News
Imagine a world where robots flawlessly detect everyone in a conversation group and also greet the newcomers. Described in a paper published in the March proceedings of the prestigious International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '22), Hooman Hedayati (PhD computer science '20) and Daniel Szafir, assistant professor of computer science at UNC Chapel Hill and former ATLAS faculty member, proposed a method to overcome situations when conversational group (F-formation) detection algorithms fail.
For the second year running, Creative Technology and Design students won first place at the largest university hackathon in the Rocky Mountain region, HackCU, held this year March 5-6 on the CU Boulder campus. Another student, whose two majors include CTD and computer science, took second place this year as the sole member of his team.
Museum of Boulder’s new exhibit, Voces Vivas: Stories from the Latino Community in Boulder County, Past and Present features Andrea Fautheree Márquez's thesis project, "Chicana Light," which explores the Chicano civil rights movement in Colorado.
Kailey Shara, an ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and her team, won third place and $1,000 for Chembotix robotic automation platform. Annie Margaret, teaching assistant professor with the ATLAS Institute, and her team, placed fourth with Digital Wellness x NoSo November.
A Q&A with Ondine Geary by Shoutout Colorado. "I make dances that are scrappy, unruly and resourceful. They slip themselves into the crevices between genres and insist on using whatever was lost down there–chicken bones, loose wires, half-retrieved memories."
ATLAS PhD student Fiona Bell is passionate about sustainability; her doctoral dissertation tackles how to reduce waste through encouraging intimate relationships between designers, the materials they use and the artifacts they develop. In recognition of her work, Bell recently received financial support to help complete her thesis through a Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship.
A group of six artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to BLDG 61’s Maker Made 2022, which runs through March 28 at the Boulder Public Library. Zack Weaver, who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab and the show’s curator, says the inspiration for Maker Made goes back to his days at Carnegie Mellon with ATLAS Director Mark Gross.
Varsha Koushik, an ATLAS affiliated PhD student and a member of the Superhuman Computing Lab, won the Three-Minute Thesis Competition. Anthony Pinter, an incoming teaching assistant professor (starting fall 2022) in the ATLAS Institute and a PhD candidate in information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, was a runner-up.
Layne Hubbard (PhD CS, Cog Sci and Neurosci '21) recently joined forces with the Digital Learning Lab and PBSKids on an effort to develop artificial intelligence for the TV show “Elinor Wonders Why.” Hubbard was an affiliated ATLAS PhD student; Mark Gross, ATLAS director and professor of computer science, served on Hubbard's PhD advisory committee.
