Carson Bruns

  • Associate Professor
  • Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials
  • CREATIVE MOLECULAR NANOTECH
  • MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
  • ATLAS INSTITUTE
  • MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Address

ATLS 231A

Office Hours

Fall 2020 Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:35-5:00 pm

Carson Bruns, assistant professor (ATLAS Institute, Mechanical Engineering), seeks to make creative use of molecular nanotechnology to engineer materials for applications ranging from biohacking to energy transduction. His research involves the fabrication of tiny molecular and particulate building blocks that build themselves into more sophisticated structures by a process of self-assembly. After receiving undergraduate degrees in chemistry and religion from Luther College and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Northwestern University, Carson spent three years as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty at CU Boulder in 2017.

Carson Bruns is the director of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab at the ATLAS Institute.

Projects

PublicationsDiane N. Jung, Caleb Escobedo, Noah Liska, Maitrey Gramopadhye, Daniel Szafir, Alessandro Roncone, and Carson J. Bruns. 2026. "Design of a Robot-Assisted Chemical Dialysis System". In: Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI Companion '26). (Edinburgh, Scotland, March 16-19, 2026).

Diane Jung, Kailey Shara and Carson Bruns. 2025. “LEGO® as a versatile platform for building reconfigurable low-cost lab equipment”. In: PLoS One 20(8). (August 12, 2025).

Jung DN, Burleson G, Bruns CJ. "An Analysis of Workloads Experienced by Scientists Working in the Chemical Wet Lab." In: Proceedings of the ASME 2025 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. Volume 4: 22nd International Conference on Design Education (DEC); 30th Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference (DFMLC); 37th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM). (Anaheim, CA, August 17–20, 2025).

Jesse L. Butterfield, Jennifer R. Quigley, Carson J. Bruns. 2024. "Smart Tattoos of Intradermally Implanted Photochromic Nanosensors for Personal UV Sensing and Dosimetry". In: Advanced Functional Materials, Volume 34, Issue 40. (October 2024).

DN Jung, CJ Bruns. 2024. "Typology Development for Synthetic Chemistry Sub-Tasks: Towards Human-Robot Collaboration Task Design in the Wet Lab". 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC-2024). (Washington, DC, August 25-28, 2024).

John-Baptist Kauzya, Brandon Hayes, Austin C. Hayes, Jamie F. Thompson, Charlotte Bellerjeau, Kent Evans, Jorge Osio-Norgaard, Gaurang Gavai, Karan Dikshit, Carson Bruns, Robert MacCurdy, Robert A. Street, Gregory L. Whiting. 2024. "Direct ink writing of viscous inks in variable gravity regimes using parabolic flights". In: Acta Astronautica, Volume 219. (June 2024).

Purnendu, Jess Hartcher‑O’Brien, Vatsal Mehta, Nicholas Colonnese, Aakar Gupta, Carson Bruns, Priyanshu Agarwal. 2023. "Fingertip Wearable High‑resolution Electrohydraulic Interface for Multimodal Haptics".  In: Proceedings of IEEE World Haptics Conference. (Delft, Netherlands, July 10–13, 2023).

Karan Dikshit and Carson J. Bruns. 2023. "Slide‐Ring Materials Based on Self‐assembled Polyrotaxane “Molecular Necklaces”". In: Supramolecular Nanotechnology: Advanced Design of Self‐Assembled Functional Materials 2. (April 21, 2023).

Samuel C. Lamont, Kyle Weishaar, Carson J. Bruns, and Franck J. Vernerey. 2023. "Micromechanics and damage in slide-ring networks". In: Physical Review E 107, no. 4. (April 1, 2023).

Karan Vivek Dikshit, Aseem Milind Visal, Femke Janssen, Alexander Larsen, and Carson J. Bruns. 2023. "Pressure-Sensitive Supramolecular Adhesives Based on Lipoic Acid and Biofriendly Dynamic Cyclodextrin and Polyrotaxane Cross-Linkers". In: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 15, no. 13.

Hyejin Kwon, Brian S. Newell, Carson J. Bruns. 2022. Redox-switchable host–guest complexes of metallocenes and [8]cycloparaphenylene. In: Nanoscale. (Sept 7, 2022). 

JL Butterfield, GP Penoncello, KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. 2022. "A Photochromic Intradermal Smart Tattoo Based on Diarylethene-Doped Polystyrene Nanoparticles for Personal γ-Ray Dosimetry". In: ACS Applied Nano Materials.

KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. 2022. "Chemorheological Monitoring of Cross-Linking in Slide-Ring Gels Derived from a-Cyclodextrin Polyrotaxanes". In: Front. Chem. 

H Kwon, CJ Bruns. 2022. All-Conjugated Cycloparaphenylene-Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Host-Guest Complexes Stabilized by CH–π Interactions. In: Nano Research 2022, 15.

Xin Zhou, Hyejin Kwon, Richard R. Thompson, Robert J. Herman,  Frank R. Fronczek, Carson J. Bruns and Semin Lee. 2021. "Scalable synthesis of [8]cycloparaphenyleneacetylene carbon nanohoop using alkyne metathesis". In: Chemical Communications 2021. (Oct. 25, 2021).

KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. 2021. "Post-Synthesis Modification of Slide-Ring Gels for Thermal and Mechanical Reconfiguration". In: Soft Matter 2021, 17.

Purnendu, S Novack, E Acome, C Keplinger, M Alistar, MD Gross, C Bruns, D Leithinger. 2021. Electriflow: Soft Electrohydraulic Building Blocks for Prototyping Shape-changing Interfaces,  In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS ’21), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. (June 28-July 2, 2021–Virtual Event).

Purnendu, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mark D. Gross, Carson Bruns, Daniel Leithinger. 2021. Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators for Origami Inspired Shape-Changing Interfaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI '21 Extended Abstracts). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. (Yokohama, Japan–May 8-13, 2021).

A Parameswar, KV Dikshit, S Movafaghi, CJ Bruns, AP Goodwin. Mechanochemistry Activated Covalent Conjugation Reactions in Soft Hydrogels Induced by Interfacial Failure.ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 2021, 13, 1486–1492. (December 28, 2020).

Butterfield JL, Keyser SP, Dikshit KV, Kwon H, Koster MI, Bruns CJ. 2020. "Solar Freckles: Long-Term Photochromic Tattoos for Intradermal Ultraviolet Radiometry". In: ACS Nano. (October 27, 2020).

M Atreya, K Dikshit, G Marinick, J Nielson, C Bruns, GL Whiting. "Poly(lactic acid)-Based Ink for Biodegradable Printed Electronics With Conductivity Enhanced Through Solvent Aging". In: ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. (April 24, 2020).

Bruns, C. J. 2019. "Exploring and Exploiting the Symmetry-Breaking Effect of Cyclodextrins in Mechanomolecules. In: Symmetry.

Bruns, C. J. 2019. "The Rise of Smart Tattoos". In: TEDxMileHigh Blog.

CJ Bruns, JF Stoddart. 2016. "The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines. ISBN: 9781119044000.

CJ Bruns, H Liu, MB Francis. 2016. "Near-Quantitative Aqueous Synthesis of Rotaxanes via Bioconjugation to Oligopeptides and Proteins". In: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 

CJ Bruns, JF Stoddart. 2014. "Rotaxane-Based Molecular Muscles". In: Acc. Chem. Res. 

CJ Bruns, D Fujita, M Hoshino, S Sato, JF Stoddart, M Fujita. "Emergent Ion-Gated Binding of Cationic Host-Guest Complexes Within Cationic M12L24Molecular Flasks". In: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 

CJ Bruns, DJ Herman, JB Minuzzo, JA Lehrman, SI Stupp. "Rationalizing Molecular Design in the Electrodeposition of Anisotropic Lamellar Nanostructures". In: Chem. Mater.