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Radically Interdisciplinary Research on Display at ATLAS Open House

Oct. 11, 2023

Some of the most valuable research takes place in the overlaps, intersections and margins. At ATLAS, we aim to find and explore more of these often-overlooked areas to uncover surprising discoveries.

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How this celebrity tattoo artist created a tattoo you can turn on and off at will

Oct. 3, 2022

Bang Bang—who has inked the likes of Rihanna and LeBron—teamed up with research scientists Carson Bruns and Jesse Butterfield to develop a new kind of light-sensitive ink.

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Ellen Yi-Luen Do and Carson Bruns win graduate school awards for outstanding mentorship

May 4, 2022

Praised by their graduate students for their scientific competence, work ethic, creativity and compassion, two ATLAS professors received Outstanding Faculty Mentor awards from CU Boulder’s Graduate School on May 3, an honor bestowed this year on only 18 faculty members campus-wide.

kailey shara is presented $45000 check the top award at nvc 2022

ATLAS PhD candidate Kailey Shara wins top award in NVC 2022

April 15, 2022

First-place New Venture Challenge winner, Chembotix, was awarded $45,000 for its work on speeding up the pace of chemistry research and development. Making molecules in current laboratory settings is typically time-consuming and dangerous; Kailey Shara's automation makes the process faster and safer.

An origami butterfly

Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation

Jan. 31, 2022

SIGGRAPH sat down with Purnendu, a PhD student in the ATLAS Institute and a researcher at Meta Reality Labs, to talk about his team’s SIGGRAPH 2021 Labs project, “Electriflow: Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation Using Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators.” The team's actuator technology strives to augment animation within physical books.

Two arms showing a CU tattoo on one arm and numbers on another, illuminated by UV light.

High-tech tattoos may help prevent skin cancer

Nov. 15, 2021

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."

a paper butterfly that is lifting off the page

Origami comes to life with new shape-changing materials

July 22, 2021

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.

LoopSketch logo on top with Chromapraxis on the bottom.

ATLAS research spins off to Catalyze CU

June 21, 2021

Two teams from the ATLAS Institute were selected to participate in Catalyze CU, a highly selective, summer-long startup accelerator that combines world-class mentorship, funding and dedicated co-working space.

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ATLAS @ CHI 2021

May 14, 2021

ATLAS researchers have 10 published works and one special interest group associated with the CHI 2021 conference, the world’s preeminent conference for the field of human-computer interaction. Held virtually, CHI 2021, also known as ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, took place May 8-13.

Carson Bruns

Assistant Professor Carson Bruns receives Advanced Industries Accelerator Grant from the Colorado OEDIT

Dec. 2, 2020

Assistant Professor Carson Bruns received $142,080 from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT)'s Advanced Industries Accelerator Grant Program for the project, Invisible Melanin: Permanent Transparent Tattoos that Reduce Skin Cancer and Aging Rates.

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