Emerging Innovations

This method not only addresses the reduction of fossil fuel consumption in wastewater treatment, but also utilizes the wastewater as both a carbon sink and energy source for active CO2 mitigation from sources such as flue gas.

Together with a team of innovators, Dr. Juliet Gopinath developed a fiber-based STED microscope that achieves super resolution while maintaining a compact footprint.

From the lab of CU Boulder professor Dr. Tam Vu comes Earable™—a small, in-ear worn device to help quantify and improve a user’s sleep.

Dr. Khurram Afridi, a former CU Boulder professor in Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, has developed a technology that allows devices to charge while in motion. This would allow cars, robots, or other electronics to charge without being fixed to a charger. In an exemplary application, Dr. Afridi can envision chargers built into roads to charge electric vehicles as they drive, or in warehouse floors to charge warehouse robots as they work.

Dr. Christopher Lowry and his research team have been working on developing new therapies for prevention of stress-related psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders, affective disorders and PTSD. This approach consists of exposures to certain mycobacteria, a genus of common and abundant environmental bacteria with immunoregulatory and anti- inflammatory properties.

Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are materials that convert a heat gradient into electricity and have been contemplated by engineers for nearly two centuries. They are solid-state materials that do not require cooling fluid, fuel, or moving parts. Various designs have been built and implemented in society today. However, those designs are found in niche fields such as space exploration and remote research facilities where sunlight or other fuel may be hard to come by and moving pieces could be detrimental.

Two of the biggest existential environmental threats to human survival on the planet are: 1) climate change due to excessive emission of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide); and 2) 10,000-year lifecycle plastic pollution. To address these issues simultaneously, without changing the entire economic ecosystem, and through an inexpensive, sustainable, and scalable technology, Dr. Prashant Nagpal’s lab has engineered living nano-organisms (called Nanobugs or Nanorgs).

A research group at CU Boulder, led by Dr. Marvin Caruthers and Dr. Subhadeep Roy, have established a novel silyl-based exocyclic amine protecting group that is compatible with boronation allowing the synthesis of bpDNA oligomers up to 20-25 nucleotide in length in yields and purity comparable to that of unmodified DNA.

CU Boulder researchers have developed an insulating gel — an aerogel based on nanotechnology — that can coat windows and insulate them by blocking infrared radiation (i.e. heat in the longer wavelengths).

Prof. William Medlen’s group has developed zeolite materials that are functionalized with a novel self-assembled monolayer (SAM). The synthesis of the functionalized zeolites is straightforward and uses low-cost, commercially available reagents. The gas diffusivity rate and adsorption properties of the functionalized zeolite can be tuned by varying the tail length of the SAM.