News & Events

Not many students have built three footbridges in their college career, but since his sophomore year, architectural engineering graduate Jay Arehart has worked to build and lead the CU Boulder chapter of Bridges to Prosperity (B2P). The student chapter has built hundreds of footbridges across the world to provide communities with safe access over dangerous rivers to healthcare, education and markets.

When David Pfotenhauer decided to pursue a PhD at CU Boulder, he knew that he wanted to specialize in an application-based science that would allow him get out into communities and use his knowledge to address public issues. As a current doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering, David joined CU Engage's 2016-17 cohort of Community-Based Research (CBR) Graduate Fellows. He became the newest member of an ongoing research project, a collaboration between CU Boulder and the Denver-based organization Taking Neighborhood Health to Heart (TNH2H). He began working to further the research that his colleague, CU Boulder CBR Fellow (2015-16) and Civil Engineering doctoral student Ashley Collier, had begun the year before in response to community concerns about air quality, contaminants and environmental health. David’s role in the project is to investigate air quality and radon levels in northeast Denver, one of the areas in which TNH2H members live.

The University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science landed three top 20 grad programs today in the U.S. News & World Report’s 2018 edition of Best Graduate Schools across the country. CU Boulder’s environmental engineering had the biggest jump going from No. 21 to No. 9. The...

Donald Strickland has chosen to be prepared in all aspects of his life, and that began with his choice of school to attend and degree to achieve. Strickland is a California native and had a choice of colleges. He was offered athletic scholarships to both CU Boulder and UCLA, a school that was much closer to home, and one where he had family connections. Even though UCLA might have been an easier choice to prepare for with family nearby, he chose to play football for CU Boulder because of the college of engineering.

The flow and movement of individual solid particles — be it grains of lunar dust or the powdered contents of a medication — holds tremendous research value for scientists in a variety of fields. Now, a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) will allow University of Colorado Boulder researchers to simulate particle behavior to a greater degree than ever before.

New oil and gas development techniques like horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing have dominated public concern in recent years about groundwater contamination in oil and gas basins. However, older vertical wells are more likely to cause groundwater contamination than newer wells, according to a new study from CU Boulder.

The research project, led by Richard Noble, Douglas Gin and Hans Funke of CU Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, will focus on improving the sophisticated membranes hidden inside powerful flow batteries. Unlike small, self-contained consumer batteries (AAAs, for example), flow batteries use external tanks to store the chemicals needed for an electrical reaction. The chemicals are commonly separated by a semi-permeable membrane.

Life is messy, and mostly we use technology to keep it tidy. But is there a place for technology that embraces messiness and unpredictability? It’s a question that fascinates Assistant Professor Laura Devendorf, who came to CU this spring, joining the ATLAS Institute with a tenure home in the Department of Information Science in the College of Media Communication and Information.