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Tinycade empowers novices to design and build arcade-like games
Limited by materials available at home during the pandemic, ATLAS PhD student Peter Gyory and a team of ACME Lab researchers developed Tinycade—a platform for DIY game controllers that anyone, including novices, can use to design and build arcade-like games using household materials such as cardboard, mirrors and hot glue.
Arielle Dispenza recognized for excellence in teaching
Arielle Dispenza was honored in December as the recipient of the 2021 Charles A. Hutchinson Memorial Teaching Award from CU Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science. Dispenza, a teaching assistant professor who joined the College of Engineering and Applied Science faculty in 2016, is director of undergraduate programs for the ATLAS Institute, where she oversees the Creative Technology and Design program.
Read More about Arielle Dispenza winning a prestigious teaching award
Denver Channel 7 discusses the impact of social media on teens' mental health with Annie Margaret
"It's not enough to tell young people to put their phones down," says Annie Margaret, an ATLAS teaching assistant professor who investigates ways to counteract the negative impact of social media on the mental health of teens. In a recent interview with Denver Channel 7 News, Margaret talked about the interventions she's developing for teens that are part of a program she'll launch in the 2022 summer break.
Watch Now about the interview with Annie Margaret on Denver Channel 7
Fall 2021 Capstone Projects
CTD Capstone is a rigorous, two-semester course sequence required for all Creative Technology & Design majors. Normally taken during the senior year, it involves the completion of a culminating project that goes through multiple rounds of faculty review and iteration. This small collection of project presentations gives a sense of the kind of work students complete in the CTD program.
ACME Lab: Creating technologies to support creativity
ATLAS recently released a new video that celebrates the ACME Lab and its commitment to designing technologies to support creatives. Directed by Professor Ellen Do, the lab researches computational tools for design, creativity, cognition, tangible and embedded interaction, and computing for health and wellness.
Murmuring Yarnscapes builds on Unstable Design Lab's award-winning DIS'20 paper
Unstable Design Lab researchers Jordan Wirfs-Brock, a PhD candidate, and Mikhaila Friske, a PhD student, both in information science, will present their interactive, hands-on, textile-based experience, Murmuring Yarnscapes, in the ATLAS Black Box, beginning Dec. 2. The installation builds on their award-winning paper from DIS'20 and is the culmination of a B2 residency.
High-tech tattoos may help prevent skin cancer
Carson Bruns, assistant professor and director of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and his research team are collaborating with the CU Anschutz Medical Campus to test a tattoo ink that’s completely invisible—and could lower the risk of skin cancer, much like a “permanent sunscreen. At the same time, Bruns and doctoral student Jesse Butterfield, a researcher in Bruns' Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials, have launched a company called Chromopraxis that will soon sell the first commercially available, color-changing tattoo inks.
ATLAS students fill in community STEM gaps through new outreach team
Teaching Assistant Professor Shaz Zamore is the faculty director of ATLAS Community Outreach and Resource Network (ACORN), a new outreach group that connects ATLAS research and STEM education to those who can’t easily access it.
Read More article about new outreach program at ATLAS called ACORN
CTD student's capstone project front stage at Fiske Planetarium
CTD senior, E.O. Rafelson fabricated a high-tech kaleidoscope for his capstone project as well as developed a way to project the patterns generated onto a planetarium dome. His project, “Kaleideo,” was presented at Fiske Planetarium on Nov. 9 for two free shows.
Read More article about CTD senior E.O. Rafelson's capstone project being shown at Fiske Planetarium
POPO lets novices program from inside their VR surroundings
Julia Uhr, an ATLAS PhD student and researcher in the ACME Lab, has created a fun 3D visual programming language that empowers novice coders to create customized VR environments while inside those environments.
ATLAS community’s work featured in Museum of Boulder exhibit
A group of 14 artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to the Museum of Boulder’s newest exhibit, “Convivial Machines,” which opened Oct. 30. It's the first museum installation for Boulder Experiments in Art and Technology (B.E.A.T), founded by Jiffer Harriman (ATLS PhD '16) in 2019.
HapticBots give form to virtual surfaces
In virtual reality, when users reach out to touch a visible surface, it normally isn't there. But a team of researchers in ATLAS Institute's THING Lab have been exploring ways to make the virtual tangible. Building on their past work, PhD graduate Ryo Suzuki and Assistant Professor Daniel Leithinger recently published a paper that was presented for ACM's Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology, introducing an intriguing application of small swarm robots that dynamically move to provide physical touchpoints on demand whenever the user reaches out and touches a virtual point in space.
Augmented reality technology to give battery storage facility workers "X-ray" vision
Researchers in ATLAS Institute's ACME Lab are designing and prototyping an augmented reality application that lets first-responders and site-operators see from a distance what is happening inside battery containers at solar energy storage facilities, alerting them as to whether the units are operating normally and safe to open.
RoomShift research: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications magazine's cover story
The cover story of the July/August IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications magazine features Roomshift, a project led by ATLAS Thing Lab alum Ryo Suzuki involving the creation of a room-scale dynamic haptic environment for virtual reality. When a virtual scene changes or users navigate within it, a swarm of robots dynamically reconfigure the physical space to match the changes in the virtual environment.
Read More about a project that brings virtual and physical worlds together with swarm robots
Origami comes to life with new shape-changing materials
Imagine opening up a book of nature photos only to see a kaleidoscope of graceful butterflies flutter out from the page. Such fanciful storybooks might soon be possible thanks to the work of a team of designers and engineers at CU Boulder’s ATLAS Institute.