Praised by their graduate students for their scientific competence, work ethic, creativity and compassion, two ATLAS professors received Outstanding Faculty Mentor awards from ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s Graduate school on May 3, an honor bestowed this year on only 18 faculty members campus-wide.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor of computer science and director of the ACME Lab, and Carson Bruns, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the  Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, were both honored for outstanding contributions to mentoring individual graduate students and the quality of their interactions with them.

Their nomination materials showcased their many contributions in mentoring graduate students and supporting the mission of graduate education, while supporting their students’ career development and individual growth.

Carson Bruns
Bruns’ research focuses on emergent nanomaterials—engineering matter at the smallest of scales to create materials with particular properties. His group has received wide recognition for its work on “smart tattoos," which have the potential to impart new properties to skin.
 
Jesse Butterfield, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD candidate and alumnus of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, said that Bruns regularly comes up with “brilliant ideas for impactful scientific work.” One such idea—the use of invisible tattoo inks to protect skin from UV light and the cancers it causes—forms the backbone of Butterfield’s PhD studies.
 
“He spends more time with his grad students than any other advisor that I’m aware of, and with some of them by orders of magnitude,” Butterfield said. “He gives each of us his full attention.”
 
Bruns always pushes his students to work on their career goals, even when it slows progress within the lab, Butterfield adds, including when two students wanted to take time out to intern with companies of interest, and when Butterfield wanted to teach an undergraduate class. 
 
Butterfield said Bruns’ kindness has been unwavering since they began working together in 2017.  “I give the strongest recommendation possible for awarding Carson, in large part due to his capabilities and strengths in his work, but also for his personal qualities, which allow him to continuously raise up the people around him. He is one of those rare people who constantly makes those around him better.”
 

Ellen Yi-Luen Do
In Ellen Do’s ACME Lab, students are engaged in a wide range of projects, from alternative game control, to immersive musical jam sessions, to robotics for wellness, to visual analytics, toys to promote child development and generative art.
 
Despite the breadth of their work, she tells her nine PhD and two master’s students that she is always available: “only an email or door away.”
 
And on any given day, the ACME Lab is a busy central hub, buzzing and flowing with undergraduate and graduate students, says ATLAS PhD Student Sandra Bae. “Ellen has cultivated a lab culture where her students warmly welcome any student interested in research to join our weekly lab meetings, directly mentor undergraduate or master’s students for their capstone projects or simply invite others to socialize. She understands the importance of a social support system where the lab functions as a family.”
 
Bae points out that Do is excellent at harnessing and directing the interests of her students. “Her mentoring strength comes from how observant she is,” says Bae. 
 
“As a PhD advisee of Ellen’s, her influence is imprinted on my life,” Bae said. “She is my academic mentor, who listened to my first conference presentation five times in a row; my senior, who taught me how to treat friends and myself with compassion; my spiritual leader, who motivates me with her delightful energy; my personal role model, who helps me, another Asian-American woman, be more confident that I belong and can succeed in academia.”

Fiona Bell, ATLAS PhD student, member of the Living Matter Lab; Dissertation Completion Fellowship, (one academic semester of financial support).

Carson Bruns, assistant professor, ATLAS Institute & Mechanical Engineering; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do, professor, ATLAS Institute & Computer Science; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.

Sasha de Koninck, PhD candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance, member of the Unstable Design Lab; Graduate School Summer Fellowship ($6,000); Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

Varsha Koushik, PhD'22, Computer Science, member of the Superhuman Computing Lab; First-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition Winner.

Anthony Pinter,  PhD'22, Information Science, ATLAS lecturer and incoming teaching assistant professor; Second-place, Three-Minute Thesis Competition winner.

Purnendu, ATLAS PhD student; Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant ($1,000).

Off

Off

Eight PhD students affiliated with the ATLAS Institute recently received Graduate School awards to support their outstanding research and creative work. 

Katie Gach received a summer fellowship, providing a summer stipend to support her dissertation research on how people manage post-mortem social media data.

Keke Wu received the Ray Hauser award to support her data accessibility research. For her pioneering work, Wu recently won a Best Paper award from the 2021 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Wu is also a member of the VisuaLab.

Fiona Bell received a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant. Bell, who took home a top award from the 15th ACM International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) Student Design Challenge for her  project, is a member of the Living Matter Lab. She also completed a prestigious internship with , assisting with the development of self-cleaning textiles.

Kailey Shara, a researcher in the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, received a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant for her research on laboratory automation systems. Shara recently took home top awards from both NVC14 and the New Venture Launch class for her laboratory automation startup, Chembotix.

Dreycey Albin, an affiliated ATLAS student and a researcher in the Living Matter Lab, received a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant.

Gabriella Johnson and Varsha Koushik, affiliated ATLAS students and researchers in the Superhuman Computing Labs, were donor award recipients; Koushik also received the Hope Schultz Jozsa Award and a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant.

Sasha Novack, a researcher in the Living Matter Lab, received a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant.

Off