Education & Outreach

One of the first steps people take toward rebuilding their communities after a flood, wildfire or other disaster may not be the right step, according to the director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. “When a disaster happens, people feel pressure to rebuild things just as they were before, when in fact a disaster should be a time when there is a pause, when we ask ‘How can we build it back better than it was before?’ ” said center Director Kathleen Tierney, also a professor of sociology.

University of Colorado Boulder Distinguished Professor James Hynes of the chemistry and biochemistry department has been named a fellow of the American Chemical Society, one of 96 scientists honored in 2013. ACS Fellows are honored for their outstanding contributions in scientific research, education and public service.

Seven University of Colorado Boulder faculty and staff have received Fulbright grants to pursue research, teaching and training abroad during the 2013-14 academic year. One of their proposed projects involves research in India on the use of the tanbura -- a long-necked stringed instrument -- as an aid for developing musical perception and intonation. Another involves research and lecturing in the United Kingdom on the representation of violence in contemporary Irish and American fiction.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging and biomedical applications.

The University of Colorado Boulder will host a conference that explores the phenomenon of slavery from a global, historical perspective on Sept. 27-28. The event will include scholars specializing in the study of slavery in ancient, medieval and modern contexts and in global regions that include Western, pre-Columbian, African, Asian and Muslim. Titled “What is a Slave Society: an International Conference on the Nature of Slavery as a Global Historical Phenomenon,” the event will be held in the British and Irish Studies room of Norlin Library.

Nanoly Bioscience of Boulder and the University of Colorado recently entered into an option agreement that will enable the startup company to develop a technique for protecting vaccines during delivery to rural and less-developed areas of the world.

The University of Colorado Boulder today announced the opening of an Office of Industry Collaboration and the naming of Caroline Himes as director.

The fact that taller people also tend to be slightly smarter is due in roughly equal parts to two phenomena—the same genes affect both traits and taller people are more likely than average to mate with smarter people and vice versa—according to a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study did not find that environmental factors contributed to the connection between being taller and being smarter, both traits that people tend to find attractive.

For female North American barn swallows, looking good pays healthy dividends. A new study conducted at the University of Colorado Boulder and involving Cornell University shows the outward appearance of female barn swallows, specifically the hue of their chestnut-colored breast feathers, has an influence on their physiological health.

A University of Colorado Boulder faculty member will travel to Africa later this month to test a mobile smartphone technology developed by his team to rapidly detect and track natural carcinogens, including aflatoxin, which is estimated to contaminate up to 25 percent of the global food supply and cause severe illnesses in humans and animals.