Technology News

NIST—Scientists have dramatically reduced the time and energy required to chill materials to temperatures near absolute zero. Their prototype refrigerator could prove a boon for the burgeoning quantum industry, which widely uses ultracold materials. NIST is now working with an industrial partner and Venture Partners to commercialize the refrigerator.

2023 was another tremendous year for innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Campus researchers and inventors created a strong crop of 162 breakthrough technologies this past year. These spanned the breadth of CU Boulder’s research expertise, with innovations in climate tech, biotechnology, quantum science, optics and aerospace, to name a few. CU Boulder's commercialization arm, Venture Partners at CU Boulder, supports a groundbreaking pipeline translating research into real-world impact, as highlighted in their 2023 Annual Report.

CU Independent—Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder are working to make the moon habitable. And they are focused on one of the most difficult challenges to lunar living: dust. Xu Wang, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder, was one of the winners of NASA’s 2023 Entrepreneurs Challenge.

SciTechDaily—JILA's (a joint institute established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder) breakthrough in optical atomic clocks uses quantum entanglement to surpass fundamental precision limits, setting a new standard in timekeeping and opening avenues for scientific discovery.

Global Cosmetics News—Tattoo artist Keith “Bang Bang” McCurdy, famous for working with celebrities, has created a company, Hyprskn, to launch a new product called “Magic Ink.” Developed with Professor Carson Bruns from CU Boulder, Magic Ink can be controlled with a special stylus, the “magic pen,” that uses two wavelengths of light to activate or deactivate the tattoo’s visibility.

Research & Innovation Office (RIO)—CU Boulder announced seven winners of the 2023-2024 translational quantum research seed grants, incentivizing quantum science and technology innovations launched from the lab to accelerate them along the development path to new programs and businesses.

CU Anschutz 360—CU Boulder plays a crucial role in fostering innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and technological advancement in drug discovery and development, particularly through its expertise in quantum computing and AI and its collaborative efforts with CU Anschutz and other institutions.

Sixteen teams of University of Colorado faculty, researchers and graduate student innovators competed for a combined $1.5 million in startup funding grants.

Pulse 2.0—CU Boulder startup BioLoomics, the company pioneering the directed evolution of target degrading antibodies using human cells, recently announced it has raised $8.7 million in seed financing to advance its proprietary platform technology and antibody degrader programs.

CU Boulder Today—The Compliant Legged Articulated Robotic Insect (CLARI) comes from a team of engineers at CU Boulder. The little, squishable robot that can passively change its shape to squeeze through narrow gaps—with a bit of inspiration from the world of bugs. Ultimately, the team wants to develop shape-changing robots that can move through a complex, natural space—in which the machines will need to bounce off obstacles like trees or even blades of grass or push through the cracks between rocks and keep going.