Outreach

This year, an interdisciplinary team of Senior Design students is the first at CU Boulder to enter the Collegiate Wind Competition as a learn-along team. They are working hard to secure a spot for CU Boulder in the competition next year and are making impressive strides in wind energy innovation and education.

Diseases of the blood, like sickle cell disease, have traditionally taken a full day, tedious lab work and expensive equipment to diagnose, but researchers across disciplines have developed a way to diagnose these conditions with greater precision in only one minute.

For three years, Air Quality Inquiry has been reaching K-12 students across rural Colorado. This year, Daniel Knight and his team extended the program across the globe to reach Public Lab Mongolia, a nonprofit whose mission is to make data available to the Mongolian public.

The challenges of COVID-19 have inspired innovation among staff, faculty and students, leading to the development of two summer programs for 38 participating students: the ME Summer Design Intensive and ME SPUR.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Potts, machine shop coordinator in the Idea Forge, joined many others in pursuing a new hobby: mask-making. He has made over 250 masks and plans to sew at least 100 more.

During February and March, over 250 mechanical engineering students trekked across the Front Range to tour one of 17 different companies. The tour series was a collaboration between Design Your Career and Instructor Janet Tsai’s manufacturing class.

As coronavirus cases mount in Colorado, several dozen 3D printers have roared back to life on the CU Boulder campus. They’re making personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers on the frontlines of the crisis.