Science

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 CU 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, CU Boulder views “getting technology out the door” as part of its mission. So while Venture Partners, CU 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 — CU 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 CU 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 �Թ�� Technology Managers, which assessed startup creation by universities in 2021, CU ranked fifth nationwide, ahead of Stanford and MIT. CU 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, CU 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 CU 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 CU Boulder startups.

Network Effects

The CU 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 CU 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 CU 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 CU 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 CU Boulder every year never make it to market.

Venture Partners therefore established the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator, funded by CU Boulder and the Colorado 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 CU’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 CU as a startup hub. “We’re trying to craft a new model.”

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Photos courtesy �Թ�� of Colorado

CU 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 CU Boulder degrees, received a doctorate in gravitational astrophysics from the �Թ�� 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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CU Boulder alum’s invention of 3D printing recognized by President Biden

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

CU 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 �Թ�� of Colorado 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, CU 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 CU 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 �Թ�� of Colorado 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

CU Promise Program Expansion

This spring, CU Boulder announced an expansion of its CU Promise program, which covers tuition and fees for Colorado 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 Colorado 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

CU 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 CU Boulder’s Department of Information Science, on the swift rise of artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT.

Summer at CU Boulder

83°

Average temperature (June–September)

Average inches of rain (June–September)

Summer sessions offered by CU 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 CU Promise Program

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CU Researchers Rethink Mental Illness

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:00:00 +0000

CU Researchers Rethink Mental Illness Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2022 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

In the dream clinic of the future, patients struggling with mental illness might — in addition to sharing their feelings with a therapist — have their brain scanned to pinpoint regions that may be misfiring.

Instead of prescribing multiple drugs to treat myriad symptoms, a doctor could recommend one therapy targeted squarely at genetic culprits underlying them all.

And thanks to telemedicine and support from trained peers, anyone who needs treatment would receive it, regardless of their location or income.

Such a dream is within reach, say CU Boulder geneticists, neuroscientists and psychologists who are joining forces to imagine new ways of diagnosing and treating mental illness.

Their work comes as 1 in 6 children and 1 in 5 adults experience a diagnosable mental illness each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). More than half will be diagnosed with a second or third in their lifetime, and about a third will have four or more.

Most will take multiple medications — some that work, some that don’t, many of which have unpleasant side effects.

Well over half will get no care at all.

“We definitely have a mental health crisis on our hands,” said June Gruber, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience who co-authored a “call to action” in American Psychologist in 2021 proposing how the crisis could be addressed. “But we are also on the cusp of big changes in the way we understand mental illness … moving away from one-size-fits-all labels to something more personalized and accessible.”

Early Diagnosis Through Brain Imaging

�Թ�� half of people with mental illnesses begin to show some signs before age 14, and 75% show signs before age 24, according to NAMI.

Yet most patients wait until a crisis occurs before seeking help.

“It’s critical to get the right diagnosis and the right treatment to the right person at the right time,” said clinical neuroscientist and psychologist Roselinde Kaiser (MPsych’08; PhDNeuroSci, Psych’13), assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. “But we tend to wait until folks are in urgent need before we do anything … and the way we treat them often has more to do with what has the least side effects rather than what’s going to be the most effective.”

Kaiser envisions a day when everyone undergoes a mental health check-up every six months, much like we do for dental health. Clinicians would start with low-tech surveys, cognitive exams and the use of tests to measure heart rate, perspiration and other physiological responses to stress.

When serious red flags arise, just as a patient with a bad back undergoes imaging to get a reliable diagnosis, someone might have a brain scan to confirm their risk of mental illness — and what kind.

“We have really good biomarkers for lots of other complicated medical illnesses, but we don’t have anything for psychiatric disorders at this point,” said Kaiser.

To help identify patterns in the brain that could serve as biomarkers, or measurable signs, she launched a study following 140 adolescents for two years. Each participant laid back inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and played a video game in which they gambled. Meanwhile, the fMRI measured blood flow to regions of the brain associated with reward and “executive function,” or self control.

In subsequent months, the teens filled out daily mental health surveys on their phones and had their movement tracked via GPS.

Previous studies show that people with poor executive function — the ability to plan, self-regulate and organize thoughts — are more likely to experience mental illness.

“But what has been really hard has been determining what kind of mental illness a person is experiencing or will experience,” Kaiser said.

She found that youth whose brain scans showed heightened sensitivity in the nucleus accumbens — a brain region associated with reward — along with poor executive function were far more likely to experience bipolar symptoms (depression along with mania) in the coming months. Meanwhile, those with blunted reward sensitivity along with poor self-regulation were more likely to experience unipolar depression, or depression without mania.

This matters because the drugs and interventions prescribed for each are very different. Yet because each person’s experience is unique, making such distinctions via talk therapy alone can be difficult.

“Neuroimaging may be a really useful tool for looking under the hood to see what is going on now and predict what could be coming in the future,” said Kaiser.

Precision Medicine Through Genetics

Andrew Grotzinger, an assistant professor of clinical psychology and researcher with the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, notes that when it comes to mental illness, multiple diagnoses are the norm, rather than the exception.

This can leave patients feeling unlucky and discouraged and taking multiple medications with serious side effects. Research shows more than 60% of people who go to the doctor for mental health reasons receive prescriptions for two or more medications, and more than a third receive three or more.

“If you had a cold, you wouldn’t want to be diagnosed with coughing disorder, sneezing disorder and aching joints disorder,” he said. “There has to be a better way.”

Genetics, he believes, could pave the way for a more precise system of diagnosis that accounts for the underlying genes different disorders have in common.

“By identifying what is shared across these issues, we can hopefully come up with ways to target them in a way that doesn’t require four separate pills,” he said.

His lab is making progress.

In a spring 2022 study, Grotzinger and his colleagues analyzed publicly available data from hundreds of thousands of people who submitted their genetic material. He looked at genes associated with 11 disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, problematic alcohol use, ADHD and autism.

While there is, he stressed, no gene or set of genes underlying risk for all of them, his team did find that subsets of disorders share a common genetic architecture.

For instance, 70% of the genetic signal associated with schizophrenia is also associated with bipolar disorder. Anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder have a strong, shared genetic basis. And anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder share many underlying genes.

Instead of prescribing multiple drugs to treat myriad symptoms, a doctor could recommend one therapy targeted squarely at genetic culprits underlying them all.

They also found that people with internalizing disorders, such as depression, tend to have genes associated with low physical movement throughout the day, while compulsive disorders such as OCD and anorexia tend to correlate with genes associated with higher movement.

“When you think about it, it makes sense,” said Grotzinger, noting that depressed individuals often present as fatigued, while those with compulsive disorders can have difficulty sitting still.

In all, the study identified 152 genetic variants shared across multiple disorders, including those already known to influence certain types of brain cells. A follow-up study, expanding the work to include three additional substance abuse disorders, is underway.

Future research, informed in part by brain imaging research, could ultimately help determine what those genes do and lead to new treatments that target those upstream processes.

It’s years away, but in the future Grotzinger and Kaiser imagine patients also having their DNA tested to help find their ideal treatment.

“My hope is that we can not only start to reduce polypharmacy but also identify new interventions for the many people who aren’t currently responding to standard practices,” Grotzinger said.

Increasing Access

Dream clinic of the future aside, Gruber stresses that existing medications and therapies do already work for many people.

“The problem is, we are ineffective in providing them to the people who need them most,” she said, noting that people of color or low-income people are often underserved. “It’s a real tragedy.”

Pre-COVID-19, 67% of adults and up to 80% of youth with mental health needs went without services each year, either because they couldn’t afford it or lived in a place where there were no counselors.

“Neuroimaging may be a really useful tool for looking under the hood to see what is going on now and predict what could be coming in the future.”

With in-person offices shut down, the COVID-19 pandemic, with all its tragic consequences, forced the field to think outside the box, bringing telemedicine from the fringes into the spotlight.

“We are moving toward a time when no longer does someone have to overcome the insurmountable obstacle of making an appointment and getting to it — where we can rapidly provide telehealth to all people across state boundaries,” said Gruber.

She believes that going forward, “lay counselors” will also play a critical role in filling the gap at a time when 77% of counties in the U.S. have a shortage of mental healthcare providers.

Lay providers have no formal mental health training but often share a cultural background or similar mental health challenges. They can serve as a bridge between people in need and clinicians or even provide support themselves.

One international study co-authored by CU Boulder psychology professor Sona Dimidjian, director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, found that community members who got three weeks of intensive training, plus follow-up supervision, could effectively counsel people with depression with measurable and lasting results.

Dimidjian is now working on follow-up research in Colorado assessing a program in which mothers who have experienced and recovered from postpartum depression support moms in the thick of it.

“For nearly a century, the standard for treatment has been a single patient, single provider in a physical office,” said Gruber. “It’s time we throw aside some of our archaic models of what kinds of treatments work and who can deliver them.”

Through a project called Emerge, Gruber and her students collected data — via laboratory tests, smartphone apps and remote surveys — on 762 young adults before and after the beginning of the pandemic in 2019. They found that not only did many experience increased depression and anger early on, but a general decrease in life satisfaction persisted a year later, suggesting COVID may have long-term mental health implications.

But she has also witnessed an unexpected upside: Mental illness, once shunned and seldom talked about, has come out of the shadows.

“It has finally come into the mainstream as a common topic of conversation, and there is a recognition that many of us will endure some kind of mental health disorder in our lifetime,” said Gruber. “With that destigmatization comes great hope.”

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Illustrations by Keith Negley

Using brain imaging, genetics, telemedicine and collaboration, researchers at CU Boulder are finding new ways to help stem the growing crisis.

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Virus Hunter, Preventing the Next Pandemic

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Virus Hunter, Preventing the Next Pandemic Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/11/2022 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

In the early 1900s, deep in the woodlands of Central Africa, a virus that had been quietly circulating amid apes for millennia made an unlikely jump to humans.

Precisely how remains a mystery: Scientists suspect a person or persons ate an infected chimpanzee or cut a finger while butchering one, exposing themselves to blood tainted with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). It took hold slowly over decades, evolving in ways that made its spread from human to human more efficient.

By 1959, a mysterious illness was spreading in Haiti. By 1981, young men were dying at alarming rates in Los Angeles. By 2022, 36 million worldwide had succumbed to HIV/AIDS, what we now know as human immunodeficiency virus, which is closely related to SIV.

It was not the first nor would it be the last virus to wreak global havoc after jumping from animals to humans: H1N1, which originated in waterfowl, killed more than 50 million during the influenza epidemic of 1918. SARS-CoV-2, believed to have originated in bats, continues to drive the COVID-19 pandemic. In all, about 300 viruses are known to sicken people. It is lost to history just how many of these resulted from animal viruses that jumped to humans. But in recent decades, many more have.

What will be the next one?

That’s the question that keeps CU Boulder virologist Sara Sawyer up at night.

“There are estimated to be as many as 1 million viruses circulating in animals out there,” said Sawyer, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology. “Which ones should we be preparing for next? That’s what I want to know.”

To that end, Sawyer has spent the last 14 years gathering hundreds of samples from primate, rodent, bat and other mammalian species to better understand what evolution has taught them about how to live with viruses. Her hunt has taken her from endangered lemur preserves to homes for retired celebrity chimps (including Michael Jackson’s famed Bubbles).

“I once received part of a coyote heart via FedEx,” recalled Sawyer, a skilled storyteller whose eyes grew wide, hands gesturing excitedly, as she described her life’s work.

In her lab at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, she also studies viruses (SIV, dengue, influenza and more), employing cutting-edge genetic sequencing and lab techniques to better understand the answers to important questions: What enables some viruses to jump species and spread unbridled, while others fizzle out? And why can some hosts get exposed without getting sick, while others die?

“There are lots of examples in nature of evolutionary winners — organisms that have figured out how to be resistant,” said Sawyer. “If we can better understand what their immune systems are doing, we may be able to come up with solutions we never thought of before.”

Coming of Age in a Pandemic

Sawyer was sitting in her seventh-grade health class in Olathe, Kansas, in the mid-1980s when her teacher made a chilling proclamation.

“She said, ‘There is this new disease, and if you have sex, you could die,’” recalled Sawyer.

During these formative years, the nightly news was filled with stories of children orphaned by AIDS in Africa and U.S. celebrities contracting the disease. Just as the generation before her had grown up in the shadow of the influenza epidemic, she was shaped by AIDS.

“That virus influenced my life in profound ways, much like COVID is shaping young people’s lives in ways they don’t know yet,” she said.

Sawyer earned a degree in chemical engineering from the �Թ�� of Kansas and worked on offshore drilling platforms to bank money for graduate school.

Just as she began a PhD program in genetics at Cornell �Թ��, she spotted the 1996 Time magazine “Person of the Year” cover on a newsstand: It was AIDS researcher David Ho, who pioneered the earliest effective drugs for the disease. Clad in aviator glasses, he looked to Sawyer like a rock star.

“I said to myself, ‘I want to be that guy,’” Sawyer said.

Hitting the Jackpot

Today, along with running a lab and teaching classes, Sawyer has gained a global reputation as a leader in her field, with the U.S. government tapping her for consultation on how to prevent and better respond to pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

“She has been at the front line of viral disease research asking the big questions that have helped us understand how zoonoses emerge and cross into humans,” said Cody Warren, a postdoctoral researcher who came to CU’s BioFrontiers Institute for the chance to work with her.

As Sawyer explained, hundreds of thousands of viruses circulate unnoticed in the animal world, often without making the animals sick. (SIV, in most cases, does not harm non-human primates.)

“We are all breathing and ingesting animal viruses every day, via the pets we keep, the undercooked food we eat, but they just pass right through us,” she said.

Sometimes, however, a virus sticks, and when a virus infects a species whose immune system is naive to it, it can run wild.

“The jackpot moment for an animal virus is when it doesn’t just pass through, it gets into our cells and turns our body into a factory for reproducing itself,” she said. “What constitutes a virus jackpot like that? Why that time and not another time?”

Genetics, her lab’s research has found, plays a role.

In one recent study, published in the journal PNAS, Sawyer and Warren show that genetic variations between chimpanzees make a critical difference in how they react to SIV. For instance, some resistant chimpanzees possess a variant of a gene called CD4 that leads to a sugar-like coating forming a protective barrier over the receptor to which the virus attaches.

Such variations between individuals can not only influence how viruses spread within the same species, but also how they jump from species to species, including to people.

“Zoonosis doesn’t just occur when a human encounters a chimp in the wild,” said Warren. “You have to have this magical interaction between the right human encountering the precise chimpanzee that is genetically predisposed to harboring that viral infection.”

Notably, a very small set of humans — about 1 in 300 — also appear to be resistant to HIV.

“If we could understand what evolution has figured out and make drugs to mimic that, we could protect ourselves,” Sawyer said.

Predicting the Next Pandemic

During a lecture in Sawyer’s undergraduate class on emerging viral diseases in 2019, Warren rattled off a list of recent coronaviruses that jumped from animals to humans via an intermediary host, igniting epidemics: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-1), likely jumped from civet cats to people in 2003. MERS jumped to humans via camels in 2012.

“I told them, six different coronaviruses have emerged in humans, two in just the last 20 years, and it is very likely that another one will emerge in the not-too-distant future,” Warren said.

As soon as the first cases of COVID-19 began appearing in headlines, Sawyer’s inbox filled with messages from students, acknowledging she and Warren had called it.

SARS-CoV-2, she notes, was particularly troublesome because it is a respiratory virus that spreads easily, and because most people experience mild or no symptoms — enabling it to continue to spread by the unknowingly infected.

“Deadly is not the best evolutionary state for a virus,” said Sawyer. “If it kills people too fast, it doesn’t spread.”

She feels optimistic that COVID-19 will grow less and less dangerous, morphing into an endemic, cold-like nuisance. But her lab always has a close eye on what’s to come.

“We have a highly fatal bird virus sweeping the U.S. right now, H5N1. Humans can get that virus from birds, and it is 50% fatal, but fortunately it has not yet learned how to spread from human to human,” she said. “That is the only thing separating us from another epidemic at this moment.”

Meanwhile, she stays true to the mission that got her into this work to begin with — the quest to develop a vaccine for HIV.

Yes, COVID-19 has been tragic and deadly, killing 6 million worldwide as of May 2022. But Sawyer asks people to put it in perspective.

“Forty years into the HIV pandemic, caused by a virus from which nobody recovers, and which causes a psychologically torturous disease, we are still losing 2,000 people per day and we have no vaccine,” she said. “We can do better.”

Submit feedback to the editor

Illustrations by Eleanor Shakespeare; photos courtesy of Sara Sawyer

Dozens of viruses, including the one that causes COVID-19, have jumped from animals to humans, often with deadly consequences. Sara Sawyer wants to know which one is next.

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10 Inventions and Discoveries by CU Faculty and Alumni

Anonymous — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 15:44:12 +0000

10 Inventions and Discoveries by CU Faculty and Alumni Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/20/2021 - 08:44

Grace Dearnley

As a CU student, alum or supporter, you can take pride in the amazing discoveries and inventions that have been created by people in your community. CU is full of innovators, who have changed the world in ways both big and small. Here are 10 inventions and discoveries made by CU faculty and alumni.

1. Post-it Note Adhesive

You might use them to leave reminders or label your lunch. Maybe you’re a Post-it traditionalist who uses them for the originally intended purpose — to bookmark your pages. No matter what you stick them to, you can thank CU alum Spencer Silver (PhDA&S’66). While working as a senior chemist for 3M’s Central Research Labs in 1968, Silver developed the reusable adhesive that eventually became a main component of Post-it Notes, which launched in 1980.

Learn more about the invention of the Post-it adhesive.

2. Liquid Crystals

Researchers at CU Boulder, led by physics professor Ivan Smalyukh, have designed new kinds of liquid crystals that mirror the complex internal structure of some solid crystals. The group’s findings, published in the journal Nature, could one day be used to create new, more energy efficient types of smart windows and television and computer displays.

Learn more about liquid crystals.

3. 3D Printing

Late one night in 1983, CU alum Chuck Hull (EngrPhys’61) made a scientific breakthrough with his creation of a small plastic cup. Although seemingly unassuming, the cup was the first object to be created using stereolithography, better known as 3D printing. Hull’s discovery became the basis for the 3D printing that is a common practice across industries and homes today. After securing a patent for stereolithography in 1986, he founded his company, 3D Systems. Hull is now a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Learn more about the invention of 3D Printing.

4. Dry Fogger

In 1982, after freezing solid the set of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video for 20 hours, CU alum Jim Doyle (Thtr’78) thought there had the be a better way to create fog than with liquid nitrogen. Doyle got to work and created a fog machine, which quickly became the industry standard. By 1986, Doyle’s dry fogger was used on the opening night of Alice Cooper’s “Nightmare Returns” tour. Later, Doyle received a 1992 Academy Award for its use in Terminator 2.

Learn more about the dry fogger.

5. Inhalable Measles Vaccine

In 2010, a team of researchers led by CU chemistry and biochemistry professor Robert Sievers developed an inhalable measles vaccine, which works when patients breathe in a puff of dry powder. One main goal of the inhalable inoculation is to mitigate needle use, as needles can be scary to some and can pose difficulties in disposal.

6. Lasers

In 1960, CU alum Theodore Maiman (EngrPhys’49) developed the laser with the help of his research assistant Charles Asawa. At the age of 32, Maiman had invented an essential technology that is now used across all aspects of life, ranging from manufacturing to surgery to grocery store checkout scanners. Maiman was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984.

Learn more about the invention of lasers.

7. Bose-Einstein Condensate

In 1995, in a laboratory at JILA, a joint institute of CU Boulder and NIST, CU Boulder physics professor Carl E. Wieman and colleague Eric A. Cornell, a research physicist and NIST fellow, led the team that produced the first Bose-Einstein condensate, which is a group of atoms chilled almost to absolute zero. When a group of atoms is in this state, they begin to act as though they are a single atom, which lends itself to superconductive properties. For this discovery, Wieman and Cornell were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.

8. TiVo

You’re living in the age of Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max, so it might be hard to remember what having cable is even like. But before the streaming giants took over, TiVo was a leader in on-demand television. In 1997, CU alum Jim Barton (ElEngr, CompSci’80; MCompSci’82) and business partner Mike Ramsey founded what would become TiVo, which was best known for the device that allowed viewers to record and save television programs onto a hard drive for later viewing, and to pause and rewind live TV.

Learn more about the invention of TiVo.

9. Quantum Squeezing

In their efforts to better understand dark matter — the substance that likely makes up most of the universe’s mass — a group of scientists, including many at CU’s JILA research institute, developed quantum squeezing. In February 2021, led in part by CU alum Daniel Palken (MPhys’18; PhD’20) and NIST fellow Konrad Lehnert, the scientists found that their new approach to searching for axions allows them to better separate the signals of axions from the less relevant signals of quantum fluctuations. All this is to say that this method puts the scientific community one step closer to understanding the mysterious dark matter.

Learn more about quantum squeezing.

10. Body Battery

In 2021, Jianliang Xiao, a mechanical engineering associate professor at CU Boulder, created a small, wearable device that uses thermoelectric generators to convert body heat into power. The device is made from polyimine, a material that is stretchy and can heal itself. The hope is that this fully recyclable gadget can someday help power fitness watches and other wearable devices.

Learn more about this wearable device.

CU is full of innovators, who have changed the world in ways both big and small. Here are 10 inventions and discoveries made by CU faculty and alumni.

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Campus News Briefs Fall 2020

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs Fall 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/10/2020 - 23:00

While in quarantine, CU Boulder professor of piano David Korevaar performed and recorded all of Beethoven’s sonatas on his living room piano.

Years on faculty at CU Boulder

3.23.20

First sonata posted to YouTube

Weeks to complete the sonatas

Sonatas performed

17,621

YouTube views as of Oct. 8

2020

250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth

Cannabis and Pregnancy

Marijuana use during pregnancy has been linked to childhood sleep problems for up to a decade, according to a CU Boulder study, which is the first to suggest marijuana use can impact children’s sleep long term. As legalization spreads, roughly 7% of pregnant women in the U.S. are using marijuana to help curb morning sickness. Lead author John Hewitt, director of CU’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics, said, “This study is one more example of why pregnant women are advised to avoid substance use, including cannabis.”

Teensy, Fast and Strong

Inspired by cockroaches, mechanical engineering assistant professor Kaushik Jayaram created one of the world’s smallest, fastest robots, HAMR-Jr. Weighing less than a paperclip, the four-legged robot is roughly the size of a penny. It is able to carry 10 times its body weight and moves about one foot per second. According to Jayaram, there are a lot of potential applications with HAMR-Jr., such as airplane engine inspections or human surgeries. "I want to build robots that can get out of the lab and run around like bugs,” Jayaram said.

New Center to Advance Quantum Science and Engineering

With a $25 million National Science Foundation award, CU Boulder is launching a new quantum science and engineering research center, led by physicist and JILA fellow Jun Ye. The center will partner with 11 other research organizations in the U.S. and abroad — including Harvard, Stanford and MIT — to create new technologies using advancements in areas related to quantum entanglement, quantum sensing and more.
“We’re asking how we can take advantage of recent advances in quantum physics to actually solve useful problems for society,” said Ye.

Everything...connects back to wanting to make sure that Black women in particular — [and] Black people in general — get to pursue [their] dreams in the daytime, not just when everyone else is asleep.”
-Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, during a virtual panel for CU students, faculty and staff on Sept. 16.

With a $25 million National Science Foundation award, CU Boulder is launching a new quantum science and engineering research center.

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Fall 2020

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Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 19:33:36 +0000

Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/26/2019 - 13:33

Giordan Thompson (MechEngr’20) was one of 21 CU Boulder engineering students enrolled in the Maymester course, "Medicine in Space and Surface Environments," focused on aerospace engineering, human physiology and medicine. For one week of the three-week course, the students lived at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah, where they simulated medical scenarios. The course was taught by faculty from CU Boulder’s aerospace department and from CU Anschutz.

Photo by Matt Kaskavitch/CU Anschutz

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Q&A: Emily Fairfax Wants You To Appreciate Beavers

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 21:29:42 +0000

Q&A: Emily Fairfax Wants You To Appreciate Beavers Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/16/2019 - 15:29

Ula Chrobak

[video:https://youtu.be/IAM94B73bzE]

In February, Emily Fairfax (PhDGeol’19) made a 44-second video about beavers. To her suprise, the video blew up on twitter, with about 5,000 shares and 15,000 likes. Here, Fairfax explains what captivates her about wetlands and beavers, what she’s learned and why we all should see beavers in a positive light.

How did you get interested in beavers?

In elementary school [in Indiana], we had musicals about wetlands and we did field trips to wetlands and I always thought they were the greatest. Then in college I led wilderness trips up in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota with canoes. There’s tons of beaver dams up there. It was really impressive being so far out there and seeing these carefully engineered structures that were holding back water.

After college, I was working and I wasn’t a huge fan of the subject matter of my job. I was watching documentaries about wetlands, and I got to this one about beavers. All of my old interests resparked, and I was just, like, ‘I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be a beaver researcher.’

How are you making the beaver research happen?

My adviser told me that if I won my own money for my projects, I was welcome to study whatever interested me. So I got a large fellowship that funded most of my research.

How widespread are beavers?

They're everywhere! Beavers have been in North America for millions of years. We know that the dam-building species or behavior is at least seven million years old, because that’s the oldest fossil dam we’ve found.

Before the trapping boom [which peaked in the 1800s], there was somewhere between 60 and 400 million in North America, or about a beaver per kilometer of stream. Then we trapped them down to almost nothing. Today there are somewhere between 10 and 15 million. They’re everywhere from Northern Mexico all the way to the Arctic, coast to coast. I study them in deserts and dry environments.

Tell me about your research.

I use remote sensing data to look at creeks in Nevada that have pockets of beaver damming, so that I'm able to compare the sections that have beavers to the sections that don't have beavers. I looked over four years: Three drought years and one wet. Over all those years, the beaver areas had a much lusher wetland.

Between drought years and non-drought years, the areas that had beavers didn’t really respond differently, which indicated that [the wetland plants] don’t really feel a multiyear drought in the beaver ponds. But in the areas of the creek that didn’t have beavers, the riparian wetland [wetland adjacent to the creeks] was really hit hard during the drought years, so it’s much more sensitive to multiyear droughts.

Was your study the first to look at that effect?

Yeah, there was [no research] directly tying beavers to that ecosystem impact.

What’s the significance of making wetlands more resilient?

Wetlands are extremely biodiverse. In the beaver wetlands I was studying there are threatened trout species, threatened frog species. A lot of insects will breed there, birds come there to nest. If you’re putting these systems into drought, those species are going to be hit hard. But if you can maintain these pockets of habitat [with the help of beavers], even when you have something like a drought that disturbs that ecosystem, it can still make it. It’s putting life support on the ecosystem.

A beaver dam in Colorado. (Photo courtesy Emily Fairfax)

What are you working on now?

The wildfire project, which was the subject of that video.

I saw these beavers maintaining ecosystems through drought and I wanted to see how far it can go. What’s more extreme than a drought? A fire! It's hotter and drier.

During fires, are these [beaver areas] actually staying green and wet? And how big of fires can they actually persist through? I imagine a wetland of any kind is going to make it through a little brush fire, but we're talking about big crowning wildfires [which spread at treetops independent of the ground fire].

I have data from five states that have five really big fires [and] also have beaver dams in them. I looked at each creek and compared where it stayed green to where there were beaver dams, and it’s an extremely tight correlation.

So, even with big fires, the dams helped the wetlands stay green.

Yeah, they were still preserved.

How does climate change tie into your research?

Most places where I look at beavers are getting increasingly hotter and drier.

I think that looking to things like beavers — ecosystem engineers that would be there anyway — is going to be a more sustainable way than trying to continue to manage every single wetland ourselves.

Does that mean reintroducing them to areas?

It means reintroduction and then also protection. A lot of states are starting to make more steps toward things like installing beaver dam analogues, which is when people build fake beaver dams, but also reintroduce beavers. And then, ultimately, putting policies into place where people can’t trap and shoot beavers without a permit. I think that’s going to really help their population grow and be more stable.

Tell me about the video you made.

Yeah! The base of the video is corkboard, and I covered it with green construction paper. And then I cut all the little pieces out of felt. The flames in the video are felt clumps that I sewed together, and for the dam I was just laying felt on top of itself to get a little more height. I already had the little beaver toy — I have lots of beaver toys.

I used my phone and an app to take about 300 pictures and stitch them all together to make the stop-motion. Between every picture I’d push the beaver toy and move the flames. I took it all and added the sounds in iMovie. All in all, it was about 2.5 hours of work.

Have you done other creative science communication projects?

I participated in a contest to haiku my research. I was one of the winners.

[The winning haiku:
Vanishing wetlands
Wilderness scarred by drought, fire
Beavers save the day]

Tell me about the reception the video had.

It exploded. I put it on my Twitter and I went for a hike and I didn’t have cell reception. When I got back from the hike my phone pinged and it was my friend. She was like “yo, your tweet blew up.” I was not expecting that, but it reached a really broad audience.

One of the coolest things was seeing it get retweeted in so many different languages and all around the world. I think it helped a lot that there was no speaking in the video.

I think if you can just think about how to take your science and distill it down into something really digestible, then you can actually reach a really broad audience.

What do you hope the impact will be?

First, I hope that other scientists think about how they can also get their research out there. There’s so much cool science going on and I think everyone should hear about it. It’s on the scientists to take it to a level where it is digestible by the general public.

And then, I hope people like beavers more. They’ve struggled with PR. They are 70-pound rodents, which can be hard for some people to enjoy. I wanted [the video] to be a resource for people, so if they're confronted with a beaver they can think, “Ok, I did learn about this, they're not bad, they are good.”

Here, Fairfax explains what captivates her about wetlands and beavers, what she’s learned through her research and why we all should all see beavers in a positive light.

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