Carson Bruns

Carson Bruns directs the Synthetic, Emergent, and Animate Materials (SEAM) Lab at the ATLAS Institute, focused on materials innovation at all length scales. Microscopic tattoo pigments that record ultraviolet exposure from inside the skin, and that can be erased and redrawn with light. Adhesives and water-rich rubbers built from nano-pulleys, circular starch molecules that slide along a polymer chain and share the load instead of tearing. Compostable membranes that generate electricity where fresh water meets salt. Robots learning to work beside chemists at the bench.

A single thread runs under the field-hopping: teaching matter tricks it will not perform on its own, each trick a little more lifelike than the last, at a larger scale than the last. Trained as an organic chemist, Bruns co-authored The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines (Wiley, 2016) with the late Nobel laureate Sir Fraser Stoddart, a 761-page reference on molecules entangled so that they behave as the world's smallest machines. Since joining CU Boulder in 2017 he has carried that machinery into biomedical engineering, soft-matter mechanics, sustainable energy, human-robot collaboration, and interaction design. The American Chemical Society selected him to represent the theme "interdisciplinary" in its 150th anniversary film series.

Some of the work has left the laboratory. With the tattoo artist Keith "Bang Bang" McCurdy he brought Magic Ink, the first rewritable tattoo ink, through clinical testing to market in 2025, and his company HYPRSKN is developing an implantable sun protectant. His TEDx talk on smart tattoos, and the work behind it, have been covered by CNN, NPR, and the History Channel.

He teaches Color, a studio course on the science and craft of color, and Chemistry for Materials and Energy Science. He was educated at Luther College and Northwestern University, and was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley before coming to Colorado.

More of his work, including things that are not science, is at carsonbruns.com.

Projects

• Smart Tattoos
• Magic Ink
• Nano-Pulley Materials
• Osmotic Power
• RoboChemistry
• Soft Interfaces
• Cybernetic Human Enhancement
• Plastic Fertilizer

Select Publications

Book

Carson J. Bruns and J. Fraser Stoddart. 2016. "The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines". John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 

Papers

Carson J. Bruns, M. Stockton, E. Gardner, Hyejin Kwon. 2026. "Multicolor photochromic nanoparticle inks for light-rewritable intradermal smart tattoos." In: Matter & Light.

K. McCurdy, Jesse L. Butterfield, Hyejin Kwon, E. Gardner, M. Jordan, M. Ganser, M. J. Mouncer, J. Osis, C. Clement, Adarsh V. Mudgil, Carson J. Bruns. 2026. "Clinical evaluation of photochromic nanoparticle tattoo ink: safety, tolerability, and performance of rewritable intradermal implants." In: Journal of Nanobiotechnology. (July 2, 2026).

Subhankar Mandal, Ignacio Lorente Montero, Aseem M. Visal, Carson J. Bruns. 2026. "Asymmetric doping of a polyelectrolyte network into a tough slide-ring hydrogel membrane to enhance sustainable osmotic energy harvesting." In: Small Science. (July 9, 2026).

Subhankar Mandal, S. Assadi, Aseem M. Visal, Ignacio Lorente Montero, Franck J. Vernerey, Carson J. Bruns. 2026. "Synergistic dual slip-link toughening of a water-rich double network hydrogel." In: Advanced Science. (May 5, 2026).

Diane 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, 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). (June 28-July 2, 2021–Virtual Event).

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).

Patent

K. McCurdy, C. Bruns, J. Butterfield, J. Osis. "Electronic multi-lamp pen for activating photo-responsive materials." U.S. Patent 12,144,953. (November 19, 2024.)

Full publication list at carsonbruns.com and on Google Scholar.