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Two groups of CU Boulder mechanical engineering seniors at Western Colorado University (WCU) designed equipment for Mountain Rescue volunteers who navigate Colorado’s rugged backcountry. The projects, sponsored by the Western Mountain Rescue Team, were developed by students in the WCU-CU Boulder Engineering Partnership Program. As part of their senior design course, they aimed to solve real challenges faced during wilderness rescues.
Three engineering students at Colorado Mesa University (CMU), including students earning their bachelor’s degrees through the CMU-CU Boulder Engineering Partnership Program, designed and tested a custom ankle foot orthotic (AFO)—a wearable brace intended to better serve drop foot patients by improving stability, comfort and mobility.
Asaiah Gifford, a mechanical engineering student graduating this spring, has been selected by the Colorado Engineering Council to receive this year’s Silver Medal Award. One of the state’s top honors for undergraduate engineers, the Silver Medal recognizes students who embody the values of academic excellence, personal integrity, professionalism and community service.
Nine students from the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering have earned graduating student awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2026. These awards honor seniors who are nominated by faculty, staff or fellow students for their outstanding contributions to the college and campus community.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized Blake Maly, a graduate student in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder, with a Graduate Research Fellowship Program award. These major awards honor and support outstanding graduate students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.
A tightly packed ball of office staples can be surprisingly strong. Try to pull it apart and the tangled metal resists like a solid object. But with the right movement or vibration, that same bundle can quickly fall back into loose pieces. A team of engineers and materials scientists in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder are exploring how this uncanny combination of strength and flexibility could inspire a new class of materials built on interlocking particles.
The Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering graduate program at CU Boulder was ranked 14th amongst public institutions for 2026-27, according to U.S. News and World Report’s Best Graduate Schools rankings. Up three spots from last year, the program continues to build on its growing national reputation.
Associate Research Professor Daniel Knight and Professor Michael Hannigan are leading an outreach program that connects CU Boulder students with rural high schools to introduce hands-on engineering experiences in the classroom. The initiative, known as the Science and Engineering Inquiry Collaborative (SCENIC), serves 12 schools and nearly 700 high school students across rural Colorado each year, turning local questions about air and soil quality into real-world research projects.
The CU Boulder Graduate School has announced that Assistant Professor Cara Welker has earned one of this year's Exceptional Graduate Faculty Mentor Awards. The award honors faculty members for their outstanding contributions either to mentoring individual graduate students, improving the overall climate of graduate education within their program, or improving the graduate program itself.
PhD student Rylan Hodgson recently created a video that won the American Physical Society's (APS) 2026 Gallery of Soft Matter contest at the APS Global Physics Summit. The video demonstrates a unique view of the dynamics of granular flow with a rolling drum experiment that could one day be used to reveal key information about the mechanics and behavior of avalanches.