Smead Aerospace Faculty/Staff News - Aerospace Fac/Staff Newsletter - Aug. 8

Crews are hard at work in AERO N130 turning plans for a plasma wind tunnel facility into a reality. The laboratory is the vision of Asst. Prof. Hisham Ali and will allow his team to study hypersonic conditions of atmospheric reentry. Construction began July 17 and is expected to take about six months.

Three aerospace students are being recognized with 2023 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) fellowships. Congratulations to:

• Grace Calkins (Advisor: Jay McMahon)
• J. Flores Govea (Advisor: Hisham Ali)
• Mark Stephenson (Advisor: Hanspeter Schaub)

Aerospace PhD student Erin Richardson (Advisor: Allie Anderson) took 2nd place in the AIAA Intelligent Systems Workshop student poster competition. Congratulations!

Join colleagues in the Rocky Mountain region on Sept. 6-7 for INSA’s Common Threads Colorado: Space Resiliency and the Mission.

The two-part program kicks off on Wednesday, Sept. 6, from 8:00 - 10:00 am MT with a TS//SI-TK classified breakfast and panel discussion in Colorado Springs. The following day, Thursday, September 7, INSA will host a 5:00 - 7:00 pm reception and keynote with Jenna Seidel, Director, NSA/CSS Colorado, at the Grand Hyatt in Denver.

Through Lab Venture Challenge (LVC), Venture Partners at CU Boulder and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) fund the university's top innovations with grants up to $125,000 that address a commercial need, have a clear path to a compelling market and have strong scientific support. 

• Application Deadlines:   
  • Aug. 18, 5 p.m.—Deadline to disclose inventions 
  • Sept. 1, 5 p.m.—Deadline to submit draft budgets 
  • Sept. 15, 11:59 p.m.—Deadline to apply to LVC 

This opportunity is available for CU Boulder or eligible CU Denver or UCCS professors with a lab with innovations in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, bioscience, electronics, energy and natural resources, infrastructure engineering, or technology and information.

The Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization Facility is now accepting applications for materials characterization projects through July 31, 2024. This program aims to encourage new and innovative projects focusing on either the Low Energy Ion Scattering Spectrometer, or the Atomic Force Microscope. The proposal is also an opportunity for selected participants to develop their skills with hands-on training for the LEIS or AFM. Each selected project will receive up to 30 hours of instrument time and assisted usage including data analysis ($3,000 equivalent, some restrictions apply), for a period of six months. Projects will be selected on a rolling basis over 12 months depending on availability of COSINC staff. More information is available online and questions can be sent email to Director Aju Jugessur.