CU-Boulder has nearly 100 research centers, and institutes analyzing everything from the impact of natural disasters to the effect of warming temperatures on Antartic ice shelves.
Did You Know?
Institutes and Centers
Research Institutes
With research institute support totaling over $142 million in the past year alone, graduate
students working at CU-Boulder’s ten research institutes are able
to focus on real-world concerns, ranging from developing space instrumentation
to finding the causes for school violence often in state-of-the-art facilities.
The Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (ATLAS) is an innovative, campus-wide institute that broadens the benefits of the information age by providing multidisciplinary curricular, research, and outreach programs that integrate information technology with a wide variety of disciplines and people, both inside and outside the university.
The Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) serves as a focal point for humanistic research, creative work, and artistic performance across the Boulder campus. Each year, CHA selects a theme around which to organize its central activities: a year-long faculty and graduate student seminar, a lecture series, and a spring colloquium. CHA also supports innovative research and creative work through monthly "work-in-progress" sessions, and events with other units on campus. In addition, CHA plays an important role in supporting graduate education: CHA grants approximately $500,000 in graduate fellowships each year, has sent graduate students to Cornell University's School of Criticism and Theory, has hosted Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowships in the humanities, and ran an internship program for students seeking employment outside the academy, a program that won a 1999 Innovation Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)
serves as a center for multidisciplinary collaboration among environmental
scientists from Boulder and throughout the world.
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. Current CIRES
research programs fall under four areas: environmental chemistry and biology,
atmospheric and climate dynamics, solid earth geophysics and the Cryospheric
and Polar Processes division.
The Institute
of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR)
is an interdisciplinary research institute with ongoing programs in most
earth/ocean environments as well as many alpine and most polar regions
of the world. It operates the Mountain Research Station and publishes
the quarterly journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. Disciplines
include plant and animal ecology, paleoecology, palynology, geochronology,
climatology, oceanography, hydrology, remote sensing, sedimentology, geophysics,
glaciology, glacial geology, and geochronological research.
The Institute
for Behavioral Genetics (IBG)
conducts research on the genetic bases of individual differences in behavior
and provides research training in this interdisciplinary area. This rapidly
developing field brings to bear upon behavioral research the perspectives
of biochemical genetics, cytogenetics, developmental genetics, evolutionary
genetics, molecular genetics, pharmacogenetics, and quantitative genetics.
Facilities are available for research on a variety of organisms, including
humans, laboratory mice, and nematodes.
The Institute
of Behavioral Science (IBS)
conducts research through its five programs: problem behavior, population
processes, environment and behavior, health behavior, and political and
economic change. IBS includes the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, the Natural Hazards Center, and the CU Population
Center.
The Institute
of Cognitive Science (ICS)
promotes interdisciplinary research in the fields of psychology, computer
science, linguistics, philosophy, and other cognitive sciences. Its major
research programs fall into five areas: 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.
JILA (formerly
the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics)
offers training for academic researchers and industry scientists, facilitates
research in the physical sciences, and fosters the invention of applications
for other research laboratories as well as commercial companies. Academic
disciplines span theoretical and experimental physics, chemical physics,
stellar and galactic astronomy, atomic physics, geophysics, and measurement
science.
The Laboratory
for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP)
is a center for basic theoretical and experimental research in planetary,
atmospheric, solar, and space physics. LASP scientists also explore the
potential uses and development of space operations and information systems,
and scientific instrumentation. LASP has experiments on several NASA spacecraft
and has developed a data-handling system for use with its space experiments.
Laboratory experiments are also pursued. Active sounding rocket programs
complement the research in planetary atmospheres, atmospheric processes,
and solar physics.
University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
Celebrating 100 years of service to the University of
Colorado and the community, the CU
Museum houses the largest collection of natural history in the Rocky
Mountain region. Of the four million objects in the museum’s collection
are world-class collections of Navajo textiles, Mimbres ceramics, cryptogams,
mammals and birds, and bees. These collections in anthropology, botany,
entomology, geology/paleontology, and zoology are utilized by hundreds
of researchers, teachers, students and more than 28,000 public visitors
each year. The CU Museum has a long tradition of university and public
education and offers regular speaking events, workshops, and family programs
that allow people to interact with museum personnel and collections directly.
Centers
CU-Boulder's 80-plus centers grant fellowships, sponsor internships, house archives for research, conduct competitions with cash awards, host public debates and programs, and support graduate study in many other ways.
Go to the campus research section for a full listing of links to centers, and institutes affiliated with CU-Boulder.
