Academics

University of Colorado Boulder faculty and students are part of international science teams that made two of the top 10 breakthroughs in physics in 2012 as judged by Physics World magazine.

University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll likes to think in multiples. If one robot can accomplish a singular task, think how much more could be accomplished if you had hundreds of them. Correll and his computer science research team, including research associate Dustin Reishus and professional research assistant Nick Farrow, have developed a basic robotic building block, which he hopes to reproduce in large quantities to develop increasingly complex systems.

The University of Colorado Boulder will hold its winter commencement ceremony on Friday, Dec. 21, in the Coors Events Center on campus. The ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. and is free and open to the public. Due to traffic delays, and ongoing construction on U.S. 36 leading into Boulder, early arrival is strongly advised. Guests should plan to be seated by 9 a.m. People entering the events center are asked not to bring large purses or bags to the ceremony.

The perception of Congress as a gridlocked institution where little happens is overblown, according to new research by scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Washington. And the way much of Congress’ work gets done is through self-manufactured crises like the “fiscal cliff,” say political science professors Scott Adler of CU-Boulder and John Wilkerson of UW.

The University of Colorado Boulder today announced a new merit-based scholarship program to recognize top entering Colorado freshmen for outstanding academic achievement. Under the CU-Boulder Esteemed Scholars Program, a select group of entering Colorado resident freshmen will receive scholarships ranging from a total of $10,000 to $20,000 over four years based on a combination of their high school grade-point average and test scores.

A University of Colorado Boulder professor and her biomedical spinoff company Xalud Therapeutics Inc. of San Francisco are teaming up with a Front Range veterinarian to conduct a clinical study targeting an effective treatment for dogs suffering from chronic pain.

Gaping crevasses that penetrate upward from the bottom of the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula make it more susceptible to collapse, according to University of Colorado Boulder researchers who spent the last four Southern Hemisphere summers studying the massive floating sheet of ice that covers an area twice the size of Massachusetts.

A new partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business and the College of Engineering and Applied Science, spurred by a gift, will have positive implications for the construction and real estate industries.

More than 350 engineering students at the University of Colorado Boulder will demonstrate their innovations and inventions to the community at the annual fall Engineering Design Expo on Saturday, Dec. 8.

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has been awarded $9.2 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to research modifying E. coli to produce biofuels such as gasoline. “This is a fantastic opportunity to take what we have worked on for the past decade to the next level,” said team leader Ryan Gill, a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI. “In this project, we will develop technologies that are orders of magnitude beyond where we are currently.”