issue. In fact, the United Nations released a report at the end of April, saying that if we don't take an urgent step right now within one generation, the effect will be catastrophic. So that just sums it up.

Raab

So what is ARMOR's mission and how did it initially form?

Graduate student Colleen McCollum spreads the word about antimicrobial resistance mediation on campus at CU Boulder.

Chatterjee

So armor, which stands for anti-microbial resistance, mediation, outreach. So this is an outreach program. And it actually came alive under the Antimicrobial Regeneration Consortium initiative that was funded by myself and Prashant Nagpal. And that's an initiative which brings in labs across the globe to come together to bring in technologies and expertise so that we can accelerate development of antimicrobials and diagnostics. Even though ARC was focused on research, we thought that outreach was extremely important. So ARMOR is an effort to start a conversation between researchers and the medical community and the general community and take steps so that we can minimize an EMR.

Raab

How do students lead the armor efforts?

Chatterjee

The students are an extremely important component of ARMOR. It's actually totally a student led effort and I strongly believe that the younger generation needs to take charge of this problem. The younger generation needs to demand that it's not OK, that we don't have antibiotics, it's not OK that we have crops of superbugs. It's not OK that pharma is moving out of this. And I think the younger generation must demand that this problem be solved right now. So I really want to give this power to them to spread awareness across, you know, communities, across different states and hopefully across the globe, because, you know, when young minds come together to solve something, they can make leaps and bounds in very short periods of time. And, you know, already the students who are part of this effort, you know, I applaud their spirit. They've done so much with such, you know, so little resources. I admire it. And I am very confident that they'll do great things in the future.

Raab

Indeed, ARMOR as a student led program. They spoke to us about how they are building awareness of and encouraging action to mitigate the threat of AMR bacterial.

Colleen McCollum

Yeah. My name's Colleen McCollum. I'm a graduate student in the Chatterjee lab. I'm a first year PhD student and in terms of ARMOR, I am one of the founding members. I was one of the people who kind of got the CU chapter of this going through the CU organization groups. AMR is one of those things that it is a global problem. It is something that can affect anyone and does affect kind of everyone. It's this huge issue that we can't ignore anymore. And it's something that industry and academia aren't really spending enough time on right now, especially in the industry sphere. A lot of people are kind of leaving the area of antibiotics because it's not very profitable, it's not very efficient. And it's kind of at this point out to academia to step up and try to fill in those blanks there to make sure that this is a problem they get solved.

Dana Stamo

So my name is Dana Stamo, I'm a first year PhD student studying biological engineering with Dr. Chatterjee. However, I have been working very closely with Dr. Chatterjee for the past year on many issues, focusing on how to resolve antimicrobial resistance in the world. So I always knew from a very young age I really wanted to go into medicine. And then as I was getting my degree here, I was learning about the pharmaceutical industry, getting progressively disenchanted with the field because of how they take advantage of a very vulnerable consumer population. And then I met Anushree and I saw how much passion she had for genuinely helping people and not just trying to make a profit off of a disease. And that inspired me so much and really pulled me into this this global crisis that no one has ever talked about. And yeah, it's as big as climate change, but people don't really know about it. Health is a shared resource. So a disease and one part of the world is a plane ride away from everywhere else. And that's terrifying. And it's really important to address. You know, I actually think that we stumbled upon this statistic suggesting that if antibiotic resistance goes unaddressed, it's going to kill more people than cancer does by 2050, which is terrifying and really soon. And despite that, it doesn't seem like anybody knows about AMR, but everybody knows about cancer. And so we started paying more attention. There's so many campaigns to bring awareness to cancer, to pull funding into cancer. And the really isn't it really isn't happening for AMR research or for AMR awareness in general. You still see people who don't finish their prescriptions. You still see meat in the supermarket that's treated with antibiotics. And all of that culminates into a culture that is irresponsible with their use of antimicrobials. And that's only going to further perpetuate the situation. Simultaneously, pharmaceutical companies don't want to keep investing in it because it's expensive and you will use that treatment for a couple weeks. They would rather invest in lifelong diseases that they're going to keep getting money from. Again, part of the reason why I was disenchanted with this field. But all that being said, we knew that our part in this as members of our community, we just need to bring awareness to it in a way that's more intense than has previously previously been done before. It's not just talking to your friends. It's going to the farmer's market and interacting with the people who are growing their own crops, learning about their perspectives on things. Drawing attention to people who do suffer from AMR infections. All of these things are really important for raising that awareness. And so we knew that ARMOR was a really good way to sort of streamline that process.

Dana Stamo, left, and Anshuree Chatterjee in the lab in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at CU Boulder.

Kristen Eller

My name is Kristen Eller and I'm a fourth year PhD student in the chemical engineering department and I'm currently working on utilizing some of our novel strategies for new antibiotics to treat specifically intracellular infections. So I was naive and had no idea actually really about the big issue that was antimicrobial resistance when I first joined the department and was looking into the various research opportunities. But when I spoke to Dr. Chatterjee, I quickly realized how prevalent this issue is. And once I understood what was going on, it was easy to see that small things that actually were happening day to day. And throughout the last four years, I've noticed many friends, family members who, for example, had infections and had to do various different antibiotics, not realizing them themselves, not realizing. And I probably would in the past have realized what that meant. And that meant that those treatments weren't working because the bugs were adapting and we weren't. I feel as if I'm starting armor. We really discuss a lot of different initiatives and programs that we wanted to put into place and in actually more than a few we already found that CU had taken that step, for example, which was fantastic. It really showed us one that, you know, CU and Boulder itself, the community really is probably an area that is already thinking at least probably a little bit farther ahead than a lot of other places in the world. And that's fantastic and really shows that this is a great place to start. It also means that some of these programs that we are working to start, for example, partnering with local farmers, looking to see if they use antibiotics. We also looked into seeing if, for example, the hand soaps that are used in all university buildings, if they have any kind of antimicrobials in them and they don't. And as well, we looked into the food that's provided at the dining hall, and I think almost all of them don't have done it.

Stamo

None of them, they don't use antibiotics at all in any of the food in the dining halls. And they brag about it. They have signs that say it. So they're aware of this issue and they're pointing it out, which is great.

Eller

No and it's fantastic for us at first we were like well, thats what we wanted to do. But it was great. It means that they care. And it also means that it provides this framework that we can go to them, say, how did you get this started? We want to be able to provide this framework for all other potential armor institutions or areas that may be thinking of putting these kind of things into place, but don't know how.

Jocelyn Campos

My name is Jocelyn Campos and I recently graduated with my Masters in Biochemistry, but I've had a very close relationship with doctor Chatterjee in the past couple of years, and I am now a staff scientist in her lab currently and I am tackling many of these similar problems dealing with antimicrobial resistance. It started out kind of as a very open conversation with doctor Chatterjee about what actions we need to do beyond lab, beyond research. And it kind of started out with, well, we have all these, you know, potential students who were interested. Why not read a chapter here in our own community, right? And, you know, it started as an open dialog. But then, you know, it started into wanting to become like an action, you know, moving forward with it. And that's kind of where I started helping Colleen or other fellow colleagues to get it going. This involvement with pre-med students, I think is going to help really tremendously for our future students because they are going to be the future clinicians that in the future, you know, physicians and to get that information down now and then moving forward with their own studies, I think is vital. And then secondly, I think I see ARMOR in a lot of other different institutions and kind of embedded in community hospitals. Hopefully, you know, we already have, you know, involvement with, at least an initiation with University of Denmark or Institution in Denmark and in India. Why not start more institutions here in the U.S. and across the board? So that's where I see it and I think naturally it'll be incorporated in a lot of many other schools and hospitals across the nation.

Announcer

ARMOR meets weekly currently over Zoom. You can email us at armor@colorado.edu that's armor@colorado.edu for the Zoom link and more information. We are on BuffConnect as well. Also, follow us on Instagram and Twitter using the handle @CU_ARMOR and like us on Facebook by searching for Global ARMOR.

This has been On CUE for more information, visit Colorado.edu/engineering.

Reporting and editing by Jonathan Raab, additional production support by Matthew Goodman.

The Anti-Microbial Resistance Mediation Outreach Program, also known as ARMOR, is a graduate student led international effort to develop public awareness of and research into the threat of widespread anti-microbial resistance (AMR). On today's episode of On CUE, we sit down with the team and discuss the global threat AMR poses, the origins of the ARMOR program and steps the team has taken to shed a light on an unseen issue.

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On CUE Podcast: New Interim Dean Keith Molenaar

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 18:09:04 +0000

On CUE Podcast: New Interim Dean Keith Molenaar Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/13/2020 - 11:09

On this edition of On CUE, Interim Dean Keith Molenaar talks about his priorities for the future of the college and how he feels about stepping into the new role. Although this job is new, Moleenar is far from being new to CU Boulder. He completed all three of his degrees here and has held several faculty and administrative roles. In this episode he outlines his priorities for the future of our college, including maintaining consistency with the goals, vision and culture that Bobby Braun put in place during his tenure here over the last three years.

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Transcript

Announcer: And now, from the University of Colorado Boulder, the College Of Engineering and Applied Science presents On CUE.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome this edition of On CUE. my name is Josh Rhoten. Today, we're talking with interim dean Keith Molenaar about a wide variety of topics. We we'll learn about his time here, dating back to his years as an undergrad and looking ahead to the future of the college. Let's get started.

Rhoten: So I just want to start by congratulating you, Keith. Tell me how it feels to be in the job.

Keith Molenaar: Feels wonderful. I'm really excited. We have such a great community here in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. It's a chance that I get to give back after being here for quite a few years. So I feel comfortable with the administrative tasks and really looking forward to helping to build the community and working with all of our colleagues here.

Rhoten: So you've been with the college for quite some time now. This is sort of accumulation or a peak moment for you. So can you kind of maybe give me a little bio about what's been going on beforehand for people who are just tuning in and may not know you very well?

Molenaar: Sure, sure. Well, I'm originally from Chicago. I worked for my dad's construction company and went to community college just outside the city. So I've actually came here as a student back in 1987 and so started my degree in architectural engineering and finished up my last three years here. I got lucky enough to get a job here in Boulder with a startup construction management company and in fact, even worked on a few of the projects around campus, physically worked on the projects as an engineer while I was practicing. Really enjoyed that, but wanted to come back and get some more education. So I came back to pursue my masters, ended up just getting enthralled with the research and loving the research aspect and got my PhD here as well. So my undergraduates in architectural engineering, my master's and PhD are in civil engineering. So a buff through and through here.

Rhoten: You're a forever buff, right?

Molenaar: I am indeed, as are a number of my family members. My youngest daughter now has just joined us here as a buff as well.

Rhoten: What projects were you working on on campus?

Molenaar: So I actually got a chance to do early estimates on the ITLL building. I worked on the Dal Ward Center, which is right next to the Champions Center at the football stadium and some renovations in the engineering center itself. That was just some of our work. I also was working on local projects, Denver Performing Arts Center, Sunspot Lodge up in Winter Park. A lot of projects around Colorado high schools, worked on Buckley Air National Guard Lab. So those were the types of projects I was working on.

Rhoten: What's the Denver Performing Arts Complex. What did you do there?

Molenaar: So what I did there was a project, if you're not familiar with the Denver Performing Arts Center, it's a number of theaters that take on about two blocks. And to connect those, there's a large skylight that goes above the street. So I got a chance to do the construction management for those skylights that are up about six stories in the air and span a whole city block. It was a really, really challenging project, but it's still there. And I point it out to my kids every time, every time we go by and enjoy the climate down there and the sense of place that it's created when I get a chance to go down and enjoy the performing arts center.

Rhoten: Right. You've also worked on some international projects in the past, too. Right?

Molenaar: Yeah. You know, so as I said, when I had my undergraduate, I worked on local projects. And then after my graduate work and spending some time at Georgia Tech as a professor, I came back here to the University of Colorado. And my research area is in risk analysis, cost and schedule risk analysis for large projects. I've written some national guidance and worked on some standards for how engineers can can better control costs and schedules on large projects. So that's just afforded me the ability to work on some expert panels and help with risk analysis on projects like the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The Panama Canal actually brought our advisory board for a meeting down there when I was department chair working there, and that was good. Lately, I've been working in France, a project called ITER. It's the International Thermo Nuclear Energy Reactor. And it's a it's a fusion experiment that's being built by the US, EU, Russia, China, India, South Korea and Japan. And it's about a 20 year project. We're about 10 years away from finishing it. That's been really exciting and wonderful to contribute to that.

Rhoten: I think maybe it might be interesting to our listeners to hear about why you picked engineering as a career. Can you maybe give me a little background about what interested you about the profession and sort of how you got started in that way.

Molenaar: Sure. Well, as I said earlier, my father owned a construction company and I worked for him since I was a since I was a young child. I was always just enthralled and inspired by going into work and just having a concrete pad. And by the time we left, we would have walls erected or a roof put on. And so I always knew building things was something I wanted to do. My father wanted me to pursue education. He didn't finish college, didn't go to college. And so he really pushed me that way. And I loved architecture. So one of the things I found looking around the country was the architectural engineering program here where it focuses on buildings and building energy. And it just really inspired me. And so that's what got me into engineering to start with, was not just the influence of my family and the desire to create things and leave them for the next generation.

Rhoten: Listening to your discussion about your career flow into your education background. One of the things that I picked up on was that you're sort of a nontraditional student. You started with a community college and kind of made your way all the way up to a PHD and now all the way to interim Dean. Can you maybe put that into context a little bit for me or talk about that kind of path for you?

Molenaar: Oh, sure. I guess I just I love to learn. I do. I still do, even as interim dean. I'm taking continuing education classes today myself and enjoying learning every day. And I think that's why I didn't just stay in industry, why I did different, different things. I went to community college, one just that was more affordable and then came here and actually got my residency and stayed here. So that was an important thing. And I've always seen learning and my career is kind of intertwined and I like it. So I think that's important. I try to never forget that I tried never to get too caught up in administration or the projects that we're doing. And remember that we are in a learning environment and that's why why I'm here. And I just love that aspect of the university and my job.

Rhoten: That can be a difficult thing, right? For people who have been in administrative roles for a while or been in academia for a while?

Molenaar: Yeah it can you know we all have to balance our time welll, you know, improving ourselves and taking time to learn because it could easily be spending too many hours a day just focusing on work. So I think I'm more effective and more efficient when I try and look for that balance in that learning. And I can also tell you my my students in my class, I think, realize that they see me continuing to learn, continuing to change the class up, continuing to bring in things from outside into the classroom. I think it makes it a better classroom environment for them, but it does take work because there's a lot of administration and a lot of research and grading and all those other things to do.

Rhoten: So I've heard you talk about becoming an interim dean a couple of times in a couple different places. And one of things you constantly stress is consistency between Dean Bobby Braun's time and what's going to come forward. Is that accurate? Is that something that you're trying to convey?

Molenaar: Yeah, absolutely Josh. You know, it even goes beyond that. One of the reasons I got into leadership was Rob Davis, who was dean before Bobby, selected me with some other young faculty to get involved in our 2020 strategic plan. So that was 15 years ago and here we are. So I kind of got involved there and it's been wonderful to see that vision come through. And then when Bobby arrived, he led a group of us and the whole college got involved in developing a strategic vision. And I'm very, very committed to that. Mainly been working on the first of the four areas which has been increasing our research impact as associate dean for research. But I'm the second element of embracing our public education mission was actually one of the things that I really contributed to and felt strongly about as we put that together again as being a student here and loving the public aspect and the accessibility aspect. I'm going to continue that. The other thing we've been talking about is global engagement, and that's been a passion of mine. Working with students I'vehad a chance to go to Bolivia, working on Bridges to Prosperity. And I've worked with our Office of International Education and served on committees there throughout my career.

Rhoten: You mentioned earlier, too, about diversity being an important aspect of community building. We just recently were recognized by ASEE in that area. I know that's a priority and a thing that you wanted to highlight going forward, do you want to speak to that goal or that piece of the vision statement as it falls to you?

Molenaar: Absolutely. Again, I hate to sound like an old timer here, but one of the biggest changes I've seen in the college is just walking through the halls, teaching in my classes. The diversity in our student population. It's really wonderful. We're starting now to have the demographics of our state, which is where we should be as a state institution. So the fact that we can have engineers, male/female equity, that we can have underrepresented minorities, similar levels to what we have across the state here, I think is just testament to all the work that the faculty and the community, especially the BOLD Center. Rob Davis really started investing years ago and has taken years to change. And it's going to it's going to take continual investment. And we have to keep the long term view where we're working at hard now, where we haven't made strides we'd like to is in the diversity of our faculty. And so we're consciously putting in programs, consciously working with our peers, trying to do what we can to increase the diversity of our faculty. So it's closer to the diversity of our student population.

Rhoten: I think that's so valuable building the community aspect. Like you said.

Molenaar: And then finally and one of the things I really want to focus on in my own interim dean time here is working on enriching our professional environment. Bobby's done a great job putting together climate surveys. We as a team are trying to make sure that that is always at our forefront, making this the place you want to work, making this the place we want to be. And although we've made great strides, I want to continue along those lines and really try and help build our community here.

Rhoten: You've presided over a time of growth in terms of research dollars here at the college, and that's probably where a lot of people are going to recognize you from over the last couple of years. Can you talk about how your experience there will translate into your time as interim dean?

Molenaar: Sure, sure. You know, I think when I was a new faculty member here, it used to be thought of that you had to prove yourself as an individual researcher. And while we have individual experts and exceptional extraordinary, in fact, researchers were much better as a community working in interdisciplinary and collaborative research. And I truly believe the reason for our growth is what we've done with our interdisciplinary research teams, what we've done with encouraging new faculty and our existing faculty to work more in groups. I think if you look at actually our research growth in dollars has grown, but our our number of proposals is actually smaller in some of the years. And that's because we're working on larger collaborative proposals rather than just so many individual P.I. investigator proposals. To me, that's just an analogy for how we work better as a community in education, in serving the public and our economic impact as a university. We can only do so much individually, and I think the more we can do together, the stronger impact that we're going to have. And so what I've learned there for research has definitely been just the power that we get when we work as a community.

Rhoten: And one of the things that you've talked about with me about the power of our communities is sharing the story of it and trying to get the word out. How important is it to you to get the word not only to The New York Times, but to The Denver Post and to these local outlets too to let people in Colorado know what's going on?

Molenaar: Yeah, well, we don't want to be the best kept secret in Colorado right now. I tell you, I love Boulder. I love our green space. But it also does kind of create a little bubble for us as most people have heard of the Boulder bubble. So we have to consciously work to to communicate with our constituents, with our peers. And that does take effort. But, Bobby, the communications team have done a great job. It's really wonderful to see how much recognition we're getting across the state, across the board with our peers in the Rocky Mountain region but even more so nationally. So we'll continue along those lines. I will work with the faculty to get them appointed to national positions as we can. But I think everybody needs to take that opportunity. We have a wonderful communications team here. We're investing in things like The conversation which helps us get Op-Ed's out. And then we have a comms team that can take some of our peer reviewed work and really get it out to the masses. And we do look at our alternative metrics, how much we're being pointed to by not just through our peer review articles, which are incredibly important, but also through the popular press and other other ways to get the word out.

Rhoten: The other piece that you mentioned before that I want to touch on that relates to community is the climate surveys that Dean Bobby Braun started. How valuable of feedback is that for you? And is that going to continue?

Molenaar: It's extremely valuable. We don't know what the climate is if we don't measure it. Those climate surveys are difficult to respond to sometimes they feel a little uncomfortable. But if we don't do that, we're not having the right conversations wer'e, you know, we're investing in our professional environment through programs, through physical spaces. We need that feedback, we need to know what's going on. Sometimes it's difficult to read some of the comments, I'll be honest. But those are the ones that help us to make changes. And so if we're not asking and we're not measuring, then we can't know if we're going in the right direction. Certainly not perfect. Those climate surveys are certainly not a perfect barometer of where we're going, but they're really important for making decisions at the program level and just really encourage everyone in the college to continue to respond to them and to be open and honest. And we also have other other venues to provide that feedback in between the climate survey.

Rhoten: So would you humor me here at the end of this interview to do sort of better, know your dean or speed round here with a couple questions? Sure. OK, so I know that you're an avid hockey player and avid fisherman, an avid bicyclist. Which of those activities would you be most excited about to blow off work and do for an entire day?

Molenaar: For an entire day? Let's see. It would definitely be fishing. Fishing is a real solace for me. If you've never been out on a river in Colorado, It's an incredible places where all the wildlife comes to. Just the beauty is astounding. And it's one of the few places where I can be where my phone can't ring. And I don't have a connection with the Internet and I truly lose track of time. So that's if I have a day to recharge and get some solace. That's that's what I would do.

Rhoten: I don't want you to blow up your fishing hole or tell me where your spot is. But where's your where's your favorite place to fish? Is it in Colorado or somewhere else?

Molenaar: Oh, I you know, I enjoy the creeks. So I have a fishing rod in the back of my car and I'll sneak out on Boulder Creek and that's fun. But probably the Colorado River outside of outside of Silverthorne and outside of Vail is probably one of the best places in the country. And we live right next to it. So that's definitely when I can take the time to get up there. That's where I would go.

Rhoten: Who are your role models in engineering as a professor, as a leader?

Molenaar: It's a good question. I hadn't really thought about that I guess I would keep them local. My direct mentor, the person who really took me from undergraduate and inspired me to come back to graduate school was Jim Diekmann. And he's since now an emeritus professor and truly was a role model. I've been lucky enough and successful enough to be able to leave a lecture and make a donation to have a lecture in Jim's name, and I'll always remember what he's done.

Rhoten: So we've established pretty clearly that you're forever buff, but I want to test your memory here. Think back a little bit, what's one thing you learned in undergrad that you still apply today?

Molenaar: You know, I was really inspired to try and try and save the world at that time through creating passive solar design and energy efficient buildings. And so, you know, one of the things that I'll be working on now is are managing our space or several hundred thousand plus square feet of space here. And so one thing I'll always try and keep in mind is that how can we be sustainable with our energy and with our buildings? And so that's still my in my core thinking forward. And I learned a lot about that from our architectural engineering program and our professors here when I was an undergraduate.

Rhoten: Speaking of undergraduates or former students, what do you think that they would say about you as a professor?

Molenaar: You know, I keep in contact with a lot of them. A number of them have congratulated me. It's good to keep in contact. It's such a great community we have here and so many of my graduating class are extremely successful now extremely and there in their jobs. Some have stayed in engineering, some own construction companies and serve on our advisory board here. Others have left and gone into finance or other things, but still have that strong engineering background. We just had our fiftieth construction, engineering and management on part of our construction and during management program fiftieth anniversary. And I saw a lot of them there. And I think they would just, you know, just appreciate that I'm giving back to the to the college. That's what I've heard a lot of as I've talked to em.

Rhoten: All right. The last question I have for you is which single project have you worked on in the past that you're most proud of?

Molenaar: Wow. Wow. One project. One project that I've worked on... the fusion project out in France. I mean, it truly could change the world and bring us clean energy. We're still a long way away. But, you know, the project's about trying to harness the energy of the sun and the fusion plasma. And that's all contained within magnets that are cryogenically frozen close to absolute zero, all within a vacuum of a stainless steel tank that's six stories tall. So the imagination that the engineers and the physicists have had to even attempt this is just phenomenal. If it works, and it very well could, it could generate clean energy by 2050. We could have these all across the world. And still it's a nuclear fusion. But the half life of the waste is 10 years. We're not dealing with waste that we have to have to maintain for tens of thousands of years. We're really looking at clean energy and less than 10 years of radio of radioactive waste. So just to be part of that and again, just part of it, it's a team of tens of thousands of people working on it. Everybody from the engineers, through the scientists, through the laborers, through the supply chain and things coming from around the world. It's just a incredible sight and an incredible opportunity. I just really feel blessed to be part of that one and hopefully I'll see it finished. But that's just a testament to the imagination of engineers.

Rhoten: One of the ones you mentioned, you worked on the engineering center on this engineer center? Yeah, I've heard a lot of rumors that this place was made up randomly and that none of the doors actually go anywhere and there's no plans. Is that true?

Molenaar: No, no. There was actually a design competition for this building. It's you know, people look at it and it's not as architecturally pleasing as as they might think or they might want. But if you look at the history of architecture during that time, that kind of brutalist period, you know, me as a civil engineer, I love the board formed concrete on the outside of this building. You can see how the concrete was constructed through the physical building itself. And that was just what was going on at the time. If you look at another example of it NCAR, that actually turned out a little bit better. But, you know, they took the took the aggregate from the Flat Irons to make the concrete look the same color as the Flat Irons. And, you know, to me, just the master craftsman who worked on it. Actually, when you look at concrete, it's actually carpenters who built the concrete, just the form work and the care, the time that they put in the build. Those things are beautiful. So I see a lot of beauty in our our building. It is confusing. It's actually about eight buildings that's connected by the lobby when you figured that out it gets a little bit easier to navigate. But I've enjoyed enjoyed working on the different aspects of it. And like I say, I hope we can get the funding that we need to improve every corner of it, because I still think it's a wonderful building. And if we can do it in a sustainable manner and put an energy efficient renovation, create more light, create more air, I think we have a wonderful place here in Boulder and we'll continue to try and make it even more vibrant through our renovations.

Rhoten: Right. Either way, it's our home, right?

Molenaar: That's right. It is. It's our identity. That's our home.

Rhoten: All right. Thank you very much for talking with me today. Keith, I appreciate it. It's a pleasure. Congratulations again.

Molenaar: Thanks.

Announcer: This has been On CUE, for more information visit www.colorado.edu.

Listen to more On CUE

On this edition of On CUE, Interim Dean Keith Molenaar talks about his priorities for the future of the college and how he feels about stepping into the new role. Molenaar also outlines his priorities for the future of our college, including maintaining consistency with the goals, vision and culture that Bobby Braun put in place during his tenure here over the last three years.

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On CUE Podcast: A look into the ProReady initiative with Ben Weihrauch

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 07:00:00 +0000

On CUE Podcast: A look into the ProReady initiative with Ben Weihrauch Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/25/2019 - 00:00

Matthew Goodman , Joshua Rhoten

This episode of On CUE spotlights one of the college's brand new initiatives for student professional development: ProReady. Senior Director of Student Professional Development Ben Weihrauch walks us through how the idea came about, why it will be pivotal for students and how you can get involved

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Announcer: And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents: On CUE.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome to this edition of On CUE. My name is Josh Rhoten, today we're talking with Ben Weihrauch, the Senior Director of Student Professional Development in our college. He's the brains behind the ProReady initiative. You may have seen something about that online or noticed the signs in our engineering center lobby. Stick around to hear how and why that initiative got started and how students, faculty and staff can get involved.

Ben Weihrauch: My name is Ben Weihrauch and I serve as the Senior Director for Student Professional Development in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Ben Weihrauch - Senior Director for Student Professional Development and creator of the ProReady initiative.

Rhoten: Can you tell me what that title means? It's a new position in our college, right?

Weihrauch: Yeah, it kind of means everything and nothing at the same time. So, yes, this is a new position. Dean Braun, along with a number of the leadership folks here in the college, have essentially charged me with pulling together all of the folks around the college that do work in the career and professional development space for students. So, we have a number of folks, whether it be their specific job description or pieces of their job description, or pieces that they've just taken ownership of, that are helping students to get to where they want to go in their career. So, this could be our career services team, it could be faculty who are advising students on internships, it's a lot of different people. So, the goal is to get everybody together and working in one direction.

Rhoten: So, tell me what that means for a student. If I were a student, what does your job position mean to me?

Weihrauch: My goal is to try to help the students get connected to all of the things that they should be getting connected with to get them ready for the world of work in a more efficient way.

Rhoten: And then I guess that leads us right into the ProReady program. Can you talk about that? What is that program?

Weihrauch: Yeah. So, a little background on ProReady to set some context. So, we know that our students - based on all of our data points and all of our senior surveys - that our students do really well after graduation. Our students are like 93% or so within six months of graduation are either working or in graduate school. So those are excellent. You know, excellent first destination numbers. And when we compare ourselves to our peer and aspirational peers where we're right in line and our students, at least at the undergraduate level, are making close to 70 thousand dollars a year on average. So, we've got good outcomes and students are going to grad school or making a good salary. But we start peeling back the layers of the onion a little bit. We know that we can do a lot better to help our students become better prepared. One of the gaps that we see right away is that our students are not getting as much experience before graduation. And so, we actually have a pretty low engagement rate when it comes to internships and co-op experiences when we compare ourselves to our peers. So, our students are going out there and finding work, which is great, but we're getting some feedback that they might not be as professionally ready because they've lacked some of the entry level experiences that you would typically think of as an intern or something like that.

Rhoten: One of the things that I kind of explain to my friends and coworkers is its sort of building your skill tree up – or you're kind of leveling up. Is that kind of how you would explain it?

Weihrauch: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when you think about young adults and new professionals, college students, they may have had some professional experience, they may have had a part time job, or maybe they've had been engaged in leadership in some way, maybe through academics or athletics, maybe in high school. But, you know, when they come to see you and they come to our college, we lay out a very specific plan for them, for their academics. You know, this is what your what your course list is going to look like. You're going to take it at this time. And every class that you're in, you get a syllabus that is like your contract with the instructor and these are your learning objectives. So, it's very clear as a student like this is my five-year path or four-year path and this is what I'm going to learn. But we have not done that when it comes to career readiness. And so, the ProReady initiative is the way to sort of speak to that and to let students know that these are the kinds of skills in parallel with your technical and academic skills that you're going to need for career success. And so how is a young person supposed to know, unless we lay that out for them so they can level up and they know that certain competencies are really key or not key. So that's really at the heart of what the ProReady initiative is all about.

Rhoten: So, a lot of students have probably seen this ProReady stuff out in the lobby around the pillars. How do those link into the formula?

Weihrauch: Sure. So, the ProReady formula is very simple. We want it to be flexible and adaptive for any student, regardless if you're an undergrad or a grad, if you're heavily into research or if you're going into industry. So, the ProReady formula, the red icon, is charting your career path. So, we want students to know that they have agency and control over where they're going in their career. And we want to connect them to the network of advisors and services within the college to help them to do that, whether it be choosing a major, working on their resumé, personal branding, all those pieces. The next one, the blue one, is gaining relevant experience. So, we need students to leave here with relevant experience, and that can be up for the student to decide what relevant experience means to them. So, it could be an internship, but it could be a side hustle. It could be entrepreneurship it could be studying abroad. It could be it could be any number of things. And then we need students to grow their professional network. So, we know that for a long-term career success, you need to be patched into the people that are in your particular fields, not only for your own learning and development, but that's the way you find work in the world of work. Now, it's, you know, it's easy to go online. To look for a job, you really find work through your network and through referrals. So, starting at the department level, but also meeting recruiters and talent acquisition managers through career fairs and joining clubs and organizations to grow your professional network. We need students to do that in order to become professionally ready.

A student talks to a business representative at a career fair.

Rhoten: So, if students are looking to get involved with this, learn a little bit more about it, you have a website set up, but you're going to be around in the college, too. Talking to them, right?

Weihrauch: Absolutely. �鶹��Ժ, you we'll be seeing and hearing from me for your whole time here. So, get used to me. But the first way that we're getting the word out is through our marketing, through the pillars and the signage and things like that. We've built out our website, which serves as a hub or a clearinghouse for students to go to one place, learn about the ProReady formula, and then connect to all of the things around the college that that plug into our map to that idea. We're also training folks from around the college, our faculty and staff as ProReady partners. And so, we're doing 90-minute trainings and it introduces faculty and staff to what the ProReady initiative is and the research behind it and what our intended outcomes and most importantly, what they can do within the scope of their role to help push this initiative forward.

Rhoten: Can any faculty or staff member, anyone be involved in that?

Weihrauch: You bet. You bet. The criteria is pretty simple. Do you want to help students be successful in their career or help them become professionally ready? If the answer is yes, then then you can be part of the ProReady network.

Rhoten: Can you tell me what someone can expect if they're coming to one of those trainings? You said 90 minutes, what are they going to hear?

Weihrauch: So, we start off with some contextual information. So why are we here? Why are we doing this ProReady thing? So, we dig into the into the data and the information about our first destination rates and information and feedback from employers and give them a nice context to set the tone. Then we go into the ProReady formula and we learn about each one of the areas within the ProReady formula. And then we do some individual and then small group discussion and activities around. Now that you know what the formula is, how can you integrate that into your work and how can you contribute to the initiative? So, it's a little bit of lecture. It's a little bit of small group and then reporting out and some interactive activities. We also take them through the website and on the website specifically, we have a section on the ProReady site just for our ProReady partners. And we have an electronic or an E tool kit where they can go on and grab information and resources that they might need for their class or for their advising services. So that’s in essence what the what the ProReady partner training is all about.

Rhoten: And I want to reiterate this, too. It's not just for grad students. It's not just for one department. It's not just for any type of students. It's for everyone from start to finish.

Weihrauch: That's right. That's right. I've been hired by the dean to make sure that all of our students, regardless of where you come from, who you are, where you're going, and doesn't matter if you're in a particular department, if you're a grad student, if you're a doctoral student, any student needs to be and should be engaged in this formula. It doesn't matter who you are. You still need to, even if you're a doctoral student or an undergrad, you need to chart your own career path. You need to gain experience and you need to grow your professional network. So, yes, we're here to lift all boats for all students. So, this is not a program necessarily. You don't have to opt in. There's no passwords. This is an initiative to get you started. So, if you and you can start at any time and commonly we start with freshmen because we want to get them at least thinking about the end in mind, even though they just showed up to campus a couple of weeks ago or, you know, this semester. But a student can plug into this at any time. So, all that to do is visit the ProReady website and start to take a look at what are the expectations for you as a student, learn about the ProReady formula and then start connecting to the different services across the college. So, it's not a program. It's not for credit. You don't have to sign up. You can just go to the to the ProReady website as a resource and get started.

Rhoten: And that's Colorado.edu/engineering/ProReady, right? That's right. And they can also find you at career fairs and those kinds of things and get some awesome swag, too.

Weihrauch: Yeah. Yeah. So, we're doing a ton of tabling. We'll be out in the engineering center lobby and we'll be over in the aerospace lobby. We'll be at all the career fairs, all the networking events. We partnered very closely with career services. We'll be at will be in clubs and organization meetings. And so, if you are part of one of the 75 or 80 clubs or organizations affiliated with the college, you'll probably meet me. And I've got a ton of free stuff that I'm giving out along with the brochure. So, shirts and other swag items. So, you'll definitely see me around and it's going to be exciting to see the ProReady swag being used and worn all over the college.

Rhoten: Worn proudly, right?

Weihrauch: Yes, absolutely.

Rhoten: Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it.

Weihrauch: Thanks. Appreciate it.

Announcer: CU Engineering is committed to helping all students become ProReady. For more information on the ProReady initiative, visit www.colorado.edu/engineering/ProReady. This has been On CUE.

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On CUE Podcast: Jacob Segil and Lucy Pao - innovators in the college

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 07:00:00 +0000

On CUE Podcast: Jacob Segil and Lucy Pao - innovators in the college Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/18/2019 - 00:00

Matthew Goodman , Joshua Rhoten

On this edition of On CUE, we're looking at two research projects at the college that could be transformational at both the individual and global levels. Their work touches on personalized medicine, quantum engineering, clean energy, national security and so, so much more to put the impact of their work in context. First up, Jacob Segil - an instructor for the Engineering Plus and Mechanical Engineering degree programs whose work focuses on creating advanced prosthetics capable of "feeling." Our second guest is Lucy Pao, a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, her research focuses on control systems, multisensor fusion, and haptic and multimodal visual/haptic/audio interfaces. In this interview, Lucy speaks to us about one of her projects focused on bringing down the cost of wind energy via innovating the traditional designs of wind turbines.

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Announcer: And now from the University of Colorado, in Boulder the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents on CUE.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome to this edition of On Cue. I'm Josh Rhoten. Research funding at the college has gone up each year for the last four years, topping one hundred eight million this last cycle. That funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, NASA and others enables our students and faculty to tackle the biggest problems in the world today. Their work touches on personalized medicine, quantum engineering, clean energy, national security and so, so much more to put the impact of their work in context. Today, we're looking at two research projects that are college that could be transformational at both the individual and global levels.

Rhoten: Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night and your hand is asleep. You can still feel it sort of, but your brain and your hand aren't talking to each other properly. Fine motor skills like picking up your phone to see what time it is are nonfunctioning to the point of being nonexistent. But your brain is also having a hard time judging where your hand and the attached fingers are in space or even relationship to each other. Doctors and scientists describe the second aspect as proprioception. That's a fancy word for your sense of your body's position in space. It's how we can tell if our hand is over our head or your eyes are shut, for example. It's also how you can tell how fast your fingers and thumb are moving towards each other as they try and close around the light switch next to your bed to figure out what's ever happening in the dark. You can probably think of a few other examples, and it's an important aspect of how we function every single day. But....

Jacob Segil: "that feeling is is is what amputees experience every day. Their limbs are numb. And what we know is that it's about half of the utility of the limb is from the sensory feedback. I'm Jacob Segil from the Engineering Plus program here in CU Boulder. And my work is on prosthetic limb development."

Jacob Segil with his prosthesic hand.

Rhoten: Segil's latest project is a partnership with Case Western University and the Cleveland V.A. Medical Center, along with other researchers at CU Boulder. The team's trying to perfect prosthetic fingertip sensors for amputees that would allow patients to actually feel tactile and sensory sensations again through nerve interfaces. The tips they're developing are starting to be tested and can eventually be used and take on clinical trials. If successful, the work can significantly improve the quality of life for many people in the U.S. and around the world.

Segil: This work has been in collaboration with several groups here on campus, at CU Boulder. I'm working with Nikolaus Correll and his robotics lab and the computer science department. They develop the initial sensing technology. We then basically reformulated that for the needs of Dr Dustin Tyler at the Cleveland V.A. Medical Center so that we could partner this technology with his neural interface.

Rhoten: The goal is to have the technology in the fingertips, 'talk' to the nerves. The way Segil describes this sounds simple, but it's a deceptively complicated feat to accomplish. Electrodes are placed inside the amputee next to nerves and muscles that used to serve the hand that lost. Electrical currents, then stimulate the different nerve fibers to produce realistic sensations that feel as though they're coming from the missing hand or arm.

Segil: So what we do is we measure a few things here at the fingertip. Proximity is distance away. So these fingertips can see it's like we have eyes on our fingers and then we also measure force. That's tactile information. We send it along as a digital signal to the hand. The hand has a brain in it, a motherboard, which decodes and translate those signals and sends them to the neural interface. The neural interface stimulates, literally electrocutes, the nervous system. It does so in a perfect way so that the sensation is recreated. They feel the touch again.

Rhoten: Having that sense of touch allows for better control and more embodiment of the prosthetic device that is these fingertips closed the loop between the brain nervous system and the prosthesis, blending man and machine together fully. That helps with the healing process because they no longer feel like they have a prosthetic. They feel like they have a hand.

Rhoten: Segil said the hardest part going for will be making the prosthetics rugged enough for everyday use, the body's incredibly durable and can heal things like a broken finger itself. Plastic fingers, well, plastic can't do any of that.

Segil: The hard part about our field is that we're trying to recreate the body, which is very durable. Plastics are not, right? They won't break tod ay, but over six months of use it will. And so that's part of the hardest mechanical design challenges are to create a product that can withstand everyday use. People go outside in the cold. People go play on the beach. You're designing for all those circumstances to make sure that the technology works in all of them and that it can withstand that abuse.

Rhoten: Segil gets excited talking about the technical aspects of the project, but he said the human impact is just as important to him.

Segil: I enjoy the engineering challenges was what was my first interest. But then throughout my career I've seen that feedback as well. This summer I saw an amputee feel the hand that he lost. It's amazing. I understand all the technological challenges, but then you see the social impact and it means a lot.

Rhoten: Our next story takes us to the National Wind Technology Center just outside of Boulder. Here the National Renewable Energy Laboratory tests water, power and grid integration. It's a 305 acre plot of land that's visible from Highway 128 south of the university and city. It's also been used for the past 40 years to design research and validate wind power control systems. From the road, you can see several white turbines scattered across an open field, spinning from wind off the canyon. But one is utterly unique to the rest. For one thing, it has two blades instead of three. It also looks like it’s up backwards because it's pointing in the opposite direction while the others. It's all part of a new federal research project here at CU Boulder.

Lucy Pao: My name is Lucy Pao and I'm a professor at an electrical computer and energy engineering here at CU Boulder.

Rhoten: Pao is leading the work here, which is a partnership with her former P.H.D student Kathryn Johnson, who's now an associate professor at Colorado School of Mines and colleagues from several other universities and agencies. The team is working to solve several issues that have limited the potential of turbines to this point, including the need for ever larger stiff blades to increase power output.

Pao: We have an Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy open project that's a relatively large interdisciplinary team project on designing and controlling extreme scale wind turbines and by extreme scale we're talking 50, five zero megawatt wind turbines and most commercial wind turbines now are about five megawatts to eight megawatts. And so we're really looking very far down the line and looking at what could be possible at the 50 five, zero megawatt level.

Rhoten: To give you some perspective, current turbines, the ones you're probably picturing and see from the side of the road. Those are about the size of the Statue of Liberty. The ones this research could lead to would be much, much larger about the size of the Eiffel Tower, in fact, with blades about 200 meters or 650 feet long. To get that big, however, there are a lot of things that need to be tested.

Pao: Working with aerodynamicists is structural dynamicists and then our part is in the control systems, we've been working together to design a very, very large scale rotor. It's a two bladed downwind rotor and we've designed an extreme scale turbine and then we gravo aero elastically scaled down to 20 meter plates so that they could be manufactured and then we can test them in a scaled version so that it's less expensive to test.

Rhoten: Pao has been working with the wind energy industry for 15 years now.

Lucy Pao

Pao: When I first got into this area, I was very surprised that most wind turbine control systems, even now, ldo not use measurements of the wind in the control system. And so one of the things first things that we worked on was how do we incorporate measurements of the wind? And this was actually a collaborative effort with atmospheric scientists in remote sensing scientists. How can you measure wind speeds that are coming into the wind turbine, make use of that in developing a controller? So then the controller is not just reacting on feedback information, but also being able to have preview in information in improving the performance.

Rhoten: Understanding how the wind in the turbine interact is an important part of building these larger turbines. The teams testing turbine at NREL is only about twelve stories tall, smaller than those in circulation now and a tiny version of the massive ones they hope to one day produce, but ready for testing for a variety of factors. It's two blades are designed to be morphing, for example, meaning they're much lighter and more flexible than traditional versions. An aspect is inspired by nature and powers of the idea that the blades can bend like palm trees in the wind, making them ideal for offshore use where turbines would have to withstand hurricane force winds. The downwind configuration plays into this as well. The idea being that strong winds would push the larger and more flexible blades away from the base of the structure instead of into it, causing damage or reducing operations if not destroying it altogether. You can actually see videos of this happening online in Europe. It's spectacular and hypnotizing at the same time. Terrifying too even. The two blade design would also mean less material needed for production. Lowering the upfront costs. Pao said the team is also exploring how to make the blades in segments rather than one long piece. That would reduce the cost of shipping and installation as well. With the Department of Energy calling for 20 percent penetration of wind energy into the national grid by 2030, the team is excited for the project's potential. From Pao's description, it's easy to picture a farm with these massive wind turbines maybe off the Eastern Seaboard, somewhere inspired by natural designed to survive harsh conditions.

Pao: Ultimately, if successful, this could really drive down the cost of wind energy.

Announcer: This has been On CUE, for more informtion visit www.colorado.edu/engineering

Listen to more On CUE

On this edition of On CUE, we're looking at two research projects at the college that could be transformational at both the individual and global levels. Jacob Segil breaks down his inventive prosthetics capable of "feeling" and Lucy Pao gives us an inside look at how she and her team aim to drastically reduce the cost of wind energy.

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On CUE Podcast: Veteran's Day Special with Lieutenant Colonel Brodie Hoyer

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 07:00:00 +0000

On CUE Podcast: Veteran's Day Special with Lieutenant Colonel Brodie Hoyer Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/11/2019 - 00:00

Matthew Goodman

In this Veteran's Day special, Lieutenant Colonel Brodie Hoyer steps out of the lab and into the On CUE recording booth. We cover everything from military activity on campus, his experiences both studying and teaching engineering at West Point and the research he is currently conducting in the Advanced Medical Technologies Laboratory under the guidance of doctor Mark Rentschler.

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Announcer: And now, from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents On CUE.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome to this edition of On Cue, I'm Josh Rhoten. Today we're talking to Lieutenant Colonel Brody Hoyer, who's studying at CU Boulder to get his PhD. Hoyer's path to our college is an interesting one. It starts at West Point, where he studied mechanical engineering, graduating in 2003. Since then, he's deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait and earned his master's from Stanford in 2013. All which gives him a unique perspective on engineering, leadership and research that I think you'll find interesting.

Rhoten: Cool so thank you. Why don't you just go ahead and start by telling me about your career in military service? A little background about yourself.

Brodie Hoyer: Okay, great. Yeah, sure. So I'm a Colorado native. Grew up in a little town called Akron, which is out northeast towards Nebraska and graduated high school there in 99 and went to the military academy at West Point, graduated from there in 2003. I was commissioned as a lieutenant of engineers. So for most my career, I've been doing combat engineering, which is a little bit different from what a normal conception of engineering is. Mostly doing demolitions, counter demolitions in the contemporary environment. And then a lot of route clearances looking for IED's - improvised explosive devices. But we've also had the opportunity to do some construction, right. So every engineer unit in the army has some some degree of construction capability. So in 2006, I was in Afghanistan. And in addition to looking for IED's, we were also helping build the ring road there from bottom to Bagram to Kabul and Kandahar, which was which was an interesting experience. But yeah, I've had the opportunity to deploy to Afghanistan once, Iraq twice and in the states I've served in North Carolina, New York, Texas and Missouri. So I got an opportunity to see kind of the whole country.

Rhoten: Right. And West Point has a long tradition of engineering, a long history of that, too. Right? Was that something you were aware of when you went there?

Hoyer: Correct Yeah. So it started out as it as an academy for artillerists and engineers because those were the most technical branches at that time. And yeah, absolutely. Like when you start reading about the history of West Point, it's that's it's right there. It started out with that. You know, there's always a tie in as an engineer you wear a castle on your collar about your branch insignia. And that castle is based on Pershing Barracks, which was there at West Point. So it's a pretty, pretty stark visual reminder of that heritage.

Rhoten: Well, so you went to Stanford after that, right?

Hoyer: Yes. Yes. So from 2011 to 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Stanford and pursue my master's degree with the intent of going back to West Point to teach, which is an amazing experience.

Rhoten: I was curious if you could tell me what the difference is. Well, there's obviously some really obvious stuff on the face of it, but getting education at Stanford and West Point and now at CU Boulder, it's very different places. Is there something that jumps out to you about engineering at those three institutions or something that's maybe disimilar in those three institutions?

Hoyer: Well, I'd say like as far as similarities. And this is something that I've seen as a commonality across all of places. But, you know, engineering students, engineering faculty at West Point at Stanford here at CU, the kind of common denominator I've seen across the board is just kind of an interest, a passion, an interest and just a love for engineering. And that has been a commonality throughout. And it's always a an encouraging thing. And it's motivating, I guess, to see that passion no matter where you go. You know, we're all we're all kind of passionate nerds, I guess. Right. So that's there's definitely a commonality. I mean, as far as differences, you know, just differences in there's West Point is its own animal because you're you're studying to be an engineer. But at the end of it, you know that you're going to go out with the intent of you're going to go out and lead soldiers to lead in combat or training or whatever it is, you know, whereas, you know, the students I was with at Stanford and the students i'm with here, you know, they're gonna go in academia, they're going to go into business and they're going to continue to pursue that engineering for for whatever reasons that they are choosing to. So, you know, it certainly leads to a difference in mentorship, something that I noticed. So being faculty at West Point, yes, I want these students to be competent, professional grade engineers. But at the end of the day, our common interests where we're looking at is how do I make this young man or woman, a great platoon leader, a great leader of soldiers, you know, a leader of character. So it's it's it's mentorship is the same, but it's different ideas.

Rhoten: It's overlapping goals, but different perspectives. Right?

Hoyer: Right. You want to – we're trying to create young professionals, but it's it's just a question of what profession that is.

Rhoten: Right. Can you tell me how you got to CU Boulder? What brought you here?

Hoyer: Well yeah, so again, being Colorado native I always knew about CU, but I come here for summer camps and the summer experiences as a kid. My dad's a CU law alum from mid-70s. And I always knew that I wanted to come if I had the opportunity. I wanted to come back to Colorado be close to family. Colorado, I have a bias opinion, but it is the greatest state. And so I started looking at programs in the area. School of Mines, CU, programs like that. And just the research interests, the faculty, being able to speak to some of the faculty here at CU before we came in. Just great. And it's a beautiful area. It's a great place to be and live and bring family. And it's all been pretty wonderful.

Rhoten: Can you tell me how – maybe introduce your research question and talk about how your career to this point has sort of influenced or dictated it?

Hoyer: Yeah, definitely. So our group, my lab group is studying polymer surfaces, micropillared surfaces with intent of looking at how those surfaces interact with soft tissue, specifically tissue within the human body. We want to see what the adhesive interactive properties are for those surfaces and see if we can't potentially tune those for different applications, whether that be endoscopy or stints or any number of subjects. It's entirely tangent to anything I've done in the military or anything I've done career wise. It was really a question of I had the opportunity to speak with doctor Rentschler, who's my advisor prior to coming into it. At that time, he was the engineering grad chair, the mech engineering grad chair. We had an opportunity to talk, and the conversation went very well. And it is very apparent right away that I would enjoy working for him. And he had the feeling that I would be a good fit in the lab. And so it is really a question of finding a niche in that research area where I could start working. It was almost more of a personality thing. It was just we I think there was a sense that we could work well together.

Rhoten: And you said you didn't have an experience in this area beforehand?

Hoyer: Yeah this is all new. Yeah. So definitely had that opportunity to study solid mechanics and undergraduate got the basis in it. But I had never gone as deep on that particular topic area as I have before starting this research. So it's been very eye opening and it's been a really good experience.

Rhoten: I know you're only just starting this program and starting to work through some of this stuff, but can you maybe for a layperson, what are some applications or where can we see this work going?

Hoyer: Yeah, absolutely. So our group specifically our primary focus is we're looking at improving the endoscopy procedures. So while one of our research focuses is endoscopy robots, so using using a small robotic endoscope that is more maneuverable and so essentially makes it the procedure not necessarily less painful, but quicker and more effective so that, you know, the chances for having to stop the procedure or not getting full imaging are reduced. And so, you know, a lot of that has to do with how effectively can the robot move within that system. And so a lot of that comes down to, again, those adhesive attractive properties. So we're trying to increase locomotion without making making the vehicles so tractive that it's causing tissue damage. So that's been our primary focus. Another focus is, again, taking those that micro texture and adding it to endoscopy balloons, which is a well-established procedure. Just trying to make it better and more successful.

Rhoten: I'm not going to say you're a nontraditional, but you're definitely not the like, 'I just finished my master's and I'm coming in straight for my PhD all in a row.' What is it like being in doctor Rentschler's group and working with different people, different age groups and kind of coming back to school?

Hoyer: It's great. Yeah, it is definitely a different perspective. You know, being the oldest person in the lab, being the only person in the lab with kids other than the advisors, of course, it definitely adds some stressors outside and there are competing demands that other grad students don't typically have. But again, it's I think what's what's unifying about being in the lab is everyone is studying everyone's researching. We're all moving towards a common goal and we're all trying to help each other towards that goal world, we're all studying our own work or in our own corners of the sandbox to some extent, but we're all trying to get to the same place. And, you know, everyone develops their own expertise and that expertise can help can help somebody else in the lab. We're all willing to help and row together.

Rhoten: You talked about how this is not a specific question that you've thought about before, but is there a way that your military career is prepared you to look at this kind of question, is there a thought process that comes with that?

Hoyer: I don't know if it's necessarily a thought process. I think definitely there is a notion of just being able to, just being able to focus and bear down on a topic.Typically one of the things that the army is very good with developing officers is making generalists. You know, it's kind of an inch deep and a mile wide. So you have enough general knowledge going in, but then have the ability to figure out where you need to focus and and bear down on that. So not necessarily a specific thought process, but just kind of a way of thinking, I guess.

Rhoten: It's interesting, I guess. Do you have different thought processes than other people in your group, too? Or is that kind of manifest itself in that way? Have you noticed that at all?

Hoyer: I can't think of anything specific, I wouldn't say that I feel like I think about problems differently. Maybe just a question is having like different life experiences.

Rhoten: Right. One of the things when I talk to other faculty, is about like engineering is a common language. And it's like people from other countries, people from other backgrounds can all do the same sort of things and have math and science as a common language. I guess that's what I'm getting at.

Hoyer: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The physics is the same no matter what speed, no matter what language you speak. So, yeah, definitely.

Rhoten: Can you talk about military activity on the campus and the ROTC and what life is like as a military active duty or going to be an active duty?

Hoyer: So I've been I've been really, really impressed. I had no preconceptions about how active any veterans organizations or ROTC programs or anything be at CU. But I've been really, really impressed with the level of participation, the level of visibility, whether it be Student Veterans Association, Society American Military Engineers. The ROTC program here is phenomenally professional and very active. So it's been really, really impressive to see that, you know, I can't speak for what it's like to be an ROTC student at, you know, at a normal institution outside of an academy. But, you know, I assume that there are those same pressures. It's a very daunting thing to know that, you know, in the next two to three years or one if your a senior, that you're going to be standing in front of soldiers and there's going to be an expectation from the soldiers that you're going to stand up and lead, being at some point, probably the least experienced person in the platoon. You know, it's a really interesting dynamic being that junior platoon leader who may be working with a noncommissioned officer, platoon sergeant, who may have 10 or 15 years of service. And it's an interesting dynamic in that yes, you are the platoon leader and all the responsibility falls on you. But, that platoon sergeant, just by dint of their experience, is going to be taking you under their wing, teaching you the ropes. But again, it's a very daunting proposition to know that that within the next year or two you'll be standing in front of soldiers and be responsible for 40 to 50 lives.

Rhoten: When I talked to people involved with the military here on campus or visiting campus, they talk about the importance of engineering in the future of the military for the US. Can you maybe give me some context about why it's important to have a strong STEM background for military going forward here?

Hoyer: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if you look at the way we fight from systems that you know are complicated, whether it's an Abrams tank or a helicopter, submarine, you know, Joint Strike Fighter ... anything like that, those are complicated. And it's almost intuitive that it would be helpful to have a STEM background in that. But, you know, even the grunts on the ground, even your average infantry soldier is carrying G.P.S. systems, highly advanced radios, highly advanced optics on their weapons. So not that you have to understand how all of those things work. But if you have a STEM background and understand the fundamentals of how those things work or what could possibly go wrong with them, it is a critical competency for junior leaders because there is there is no system, there is no branch of the military right now that is not just awash in technology.

Rhoten: What's it gonna be like teaching at West Point for you, do you think is going to be exciting to go back there?

Hoyer: I'm very much looking forward to it. So I was able to teach there from 2013 to 2016 and it is just a really rewarding experience. So I think it's the best of both worlds for me because I get to teach engineering which is something I'm really, really passionate about. I just I really enjoy teaching engineering. And then on the flip side of that, being able to have in my in my classroom, junior cadets, future platoon leaders. So it's the mix of teaching and mentoring, engineering and the army leading soldiers, which are two things I'm really passionate about it and I'd like to speak with cadets who are also passionate about it.

Rhoten: So you're in Marc Rentschler's lab. It's an interesting and exciting place. What's it been like studying under him?

Hoyer: So Marc is great. One of the constraints on this program is I have to be done in three years. And that was obviously one of the one of the key points in the conversation when Mark and I were first talking about joining his lab. And that's been great. His understanding of that constraint and his ability to help me to scope a project that is interesting and moves science forward even a little bit, but is also achievable, has been really, really critical to setting my mind at ease, but also helped shepherd me through the progress. And Mark is a he's a very dynamic person and has a lot of great ideas. And it's just his again, getting back to that enthusiasm and that passion. It's very clear he has a huge passion for innovation and a huge passion for engineering that's really infectious whenever you talk to him. He's just kind of exudes confidence and passion. And it's really it's helpful for me as a student in his lab.

Rhoten: I know it's not completely up to you, but what does the future hold for you after you leave CU Boulder?

Hoyer: Yeah, definitely. So after CU Boulder, I'll return to West Point as a senior faculty. And that's a guaranteed three year tour. But every department has a certain number of permanent faculty and that is certainly the hope. So I'll definitely compete for one of those positions. And if I attain one of those, then it'll just be a question of deciding, you know, whether it be personal, family or needs of the army at some point look to retirement.

Rhoten: All right. Thanks for talking you very much. I appreciate the time.

Hoyer: Hey, Josh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Announcer: This has been On CUE for more information, visit Colorado.edu/engineering.

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PhD student Jordan Dixon interviewed for Brainwaves podcast

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 21:57:18 +0000

PhD student Jordan Dixon interviewed for Brainwaves podcast Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/28/2019 - 15:57

Dixon is working on augmented reality lenses for NASA’s astronauts that could one day help people who are blind.

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Podcast: AES Professor Frew on drone based storm research, airborne scientists and the movie "Twister"

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 14:00:00 +0000

Podcast: AES Professor Frew on drone based storm research, airborne scientists and the movie "Twister" Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/01/2019 - 08:00

Josh Rhoten

In this episode, OnCue talks to Smead Aerospace Professor Eric Frew about CU Boulder's role in project TORUS. Project TORUS–or Targeted Observation by Radars and UAS of Supercells–is a two-year partnership between CU Boulder, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (which is leading the work), Texas Tech University, the University of Oklahoma and the National Severe Storms Laboratory. The goal is to collect data to improve the conceptual model of supercell thunderstorms, the parent storms of the most destructive tornadoes, to help with future forecasting and warning.

Read more: CU Boulder deploys drones to get answers about tornado formation

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Announcer: And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents OnCUE.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome to this edition of OnCUE, my name is Josh Rhoten and I'm a communications specialist with the college. Spring and summer in the Rockies and Great Plains often bring thunderstorms that can be as beautiful as they are violent. The largest and least common of these storms are known as supercells. These are the storms that can produce baseball sized hail heavy rain and tornadoes and get plenty of coverage on the nightly news and internet video sites. While these stosrms occupy a large part of our national consciousness thanks to pop culture and folklore, experts still don't know why some super cells produce tornadoes and others don't. Engineers, scientists and meteorologists are working together to answer that question to reduce false alarms and provide more warning time to those in the path of destruction. The latest project in that effort is TORUS. It's one of the largest and most ambitious drone based investigations of meteorological phenomena ever. And it features researchers from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, Texas Tech University, the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the University of Colorado Boulder through the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Researchers here join the project from May through June this year, deploying on many storms that produce tornadoes and gathering valuable data from the area via their custom Raven drones. For this edition of OnCUE I sat down with aerospace Professor Eric Frew after he and the team returned to Boulder. We talked about misconceptions from the movie "Twister," how the drones were built, and how this research could potentially save lives in the future.

Rhoten: Great. So tell me a little bit about the TORUS project. What does the acronym stand for and what's your goals with it?

Eric Frew: So TORUS stands for Targeted Observations by Radars and UAS of super cells. It's a large project sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It includes University of Nebraska Lincoln, Texas Tech University, University of Colorado Boulder, University Oklahoma and the National Severe Storms lab. All those universities and the government labs are bringing sensors to study supercell thunderstorms which are the storms that are known to create tornadoes. Our particular role in the project is to fly multiple unmanned aircraft, multiple drones in and around these storms.

Rhoten: Can you tell me why it's important to study these supercell thunderstorms. What's the goal or long-term range of plans for you guys?

Frew: So the long-term goal or the long-term motivation of the project is to improve the lead time in tornado warnings. So currently tornado warnings are issued when specific things are seen in the radar. When the storm is actually about to produce a tornado and the general public gets about 15 minutes of lead time if a tornado is going to form during that warning. The severe storms community believes that with better understanding of the storms we can push that to an hour so you can do a lot more to get safe if you have an extra 45 minutes of time. Before we can do that we need to understand what leads to tornado formation better and so the goal of the project is still that fundamental scientific understanding of tornado formation so that we can do better forecasting.

Rhoten: And using drones is not new for CU Boulder, you guys have been using this kind of technology before to study the same sorts of questions right?

Frew: So at CU Boulder we've been developing drones and using them for atmospheric science and related Earth Science Applications for probably two decades now. But we are doing some novel things in this project in particular we're flying multiple aircraft at the same time in new regions of the storm so without getting into a lot of meteorology supercell thunderstorms which are the storms that produce most tornadoes have some structure and the meteorologists talk about things like the left flank at the right flank of the storms. In the past we've flown in the right flank. It's the relatively calmer part of the storm if there's such a thing whereas this time we're flying in the left flank which is more into the heart of the storm and so that's a much more challenging environment than we've done in the past. The other novelty is we're flying up to three aircraft at the same time. In years past we flew one aircraft only so we were really focused on that one team whereas now we are coordinating multiple aircraft in different parts of the storm to really gain a much broader perspective on what's happening.

Rhoten: Can you put into context why you would want to use a fixed wing drone for this? What's the advantages of that?

Frew: So there's two parts to your question, the first is why a drone in the first place? So actually in something like the 1970's the severe storms community and something that was called Vortex One, I believe, flew piloted aircraft in and around these storms and they got really- they hit some very turbulent air and it was very dangerous and the community said that is not something that's safe. We don't want to do that in the future and so unmanned aircraft or drones are really the only type of aircraft that you want to put into this environment. There are certain variables that you cannot measure without touching the storm, radar and remote sensing gives a lot of information but you don't know the temperature and the humidity in the air unless you're there. So that's why we want to fly an aircraft in the environment, balloons don't go where you want them to. So an unmanned aircraft is the answer. Now we fly what's called a fixed wing unmanned aircraft it looks like a conventional aircraft just smaller because it has the endurance and the flight characteristics to really handle that type of conditions that were flying in. Our aircraft can fly for about three hours in ideal conditions in the storms, we fly for about 90 minutes. A multi-rotor drone would just be a more conventional picture maybe you can fly for 30 minutes in these types of conditions.

Rhoten: The CU team is made up of faculty, staff, students. Can you tell me what the composition is like?

Frew: Yeah so. So our team has several faculty like myself three staff engineers from the CU Grand Challenge IRISS initiative and then the rest are students either undergraduate students or graduate students. Several of our pilots who are actually in command of our aircraft are in fact students that have been trained here at CU to do this work. And a lot of the developments, a lot of the support, also comes from the students.

IRISS at CU Boulder: The Integrated Remote and In Situ Sensing initiative

CU Boulder’s Integrated Remote & In Situ Sensing Program (IRISS) is one of the three major programs of the CU Grand Challenge. TORUS puts on full display the IRISS Grand Challenge goal to use mobility, enabled by aerospace vehicles, to be at the right place at the right time to make the right measurements.

Rhoten: Is it good hands-on experience for them?

Frew: Oh it's fantastic hands on experience and one of the students said to me, 'this is the most fun I've ever had at CU.

Rhoten: When I first heard about the project I immediately thought of the movie Twister. But there's probably a lot of misconceptions or those kinds of ideas floating around can you talk about what maybe the biggest misconception is?

Frew: So we get that comparison a lot. And the biggest misconception is that we are not trying to fly into the tornado itself. The severe storm community has a pretty good understanding of what's going on in the tornado. Our goal is to understand what leads to the formation of the tornado. We're trying to study the storm in a much broader way. In fact we should not be closer than two miles to where a tornado would form. It's about the air that leads into the storm. What's happening to that and what becomes the tornado that we're studying.

Rhoten: What's a normal day look like for you when you actually get going?

Frew: The severe storm season in the U.S. and the Great Plains typically runs from at the beginning of May to mid-June. So we're on call during that entire time. If there aren't storms in the near future sometimes we'll stay at home and wait till weather conditions develop. So I'll really describe what happens while we're in the field itself and we'll chase weather you know day to day as it goes. A typical day will begin around 10 a.m. we'll have a weather briefing with the entire TORUS team that's obviously led by the meteorologists, the CU Boulder team we're the the flight support team so we don't really have a lot to contribute to those discussions although the FAA limitations of where we can operate certainly play into those decisions. So that's about an hour, we discuss the weather conditions for the day we discuss where we think we need to be. And we also look ahead to the next day, so in the meteorology world today is called day one, tomorrow is called day two. So at the end of the day today no matter what we do we need to start positioning ourselves for what we're going to do tomorrow as well. Once the briefing is over we typically have anywhere from two to six hours of driving to get in position. We're very nimble as an armada, you go where the weather takes you. You don't just sit there and wait for it. So we'll leave eleven, twelve o'clock. We'll drive till 4, 5, 6, – 7 o'clock, sometimes these types of storms that we're interested in studying sometimes will not form until 7 p.m.

Rhoten: Right, it's a lot of hurry up and wait. Right?

Frew: We call it hurry up and wait because you really want to position yourselves and then you see what the weather's doing and then you wait until you have a good sense and then you rush to the next stop. Yeah.

Rhoten: Is there times where it's wait five minutes is there time where it's wait five hours you don't know?

Frew: Usually I'd say it's wait an hour if you're waiting five minutes that's usually just to swap a piece of equipment or for the team to catch up.

Rhoten: What is it like when you're out there trying to deploy a drone and the tornadoes forming and what's that excitement like?

Frew: So as we prepared for this mission we had a discussion with our meteorologists and they kind of laid out for us the main risk factors to be involved in in fact the tornado is not even in the top three. So when we're thinking about being out there the thing we worry about the most are other drivers. So in these storms you get a lot of tornado chasers and so they call it chaser convergence and that's the number one thing we look out for. The next two hazards are lightning and then hail and then the last one is the tornado. So when we're getting ready to deploy the first thing we're worrying about is the other cars and the other drivers and making sure we find a safe spot kind of off the road. Then it's mostly the lightning that you kind of worry about. And I'd say only once when we were deploying did I feel like there was lightning even nearby. I mean it's not a major hazard but it's the thing that I'm watching out for as we're getting set up. Otherwise we're with professional meteorologists they know these storms we're always on the outside on the edges we're not in heavy precipitation so there's some adrenaline because we're about to go but we're always safe and so and we've been doing this for a long time that we're professional about it. And so we know what our roles are and we just move forward and we get in the air and we continue with the mission.

Rhoten: Tell me about chaser convergence and having so many people there. Has that ever prevented you guys from deploying?

Frew: Chaser convergence I think it's the term that the meteorologist used to indicate that the roads can become clogged with storm chasers. We've seen this happen a couple of times this past year in our deployment it just traffic backs up. It's also dangerous because most of the people in that traffic are trying to see the storms take pictures they quickly pull off to the side of the road. So it is something that slows us down. We we were not prohibited from our operations because of that phenomenon. It's just something that slowed down our ability to operate and something we had to pay extra attention to.

Rhoten:So this project will continue for another year and I'm sure the work will continue in different ways. What are the questions that you're still looking at as you look back up this years deployment?

Frew: So you know our teams and it's deploying the drones are big questions are how efficient were we with our operations? What can we do to improve how things worked? Can we be quicker? Can we be more reliable? Can we have better quality data? So those are all the things that we'll go back and refine between now and next season. In terms of you know scientific questions, what have we answered or are we trying to answer. That's difficult to say. We want to get a lot of data before we really look at it and try to make some conclusion. So it's really preliminary to say we've learned something new or we've not learned something new or even that there's a new hypothesis that's come out of this because good science requires good amounts of data and we don't we schedule two years because that's what we think it takes to have a really strong dataset.

Rhoten: Well the data set is an interesting aspect too because you were telling me that you don't necessarily want to get all tornadoes all the time.

Frew: Yeah. So the scientific question is what conditions in these super cell thunderstorms lead to tornadoes? And so maybe backing up a step, I'm making up the numbers but the round averages are about the same. Something like ninety five-ish percent of all tornadoes come from a supercell thunderstorm – a very specific type of storm – but only single digit percentages of super cells create tornadoes. So there's still a lot that's not known about the formation process. And so in order to understand what about this storm is leading to a tornado you need to have a lot of data where that does happen and a lot of data where that doesn't happen so you can see what's different. So that's why ideally you know half of our data will be storms that produce tornadoes. Half of our data will be storms that don't. So we can kind of compare and contrast between those two sets of data.

Rhoten: When you're working on a project this large and collaborating with other universities is there any other trickiness collaboration problems that you encounter?

Frew: So our team here to CU Boulder has been working with some of these severe storm scientists for two decades. So we've really developed a relationship and we understand each other's equipment and we understand how the deployments work. Something that's really neat about this large of a project is I think of it as a federation or like each team sort of knows the big picture knows how they operate. There's a leader on a day to day basis who identifies which storm we're going to operate on. And then we all know how to do our things separately. With this type of a storm we've introduced something called the pivot instrument which is that one instrument that everyone's going to use to coordinate their activities. Because the unmanned aircraft because the drones are the novelty and the new science is going to come from them. That left flank mission that I mentioned earlier is the pivot instrument. So the chief meteorologist and the lead investigator for this entire project is the one that's directing that aircraft. And he's letting the entire team know the plan the schedule the timing of when that aircraft is going to be in the air and every other sensor is positioning in itself in its own way, knowing when that aircraft is going to fly. And so that's sort of we think of this as a loose coordination. You know we're not all on the phone or on the radio on the minute to minute basis but everybody knows that that aircraft is planning to take off in 30 minutes so you need to be in position in 15. So you're capturing the volume of air where it will be operating. And so that's how we stay coordinated and again these groups have been working together for decades. So we understand each other's limitations how we have to operate. And so it's been a very easy collaboration with this team.

Rhoten: Can you broadly to see what the other tools that are being used are in the team? I know there's an airplane.

Frew: Yeah. So I've mentioned before various different institutions that are participating and they sort of bring their own different pieces of equipment. I'll start with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, they are the lead university Adam Houston from UNL is the lead meteorologist for this project. They also have what are called mobile mezzenet vehicles. These are ground vehicles Ford Explorers with weather measuring equipment sort of on a pole coming up from their roofs so they get what we call surface observations. They're figuring out what's the pressure, temperature, humidity, wind on the ground the exact same things the drones are measuring. And so then we have the CU Boulder team. We're flying drones in the storm. We coordinate very closely with the UNL team in fact pretty much. There is one of the UNL's mezzenets underneath the drone where it's flying. So we have two measurements in the environment to kind of compare to the surface and in the sky. Texas Tech has whats called a Ka band radar. In fact they have two radar so they do what's called dual Doppler measurements so with two radar you can actually resolve three dimensional structure of the winds that are in the storm. You also get what's called reflectivity which tells you something about the strength of the precipitation if there's rain if there's hail in the environment. We then have colleagues at the University of Oklahoma and the National Severe Storms Lab they have additional mobile mezzenets. They released balloons soundings sort of well back from the storm to to understand the kind of precursor conditions to these storms. That's also very helpful for understanding and then the last piece of equipment is something that the National Severe Storms Lab brings. This is the P3 Orion Hurricane Hunter aircraft. So this is a piloted aircraft it's the hurricane hunters the same aircraft that go into hurricanes to study them. They're flying on these storms with us. They have radar so they aren't flying in the heart of the storm like the drone is but they're able to get out and get this picture from above the storm of what's going on. All that data together is needed to understand what's happening not just any one of those.

Rhoten: Can you see a world where there's more equipment being involved for CU particularly so, more drones or is there another aspect that you would like to include in this in 15 years when something else happens?

Frew: That's a great question and maybe there's two parts to it. You know I'm an aerospace engineer so for me it's the drones. My vision is that while these drones are flying they're actually talking to the weather models and they're using the model to make decisions in real time on where to go to best understand this storm. Imagine the drone has sort of in its mind a forecast has two forecasts and it knows that if I get cold here the forecast that says tornado is more likely if I get hot here the one that says no tornado is most likely. So that's my vision for where this idea can take us.

Rhoten: That'd be really cool.

Frew: I think it'll be very exciting to see this airborne scientist concept, right now that the TORUS project is a unique deployment all these assets don't exist in every town in the Great Plains. So the other aspect of your question is we could see in the future the drone technology advancing to the point where small towns individuals have drones that they could release into these environments or into the precursor environments to help feed into the weather system much like you know citizen science works now with weather stations on your your roof or your house or whatnot. So I think there could be a time in the future where you know local meteorologists, local first responders, local public safety officers also have related technologies that provide just a little bit of additional insight to their local towns to help provide some additional safety.

Rhoten: Great. Well thank you very much for talking to me it's an interesting project for sure.

Frew: My pleasure.

Announcer: This has been OnCUE for more information visit Colorado.edu/engineering.

OnCue talked to Professor Eric Frew about how drones are contributing to cutting edge storm research, long travel days with the project, and expectation versus reality in the '90s classic tornado movie "Twister."

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'Science Friday' highlights Antarctic hydrology work by two CU Boulder engineers

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 17:10:40 +0000

'Science Friday' highlights Antarctic hydrology work by two CU Boulder engineers Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/26/2019 - 11:10

Michael Gooseff and Diane McKnight of civil, environmental and architectural engineering have spent years documenting the dramatic changes in the continent's McMurdo Dry Valleys.

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"We're essentially creating a new discipline in my lab." - Wil Srubar - Ep. 14

Anonymous — Mon, 27 May 2019 06:00:00 +0000

"We're essentially creating a new discipline in my lab." - Wil Srubar - Ep. 14 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/27/2019 - 00:00

Josh Rhoten

Wil Srubar is an assistant professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering here at C.U. Guided by the tenets of industrial ecology, his team's collective vision is to engineer next-generation infrastructure materials by blurring the boundaries between the built environment and the natural world. Materials of current interest include biodegradable polymers, phase-change materials, recycled aggregate concrete, and natural-fiber composites for green building applications.

Read more: "Frankenstein" materials could revolutionize building construction

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Transcript

Announcer: And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the College of Engineering and Applied Science presents OnCue. Here's your host.

Josh Rhoten: Welcome to this edition of OnCue, I’m Josh Rhoten a communications specialist with the college. I recently sat down with Will Srubar, an assistant professor in civil, environmental and architectural engineering, to talk about his research into living building materials. His latest award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA could fundamentally change the way buildings are made and takes its name from a classic horror novel.

Rhoten: So go ahead and tell me about your project that you're working on with DARPA right now.

Will Srubar: The projects funded by DARPA and it's through their biological technologies office and it's through a new program the engineered living materials program, or ELM program, that really tries to push the boundaries of what materials are able to do. Have them no longer be static but rather serve some sort of biological function. So our project is a tall order, we proposed to engineer a hybrid living material which is composed of an inert structural scaffold so you can think of that is as sand. Like we normally use sand in cement and mortar something that's inorganic and that's non-living that kind of provides a little bit of a framework for a biological component to grow on and to thrive. And so we use that inorganic scaffold to support the growth and viability of a living component. And what we end up with is a material that not only has some structural load bearing function but also has a biological function as well.

Rhoten: So go ahead and tell me where the title of this project comes from. There's an interesting link to it, right?

Srubar: Yes. Yeah there is. There is an interesting link. So Prometheus is an ancient god of technology and it was really fire back then and if those of you well versed in mythology will recall that Prometheus was a little bit bitten by the technology that he was trying to wield. Mary Shelley was inspired by this particular story. And so she subtitled her Frankenstein novel as the modern Prometheus. And what was intriguing to us as a project team was we were also trying to create a Frankenstein like material and we wanted to learn from our predecessors and actually not see the same fate and to be able to really control the material so as to not get the better the best of us. So we often will speak of this project as the Post-Modern Prometheus where we have finally, after three tries, wielded the technology that we're creating. It also is pretty interesting because we're working with the Cyanobacteria that are really green. So it really does look like a Frankenstein material.

Rhoten: Right, right you described it that way a couple times too. What does Prometheus actually stand for?

Srubar: Prometheus stands for the programmable resurrection of materials engineered to heal exponentially using switches.

Rhoten: It's a catchy title really. The connections are really interesting to the work too. Can you tell me about the genetic aspect that you were talking about before?

Srubar: Yes. So you know nature has over millennia evolved to give us really great materials to work with starting materials and that evolution involves a lot of genetic mutations along the way. So we're kind of here at this point in time where we have bacteria and other plant cells that do some really great things we know over time further genetic mutations will improve these materials and perhaps make them more ideally suited for engineering applications. So the concept of synthetic biology is to speed up evolution and to do some of that genetic mutation in the here and now to get the products the materials more ideally suited for applications and needs for society that we need today.

Rhoten: Its… nature is an interesting educator or teacher. Would you say that? Is that kind of what your thesis/process is with your work?

Srubar: Absolutely. The growing field of bio mimicry and bio memetic design does exactly that. They learn from nature and we infuse a lot of that into what we do in the living materials lab where we identify perhaps a… an organism or even a small molecule that nature has created that does extraordinary things. We try to mimic it in the laboratory. And in the case of this project we try to impart the ability of microbes to make those awesome minerals and materials to serve the application needs that we have identified.

Rhoten: Can you tell me where this kind of sits in the broader C.U. context? I know you're working with other professors here too.

Srubar: Yeah. So this we're essentially creating a new discipline in my lab which is the living materials laboratory and what that necessitates is a multidisciplinary approach to create exciting new materials at what I call the bleeding edges of material science. So that necessitates, especially for this project, necessitates a lot of collaborators and folks who are well versed in the biological sciences biochemistry, gene engineering. We can talk about our gene editing and metabolic engineering parts of the project, microbiology but also traditional materials science. And since we are designing these materials for a specific application this necessitates a folks who are well versed in structural engineering structural mechanics and also failure mechanisms of materials.

Rhoten: Can you kind of tell me broadly, you’ve introduced it a little bit already but broadly what a layperson can understand about this project. What are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish with this?

Srubar: Yeah. So if you look around you in buildings materials are pretty static and pretty inert. And for good reason we want to keep our microbiomes in the indoor environments relatively safe for humans. What we're starting to question though is that paradigm of why do materials have to remain so inert and why couldn't they for example self-heal? Why couldn't they impart some benefits to indoor environments like sequester carbon dioxide which CO2 levels people may not know. CO2 levels are twice sometimes three times as high indoors than they are outdoors. And why couldn't these materials for example provide other benefits like serve as bio indicators when they're when there are elevated levels of toxins in the environment. We see wonderful examples in nature of how communities of insects and other species of animals can adapt and respond to external environmental triggers. And we're just trying to impart a little bit of that too to materials for the built environment.

Rhoten: Can you… this is your first DARPA project?

Srubar: Yes.

Rhoten: Can you talk about maybe some hesitations or some interest in your part in working with them for the first time. Is it something where you didn't know that you could work with DARPA? Your work maybe didn't align in your mind somehow?

Srubar: Yeah absolutely. When I when I thought of DARPA, as a new investigator I always thought of DARPA as they would fund the genius projects and they would fund the projects that were impossible to accomplish. And when this program came out and they had a call for proposals I was both hesitant but overwhelmingly excited because for the first time I saw a call from DARPA that really resonated with what it is that I did in my research group but also where I wanted my research to go. And it opened up brand new opportunities for for me and my research group. I often tell my students that you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. So what I did was I assembled a dream collaborator team. We came up with a crazy idea, we thought it could possibly work. Turns out it's working which is which is excellent. And we dazzled DARPA with an idea because we were proposing to do something no one has ever done before.

Rhoten: Do you still feel kind of an imposter syndrome with DARPA now that you’ve got it or?

Srubar: I always feel imposter syndrome, being a first generation college student and having a a background that was while it was very supportive, left me to figure things out on my own. So I always feel a little bit of that I think academics, especially newer academics, feel that they're playing in the big leagues but what I have found with this project is an overwhelming momentum forward with what it is that we're finding in our labs. The overwhelming interest and intrigue that the project is bringing and that instills a lot of confidence in what we're doing.

Rhoten: Well what's one aspect of it that you're really interested in or one part of the science are you really excited about or talking about with people.

Srubar: I think the most interesting pieces of this project are that we are first, questioning the prevailing paradigm of cementitious materials and cement technology really hasn't changed in the last hundred years and we're creating a material that could serve a structural purpose as a replacement for traditional cement. But I think the most important or most interesting aspect of these materials are that we are using cyanobacteria, really green goopy Frankenstein looking cyanobacteria that sequesters CO2 and so while we are creating a living material that's structural that's living, we're also doing a little bit of good for the environment. Because there are very few examples of materials that sequester carbon dioxide as they're living and growing. Plants are really the main example that we see and biomass is another one and we're using one of the microbes in this project that is arguably the best at doing so.

Rhoten: I guess I'm also kind of curious to talk about your experiences with your other investigators in that they bring a different skill set from you. Have you learned from them? What kind of processes has that been for you integrating with them?

Srubar: The first thing we learned in this project is how to communicate because we all work on different scales from the nanoscale to the macro scale, for example learning a different vocabulary was also very challenging. So what they term as a substrate means something different to my collaborators than what it means to me. And so they've really opened my eyes to different… not only different ways of looking at science and engineering but also recognizing perhaps some of the challenges we encounter and spinning that as opportunities because sharing at least at my scale at the larger scale sharing some of the common challenges that we face in material science really has bolstered some of the microbiology and synthetic biology that we're imparting to the to the project and is leading us in wildly cool crazy directions.

Rhoten: Can you tell me where we're at with the project right now? How many more years are left? What's the work left to do?

Srubar: Sure. What's exciting about this is is this was a four year project. We were funded for four years. We're about a year and a half in so we have quite a few years left and and what we had promised to deliver in four years we actually accomplished in a year and a half which is obviously exciting and what we're what we're hearing from DARPA is an overwhelming positive response and support to push our system a little bit further. What else can it do? Really understand the bounds of the material and what applications it may it may serve in.

Rhoten: Well what's your answer when they ask you that? What do you what do you envision from this project going forward?

Srubar: When we think of applications of this material we frame it in a way where we really have targeted extreme environments for applications particularly military applications which is of course the what the Department of Defense is interested in as well as the Army the Navy. In addition to just DARPA and the crazy idea is they want a real application. So where we're seeing the most promise for this type of material are in applications of extreme environments where we do see these triggers of temperature such; as area desert environments, even cold desert environments where there may be the environments relatively austere but it's cold. And that would help us then use those switches of switching the material on and off to self-heal and so we see the most promise for those types of military installations in those in those environments. I will also say that an attractive aspect of this this project in the material system that we're working on is that the bacteria help grow the bulk material and we know that bacteria grow at an exponential rate. And so instead of manufacturing a brick or some module one by one by one we envision an exponential increase in the ability to manufacture this type of material where you may create one brick split it into two then all of a sudden you have four bricks you split those. And so it's revolutionizing not only what we think of a structural material but how we even are able to fabricate structural materials at an exponential scale.

Rhoten: And that kind of goes back to what you're talking about how it's a new field and a new area developing, is it challenging not having other people around to kind of see what they're doing? I mean you're kind of pioneering this in a lot of ways is that a challenging aspect?

Srubar: It's a challenging and exciting aspect I would say. We are rooted in our fundamental disciplines, all of my collaborators are, we are viewed in some cases as just like DARPA is viewed as the ones with the crazy ideas. And while we are still some years away from seeing a true application of this material we do feel that in essence we are creating this new discipline and we're inspiring others to push what is the definition of their own disciplinary boundaries.

Rhoten: Great. Well thank you for talking to me about it. You bet.

Announcer: This has been on cue for more information visit Colorado. The CU slash engineering.

Wil Srubar is an assistant professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering department at CU. Guided by the tenets of industrial ecology, his team's collective vision is to engineer next-generation infrastructure materials by blurring the boundaries between the built environment and the natural world. Materials of current interest include biodegradable polymers, phase-change materials, recycled aggregate concrete, and natural-fiber composites for green building applications.

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