Computer science professor Nikolaus Correll and his lab at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder have been awarded $1.8 million by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to help establish a circular supply chain for domestic electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

The percentage of EV passenger vehicles on the road is  to 28% by 2030 and 58% by 2040, globally.

The existing supply chain for EV batteries relies mostly on recycling to recover critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel or copper.

However, conventional battery recycling methods are energy-intensive, produce significant quantities of greenhouse gases, and lead to large volumes of waste deposited in landfills.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder joins 12 other projects around the country working to change this dynamic through ARPA-E's  program.

Correll's project focuses on autonomous robotic disassembly of EV lithium-ion battery packs. Humanoid robots will work together with robotic arms to manipulate wire harnesses and remove screws and other components before dismantling commercial battery packs with a heavy-duty industrial arm.

Correll explained that people are interested in using robots for the task due to the hazardous nature of the work.

"The batteries are quite dangerous to handle due to the risk of electrocution and spontaneous ignition," Correll said.

The Correll Lab's project will use state-of-the-art perception models and large-language models to consider the physics and context of each battery.

By advancing the efficiency and ability of battery disassembly systems, component recycling could be done at a commercial scale more safely and cost-effectively, leading to less waste in landfills and more material available for new EV batteries.

The director of ARPA-E, Evelyn N. Wang, said, "I look forward to seeing how these CIRŷ���ڱ���ƵLAR projects develop regeneration, repair, reuse, and remanufacture technologies to create a sustainable EV battery supply chain." 

Off

Off

Off

Off

Join us in welcoming our new Department of Computer Science faculty and learn about what they're excited to pursue. 

At ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder I’ll be working on the design and implementation of efficient numerical methods for challenging problems (mostly presenting as differential equations) in science and engineering. I’m particularly looking forward to being able to work with people from computer since, applied math, physics, and beyond in the interdisciplinary, collaborative setting offered by the university.

I am excited to work on trustworthy quantum computing to enhance the reliability and security of quantum computers and emerging accelerators, as well as exploring quantum intelligence to pursue synergistic opportunities between quantum computing, machine learning, AI, and optimization.

I am excited to be joining the Computer Science Department at the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder! My goal is to ensure that students from all backgrounds feel supported by our programs. I believe it is important to address learning needs both inside and outside the classroom, and to celebrate the diversity that each student brings as a valuable strength. I am looking forward to working alongside the wonderful faculty and staff at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder to strengthen our programs and build meaningful partnerships

I’m thrilled to join the teaching faculty in the post-baccalaureate program in Applied Computer Science at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. One of the most rewarding aspects of this position is engaging with passionate, motivated students who are eager to learn and grow. I'm especially excited to introduce the latest advancements in artificial intelligence to the classroom. Over the past five years, AI has undergone rapid transformations, and I’m eager to help students understand the inner workings of these technologies, apply them to real-world problems, and innovate for the future. My goal is to empower students to not only grasp the concepts of computer science but also to become contributors to the evolution of this ever-changing field.

I am thrilled to start my new research lab at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder CS and tackle some of the most challenging and impactful problems in geospatial and statistical machine learning. Along with the PhD students in my lab, I am excited to push the frontiers of fundamental machine learning research for practical social and scientific impacts, and to find new collaborators in this mission across the University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ.

Off

Daniel Acuna, an associate professor in computer science, is part of a group advocating for the broader computer science community to help increase the diversity of nominees for scientific awards.

"," an opinion piece Acuna and his coauthors wrote for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), outlines how nominators can help broaden recognition of diverse contributors in science.

Acuna's Science of Science and Computational Discovery Lab focuses, among other themes, on who has the opportunity to make scientific discoveries and how those discoveries are acknowledged. This lens is useful in considering how to promote broader recognition.

Awards start with a nomination process, which means that only those submitted for nomination have a chance of receiving the award, Acuna explains. Changing this simple lever by encouraging people to nominate holistically and thoughtfully could change the landscape of scientific recognition and discovery.

The article highlights some of the work that the ACM has done to help broaden representation, including the ACM Shepherds program, which connects nominators with people familiar with the process who are willing to help.

Not just a trophy

In the competitive world of academic grants and tenure, scientific awards and their accompanying visibility can motivate aspiring scientists.

The article explains this can be especially impactful to "persons from populations underrepresented in computing who may view awardees as inspirational trailblazers and role models."

The awards can also have practical benefits to awardees, who can use them as evidence of service requirements for tenure consideration.

"While many organizations would like to broaden the populations of people who get recognized," Acuna said, "we should also consider the process by which recognition happens. It is usually a community effort, and change can happen through all of us."

Off

Orit Peleg, associate professor of computer science and Biofrontiers Institute faculty member at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder is one of six researchers recognized for their boundary-pushing work by the prestigious.

Each researcher will receive a total of up to $2.5 million over five years, joining a global community of 21 Polymaths from six countries.

The Polymath Program provides significant, flexible multi-year grants to enable awardees to pursue risky, novel theories that would otherwise be difficult to fund.

Peleg will focus on the evolutionary origins and diversification of communication across different animal species and how it manifests in group cognition of social animals.

"This award validates my belief that some of the most exciting discoveries lie at the intersections of diverse fields," Peleg said. "I am deeply grateful to my mentors and mentees for their inspiration and guidance along the way, and to Schmidt Sciences for their generous support."

This year, the program received 117 applications from 65 nominating universities and partners that were evaluated by senior scientists, prior Polymath awardees and other experts.

The six recipients were selected based on both their past achievements—including a demonstrated capacity for high-impact research and high-variance thinking—and their ideas for boundary-breaking future projects.

In Peleg's lab, her mentees research how biological communication signals are generated and interpreted. While the channel may change - whether chemical, sound, or light - the living creatures of our world all encode high-dimensional biological features into low-dimensional communication patterns.

“Curiosity doesn’t operate in a silo, and neither should science,” said Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Sciences. “That’s why we support several initiatives to enable researchers to pursue interdisciplinary hypotheses, in collaboration. The Schmidt Sciences Polymath Program allows bold, creative thinkers to pursue knowledge across boundaries and in doing so, to help all of us better understand the deep interconnections between people, planet and universe.”

The Polymaths benefit from a network of winners that convenes annually to develop ideas for collaboration, funding and further study. The recipients represent the top 5 percent of applicants who are given funding to pursue research within three years after being awarded tenure.

“We are delighted to support the Polymaths to pursue what excites them. Through our funding, we hope to achieve breakthroughs and transform the way science is conducted,” said Stu Feldman, chief scientist at Schmidt Sciences.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Schmidt Sciences

Schmidt Sciences supports interdisciplinary researchers across scientific fields, geographies and career levels through Schmidt Science Fellows, Schmidt Polymaths and other initiatives. The Polymath program began in 2021 with awards to two scientists. 

Off

Assistant Professor Huck Bennett is working to keep our data safe from hackers when the quantum revolution comes.

Bennett has been funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate the feasibility of lattice-based cryptography to protect against the threat of quantum computers.

"Quantum computers have the ability to break the cryptography we currently use on the internet to shield our emails from prying eyes and protect our financial information from hackers," Bennett explained.

Solving for tomorrow

This is not just an issue for the future when quantum computers come online. Even today, bad actors are gathering encrypted data to crack in anticipation of the quantum revolution.

The security of cryptography derives from a set of challenging math problems that take computers a long time to solve—or at least we hope it does.

Because quantum computers can quickly solve some problems that serve as the basis of current cryptography, researchers have been in search of new classes of problems that are both suitable for use in cryptography and secure against quantum computers—problems that are "post-quantum."

Bennett's work is to pressure-test one of the suggested new post-quantum cryptography methods, lattice-based cryptography.

Hard enough?

Bennett explained that a lattice is a geometric object that looks like a regular “grid” of points in high-dimensional space: often 100 or more.

We can create math problems from this multidimensional lattice that are a great fit for cryptography. They are quick to solve if you have the right information, but without it, they take a huge amount of time and computing power.

Bennett's focus is on how "hard" problems on lattices are, or how much time it takes to solve them.

Specifically, his goal is to show that lattice-based cryptography is secure by showing that certain computational problems on lattices get exponentially harder as the dimensions grow—even for quantum computers.

But, he said, it's also important to play “hacker's advocate” and think about whether this complex cryptographic idea could fall apart. 

Off

Off

Off