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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).

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Catalyze ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ is a highly selective, summer-long startup accelerator that combines world-class mentorship, funding and dedicated co-working space. The program helps the most promising ventures from across the ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder campus reach escape velocity–providing some funding without taking any equity. 

CHROMAPRAXIS, a tattoo ink innovation company with research developed in the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab and founded by Assistant Professor Carson Bruns and Jesse Butterfield, a mechanical engineering PhD student, has been accepted. The company has two product lines:

• Dermadaptive Ink enables tattoo artists to pioneer a new form of body art as dynamic as the body itself, with color-changing pigments that morph tattoos’ appearance in different lighting. 
• Invelanin Ink lowers skin aging and skin cancer risk by providing permanent, invisible sun protection. Unlike sunscreen, a one-time, minimally invasive Invelanin procedure provides years of protection without ever making the skin sticky, oily, or shiny. 

Also accepted is LoopSketch, a remote, real-time collaborative software platform for "sketching" musical ideas with friends using user-recorded loops, AI-recommended loops and AI-created loops.  With research developed by ATLAS PhD Student Darren Sholes in the ACME Lab, LoopSketch focuses on group flow and brainstorming, allowing for a remote experience that feels more like an in-person jam session. It makes it possible for musicians in different locations to collaborate and quickly build rich, multilayered recordings. Sholes pitched LoopSketch to judges during ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s New Venture Challenge 14 Prize Night on March 17, winning first place in the newcomer competition (event video ), which came with $5,000 in funding. 

Catalyze ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ has helped founding teams go from idea to impact, and from prototype to production. Catalyze alumni have a strong track record of being accepted to top tier accelerators like Techstars, raising funding, winning grants and launching successful Kickstarters.  participants will be with a cohort of other highly performing teams.  

ATLAS Board of Advisors member Kyle Kuczun is one of the coaches for this cohort.

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