Sept. 8, 2025 - ME Faculty & Staff Newsletter

Congratulations to Associate Professor Marina Vance for being recognized as an End Zone Innovator during the Buffs football game vs. Georgia Tech. The End Zone Innovator is a new award that recognizes a faculty member for their unique and outstanding achievements in research and creative work.

Vance is being recognized for over 20 years of scholarly commitment and high-impact air quality research.  

Congratulations to Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend for being selected as a 2025 Outstanding Postdoc Mentor of the Year Award recipient! The postdoc-nominated award recognizes faculty members who provide exceptional mentoring, training and leadership to postdoctoral scholars at CU Boulder.

Vriend is described by her nominators as an "unparalleled mentor who not only guides research but also creates a profoundly supportive environment" for postdocs in her lab.

The IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE GHTC 2025) is an international conference sharing effective approaches, best practices, and practical and/or scholarly technology-enabled interventions that address the needs of underserved communities in resource-constrained environments around the world. This cross-disciplinary conference provides the perfect venue for those interested in humanitarian engineering to join their peers in October 2025 at the Colorado School of Mines.

Poster session abstracts for this year's conference are being accepted until September 19. Click here to submit a poster abstract.

Early conference registration is open until September 30. Follow this link for more registration information.If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to Grace Burleson, who is the technical program co-chair for GTHC this year.

The ME Community Engagement & Outreach Committee is announcing the return of Community Engagement and Outreach Grants! This program seeks to fund new activities that help support and further our department's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mission.

Proposals up to $15,000 are due by Friday, September 19. Proposals up to $3,000 can be submitted throughout the year as funding allows. All ME faculty, staff and students are eligible to submit proposals.

Click here to review the full grant details and access the proposal form. There is a separate webform that is open for student society conference travel requests. For any questions or help getting a sense of what can be funded through a Community Engagement & Outreach Grant, please reach out to Katherine Ramos.

STEM Routes, a graduate student-led organization on campus that works to create an inclusive and supportive undergraduate STEM community, is looking for faculty members to join the STEM Routes Uplift Research Program for the 2025-2026 school year.

The goal of the program is to provide funds, mentorship and a sense of belonging during a student's first research experience. Student stipends are funded by the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as some incredibly generous labs on campus.

If you are interested in helping develop an undergraduate researcher this year, please follow this link and fill out the "Lab Application" form. The deadline to submit this form is September 20, 2025 at 5 p.m. MST. Please reach out to stem_routes@colorado.edu for any questions or concerns.

Weekly coffee breaks are continuing throughout the semester every Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m. in ECNT 114. Stop by for coffee, cookies and a chance to take a quick break and connect with colleagues!