Three CU Boulder faculty will lead projects awarded through the Department of Defense (DoD) competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. CU Boulder was matched only by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in receiving three MURI awards.

The projects were chosen from a pool of hundreds of applications and each team will receive an average award of $7.1 million over the next five years.

The CU Boulder MURI award winners are:

• Leanne Hirshfield, associate research professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS), who will research cognitive security and its mitigation;
• Konrad Lehnert, professor adjoint in Physics and JILA Fellow, will look at using quantum phononics to advance quantum information processing; and 
• Merritt Turetsky, professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Institute of Arctic & Alpine Research (INSTAAR) director, for work on chemical and microbial indicators to improve the monitoring and prediction of climate‐induced permafrost degradation across Alaska. 

The long-standing MURI program funds teams of investigators to bring together insights from multiple disciplines to make rapid advances in scientific areas of specific interest to the DoD. For the fiscal year 2023 competition, the Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Office of Naval Research called for proposals in two dozen topic areas of strategic importance to the Department. The result of their merit-based selection of award winners is a total of $220 million in grants to support 31 teams at over 60 U.S. academic institutions. 

Each MURI program team is comprised of researchers from multiple institutions, including one primary university assigned to head group efforts. In addition to CU Boulder’s three lead awards, the university also received one ‘sub-award’ for work on cavity molecular polaritons. Each of the lead grant recipients conducts research within one of the university’s twelve research institutes, which account for more than half of all sponsored research dollars at the university. 

The MURI grants are the latest example of CU Boulder’s nationally-recognized researchers being among the most productive in the nation, and making contributions to the university’s research and education missions and to local and area economies. 

“Topping the list of universities receiving 2023 MURI awards speaks volumes about the quality of our researchers and the work emanating from our campus, including our research institutes,” said Massimo Ruzzene, vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes. “We’re thrilled that our researchers are being recognized in this way and eager to see what they will accomplish with this funding.”