Feb. 2, 2026 - ME Faculty & Staff Newsletter
Quick Shout Outs
Congratulations to ME faculty and staff members Shalom Ruben (Hutchison Teaching Award), Mike Hannigan (Faculty Service Award), Nicole Xu (Textbook Recognition Award) and Victoria Lanaghan (Outstanding Staff Award) for being recognized as college award winners at last week's All-College Meeting! If you missed the meeting, you can download and view the slides here.
Department Highlights
Donated blood has a shelf life. A new test tracks how it's aging
Roughly 6.8 million people donate blood in the United States alone, helping save millions of lives, according to the American Red Cross. But just like groceries sitting on store shelves, red blood cells age over time. That's why Associate Professor Xiaoyun Ding and medical collaborators at CU Anschutz have created a new chip device to help give blood centers and hospitals a reliable way to monitor the quality of red blood cells after they sit for weeks in storage.
New materials, old physics – the science behind how your winter jacket keeps you warm
Assistant Professor Longji Cui is a materials expert who develops high precision instrumentation and computational techniques to explore energy transport, conversion, and dissipation at extreme scales. In this article by The Conversation, Cui explains how even something as simple as winter jackets that keep you warm during chilly days are a testament to centuries-old physics and cutting-edge science.