Professor Devendorf soldering and weaving

ATLAS Professor Laura Devendorf Explores Innovations in Weaving at CHI 2023

May 16, 2023

Weaving has been a central craft in global culture for thousands of years—so ubiquitous that it often feels invisible. Laura Devendorf, ATLAS Unstable Design Lab Director, Information Science faculty member, is changing this perception by proving that weaving is very much a source of radical innovation, and inspiring others in...

Utility Research Lab team at their table

ATLAS Innovators Win Big at RepRap Festival

May 8, 2023

The first annual Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival (RMRRF) took place in Loveland, CO, and the ATLAS Utility Research Lab crew showed up in a big way. RepRap is a global movement focused on developing freely-available 3D printers that can produce most of their own components, with the goals of simplifying...

woman wearing tank-top style shirt made from kombucha scobe with led lights embedded

Kombucha chic: How one student uses microbes, and time, to grow her own clothes

May 4, 2023

Biodesign researcher Fiona Bell says that anyone, anywhere can grow their own clothing right from their kitchens. You start by brewing a batch of kombucha.

chi 2023 logo

CHI 2023 features works by 19 ATLAS community members

April 25, 2023

We are happy to announce that 19 members of the ATLAS community contributed to work accepted for the 2023 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, taking place in Hamburg, Germany, April 23–28. Accepting fewer than 25 percent of submissions, CHI is the premier international conference on human-computer...

Carson Bruns

Bruns lands prestigious NSF CAREER research award to usher in next generation of “smart tattoos”

April 4, 2023

Assistant Professor Carson Bruns has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research that investigates how the art of tattooing can incorporate the latest advances in nanotechnology to improve human health. The National Science Foundation CAREER Award recognizes exemplary faculty in the early stages of their career with...

grace leslie on right wearing eeg headband prepares for brain music performance

Can music heal? This artist and researcher wants to find out

Dec. 6, 2022

Electronic musician, flutist and researcher Grace Leslie believes that music touches something deep in the human brain—a hardwired need, perhaps, to sit around a fire or in a concert arena and feel connected to the people around us. Humans have been making music for longer than we’ve lived in cities and grown crops. “In most cultures, it’s used to draw people together,” says Leslie.

Robot staring straight ahead at  viewer

Interdisciplinary team receives $1.8 million for audacious robot-building project

Nov. 7, 2022

Robots help build cars, fly planes, fight wars and provide healthcare; they play a role in countless industries, but for the most part, they don't work in chemistry labs. A team of CU Boulder scientists plans to change that.

two cardboard tinycades side by side

How to turn throwaway cardboard into a DIY arcade game

July 22, 2022

Like many people across Colorado, Peter Gyory spent the height of the COVID-19 pandemic sitting at home with nothing to do. Then the ATLAS-based PhD candidate and game designer looked around his apartment: “I was surrounded by cardboard. I thought: ‘How could I make a game out of that?’”

The four projects presented by ATLAS at DIS'22

ATLAS research front and center at DIS’22

June 29, 2022

Researchers from ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design, THING, Living Matter and Superhuman Computing labs presented four papers, including three that received “Honorable Mention” awards, at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

An arm with illustrations added of different emotions, symbolizing the emotional effect of touch.

DIS'22: Exploring how designers approach emotional robotic touch

June 22, 2022

Prior psychology findings show humans can communicate distinct emotions solely through touch. In this award-winning work presented at DIS'22, THING Lab researchers hypothesize that similar effects might also be apply to robotic touch.

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