Catalog

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is jointly sponsored by the University of Colorado and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). CIRES employs almost 500 faculty, students, and staff from a variety of disciplines. Academic departments represented in CIRES are astrophysical and planetary sciences; atmospheric and oceanic sciences; chemistry and biochemistry; ecology and evolutionary biology; geography; geological sciences; electrical and computer engineering; mechanical engineering; and physics. The institute serves as a center for multidisciplinary collaboration among environmental scientists from Boulder and throughout the world. A visiting fellowship program enables scientists from other institutions to spend time at CIRES.

CIRES research programs involve field investigations conducted in the mountains of Colorado, the Aleutian Islands, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, Hawaii and various Pacific atolls, and elsewhere. Results of this research bear on such practical societal problems as destruction of the Earth’s ozone shield by pollutants, acid deposition in rain and snow, degradation of air and water quality, toxic waste treatment, understanding climate change, and earthquake prediction.

Current CIRES research programs, in which approximately 45 graduate students participate, can be grouped into four areas. In environmental chemistry and biology, ongoing research involves measurements of constituents and reactions in the atmosphere, kinetics of reactions in the stratosphere and troposphere, aerosol chemistry, and leaching of toxic wastes from mining. Studies of atmospheric and climate dynamics include air-sea interactions, dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer, ocean dynamics, ice nucleation physics, cryosphere-climate interactions, ice sheet dynamics, and contemporary and paleo-climatology.

Research in solid earth geophysics includes earthquake prediction and earthquake physics, plate tectonics, seismic wave propagation, nuclear test discrimination, rock deformation and fracture, strains and tilts associated with Earth tides and secular deformation, and normal modes of vibrations of the Earth.

The Cryospheric and Polar Processes division is a national leader in the study of polar processes. Its research emphasizes studies in high latitude regions, using numerical techniques and satellite remote sensing. Research activities are supported by the World Center-A for Glaciology, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and the Snow and Ice Distributed Active Archive Center.

The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) is an Earth and environmental systems institute that investigates how the Earth’s environment is affected by natural and human-induced physical and biogeochemical processes at local to global scales. INSTAAR is home to interdisciplinary studies of Quaternary and modern environments, geochronology, human and ecosystem ecology, hydrology, oceanography, landscape evolution, biogeochemistry, cold regions research, and past-to-present climate variability. INSTAAR consists of over 70 PhD level scientists, including 16 tenured or tenure track faculty from across campus (geological sciences, environmental and evolutionary biology, geography, environmental studies, civil engineering, anthropology). About 60 graduate students from eight departments are working in INSTAAR laboratories. Another 60 undergraduates work and do research with INSTAAR researchers and teachers. Including federal scientists and affiliates (USGS, NOAA, NCAR), post-doctoral fellows, and operational and administrative staff, the institute consists of just over 200 members.

INSTAAR’s Ecosystems Group focuses on biocomplexity, carbon sequestration, nitrogen cycling, alpine biodiversity, ecosystem disturbance and recovery, atmospheric dynamics and chemistry, eco-hydrology and engineering, and invasive species. The Geophysics Group applies quantitative field geodynamics and numerical methods to discover the properties, patterns, and dynamics of snow, ice, water, and sediments in the world’s oceans, glaciers, and land areas. The Past Global Change Group focuses on the reconstruction of the dynamics of past environments and climate variability to enhance our understanding of the interactions between all components of the Earth system: atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, and biosphere, including humans.

Major facilities and programs at INSTAAR include: Long-Term Ecological Research studies in alpine and polar regions; The Mountain Research Station, a world-class complex of laboratory and field facilities to support year-round alpine research efforts; an Environmental Computation and Imaging Facility powered by a supercomputer with global connections to geophysical databases and nationally developed software; the Center for Geochemical Analysis of the Global Environment, which promotes the development and application of analytical methods that reveal past and present changes in Earth’s climate, its land surface, and major biogeochemical cycles; a Front Range Carbon Cycle Consortium that determines the stocks, exchange fluxes, and stability of carbon, and expands the educational opportunities in carbon biogeochemistry; a national multi-institutional facility for developing a Community Surface-Dynamics Modeling System to predict the transport and accumulation of sediment and solutes in terrestrial landscapes and sedimentary basins; 35 high-quality analytical labs, including unique campus wide facilities; and the international Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research journal.

The Mountain Research Station, located at 2,900 meters (9,500 feet) in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, is operated for the university by INSTAAR. The station, a national center for field studies in the biological and physical sciences, is especially well known for long-term ecological, climatological, and atmospheric research.

The station offers researchers easy access to a variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats at altitudes from 1,500 meters to 3,800 meters. A wide variety of courses is offered in areas such as plant and animal ecology, climatology, geomorphology, and hydrology. The station maintains the mountain climate program in support of the environmental field research conducted in the area.

Weather observing stations have been operated since 1952 at four altitudes between 2,200 and 3,750 meters, and additional stations are established for new projects.

The Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) is one of the top research and training facilities in the world for genetic research on behavior. This rapidly developing field brings to bear upon behavioral research the perspectives of biochemical genetics, developmental genetics, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, pharmacogenetics, and statistical and quantitative genetics. IBG is home to one of the nation’s largest DNA repositories for research on human behavior, as well as housing a wide array of behaviorally and genetically defined lines of selected, recombinant inbred, transgenic, and knockout-gene mice. Facilities are available for research on a variety of organisms, including humans, laboratory mice, and nematodes. Current research includes studies of aging, psychopathology, reading disability, cognition, substance abuse, behavioral development, and evolution. IBG provides NIH-supported training opportunities, at the postdoctoral and predoctoral level, in affiliated programs at the University of Colorado campuses in Boulder and Denver.

The Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) is an interdisciplinary research organization serving faculty and graduate students in the behavioral sciences. Its principal functions are to conduct and sponsor research programs involving two or more of the behavioral sciences and related fields; to provide research facilities, equipment, and administrative services for participating faculty; to facilitate graduate and undergraduate research training; and to disseminate information about its activities and findings to scientific groups and institutions.

The institute sponsors research programs in environment and society, political and economic change, population, and problem behavior. IBS includes Computing and Research Services which provides assistance and training in social science methods, statistics, and computing; the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence; the Natural Hazards Research and Information Center, and the African Population Studies Research and Training Program.

The Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS) was established to promote interdisciplinary research in the fields of psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, education, speech/language/hearing sciences, and other cognitive sciences. Its major research programs fall into six areas: neuroscience; natural language processing; human-computer interaction and knowledge-based systems; connectionist modeling; human information processing and skilled performance; and judgment and decision making. These programs include the use of artificial intelligence techniques and cognitive simulations in gaining an understanding of basic cognitive processes as well as educational and industrial applications.

JILA has been one of the nation’s leading research institutes in the physical sciences since its founding in 1962. A joint institute of the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, JILA is located on the CU-Boulder campus. JILA’s NIST members hold adjoint faculty appointments at CU. The Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and Electrical and Computer Engineering are affiliated with JILA.

Through the years, JILA scientists have made key contributions to applied technology, including advanced, ultrafast lasers; precision mirror mounts; laser stabilization techniques; femtosecond optical and ultraviolet frequency combs; high-finesse optical cavities; a nonlinear optical system for blind signal separation; precision measurements of optical frequency standards; novel designs for optical atomic clocks; high-precision gravimeters; and software that delivers international time standards over the Internet. Scientists trained at JILA have joined such firms as Amgen, Ford, Hewlett Packard, Intel, and 3M; numerous entrepreneurial companies; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and other major laboratories; and universities throughout the world, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, the University of California, the University of Tokyo, the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Yale University.

JILA scientists also explore some of today’s most challenging and fundamental questions in physics. Their research ranges from the small, cold world of quantum physics through the design of precision optics and lasers to processes that shape the stars and galaxies. The institute’s research spans seven broad categories: astrophysics, atomic and molecular physics; biophysics; chemical physics; materials physics and chemistry; optical physics; and precision measurement.

The institute’s faculty includes two Nobel laureates, seven members of the National Academy of Sciences, and two John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellows. JILA offers advanced training for visiting academic and industry scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and CU graduate students. Creative collaborations among JILA Fellows and their groups play an important role in generating the pioneering research JILA is known for around the world. This rich mix of research and educational experience make graduate study at JILA a distinctly interdisciplinary endeavor. Each year, the institute attracts many scientific visitors and seminar speakers. Graduate students can also attend in-house courses in laboratory electronics, instrument making, computing, and scientific writing.

JILA’s facilities comprise a 10-story tower containing offices for scientists and administrative support staff, a 128-seat auditorium, and a laboratory wing with an isolated, underground research bay. A four-story south wing contains computing systems, laboratories, a reading room, meeting rooms, and private offices. The institute supports its research and education with electronics and instrument shops; computing, networking, and administrative services; the W. M. Keck Optical Measurement Laboratory; and a Scientific Reports Office.

A brochure describing JILA is available from the JILA Chair, University of Colorado at Boulder, 440 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0440 (303-492-6787) or at jilawww.colorado.edu/print.

The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is a research institute carrying out basic research in space science, including in planetary, atmospheric, solar, and space physics. LASP is one of a very small number of university-based groups that is able to design, build, test, and operate spacecraft instruments and even entire spacecraft. Due to its broad approach, LASP activities span the entire research cycle, including designing and fabricating instruments to address scientific questions, flying the instruments and analyzing data returned from them, integrating the results with laboratory and theoretical analyses, and developing the next generation of questions to address, supported by laboratory and theoretical analyses that provide a broad context for understanding the scientific questions and results.

LASP has active instruments on several spacecraft, including the Cassini mission to Saturn, the MESSENGER spacecraft that is studying Mercury, the SORCE and TIMED spacecraft that are in Earth orbit studying the Sun’s influence on the Earth’s atmosphere, and on the AIM spacecraft to study the Earth’s mesosphere. A student-designed and -built instrument is currently on its way to Pluto aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. Instruments are currently being designed and built to fly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft that will study the influence of the Sun, and for the Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission that will study the Earth’s radiation belts. LASP researchers also are involved in analyzing data from the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover and Phoenix missions, and in planning for upcoming data analysis from the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Students and faculty from the Departments of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, Physics, Geological Sciences, and Aerospace Engineering pursue their research under the auspices of LASP. LASP is home to the Center for Astrobiology, part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, through which scientists from many disciplines across campus work to understand the potential for life to exist elsewhere in the universe, and the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM), whose goal is to understand the nature of the Earth’s space weather environment. LASP has approximately 200 full-time professionals, including 60 scientists and 75 engineers, and 100 students at any point in time. This high student-to-professional ratio is indicative of the high level of collaboration between students and professionals. LASP graduates have gone on to play important roles in spacecraft mission design and operation, science analysis, and in the astronaut corps.

LASP’s space research programs are recognized internationally. The combination of mission operations, instrument development, science analysis, and student involvement in all aspects of its programs is unique in the world. For additional information about LASP and its current programs, visit lasp.colorado.edu.

The Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), an interdisciplinary joint research effort between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is advancing solutions for producing energy economically from low carbon sources, decreasing reliance on foreign oil, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and using energy more efficiently to meet the global energy challenge.

RASEI’s efforts focus on interdisciplinary energy research, training the next generation of energy professionals, and the development of market-ready leading-edge technologies. Learn more about the RASEI at rasei.colorado.edu.

(A comprehensive list of active research centers can be found at www.colorado.edu/research/institutes/index.html.)

The Business Research Division performs contract research and provides the Colorado business community with information and special studies on the state’s economy and business problems. The division is also responsible for the organized research activities of the Leeds School of Business, which are conducted through three organizations. The Rocky Mountain Trade Adjustment Assistance Center provides management assistance, business information, and consulting services to small and medium-sized businesses in the region. The Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center Colorado, with locally based field engineers and project management staff, provides on-site assessments of the business and technical aspects of small manufacturing operations in the state and recommends priority actions to improve a company’s competitive position.

The College of Engineering and Applied Science oversees 16 interdisciplinary research centers whose programs augment discipline-based research in traditional academic fields. These research centers have a wide variety of research foci such as the commercial development of space (BioServe); decision support for water and environmental systems (CADSWES); computer simulations in aerospace structures (CAS); astrodynamics research (CCAR); Joint Center for Combustion and Environmental Research (JCCER); photopolymerization methods (CFAP); power electronics (CoPEC); pharmaceutical biotechnology (CPB); Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV); lifelong learning and design (L3D); separations using thin films (MAST); advanced environmental sensors (CET); biofuels and biorefining (C2B2); real-time hybrid simulations for earthquake engineering (FHT); integrated micro/nano-electromechanical transducers (iMINT); and environmental mass spectrometry (CEMS).

The Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA) is a research center within the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. CASA provides a focus for campuswide expertise in experimental, observational, computational, and theoretical astrophysics, including solar and stellar physics, interstellar and intergalactic medium studies, star and planetary system formation, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, and cosmology. Staff members carry out research involving x-ray, far-UV, optical, infrared, submillimeter, and radio observations using both satellites and ground-based facilities.

CASA scientists play leading roles in data analysis for NASA astrophysics missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope. CASA instrumentalists manage an active sounding rocket program, develop millimeter instrumentation for the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, APEX telescope, and Herschel Space Observatory, built the spectrographs for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), which may be installed in the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007. CASA students and researchers also built the Near Infrared Camera for use on the Apache Point Observatory 3.5m telescope.

Other CASA programs include laboratory experimentation on molecules of astrophysical interest, space and ground-based observations in all wavelength bands from x-ray to radio, extensive numerical modeling of the evolution of matter in the early universe to study the formation and evolution of galaxies and intergalactic medium, and theoretical investigations in many areas of astrophysics.

The Center for British and Irish Studies promotes research in all aspects of British culture, history, and contemporary life. Its resources include the outstanding research collections of the University of Colorado Libraries, including a wide range of microfilmed copies of original materials from Britain. The center is the leading research facility in British studies in the Rocky Mountain/high plains area.

The center sponsors visiting lecturers, colloquium series, and conferences, and serves as a gathering point for scholars and students in the region. It welcomes outside users of the research collections and continues to develop the research base. The center also cooperates with community groups in sponsoring activities dealing with British politics, business, and the arts.

The Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR) conducts labor education programs and research in various aspects of labor relations. Noncredit courses are offered for members of organized labor as the university’s service to the labor community of Colorado. Graduate students may attend conferences with staff members and use available library facilities. CLEAR staff members also teach credit courses in other schools and colleges.

The Policy Sciences Center stresses the integration of knowledge and practice to improve public policy. The research program includes policy analysis in such areas as environment, natural resources, poverty, growth management, and economic development, as well as the development of theory and methods for the policy sciences. The center also supervises the public policy curriculum for the MA in political science (public policy option).

The McGuire Center for International Economics, organized within the Department of Economics, is dedicated to research and graduate training in a broad range of international topics. Specialties of faculty associated with the center include international trade and finance, monetary theory and policy, monetary history and reform, and economic development and macroeconomics. Research on questions concerning international debt and trade relations in the Pacific region is given particular emphasis and support. The center offers opportunities for students and faculty interested in interdisciplinary work between international economics and areas such as international politics, conflict and peace studies, and international business.

Laboratories, special classrooms, and specialized equipment are essential to graduate training and research. Some of the facilities at the University of Colorado are described in the following paragraphs.

Aerospace engineering sciences is equipped with both high-end workstations and PCs, an educational wind tunnel, laboratories in structural dynamics and controls, a guidance and control laboratory, a Global Positioning System laboratory, and the Lockheed Martin Room, dedicated to senior design teams. Space hardware laboratories aid in developing expertise in electronics, structures, fluids, and thermal control for the development, testing, and operation of small payloads; and space biotechnology laboratories develop expertise in microgravity studies involving animal physiology, agricultural products, bioprocessing, and advanced spacecraft life support systems. An unmanned vehicles systems integration laboratory provides learning opportunities for sophisticated subsystems integration. Computer laboratories are equipped for use in upper-division and graduate courses and for graduate research, with special capabilities for computer-aided control systems design, satellite image processing, satellite mission design, and parallel processing for computational structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, control, acoustics, and optimization. A NOAA satellite receiving station is available to the department for use in teaching and research.

The Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences emphasizes studies of theoretical, instrumental, and observational astrophysics (including the sun), planetary atmospheres and surfaces, astrophysical fluid dynamics, space physics, and plasma astrophysics.

The department is a member of the ARC 3.5m telescope consortium and operates the Sommers-Bausch Observatory and laboratories for space astrophysical hardware, computational fluid dynamics, and UV/IR/X-ray astronomy. Also used are observational facilities of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile; the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona; the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico; and many NASA astronomical and planetary satellites, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Galileo and Cassini Spaceprobes, and Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. Teaching and research are conducted in collaboration with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), JILA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (including the High Altitude Observatory), and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA).

Chemical and biological engineering research facilities are extensive and modern. Nearly all research equipment is interfaced to microcomputer systems for automated data collection, monitoring, and control.

Studies in heterogeneous catalysis and surface science use ultrahigh vacuum systems located in the chemical engineering laboratories.

Research in chemical process control makes extensive use of an array of real-time computer systems and experimental units.

The suspension fluid dynamics laboratories include microfilters, sedimentation devices, and particle size analyzers.

Membrane studies use casting machines for fabricating flat sheet and hollow fiber membranes, and a variety of analytical equipment. A pendant drop tensiometer is used to study membrane formation via interfacial polymerization. A differential scanning calorimeter is used for determining the glass-transition and crystallization temperatures as well as other properties of polymeric membrane materials.

The biotechnology research laboratories are equipped with highly instrumented and controlled fermenters, high-performance liquid chromatographs, a flow cytometer, a tissue-culture laboratory, a DNA microarray facility, a UV-vis scanning spectrophotometer, an electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer, a phosphorescence imager, centrifuges, and other standard bioprocess and bioanalytical equipment.

In the polymer laboratories, the latest differential scanning calorimeter is used to study photopolymerization reactions and phase transitions. Nonlinear optical polymeric materials are characterized on an optical bench equipped with a Neodymium/YAG laser and photo detection system. The laboratories are also equipped with a Hewlett Packard UV-visible spectrophotometer and facilities to perform photopolymerizations to produce membranes and polymer films.

The ceramics processing laboratory includes a high-temperature furnace, a thermal gravimetric analyzer, and several fluidized beds.

research encompasses the infrastructure of our modern society, which depends on the technologies of structural, geotechnical, environmental, water resources, building systems, and construction engineering. Research facilities include unique laboratories for multiscale simulation of civil, environmental, and building systems. A 400 g-ton centrifuge with a sample capacity of two tons is used for simulation of the behavior of earthen and structural systems. The department has one of the 15 NSF-supported George Brown National Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation facilities in the United States for dynamic testing of the response of large structural elements to earthquakes. The Larson Building Systems Laboratory contains a full-size room with complete HVAC controls for the study of energy efficiency, comfort, and room air quality in buildings. The environmental fluid mechanics laboratory contains a large capacity hydraulic flume equipped with a 3-d laser system for visualization of turbulence and mixing in order to study aquatic ecology and contaminant dispersion in surface waters. In addition, numerous research projects are carried out in multipurpose laboratories on the Boulder campus and at field sites from Colorado to Antarctica. The department maintains significant computing facilities for research in diverse areas such as construction project management and groundwater contaminant transport. The Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems develops software that is widely used in river basin management throughout the United States. Drawing on these facilities, faculty and students have initiated interdisciplinary research that seeks to apply emerging analytical methods such as life-cycle analysis to study the long-term interactions between built infrastructure (building, transportation, and hydraulic structures), the environment, natural resources, and the concerns of human society for safety and well-being.

The Department of Computer Science supports its own domain (cs.colorado.edu), which is a 10/100/1000 mb network connected to the campus and the world by gigabit fast ethernet. The department has been instrumental in pushing the campus to a faster networking model through research. Research and computing needs are handled by department staff. Computer science supports most architectures and operating systems, giving research students the opportunity to learn about and use the latest, greatest equipment and software.

Current hardware inventory includes Sun Microsystems workstations and servers, Digital Compaq workstations, an Alpha and DS20 parallel processing cluster, Macintoshes and Windows 2000 desktop workstations, HP workstations, NCD xterminals, and various computers. All are networked with 10/100/1000 mb networks connected with switches and hubs to a firewalled gateway.

Electrical and computer engineering special equipment and facilities include a class 1000 clean room facility for epitaxial growth and fabrication of microwave and optical devices, high-vacuum and vacuum deposition equipment for thin-films research, an integrated circuits laboratory, ion implantation equipment, crystal growing facilities, a systems and control laboratory, a laboratory for data storage research, a digital system design laboratory, a power electronics design laboratory, undergraduate laboratories in circuits, electronics, and energy conversion, several holography and optics laboratories, a computer laboratory for VLSI design, a microwave device research laboratory, a communications laboratory, a roof-mounted antenna range, numerous special-purpose computers, an anechoic chamber for studying propagation effects at microwave frequencies, a special microscope for laser manipulation of microorganisms in vivo, and an electromagnetic fields bio-effects laboratory.

The department has a variety of computing equipment to support its research and instructional activities. Most machines are connected via Ethernet, which also provides access to a large number of shared computing resources on campus.

Mechanical engineering laboratories provide for experimental studies of thermal, mechanical, and electronic systems. Typical areas of study include heat transfer, fluid and solid mechanics, mechanical behavior of materials, combustion, prosthetic device performance, electronic packaging and manufacturing, and design optimization.

The combustion laboratory contains instrumentation for velocity, temperature, and composition measurements in chemically reacting flows. Included are systems for gas chromatography, laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy, laser absorption spectroscopy, laser schlieren, laser interferometry, and laser doppler anemometry. The laboratory is also equipped for computer control of the instrumentation and automatic data reduction including graphics capabilities.

The materials laboratory is well equipped for the measurement of the physical and mechanical properties of polymers, metals, ceramics, and composites. Major facilities include a pressure dilatometer with capabilities to 200 MPa and 450°C for determination of solid and melt equations of state, a forced-oscillation dynamic mechanical analyzer as well as a large capacity torsion pendulum for measurement of modulus and damping behavior, a modern servohydraulic mechanical test system for the analysis of tensile and relaxation properties, and an acoustic microscope for morphological studies.

The fluid mechanics laboratory is equipped with several basic facilities for experimentation in fluid systems. The Stokes flow apparatus is devoted to measurement of drag in highly viscous fluid flow using laser-timer instrumentation. The Taylor-Couette apparatus incorporates thermistor sensors, laser sheet visualization, and computer data acquisition to study instabilities of fluid motion between rotating cylinders with a radial temperature gradient. A humidity-controlled room provides an environment for studying the stability of rotating capillary rivulets. A Ling vibration exciter provides the basis for g-jitter experiments on the stability of differentially heated fluid layers.

The packaging laboratory is equipped with a quick prototyping workcell for semicustom multichip modules, two fluxless solder reflow chambers, a thermosonic flip-chip bonding machine and a thermal-chip testing system. The electronic manufacturing laboratory houses a mock-up chemical vapor deposition reactor, a condensation soldering set-up, a wind-tunnel for testing various high performance heat sinks, and a Czochralski crystal growth simulator. This equipment supports work on novel packaging and process control techniques, including artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic.

The Mechatronics Laboratory has state-of-the-art facilities to lay out MEMS designs using Tanner Research Tools and IntelliCAD simulation software. The laboratory has probe stations equipped with computer control, video cameras, and power supply units. Personnel are able to activate, record, and evaluate MEMS to be fabricated for the proposed study.

Various optical instruments are available to verify the electromechanical behavior of fabricated MEMS in real time as a function of environmental temperature and pressure. For temporal response studies, an optical interferometer is available. For static deformation studies, a Zygo Interferometric Microscope (New View 200) is available in the MEMS R&D Laboratory. This imaging system uses noncontact scanning white light interferometry and provides 3-d surface analysis with Z-scan from 1 nm to 5,000 um with 0.1 nm height resolution. The field of view is adjustable from 1 um to 50 mm. With this unique system staff can visualize and study any MEMS deformation induced by internal material stresses and/or applied external forces, as well as the wear effects due to friction.

The Nuclear Physics Laboratory, of the Department of Physics, conducts research in high-energy nuclear physics, the study of quark-gluon systems in nature. Current activities include experimental studies of a new form of matter, known as the quark-gluon plasma, created in high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei, and the precise determination of the internal structure of the proton using high-energy particle beams.

Graduate students and faculty of the laboratory develop and install experimental equipment, help run the experiments during accelerator operation, and then analyze their data, both at the accelerator facilities and in the Boulder lab facilities. The present research is performed primarily at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with questions still under study at DESY (Germany), Fermilab, and Jefferson Lab.

Theoretical activities focus on development of Effective Field Theory (EFT) methods for treating low-energy (or, equivalently, diffuse) systems whose underlying dynamics are governed by short-ranged interactions. Many topics of much current interest (nuclear few-body systems, BECs, etc.) are susceptible to treatment via these methods.

Support for the research program comes from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Consult up.colorado.edu/CUNuclearPhysics for more detailed information.

The High Altitude Observatory (HAO) is an internationally recognized center for the study of solar, solar-terrestrial, and related astrophysics with emphasis on the interrelationships. Established in 1940, HAO has its central laboratory and administrative offices in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) building in south Boulder.

HAO is a part of NCAR, which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. HAO’s extensive research facilities are used by graduate students pursuing advanced studies in atmospheric sciences and physics.