Professor Iain Boyd, standing at right, and his group work on a problem together. Boyd serves as the director of the Hypersonic Vehicles IRT.The College of Engineering and Applied Science will host a research blitz and poster session featuring work from within the interdisciplinary research themes from 3 - 6 p.m. on April 12 in the DLC lobby and first floor meeting spaces.
The event will include presentations from each IRT director from 3 - 4:30 p.m. with a poster and networking session to follow. Posters will describe seed grant funded research or related projects in each theme and will be presented by undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty.
Interdisciplinary Research Themes in the college are made up of faculty, staff and students. They help researchers coordinate faculty hires, share facilities and use seed funding to leverage work that could provide transformational societal impact. The five current interdisciplinary research themes in the college are:
- Resilient Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RISE): This IRT explores holistic actions to address the many drivers of urban disaster risk worldwide, while simultaneously addressing environmental sustainability and social equity challenges. Specifically, this IRT converges and leverages new developments and world-class expertise in disaster resilience, sustainable design, and social justice across engineering and the CU Boulder campus.
- Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning: The scope of this theme includes research in engineering and computing education and assessment, as well as AI/machine learning and the convergence between those areas. One key goal is to develop the theories, technologies, and know-how for advancing student-centered learning and creating next-generation learning environments in K-16, graduate, and professional engineering and computing education.
- Hypersonic Vehicles: This IRT centers on hypersonic vehicles which are used for space exploration, national security and perhaps for passenger transport in the future. The design of these flying vehicles involves consideration of a number of complex, closely interrelated areas including aerodynamics, propulsion, materials, structures, controls and optimization.
- Autonomous Systems (ASIRT): This IRT investigates how smart, safe, and secure autonomy can expand and exploit the full capabilities of these networked systems. This theme convenes faculty with expertise in robotics, cyber-security, verification and validation, control theory, artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, machine learning, formal methods and human-robot interaction.
- Multi-Functional Materials: Aims to establish the science of integration of materials that metabolize energy into distributed sensing, actuation and computation. This theme develops artificial systems with biological properties by bringing together campus researchers from across the domains of biology, physics, computer science, material science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.
The event is free and open to anyone in the college, including staff. Registration can be done online in advance and questions can be sent to Catie Gibson in the Research Support Office by email.