Spotlight Faculty Fellow

Research highlight: Dr. Keith Musselman and the EcoTram (MRS News)

Gabe Allen — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:53:42 +0000

Research highlight: Dr. Keith Musselman and the EcoTram (MRS News) Gabe Allen Wed, 01/14/2026 - 09:53

INSTAAR fellow Keith Musselman and collaborators have constructed an "EcoTram" that continuously measures hydrological and ecological variables across a 400-foot transect high in the Indian Peaks. The system provides a wealth of data for investigations into shifting mountain systems.

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Embracing excellence: CU Boulder honors postdocs and mentors during National Postdoc Appreciation Week (Postdoctoral Affairs)

David J Lubinski — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 17:55:06 +0000

Embracing excellence: CU Boulder honors postdocs and mentors during National Postdoc Appreciation Week (Postdoctoral Affairs) David J Lubinski Mon, 09/22/2025 - 11:55

Among a select group to receive awards were two INSTAARs: Nathalie Vriend was selected as a CU Boulder Outstanding Postdoc Mentor of the Year and Edgart Flores won an honorable mention as an Outstanding Postdoc. Congratulations to both of them!

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INSTAAR welcomes two new faculty fellows

Gabe Allen — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 21:31:58 +0000

INSTAAR welcomes two new faculty fellows Gabe Allen Tue, 08/26/2025 - 15:31

Gabe Allen

INSTAAR has hired two new faculty fellows, Laura Sunberg and Zhi Li. Both Sunberg and Li will join the department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering as assistant professors in addition to conducting research at INSTAAR.

Though Sunberg is new to her position, she is not new to INSTAAR. For the past two years, she has studied how microplastics circulate through the ocean during an NSF-funded postdoctoral position at the institute. Starting last year, she also served as the postdoc representative on the INSTAAR directorate, the institute’s governing body. As a faculty fellow, she will now rejoin the directorate as a voting member.

Sunberg will join a small, but growing cohort of INSTAAR researchers with expertise in environmental fluid mechanics. Institute leadership hope that her appointment will spark new collaborations and expand the institute’s focus on emerging environmental hazards.

“Dr. Sunberg’s novel laboratory and numerical modeling studies of microplastic and firebrand transport will expand INSTAAR’s research portfolio into new areas of growing environmental concern,” INSTAAR director Nicole Lovenduski said.

Zhi Li comes to INSTAAR after wrapping up a postdoctoral position at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is an expert in surface water modeling, with a particular focus on refining flood prediction methods. At INSTAAR, he also plans to establish a “collaboratory” aimed at understanding the overlapping impacts of climate change and flooding on agriculture, infrastructure and public health.

This summer, Li was quoted in multiple stories covering flash flooding across the U.S., including this New York Times article. Li will join a growing number of INSTAAR members studying climate-related extremes and hazards, an emerging focus area for the institute.

“Dr. Li will elevate INSTAAR’s research on climate-related extremes by bringing additional expertise on hydrology and flood impacts,” Lovenduski said. “His numerical modeling research will complement the CSDMS program, and his community efforts will enhance INSTAAR’s public engagement.”

Laura Sunberg, an expert in marine microplastic transport, and Zhi Li, an expert in flood modeling, are INSTAAR’s latest faculty members. Both researchers are also beginning professorships in the department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering.

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Report paints grim picture of how nuclear war could impact oceans (CU Boulder Today)

Gabe Allen — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 15:48:40 +0000

Report paints grim picture of how nuclear war could impact oceans (CU Boulder Today) Gabe Allen Wed, 07/30/2025 - 09:48

In a Q&A, INSTAAR director Nicole Lovenduski talks about her contributions to a report on the environmental impacts of a hypothetical nuclear war. Lovenduski was tasked with modeling impacts in the world's oceans, which could be global and long-lasting.

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Rainy spring may be bad news for fire season. Here’s what you can do about it (CU Boulder Today)

Gabe Allen — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:13:19 +0000

Rainy spring may be bad news for fire season. Here’s what you can do about it (CU Boulder Today) Gabe Allen Tue, 06/17/2025 - 13:13

Grassland fires are becoming more frequent and more dangerous across the country. Ecologist Katharine Suding has spent her career understanding the ecosystems that produce them. She shares insights in a Q&A.

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A brief history of Katharine Suding's groundbreaking career in restoration ecology (The Franklin Institute)

Gabe Allen — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:25:36 +0000

A brief history of Katharine Suding's groundbreaking career in restoration ecology (The Franklin Institute) Gabe Allen Mon, 05/05/2025 - 14:25

The Franklin Institute recently gave INSTAAR senior faculty fellow Katharine Suding the Bower Award for achievement in Science citing her transformative contributions to the field of restoration ecology. This mini-documentary tells her story.

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New faculty fellow Nathalie Vriend brings avalanche expertise to INSTAAR

Gabe Allen — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:00:00 +0000

New faculty fellow Nathalie Vriend brings avalanche expertise to INSTAAR Gabe Allen Wed, 04/23/2025 - 12:00

Gabe Allen

This month, INSTAAR welcomed associate professor of mechanical engineering Nathalie Vriend to the institute as a senior faculty fellow. Vriend’s research aims to deconstruct the physics of granular flows in nature. In particular, her work provides insight into the physics of avalanches and migrating sand dunes.

As a senior faculty fellow, Vriend will become a voting member of the INSTAAR directorate while continuing her teaching and research in the Paul M. Rady Mechanical Engineering College of Engineering and Applied Science. She is also eager to explore new collaborations with other INSTAAR scientists.

“Nathalie is an outstanding scientist who will enhance our interdisciplinarity, deepen our expertise in fluid mechanics, and expose INSTAARs to novel laboratory techniques for the study of geophysical phenomena,” INSTAAR director Nicole Lovenduski said, adding that her appointment will strengthen ties between INSTAAR and the Paul M. Rady Mechanical Engineering College of Engineering and Applied Science.

In light of her recent appointment, INSTAAR sat down with Vriend to talk about her career, research interests and aspirations for future collaborations at the institute.

Q: Why were you interested in joining INSTAAR?

A: When I came to CU Boulder two-and-a-half years ago, I heard about the different institutes, but I wasn't really aware what the mechanics or benefits of joining were. More recently, I struck up a conversation with INSTAAR director Nicole Lovenduski, and I realized that INSTAAR’s focus overlaps with at least half of my work, because snow and avalanches occur in the arctic and alpine.

After talking with Nikki, I saw great potential in connecting with people that do field work in these environments. I’m in mechanical engineering and barely any of my colleagues actually go out into the field. INSTAAR’s logistical support, storage facilities, and experience in applying for field grants and executing field campaigns—those things were big selling points for me.

Q: Tell us about your research on avalanches.

A: It goes back to my very first research job after my PhD, where I studied avalanches in Switzerland. In essence, my research has always focused on moving snow. So we're not talking about fracturing or the initiation of a snow avalanche, which is a completely different topic. But, if a snow avalanche has already started and is moving along, how fast does it go? What kind of pressures are exerted on it? What's the reach? What's the run out? I’m interested in the physics of avalanches.

Then come the implications. Where could you build infrastructure safely? What kind of defensive structures could you build to divert an avalanche out of the path of greatest danger? How can we model avalanches, so that we can predict where they might go?

I recently gave a guest lecture on snow avalanche field work and one of the students was like ‘Wow. You went and built this experiment and recorded three artificial releases of snow throughout the winter and that’s all the data you could collect?’ Yeah. Field work with avalanches is just hard because you’re dependent on factors you can’t control. And, if an avalanche goes, you have to get the data there and then. If something fails, you’re out of luck.

So, because of those factors, I moved more into the lab. It’s much more controllable. We can repeat it. We can change certain parameters to nudge behavior in a certain direction. In my lab right now, we’re specializing in a technique called photoelasticity. It creates these fantastic images that are not only beautiful, but hold a lot of quantitative information.

Q: Fascinating. I know you also do research on sand dunes. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

A: Sand Dunes were my first scientific love. It’s what I did my PhD on, which was 15 years ago mind you, I guess I’m getting a bit old. I looked at the booming sand dunes or the singing sand dunes. Basically, if you create an avalanche on a sand dune it creates a very musical tone. We explained that using geophysical methods, acoustics and some, you might say, granular mechanics.

It creates such a magical, mystical sound, and there were a ton of TV news segments about the research—PBS, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel. It was 15 years ago, and PBS even asked me to do an interview a couple of years ago. They keep coming back to it.

Since then, I’ve done several field trips to Qatar and White Sands National Park here in the U.S. to investigate the structure of sand dunes—how they are layered and what that tells us about their history.

When you cut a cross-section of a tree you get tree rings. You can count them, measure them and see which years the tree was growing slow or fast. The same thing happens to sand dunes. As they migrate, they continuously avalanche and form layers. Depending on the width, you can see how fast it was moving.

Q: Why does your research matter? Why is it important?

A: It’s very simple in both cases. For sand dunes, we’re living in a drying world. We have a loss of agricultural resources. Rivers are drying up. Playas are drying up and creating more sand and more dust. So sand dunes are really important.

I visited places in Qatar where dunes were engulfing roads. In the capital of Mauritania, Nouakchott, a dune field is slowly encroaching on the city. It's just engulfing houses, and there's nothing they can do about it. And, closer to home, we have Lake Michigan. They have a row of villas next to these sand dunes and, one by one, they are getting overtaken. They’re trying to get them out with bulldozers, but, of course, it isn’t working. So one by one, you can see your neighbors losing your house, and you know you're next.

Sand dunes can have a huge impact on human infrastructure, so we need to understand how sentiments move, and how we can adjust their behavior. Can we stabilize them? Can we divert them?

The rationale is very similar for avalanches. We might have been able to rely on historical data in the past, but with climate change avalanches may be bigger. They may be happening in different areas. Their impact may be much, much more significant. So we really need to understand how avalanches move, and how other debris flows and landslides move.This might allow us to predict their behavior and plan for it. I approach that through physical modeling.

Q: What kind of collaborations do you envision might be possible within INSTAAR?

A: I’ve been talking with Julia Moriarty, who does coastal research. She does a combination of sedimentology, fluid dynamics and coastal oceanography. We had been talking about potentially applying for an NSF grant, but in the end we split the project into separate proposals with the postdoc involved. Nonetheless, we know we have a common research interest that could lead to further collaborations.

There’s also a very clear overlap between my research and Irina Overeem’s work. She works with glaciers and ice streams and sediments.

Finally, Bob Anderson has worked on geomorphological problems that I’m interested in. There might be something there.

I still want to reach out to Mountain Research director Scott Taylor and the people in charge of cold rooms to explore more possibilities. I’ve talked with Nikki and some others about the possibility of doing some small experiments in the cold room, because some of my work could definitely benefit from a cold environment. We’re still investigating whether our cameras, which are quite fancy, could deal with minus 10 degrees.

I will also be giving a talk at the Mountain Research Station summer seminar series (see our events page for more info).

Vriend, an expert in avalanches and sand dunes, will join INSTAAR as a senior member of the directorate. Institute leadership hopes her appointment will strengthen ties with the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

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New RIO Faculty Fellows cohort continues legacy of leadership development across campus (RIO)

David J Lubinski — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 22:31:57 +0000

New RIO Faculty Fellows cohort continues legacy of leadership development across campus (RIO) David J Lubinski Tue, 03/11/2025 - 16:31

Julia Moriarty (INSTAAR & ATOC) is one of 14 faculty members selected by the Research and Innovation Office as their 2025 RIO Faculty Fellows cohort. The program supports faculty in achieving their goals through tailored training, experiential learning and leadership development opportunities.

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Scott Taylor to receive a 2025 CU Boulder Faculty Excellence Award (Boulder Faculty Assembly)

David J Lubinski — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 23:34:03 +0000

Scott Taylor to receive a 2025 CU Boulder Faculty Excellence Award (Boulder Faculty Assembly) David J Lubinski Wed, 03/05/2025 - 16:34

INSTAAR Fellow and EBIO Associate Professor Scott Taylor is just one of three faculty members to win an award for Excellence in Leadership & Service from the Boulder Faculty Assembly. The award includes a monetary prize and an awards ceremony event on April 2nd. Congratulations!

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Katharine Suding named a 2025 Franklin Institute Bower Award winner (Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine)

David J Lubinski — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:48:15 +0000

Katharine Suding named a 2025 Franklin Institute Bower Award winner (Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine) David J Lubinski Fri, 02/14/2025 - 17:48

CU Boulder distinguished professor Katharine Suding was recognized for making “transformative contributions to restoration ecology by increasing our understanding of degraded ecosystems and their recovery dynamics.”

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Spotlight Faculty Fellow

Research highlight: Dr. Keith Musselman and the EcoTram (MRS News)

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Embracing excellence: CU Boulder honors postdocs and mentors during National Postdoc Appreciation Week (Postdoctoral Affairs)

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INSTAAR welcomes two new faculty fellows

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Report paints grim picture of how nuclear war could impact oceans (CU Boulder Today)

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Rainy spring may be bad news for fire season. Here’s what you can do about it (CU Boulder Today)

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A brief history of Katharine Suding's groundbreaking career in restoration ecology (The Franklin Institute)

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New faculty fellow Nathalie Vriend brings avalanche expertise to INSTAAR

Q: Why were you interested in joining INSTAAR?

Q: Tell us about your research on avalanches.

Q: Fascinating. I know you also do research on sand dunes. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Q: Why does your research matter? Why is it important?

Q: What kind of collaborations do you envision might be possible within INSTAAR?

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New RIO Faculty Fellows cohort continues legacy of leadership development across campus (RIO)

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Scott Taylor to receive a 2025 CU Boulder Faculty Excellence Award (Boulder Faculty Assembly)

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Katharine Suding named a 2025 Franklin Institute Bower Award winner (Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine)

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