Science

Mining the Moon: A New Era of Commercial Space Exploration

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:49:47 +0000

Mining the Moon: A New Era of Commercial Space Exploration Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:49

Kelsey Yandura

Elizabeth Frank (PhDGeol’14) is helping pave the way for a new era of space exploration and commerce as the chief scientist at Interlune, a Seattle-based startup aiming to become the first private company to harvest the Moon’s natural resources, namely the stable isotope helium-3.

This useful gas, while rare on Earth, is abundant on the Moon and sought after for its uses in medical imaging, nuclear fusion research, quantum computing and more. For the extraction and transportation of the isotope, Interlune plans to build a lunar harvester that the company would fly via spacecraft to the Moon.

What is the vision in terms of the future of space mining and space commerce?

We are trying to find novel ways to leverage the commercial space sector for planetary exploration. What makes people excited about Interlune is that even though we have this vision that seems kind of sci-fi, we have actual customers on Earth in areas like quantum computing, medical imaging and national security. There is an actual demand.

Your PhD was in planetary geochemistry at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. What led you to Boulder?

There’s an incredible space community in Boulder — a lot of interdisciplinary work among ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ departments and organizations like LASP and the Southwest Research Institute. When I was touring ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, I was handed a list of planetary scientists in Boulder that was upwards of 50 people. I thought, “Oh my gosh, there’s just so much going on.”

Your work seems to challenge the idea that industries exist in a silo. Can you talk more about your multidisciplinary approach?

When you’re a PhD student, you are expected to be a specialist. But I don’t actually identify anymore as a specialist. I’m a generalist — I have a PhD in planetary geochemistry, but I’ve also worked in spacecraft engineering, mining consulting, business development and more. To move humanity forward, you need people like me to stitch the specialists’ work together in new and exciting ways.

What topics in the field have been piquing your interest these days?

Ethics and sustainability are really top of mind. The mining industry has a long legacy of harming both people and the environment. I think that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. We want to be intentional and thoughtful about how we use technology and extract space resources for human use.

Any thoughts or advice for recent graduates?

I think PhD students and graduates should know that just because you got your degree in one topic, doesn’t mean you have to stay in that field. You can redirect your career in unexpected and exciting ways. Stay open to opportunities and take them — you never know where they’ll lead you.

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Photo courtesy Elizabeth Frank

Elizabeth Frank (PhDGeol’14) is helping pave the way for a new era of space exploration and commerce as the chief scientist at Interlune, a Seattle-based startup aiming to become the first private company to harvest the Moon’s natural resources.

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The Making of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Quantum Valley

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:42:06 +0000

The Making of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Quantum Valley Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:42

Dan Strain

Qizhong Liang (PhDPhys’25) squeezes around a worktable tucked into the back corner of a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ physics lab. Spread out in front of him is an intricate arrangement of mirrors, lenses and tubes. But what draws Liang’s attention is what seems to be an empty plastic bag.

“Want to guess what it is?” asks Liang, a doctoral student at JILA, a joint research institute between ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The bag isn’t, in fact, empty but contains something almost precious: breath. Researchers at Children’s Hospital ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ collected the sample from a child hospitalized with pneumonia. Liang’s tabletop apparatus will generate a powerful laser, known as a frequency comb, to scan the breath sample and identify the unique chemical fingerprints of the molecules floating inside.

Ultimately, Liang and his colleagues hope the laser can serve as a tool to diagnose children with asthma and pneumonia.

But he and his advisor, Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97), aren’t medical professionals. They’re researchers working at the forefront of a field called quantum physics, or the study of matter and energy at its most fundamental level, which deals in the bizarre behavior of things like atoms and electrons.

“This is brand new stuff,” said Liang. He notes that transforming such fundamental science into new technologies is thrilling, but also lonely. “You don’t have many [other experts] to talk to,” he said.

Yet the discipline may soon be a lot less lonely. Across the country, and particularly in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, the momentum around quantum physics is gathering speed. Scientists and engineers are channeling their understanding of the field into technologies that could improve people’s lives.

“It’s a natural progression of the revolution that’s been ongoing since the 1960s,” said Ye, a JILA and NIST fellow and a professor adjoint of physics. “We are just getting faster.”

In ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ alone, quantum technology companies employ roughly 3,000 people, a number that may jump to more than 10,000 across the Mountain West over the next decade, according to one estimate. Sitting at the center of this revolution is ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, where researchers have spent decades trying to lasso the quantum realm — earning four Nobel Prizes in physics in the process. The university has launched a suite of programs to turn quantum advancements into real-world technologies. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ is also nearly unmatched among public universities when it comes to training students to become the next generation of quantum workers.

“The reason the state of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ has been so successful in quantum has been ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder,” said Heather Lewandowski (PhDPhys’02), a JILA fellow and professor in the Department of Physics. “It goes back to our foundational research and to our training and preparation of students.”

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s quantum future

This year marked a milestone for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and the Mountain West in the global race for quantum innovation and leadership. In July, the coalition Elevate Quantum unlocked more than $127 million in federal and state funding for quantum advancements.

Elevate Quantum is a consortium of 120 organizations across ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, New Mexico and Wyoming (ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder is the powerhouse partner), with the mission of growing the Mountain West’s prowess as a global leader in the quantum industry.

After applying to the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Tech Hubs program, the coalition gained its official Tech Hub designation in 2023. Only 31 out of nearly 200 consortia were awarded the designation and could proceed to the program’s second phase: competing for implementation grants. In July, the federal government named Elevate Quantum one of the 12 Tech Hubs that would be awarded funding.

“It’s been a wild year,” said Scott Sternberg, executive director of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶbit Quantum Initiative, which “convenes, coordinates and catalyzes” the quantum activities on campus. “The challenge is now to continue the fundamental discovery while also engineering quantum products and solutions for economic gain.”

The potential applications are vast. Ye, for example, leads a $25 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation called Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE). The bread and butter of his lab are atomic clocks — devices that tell time not with gears and hands, but by tracking the natural behavior of electrons. They’re so precise they can measure the change in gravity if you lift them up by just a fraction of a millimeter. One day, he envisions that scientists could use similar quantum devices to, for example, track magma flow deep below Yellowstone National Park, the site of a supervolcano.

Recently, he and his colleagues made groundbreaking work on a type of atomic clock known as a nuclear clock. It uses lasers to trigger, then measure, extremely small shifts in energy occurring within the nuclei of thorium atoms.

Another team of engineers at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ is using frequency comb lasers, similar to those in Ye’s lab, to detect methane leaks above oil and gas operations. Still others are using quantum sensors to map out the activity of the human brain and even search for elusive dark matter — the seemingly invisible substance that binds the universe together.

Quantum work is now expanding on ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s East Campus as well, in an initiative funded by the NSF and led by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Scott Diddams, professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering. The $20 million grant will launch a new facility, the National Quantum Nanofab, where researchers and quantum specialists from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ and around the country can prototype and build new quantum technology.

The university is also helping to bring something else to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ: the next generation of quantum experts.

Quantum leaders of tomorrow

Denali Jah (EngrPhys’25), a senior studying engineering physics and applied math, found his way to physics in high school. He was having a hard time at home, and his physics teacher noticed and made a point of showing Jah how exciting science could be.

“I really appreciated his approach to life in general — it was one of curiosity,” Jah said.

In 2023, Jah joined the university’s first-ever cohort of Quantum Scholars, one of several ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ programs encouraging students to take an interest in quantum physics. As part of that program, Jah and fellow undergrad Annaliese Cabra (Math’23) helped to organize the university’s first Quantum Hackathon, in which teams of students compete against each other to solve tricky problems in quantum computing.

Another ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ experience, the Quantum Forge, is a year-long course offered through the university’s Department of Physics. It partners students with real quantum businesses in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. Over the span of a year, the students lead a hands-on project for those businesses, such as designing components for an advanced cooling machine known as a “dilution refrigerator.”

Lewandowski, a member of the university’s Physics Education Research Group, noted that the quantum industry is in its infancy — companies are still trying to get a handle on what kind of employees they’ll need. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, she said, trains students to be flexible in the field.

“Students can still have their core engineering or physics degree, but you supplement that with a few quantum technology courses, and that can make you very employable,” said Lewandowski.

Jah, for his part, wants to use his new skills to study quantum loop gravity, a trippy theory that seeks to explain how gravity works. He said that quantum physics takes a lot of work, but it’s a path that anyone can follow — as long as they have enough wonder.

“I hope other people can engage in this exploratory process of: How does the world work? Let’s see,” Jah said.

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Illustrations by Brian Stauffer

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and Elevate Quantum partners are ready for $127M regional quantum boost. Here’s how it’s all coming together.

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How Ancient Viruses Fuel Modern-Day Disease

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:23:01 +0000

How Ancient Viruses Fuel Modern-Day Disease Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 10:23

Lisa Marshall

Peek inside the human genome and, among the 20,000 or so genes that serve as building blocks of life, you’ll find flecks of DNA left behind by viruses that infected our primate ancestors tens of millions of years ago.

Scientists have long considered these ancient hitchhikers, known as endogenous retroviruses, as inert or "junk" DNA that were rendered harmless millennia ago. But new ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ research shows that, when reawakened, they can play a critical role in helping cancer survive and thrive. The study also suggests that silencing certain endogenous retroviruses can make cancer treatments work better.

“Our study shows that diseases today can be significantly influenced by these ancient viral infections that, until recently, very few researchers were paying attention to,” said Edward Chuong, an assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute.

After slipping into the cells of our primate ancestors, these invaders coaxed their unknowing hosts into copying and carrying their genetic material — passing their DNA on to future generations.

While endogenous retroviruses can no longer sicken their hosts or spread like live viruses, they can act as switches that turn on nearby genes, with both good and bad results.

On the plus side, they contributed to the development of the placenta, a critical milestone in human evolution. Chuong’s research also shows they can switch on genes that help us fight infection.

However, endogenous retroviruses also have a dark side.

Chuong’s latest study found that a lineage known as LTR10 is remarkably active in about a third of colon cancer tumors, where it appears to fire up genes that inflame cancer.

The good news: When those viral relics are silenced, the cancer-promoting genes go dark too, and tumor-shrinking treatments become more effective.

As a leading researcher in the burgeoning field, Chuong hopes that by better understanding these oft-neglected bits of the genome, scientists can come up with new ways to treat modern-day illnesses.

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Photo by Glenn Asakawa

Tens of millions of years ago, ancient viruses infected our primate ancestors, leaving flecks of DNA that made their way into the human genome. A new study suggests these “endogenous retroviruses” may not be as harmless as once believed.

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards Bring Magic to the Science Classroom

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards Bring Magic to the Science Classroom Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/16/2024 - 00:00

Jessica Winter

One Saturday per month throughout the academic year, children and their families gather at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder to witness the magic of science — hosted by the university’s very own “wizards.”

The ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards program, a free science-education experience for children, unofficially began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ physics professor John Taylor, the original “Mr. Wizard,” started presenting two to three children’s science shows each year on campus. Eventually, he began traveling to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ schools and presenting his science shows up to 20 times per year.

In 1987, after years of sharing his passion for science with others, Taylor handed the torch to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ professor David Nesbitt, a Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow and current director of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards. Since that time, the program has expanded in funding, frequency and faculty. The monthly show typically boasts over 400 attendees and has been attended by more than 100,000 children and family members over the past 37 years.

“The shows have a different sort of energy than a kids-only class because parents also participate,” said the program’s coordinator Candice Brown in an article she penned for NIST on ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards. “It’s the perfect combination — an enthusiastic young audience plus the [adults] who get the chance to be kids again — all eager, curious and interested in learning.”

While the program has grown and flourished under the leadership of Nesbitt, the “Chief Wizard,” it is still centered on Taylor’s philosophy of science education: we cannot have science without joy.

“Joy and curiosity are the fundamental reasons each of us studies science,” said Nesbitt. “Kids are naturally curious and excited about learning new things. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards is a perfect venue for professors and their graduate students to expose young scientific minds to their own joy and delight in science.”

And the program does more than entertain — it’s also helping children to view themselves as scientists. In a 2022 survey of 120 adults and children who have attended presentations, 84 percent responded that ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards allowed children to better identify with scientists.

Nesbitt describes the program as “running on a special kind of magic: the goodwill of a fantastic community.” From the professors who volunteer time to prepare the presentations, to the staff, postdocs and students, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards involves a whole community dedicated to sharing the magic of science.

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Photos courtesy ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards

For over three decades, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Wizards has engaged and informed children about the wonders of science.

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New Padding Innovation Could Revolutionize Helmet Safety

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

New Padding Innovation Could Revolutionize Helmet Safety Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/16/2024 - 00:00

Daniel Strain

Football players (and anyone else who takes hard hits) may want to breathe a sigh of relief. Engineers at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and Sandia National Laboratories have been hard at work researching and developing a new design for padding that can withstand powerful impacts.

“If you’re riding your bike and get into a crash, you don’t know if that’s going to be a low-speed impact or a high-speed impact. But regardless, you expect your helmet to perform well,” said Robert MacCurdy, assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. “We’re trying to develop a geometry that performs well under all of those scenarios.”

The team’s innovations, which can be printed on commercially available 3D printers, could one day wind up in everything from shipping crates to football pads — anything that helps to protect fragile objects from the bumps of life.

“Impact mitigation is something that’s important everywhere,” said MacCurdy. “It’s in highway crash barriers, knee pads and elbow pads, and in packaging equipment.”

Currently, some of the most common types of padding materials are foams, which are filled with tiny holes and channels, such as packing peanuts or stress balls. Foams can absorb a lot of force, but if you squeeze them hard enough, they will compress down into a rigid wad. MacCurdy and his colleagues wanted to develop cushioning that would provide protection, regardless of the force of impact.

The group’s new designs look a bit like the cells in a honeycomb. When you squeeze them, the cells collapse, but always following a careful pattern.

Everyday risks may soon be greatly reduced. The researchers put their designs to the test in labs, reporting that the padding could absorb roughly six times more force than standard foams made out of the same material.

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Photos courtesy Wikipedia and Lawrence Smith

New kinds of padding could make football gear, bike helmets safer than ever.

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Leslie Leinwand & The Science of Getting Things Done

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Leslie Leinwand & The Science of Getting Things Done Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/16/2024 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

Some might say the cards were stacked against Leslie Leinwand.

At age five, the precocious kindergartner was plucked from her Manhattan home and transplanted to the one-stoplight town of York, South Carolina, after the sudden death of her father, an internal medicine doctor. Her mother remarried a man who told young Leinwand repeatedly that, “girls didn’t need to go to college.” Then, when she was 13, tragedy took her mother and she was sent to live with extended family.

Leinwand persisted, landing at a small college in North Carolina where an astute professor noticed her interest in science and insisted she take a summer organic chemistry course at Cornell University.

“That’s when my somewhat sad story changed,” she recalls, now seated in her spacious office at the glistening, $210-million biotech facility she helped bring to life. “All because I had this fantastic professor.”

Today, Leinwand is a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and the chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. She has achieved what many scientists only dream about: turning a seed of scientific inquiry into a multibillion-dollar company that saves lives — more than once.

Leinwand stayed at Cornell and helped pay her way through by working as a fraternity house waitress. She later earned her PhD in genetics from Yale and served on the faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine for 15 years before landing in Boulder in 1995.

Throughout this time, one fundamental question drove her research: What genes and proteins are responsible for making the heart function properly, and what causes this complex machine to break down in some people?

“She is very special. When she discovers things in her lab, she doesn’t stop there,” said Nobel laureate and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry Tom Cech, who has known Leinwand for three decades. “She works tirelessly, doing whatever it takes, to make something happen that will impact patients.”

Healing a big, sick heart

Much of Leinwand’s work has centered on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), which she describes simply as a “big, sick heart.”

It is the most common genetic heart disease in the United States, impacting roughly one in 500 people, as well as the most common cause of sudden death among athletes — who often don’t know they have it and push their hearts too hard, with lethal results.

HCM first made headlines in 1990 when Hank Gathers, an all-American college basketball star, collapsed and died while on the court during a game at the age of 23. Since then, a long list has followed, including Reggie Lewis of the Boston Celtics, who died on a basketball court shortly after Gathers in 1993.

In patients with HCM, their hearts — the walls thickened by disease — squeeze too hard and don’t fully relax, which burns through energy, leaves them breathless, causes the heart to race and depletes their energy.

HCM gets worse over time — and, until recently, there was no medication to treat it.

Leinwand’s interest in the disease dates back to 1985, when she first began studying a protein called myosin, which converts chemical energy into mechanical energy to move muscles, including the heart. Early on, she suspected that glitches in this ubiquitous protein might contribute to heart troubles and that studying them could ultimately lead to new therapies.

“It was an idea before its time,” she recalls. “We didn’t have the technology back then that we did later.”

First, she and her students had to develop a way to manufacture myosin in the lab so they could study it. That alone took years.

In 1996, Leinwand and other ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ colleagues took what they had learned about myosin and founded Myogen, a startup that developed two novel drugs for treating hypertension, which sold to pharma giant Gilead Sciences for $2.6 billion in 2006.

Ultimately, Leinwand’s team determined that faulty myosin was a key culprit in HCM.

In 2012, she joined Harvard’s Christine and Jonathan Seidman, who study the genetic mechanisms of heart disease, and Stanford biochemist James Spudich, who studies how muscles contract, to create the biomedical company MyoKardia.

MyoKardia developed a drug that attaches to the faulty protein, effectively cranking down the heart’s overactive motor. The drug was tested in clinical trials and mavacamten (brand name Camzyos) was born.

Bristol Myers Squibb bought MyoKardia for $13 billion in 2020 and, in April of 2022, the Food and Drug Administration approved mavacamten as the first and only cardiac myosin inhibitor approved in the United States for treating HCM.

“We had hoped that the best outcome could be that the disease progression was slowed, but what cardiologists are telling us is that they are actually seeing a reversal in some patients,” says Leinwand.

Leinwand is not one to get emotional in public. But she can’t help but choke up a bit when asked how this makes her feel.

“It has been the most amazing thing to hear patients say things like, ‘I can now walk up a flight of steps again. I am no longer bedridden. I can get out of my house.’ It feels great.”

Paying it forward

Leinwand has no plans to retire anytime soon. The BioFrontiers Institute, which she and her colleagues dreamed up in the early 2000s, is now a thriving intellectual melting pot, bringing hundreds of physicists, engineers, biologists, chemists, geneticists and computer scientists from around the world together under one roof to improve human health.

Today, her Python Project, another way-outside-the-box idea she came up with in 2006, persists, enabling undergraduate researchers to study Burmese pythons as a means of better understanding what healthy versus unhealthy heart growth looks like.

Pythons can go 6–12 months without eating and then swallow animals as big as they are in one bite, prompting their heart to balloon 40 percent in just 48 hours. In the python’s case, this growth is healthy, much like a well-trained athlete’s heart that grows larger with conditioning.

By understanding how pythons can grow and reverse a larger healthy heart so quickly, Leinwand and her team hope to someday develop therapies that could help people strengthen or shrink their heart muscle, according to need.

Dedicated to her research, she was undeterred when told that the reptile breeder in Oklahoma City could not ship live pythons to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ due to interstate shipping guidelines. Instead, every year, her students drive 20 hours roundtrip to buy them and bring them to her lab on campus.

Leinwand continues to mentor students and travel the country giving lectures on leadership, paying forward the gift she got from the professor in North Carolina who encouraged her pursuit of science. She prioritizes her own health too, carving out time to pedal 12 miles each night on her indoor recumbent bicycle while watching cooking shows to inspire the gourmet meals she prepares for friends.

When asked how she gets it all done (a question she hears a lot), she offers this singular piece of advice:

“Pick your battles, and don’t pick battles you cannot win,” says Leinwand. “I know how to get stuff done,” she adds with a modest shrug. “I’m happiest when I’m doing five things at once.”

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Illustration by Sol Cotti

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Leslie Leinwand helped develop the first drug for an incurable heart disease, sold two companies for billions and founded a thriving biotech institute. She’s just getting started.

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Turning Science into Startups

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Turning Science into Startups Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 00:00

Alexander Gelfand

Ask Dana Anderson, professor of physics at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and founder of Infleqtion, a quantum-technology startup, what role the university played in getting his company off the ground, and he doesn’t mince words.

“They didn’t get in my way,” said Anderson, who launched Infleqtion under the name ColdQuanta in 2007.

Unlike many universities, said Anderson, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder views “getting technology out the door” as part of its mission. So while Venture Partners, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s commercialization arm, did not yet exist and the university could not offer Anderson the wealth of resources it now makes available to aspiring founders, the university smoothed out his path.

The Technology Transfer Office (TTO), as it was then known, helped Anderson draw up a conflict management plan. When he needed lab space to work on his quantum devices — Infleqtion leverages Anderson’s research into the quantum properties of atoms to develop everything from atomic clocks to quantum sensors and computers — ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ worked out a facilities use agreement with him. And when the company was in danger of going under, the university gave him the time he needed to pull it back from the brink.

Infleqtion’s technology can now be found in orbit aboard the International Space Station and in labs around the world. The company employs more than 200 people, has raised nearly $200 million and is preparing to sell atomic clocks and quantum sensors at a commercial scale — all because ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ was willing to invest in a scientist who, as he admitted, was “not a business guy.”

“I’m very, very grateful for that,” Anderson said.

He is not alone. According to the latest report from the Association of University Technology Managers, which assessed startup creation by universities in 2021, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ ranked fifth nationwide, ahead of Stanford and MIT. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder produced 20 startups that year and has spun out 179 companies to date. The pace of startup formation is surging, having nearly doubled in recent years.

That increase is no accident. When Anderson formed his company, the TTO was focused on filing and licensing patents. While protecting intellectual property (IP) remains crucial to launching companies based on scientific and technological innovations, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder now takes a more holistic approach to helping researchers successfully lead such “deep-tech” startups.

“Venture Partners spends the majority of its resources and energy developing and growing innovators: teaching folks entrepreneurial skill sets, partnering with investors, running startup accelerators and other programs,” said Bryn Rees, associate vice chancellor for research and innovation and managing director of Venture Partners.

The principal goal is to translate discoveries by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder researchers into products and services that benefit society while contributing to local, state and national economies. But maintaining a strong startup ecosystem confers other advantages as well, like expanding research funding opportunities and attracting innovative faculty and students.

Entrepreneur Academy

Johnny Hergert and Camila Uzcategui of Vitro3D

Venture Partners, which launched in 2019, has developed a suite of programs designed to shepherd researchers through the process of founding a startup, from licensing patents and identifying markets to courting investors. Aspiring founders are free to pick and choose among them; but many, like Camila Uzcategui (MMatSci’18; PhD’21) and Johnny Hergert (MMatSci’18; PhD’21), co-founders of the biomedical startup Vitro3D, follow the entire sequence.

As soon as they realized the rapid 3D-printing technology they developed as PhD students in the laboratory of materials scientist Robert McLeod had potential commercial applications, Uzcategui and Hergert disclosed their invention to the university. By 2020 the two were in discussions with Venture Partners, which helped them secure exclusive licensing for a variety of patents from the McLeod lab.

A slow, difficult or expensive licensing process can stymie a budding entrepreneur and make it harder to attract funding. But Venture Partners’ Licensing with EASE program offers quick pre-negotiated terms that are attractive to founders and investors alike.

“With these licensing terms, you can go out and talk to venture capitalists and raise money,” Uzcategui said.

Uzcategui and Hergert quickly enrolled in Venture Partners programs — funded in part by NSF — such as Starting Blocks and Research-to-Market, which help founders identify markets for their inventions. They originally envisioned using their 3D-printing technology to aid drug discovery, but after speaking with potential customers, they shifted to producing dental aligners instead.

The opportunities kept coming. The pair enrolled in the New Venture Launch class, which offers mentoring and pitch coaching from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists; won $125,000 in the Lab Venture Challenge (LVC) pitch competition and another $30,000 in the New Venture Challenge (NVC); and participated in the Ascent Deep Tech Accelerator.

“We kind of never stopped,” Uzcategui said.

Vitro3D then attracted $1.3 million in seed financing with Buff Gold Ventures, a venture capital fund co-created by Venture Partners that invests exclusively in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder startups.

Network Effects

The ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder ecosystem played a similarly important role for Nick Meyerson, cofounder and CEO of the diagnostic testing startup Darwin Biosciences.

As a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder virologist Sara Sawyer, Meyerson discovered a novel means of analyzing a person’s saliva to determine whether they were carrying an infectious disease even before they developed symptoms. The Department of Defense (DoD), which funded the research, suggested he form a company to develop a handheld diagnostic device. Meyerson went to Rees and Venture Partners for advice. After submitting a patent application, Meyerson began taking Venture Partner workshops and entering pitch competitions, and in March 2020, Darwin Biosciences was born.

Because of his existing relationship with the DoD — and also because he used his technology to develop one of the nation’s first rapid saliva-based COVID-19 tests — Meyerson didn’t need accelerator support or help figuring out who his potential customers were.

But ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder was still there for him. When the pandemic hit, the university gave Meyerson lab space to develop his COVID test. It also introduced him to Boulder’s rich network of experienced entrepreneurs and investors: Meyerson met his first CEO at the Lab Venture Challenge and his current director of operations through Venture Partners.

“Most of the heavy hitters that I know in the area are because of connections that I’ve made through [Venture Partners],” said Meyerson.

Darwin Biosciences is now on the verge of entering the commercial market. The company is developing a phase-two prototype of its testing device and pursuing FDA approval with the goal of developing a diagnostic platform that can be used for everything from at-home infectious disease testing to early cancer screening.

Next Steps

“This is something that other universities really have not done”

The purpose of all these support structures is to help as many ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ innovators as possible unlock the social and economic benefits of their discoveries. And as Vitro3D and Darwin Biosciences illustrate, the system is working.

But not every researcher wants to found their own company, which helps explain why many of the approximately 150 promising inventions produced at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder every year never make it to market.

Venture Partners therefore established the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator, funded by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Office of Economic Development and International Trade, which gives outside entrepreneurs the opportunity to form startups around university-owned technology. Ten startups launched this past August, and each company enjoys access to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s startup programs and up to $100,000 for technology development.

“This is something that other universities really have not done,” said Rees, who believes that Embark will fuel more growth for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ as a startup hub. “We’re trying to craft a new model.”

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Photos courtesy University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder has launched nearly 180 startups, ranking it fifth in the nation for startup creation.

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Behind the Sci-Fi

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Behind the Sci-Fi Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 00:00

Patty Kaowthumrong

Astrophysicist Erin Macdonald (Math, Phys’09) has a way of explaining things. As a graduate student and postdoctoral candidate teaching introductory physics and astronomy classes, Macdonald realized she enjoyed the challenge of distilling complex topics, often without using math or equations, into easier-to-digest information for her students.

“Seeing how that resonated with people and how much more accessible it made science to them was what sparked that passion in me,” said MacDonald, who, in addition to her ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder degrees, received a doctorate in gravitational astrophysics from the University of Glasgow.

Macdonald’s talent and expertise led her career to an unexpected destination: Hollywood.

Since 2019, Macdonald has been the science advisor for the Star Trek franchise. In the role, she helps creators figure out how to portray scientific topics on screen and use real and fictional STEM concepts to heighten plot lines. For instance, the first assignment she was given for the TV show Star Trek: Discovery was to write canons (fundamental principles) for dilithium, a made-up material that has existed in the series since the 1960s.

“Dilithium is totally fictional, but we were using it as a major plot point,” she said. “And so I had to, ‘Yes, and’ all the past stuff that we knew about dilithium and create new fictional science for it that now exists in that universe.”

While there are a lot of people behind movies and TV shows (including herself) who want the science featured to be accurate, there are more challenges to making that happen than figuring out where to draw the line between fact and fiction. From the set dressing to the visual effects budget and the on-screen time available to explain something, the film crew must consider many behind-the-scenes factors, Macdonald said.

One of her favorite examples of letting accuracy slide is Star Trek’s transporter, the iconic, fictional machine that teleports people and objects. In the real world, Macdonald said, it could not work because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that you cannot know the position and speed of particles with perfect accuracy — so you can’t move and rebuild them somewhere else at the transporter’s level of precision.

But in Star Trek, the transporter is equipped with a component called the Heisenberg compensator, which counteracts any problems caused by the uncertainty principle.

“We don’t know how it works. But it works very well,” she said. “And it’s really an example of acknowledging that we’re breaking physics but letting it slide anyway.”

While working as a science advisor is her dream job, Macdonald, who hails from Fort Collins, had other gigs before she landed the role, including working as an educator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. She began honing her speaking skills at science conventions and eventually moved to Los Angeles. Then she began presenting at conferences, breaking down the science behind science fiction and its interconnectivity with pop culture, which led to gigs as a science consultant and eventually breaking into the TV industry.

“What got me to the position I have now was just looking for all those little opportunities, taking those risks and continuing to perform as best I could”

“What got me to the position I have now was just looking for all those little opportunities, taking those risks and continuing to perform as best I could,” she said.

Macdonald said finding her voice and learning how to express herself authentically — which was challenging for her as a woman working in traditionally male-dominated STEM fields — was also key to her success. In 2022, her experiences and passion for filmmaking inspired her to establish Spacetime Productions, a company dedicated to elevating marginalized talent in front of and behind the camera. It released its first short film, Every Morning, last year and another, Identiteaze, is scheduled to be released in early 2024.

Founding Spacetime Productions taught Macdonald that individuals are sometimes more capable of achieving their goals than they think, whether that means writing a book, starting a company — or making a film.

“Just do it,” she said. “You’ll figure it out, learn along the way and make a lot of mistakes. But it’s fun.”

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Illustration by Ryan Olbrysh

Erin Macdonald, Star Trek’s science guru, sounds off on landing the role of a lifetime and what you don’t see on screen.

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alum’s invention of 3D printing recognized by President Biden

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 16:11:59 +0000

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alum’s invention of 3D printing recognized by President Biden Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/30/2023 - 10:11

Allison Nitch

Charles W. Hull (EngrPhys’61) was named among the 2023 recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his exemplary achievements in technology and innovation through his invention of 3D printing.

Awarded by President Biden on Oct. 24, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation is the nation’s highest award for technological achievement. Along with the National Medal of Science, it recognizes American innovators whose vision, intellect, creativity and determination have strengthened America’s economy and improved our quality of life.

After Hull completed his degree in engineering physics at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, he worked with a DuPont subsidiary before going on to invent the solid imaging process known as stereolithography. This became the basis of the first commercial 3D printing technology, which spurred the dawning of a dynamic industry in the United States.

Upon securing a stereolithography patent in 1986, Hull then founded 3D Systems Corp. Hull initiated the 3D printing industry and remains involved in the corporation’s day-to-day operations through a range of innovative applications, including state-of-the art production of 3D printers to the first home-certified 3D printer, the award-winning Cube.

“We were thrilled to learn that Chuck Hull has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation,” said Massimo Ruzzene, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes. “His pioneering work in stereolithography, 3D printing and prototyping was truly transformative, making this honor well-deserved, as well as an example of the culture of innovation ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder has long sought to foster.”

A member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Hull is credited as the inventor on more than 90 U.S. patents in the field of ion optics and 3D printing. As a strong advocate for education and training of youth in all aspects of this rapidly growing technology, Hull received an honorary degree from the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Board of Regents in 2016.

Photo by Ryan K. Morris

Charles W. Hull was named among the 2023 recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his exemplary achievements in technology and innovation through his invention of 3D printing.

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Campus News Briefs Summer 2023

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs Summer 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/10/2023 - 00:00

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Promise Program Expansion

This spring, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder announced an expansion of its ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Promise program, which covers tuition and fees for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ resident students with significant financial need. The expansion doubles the number of students eligible for the program, increasing funding for incoming, transfer and continuing students. The move was made possible in part by the passage of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Senate Bill 96, which increases the university's ability to support institutionally funded merit scholarships and need-based grants for resident students.

Everest Germs Can Last Decades

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder-led research determined that human microbes found in the soil of Mount Everest — left by sneezes, coughs, nose-blowing and more — were resilient enough to survive in a dormant state for decades (or even centuries) in harsh conditions at high elevations. The study was the first to use next-generation gene sequencing technology to analyze soil from above 26,000 feet on Everest. The findings suggest ways to better understand environmental limitations to life on Earth and where life could exist on other planets or cold moons.

Eggshells Reveal New Elephant Bird Lineage

Eggshell remnants from eggs larger than footballs reveal information about a now-extinct new lineage of elephant bird that roamed northeastern Madagascar more than 1,200 years ago. This study, published in Nature Communications, marks the first time a new elephant bird lineage has been found without any skeletal remains. The research will help scientists learn more about birds that once lived — and why so many have gone extinct.

Heard Around Campus

“It feels to me like the very early days of widespread adoption of the internet in terms of how impactful this could, eventually, be for everyday life.”

— Casey Fiesler, associate professor in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Department of Information Science, on the swift rise of artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT.

Summer at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder

83°

Average temperature (June–September)

Average inches of rain (June–September)

Summer sessions offered by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder

8,181

Students enrolled in summer classes in 2022

90%

Summer students who are undergraduates

62%

Summer students who are Arts and Sciences majors

36%

Classes that meet completely or partially in-person

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Photo credit: Eric Daft, National Geographic

Mount Everest, elephant birds and the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Promise Program

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Mining the Moon: A New Era of Commercial Space Exploration

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