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Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread

Alexander James Servantez — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:15:00 +0000

Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread Alexander Jame… Fri, 12/05/2025 - 11:15

PhD student Laura Shannon, alongside Professors Greg Rieker and Peter Hamlington are setting fires inside wind tunnels to gain a better understanding of how fire spreads across different terrain. The team says their findings could help keep communities safer in a world where climate-driven wildfire is becoming more common—and more dangerous.

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Brewing engineers: Inside CU Boulder’s new food engineering program

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:00:27 +0000

Brewing engineers: Inside CU Boulder’s new food engineering program Alexander Jame… Wed, 12/03/2025 - 14:00

Alexander Servantez

For Carmen Pacheco, food isn’t just something you eat. It’s a complex, interconnected set of culture, stories and engineering that she is using to build one of CU Boulder’s most innovative academic ventures.

Pacheco, a faculty member in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, is the architect behind the Food Engineering Graduate Certificate. Launched in 2024, the program was designed to introduce engineering students to the science behind their favorite foods and career opportunities in the food industry.

The certificate program, inspired by a pioneering Design of Coffee course at UC Davis, is among the first of its kind in higher education. Pacheco says it can reinforce scientific concepts that students can apply to any engineering discipline.

“We use universally recognized products like coffee and cacao as mediums to learn engineering principles, but they also have the ability to provide transferable skills,” said Pacheco. “We aren’t trying to produce baristas or chocolatiers. We want students to gain an understanding of engineering systems—understanding and evaluating the process from the beginning all the way to the final product.”

Early path to food engineering

Growing up in an immigrant family, Pacheco felt a close connection to food. She learned all the cultural dishes that embodied her youth, even creating a bilingual cookbook to preserve her family’s traditional recipes.

Faculty member Carmen Pacheco (middle) working with students in the Design of Coffee course.

As her cooking skills grew stronger, Pacheco found herself thinking about food in a new way. It wasn’t just recipes anymore—she also began questioning the functions of ingredients and thinking about the ratios of spices and herbs.

One day, while selling her homemade mole sauce, Pacheco asked herself an interesting question: How can food become a fun educational tool for teaching engineering students?

“I used to bring salsa into my freshman-level chemistry class to teach mechanical engineers about acidity, like the pH of a tomatillo versus a roasted tomato, or understanding hydrogen-ion concentration,” Pacheco said. “The students had a nice response to using food in the classroom, and I became extremely passionate about it.”

That next semester, Pacheco founded the university’s first food engineering course: Design of Coffee.

“Boulder is a mecca for natural foods and people love coffee here. I pitched the class to my faculty chair, explained its importance, demonstrated the teaching and before we knew it there was a class,” she said. “I didn’t know if people were going to sign up for it, but they did.”

Crafting a complete student experience

After the success of the Design of Coffee class, Pacheco was given the opportunity to take the one-off idea and sculpt it into a complete student experience. She added two additional food engineering courses—Design of Chocolate and Design of Beer—and worked with Associate Teaching Professor Dan Riffell to curate the curriculum and align the classes with a wide range of elective offerings, creating a full-fledged graduate certificate program.

But Pacheco’s vision for the program wasn’t just about brewing coffee or malting beer.

Students working together in groups to brew coffee in the Design of Coffee course.

According to Pacheco, all foods have a story and understanding that story is crucial to its creation.

Take chocolate, for example. Over 75 percent of cacao is harvested in Africa via slavery and exploitation of cheap labor. It’s then shipped in bulk, often to privileged countries like the U.S. and Europe.

However, Africa sees little, if any, economic value, from its hard work.The profit is seen in countries where cacao is developed into chocolate bars and other treats.

“When the students learn the history of chocolate and its journey, they value and appreciate it more,” Pacheco said.

Coffee also has a story. Coffee trees take three to five years to mature and are extremely sensitive to climate change. They require heavy maintenance and chemicals to survive, which can be harmful to the environment.

That’s why Pacheco emphasizes sustainability as a key pillar in the course’s curriculum. Students learn to process coffee from scratch, using the least amount of energy possible.

“It’s important to educate students to close the gap between consumers and producers,” said Pacheco. “If consumers know where their food comes from or how it's made, they are more likely to be engaged in conversations about sustainability.”

The future of the program

In just one year, Pacheco has seen encouraging enrollment numbers. But she believes there’s room to grow.

She envisions a day when students will have access to a food engineering lab—a one-stop shop equipped with everything they need to roast coffee, process chocolate or malt beer.

She also hopes the program can one day be opened to a broader range of students across campus. Right now, only engineering students can apply, but allowing students from other majors could enrich classroom conversations.

The potential is endless, but Pacheco says the program’s core values will always stay the same.

“At the end of the day, engineering is not just math and machines—it’s the story of the people behind all of these materials,” Pacheco said. “We want this program to be a sustainable resource for both the local community and beyond.”

Faculty member Carmen Pacheco is the architect behind the Food Engineering Graduate Certificate, one of CU Boulder's most innovative academic ventures. Launched in 2024, the program was designed to introduce engineering students to the science behind their favorite foods and career opportunities in the food industry, but it can also reinforce scientific concepts that students can apply to any engineering discipline.

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A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time

Alexander James Servantez — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:20:57 +0000

A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time Alexander Jame… Thu, 11/20/2025 - 14:20

Soil is comprised of an intricate network of bacteria and other microbes that humans depend on, but this complex environmental system is constantly shifting, making it difficult for scientists to measure. Associate Professor Gregory Whiting and his team of researchers are developing reliable, inexpensive and easy-to-deploy sensors that monitor soil in real time to help farmers optimize their use of fertilizers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money in the process.

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Smart toilet designs in Cambodia held promise, but a key piece was missing

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:58:52 +0000

Smart toilet designs in Cambodia held promise, but a key piece was missing Alexander Jame… Wed, 11/19/2025 - 13:58

Alexander Servantez

A smart toilet design introduced in rural Cambodia was supposed to change lives—keeping families safe and protecting the environment.

However, while households reported that they liked the new system, a crucial piece was missing: using it correctly.

James Harper, an assistant teaching professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder, recently led a behavioral study analyzing toilet use in Cambodia. The work, conducted through Harper’s own research consultancy Realize Research in partnership with international development organization iDE, assessed rural households using a backyard sanitation system designed for families to treat human waste themselves.

“Here in the States, we don’t need to think about clean water coming from our tap or having a toilet that flushes, but there are plenty of places around the world that do,” said Harper. “Cambodia is a country of about 17 million people where sanitation systems are lacking. There have been a lot of innovations to help bring new infrastructure and practices to rural areas of the country, and this study examined one of those innovations from a behavioral perspective.”

A man digging a pit for one of the alternating dual-pit latrines (ADP) in rural Cambodia.

An easy, effective sanitation solution

iDE partnered with local business owners to promote, sell, and install alternating dual-pit latrines (ADP) across six Cambodian provinces. These pour-flush toilet systems are most commonly used in off-grid locations and are an adaptation of single-pit latrines like those commonly found in U.S. national parks.

Since 2009, iDE has facilitated the implementation of over 410,000 basic, pour-flush latrines, representing nearly one in five toilets in all of rural Cambodia.

The ADP is essentially a new second pit and is sold as an upgrade to an existing single-pit latrine that is currently full of waste. When one pit fills—usually after two to five years of regular use by a household of five—users can switch to using the empty second pit.

When the initial installation is performed, the service provider mixes hydrated lime, a common soil conditioner used globally in agriculture, into the first pit to speed up the process of treating the waste and kill pathogens that endanger humans.The toilet is then connected to the new second pit.

After the second pit fills, users are encouraged to call their original service provider or they can empty the first pit safely using shovels and buckets, and then reconnect their toilet back to the first pit. The lime mixture and storage time remove most pathogens after two years, making the treated waste easy and safer to compost, allowing the cycle to repeat indefinitely.

It’s not the most glamorous engineering project, but Harper says ADPs are extremely effective at killing off dangerous pathogens, especially in areas with limited infrastructure. The waste they produce can be used, somewhat surprisingly, for agricultural purposes, as well.

Human waste is replete with nutrients that plants love, so as long as pathogens are removed, human waste can be a great fertilizer.

“Lime is a cheap agricultural amendment that’s commonly used around the world to change the pH of soil to improve crop production,” Harper said. “We use it to raise the pH in a full pit to kill pathogens that endanger humans. Then, that human waste can be used as a fertilizer to make crops grow better.”

The interesting, important results

From a theoretical standpoint, ADP latrine implementation in Cambodia was sound. It was safe, cost-effective and came with a number of potential benefits for the area.

However, the team recognized early that long-term use of the system depended on the engagement and behavior of the households themselves.

A man putting the finishing touches on an ADP in rural Cambodia.

After multiple training sessions and allowing families to manage their ADPs themselves, iDE and Harper surveyed 765 households to see how well people were using the toilets and following the recommended guidelines, particularly those about waiting 2 years before emptying and switching their pit connections. Despite a general understanding of the required steps and expectations, they found that follow-through among households was inconsistent.

According to the survey, only 40% of people could recall certain details of recommended ADP maintenance, including how long before emptying a pit can be done safely. In fact, not one household in the entire study waited the recommended two-year period before emptying, potentially exposing themselves and others in their community to health risks via pathogen exposure.

Harper says there were clear motivations for the results. Some families opted to empty pits early before hosting guests during cultural events. Others simply reconnected their old pits to their toilets without emptying the dried, compacted waste. But overall, households just did not want to manage their own waste—for obvious reasons.

“Ultimately, what the study highlighted was the difference between theory and practice,” said Harper. “We learned that households can’t—and actually shouldn’t—be relied upon to completely manage their own waste, and that’s a reasonable finding. We don’t manage our own waste in the States; we just flush and forget. So, why would we expect something different from people in Cambodia?

While the ADP could be a great product, its use in the real world is different than we assumed during design, and that’s why the design must be improved going forward—to meet the need while working within the real-world constraints of our users.”

iDE will use the results of this study to pivot and experiment with other solutions. They are currently testing and scaling up a service-based approach where waste can be disposed of safely on the household premises by a trained service provider. All a household needs to do is call when they need help emptying their pits.

But Harper and his iDE colleague Tyler Kozole also hope the study can be a moment of learning that all engineers across any discipline can benefit from, too.

“We recognize that this research indicates what could be viewed as a type of failure in our work,” said Kozole, director of iDE Cambodia’s Wash, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program. “We’re broadcasting this research to advocate for embracing and learning from failures. If the whole sector embraced this mindset, we’d solve problems faster, use our resources more efficiently and ultimately make the kind of impact we’re trying to see in the world.”

Assistant Teaching Professor James Harper recently led a behavioral study analyzing toilet use in Cambodia. Their goal was to introduce a new, smart toilet design that can keep rural households safe and protect the environment. But while households reported that they liked the new system, a crucial piece was missing: using it correctly.

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Researchers redefine hip arthroscopy with breakthrough surgical device

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 17:44:38 +0000

Researchers redefine hip arthroscopy with breakthrough surgical device Alexander Jame… Wed, 11/12/2025 - 10:44

Alexander Servantez

There’s a new tool in the hands of surgeons making waves through the world of hip arthroscopy.

Jacob Segil, a research professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder, collaborated with Dr. Omer Mei Dan from the Department of Orthopedics at �Թ�� of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine to create a redesigned surgical instrument called the CAP-LIFT cannula.

The technology, published in the journal Arthroscopy Techniques, completely transforms arthroscopic procedures in the hip region, making them safer and more efficient than ever before. The device was recently launched in October, and within the first few weeks used in over 100 successful surgeries.

“We are very proud of how this technology has already helped surgeons and patients across hip arthroscopy and sports medicine,” said Segil. “It’s being sold nationwide and the feedback we’ve received from all of the different surgeons has been fantastic.”

A surgeon using the CAP-LIFT cannula during a hip arthroscopy procedure.

Hip arthroscopy, a type of minimally invasive joint surgery, has become increasingly popular as of late. According to a study in the Iowa Orthopaedic Journal, the procedure has seen a 600% increase in utilization over the past 15 years due to improved techniques and technology.

Most hip arthroscopy surgeries involve using a cannula—a thin tube that’s inserted into the body from the skin down into the joint. Think of it as a straw that allows a surgeon to position surgical tools and a camera inside the area.

Segil and Mei Dan's slotted cannula design (right) next to a standard circumferential cannula (left).

Existing cannulas allow surgeons to operate inside an otherwise hard-to-reach joint space without the need for large incisions or open surgery. However, Segil says they still leave a lot to be desired when it comes to hip arthroscopy.

“Imagine sticking a chopstick into a straw and trying to manipulate the tissue and joint on the other side. With such limited space, it’s very hard to do,” Segil said. “That’s the constraint on the surgeon, and for the longest time it’s been seen as simply a fact of life. It’s been poor ever since these techniques have been established and our cannula design solves those problems.”

The CAP-LIFT cannula is “slotted,” meaning it’s only about 120 degrees of material instead of a full circumference. This allows a surgeon a wider range of motion to maneuver a tool inside of the tube far easier.

But that’s not the only novelty Segil and his team introduced with their new invention.

Current cannula techniques require a second set of hands holding a stainless steel surgical tool called a “sled” in order to help guide instruments through the tube and maintain access to the joint. According to Segil, this awkward dynamic with another body in the operating room can be time consuming and difficult during a procedure, especially when swapping tools or adjusting within the joint space.

He also says it can be extremely dangerous. Every removal or re-entry of the sled means an increased risk of damaging the tissue, muscle or tendons surrounding the joint, which can cause a great deal of additional swelling or recovery complications.

A close look at the fully equipped CAP-LIFT cannula.

To combat this, the group implemented an anchoring system that combines the cannula and the sled into a single device, granting easy access into the joint without damaging the surrounding tissue or needing any extra hands.

“Picture a straw again. Usually they are held in place by the lid of a cup, but they can still move around. In surgery, this causes issues. It creates a challenge and surgeons wouldn’t be able to get to the joint,” said Segil. “Our cannula device is like a straw that is anchored and fixed at two ends to the top and bottom of the cup. It doesn’t move at all—it’ll make sure that you go all the way to the joint every time and you don’t need a second or third person to help.”

The CAP-LIFT cannula was purchased by major medical device manufacturer Smith and Nephew in 2022. But for Segil and Mei Dan, it’s the device’s impact on patients that gives them a true sense of fulfillment.

“We already know a lot of people who have used it during surgery,” Segil said. “That means there are real people who have benefitted from our technology. It’s amazing to know that our idea is finally out in the world and helping others.”

Research Professor Jacob Segil collaborated with Dr. Omer Mei Dan from the �Թ�� of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine to create a redesigned surgical instrument called the CAP-LIFT cannula. The device was recently launched in October, and within the first few weeks used in over 100 successful surgeries.

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Mechanical engineering students shine at the 2025 CSC Finals

Alexander James Servantez — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 19:46:57 +0000

Mechanical engineering students shine at the 2025 CSC Finals Alexander Jame… Thu, 11/06/2025 - 12:46

Mechanical engineering students Jack Mulvaney, Josh Shrewbridge, Hayden Dondlinger, Kai Groudan, Duncan Laird and Gregory Reilly shined at this year's Colorado Sustainable Challenge, receiving nearly $8,500 in awards during the two-week hackathon-style event designed for anyone passionate about solving problems and building a solution to impact sustainability.

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ME researchers and alumni among this year's Lab Venture Challenge winners

Alexander James Servantez — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 20:06:03 +0000

ME researchers and alumni among this year's Lab Venture Challenge winners Alexander Jame… Mon, 10/27/2025 - 14:06

Assistant Professor Longji Cui and ME alum Jafar Makrani (MMechEngr'25) have each won $125,000 in startup funding along with their respective teams as part of this year's Lab Venture Challenge competition. Their startups, Synergia and Agami Zero, specialize in developing cutting-edge technology that offer cost-effective, clean energy solutions.

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Researchers pioneer fluid-based laser scanning for brain imaging

Alexander James Servantez — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 18:36:15 +0000

Researchers pioneer fluid-based laser scanning for brain imaging Alexander Jame… Thu, 10/16/2025 - 12:36

Professor Victor Bright and mechanical engineering PhD students Eduardo Miscles and Mo Zahrabi have recently collaborated on a new study that demonstrates how a fluid-based optical device known as an electrowetting prism can be used to steer lasers at high speeds for advanced imaging applications.

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Xu selected to receive a 2025 Packard Fellowship award

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:24:11 +0000

Xu selected to receive a 2025 Packard Fellowship award Alexander Jame… Wed, 10/15/2025 - 09:24

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation announces the 2025 class of Packard Fellows.

Nicole Xu, assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering.

Established in 1988, the award provides some of the nation’s most promising early career scientists and engineers flexible funding to test novel ideas and lead research that drives real-world impact. This year’s class features 20 innovative researchers, who will each receive $875,000 over five years to explore new frontiers in their fields of study.

“I’m excited to join this incredible cohort of Packard Fellows,” said Xu, who is also affiliated with the Robotics Program, Biomedical Engineering Program and BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder. "It’s a great opportunity to collaborate with people and learn from these brilliant scientists and engineers.”

A history of Packard Fellows at CU Boulder

Xu is the 20th researcher from CU Boulder to receive a Packard Fellowship.
She is the fifth researcher to represent CU Engineering as a Packard Fellow.

Xu leads an interdisciplinary research group at the intersection of robotics, fluid dynamics and biology. She says the funding will help her team tackle issues related to climate, energy efficiency and even environmental stewardship.

“To address climate change, we need new, energy-efficient tools for ocean monitoring and exploration,” Xu said. “The Xu Lab leverages jellyfish as a model organism to design next-generation underwater vehicles using three approaches: engineered soft robots, cyborg systems enhancing live animals, and tissue-engineered constructs. Together, these methods offer complementary insights into propulsion.”

The Packard Fellowships were inspired by electrical engineer and former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard and his commitment to strengthening university-based science and engineering programs across the country. Since the fellowship’s inception, the Packard Foundation has awarded more than $500 million to support 735 scientists and engineers from 55 universities.

Over the years, Packard Fellows have made discoveries to help protect species, develop new vaccines and launch technologies that improve our daily lives. Many have gone on to receive some of the field’s highest honors, including Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics and elections to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

“It’s important to invest in science now more than ever so that we can study fundamental research and applications in areas like AI and climate change,” said Xu. “The Packard Fellowship will provide my lab with crucial funding that will allow us to conduct high-risk, high-reward research.”

Read the Packard Foundation news release

‘Cyborg jellyfish’ could aid in deep-sea research, inspire next-gen underwater vehicles

Assistant Professor Nicole Xu first became fascinated with moon jellyfish more than a decade ago because of their extraordinary swimming abilities. Today, Xu has developed a way to harness their efficiency and ease at moving through the water in ways that could make some types of aquatic research much easier.

We can turn bugs into flying, crawling RoboCops. Does that mean we should?

Scientists and engineers are modifying animals with mechanical parts to create next-generation biohybrid cyborg animals that can perform difficult and unappealing tasks for humans. But do humans have the right to overlook animal consciousness for personal gain? In this article by Salon, Assistant Professor Nicole Xu blazes this new terrain and explores the ethical considerations behind these biohybrid creatures using her jellyfish case study as an example.

Meet 5 types of robots with living body parts

Living organisms have evolved across the span of millions of years to do things that are nearly impossible even for today's machines. But what happens when you combine biology and engineering to create more capable robots? Assistant Professor Nicole Xu shares her lab's efforts to create the next generation of cyborg jellyfish explorers.

Assistant Professor Nicole Xu has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The award provides some of the nation’s most promising early career scientists and engineers flexible funding to test novel ideas and lead research that drives real-world impact.

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New open-source software allows for efficient 3D printing with multiple materials

Alexander James Servantez — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:16:15 +0000

New open-source software allows for efficient 3D printing with multiple materials Alexander Jame… Mon, 10/13/2025 - 15:16

Alexander Servantez

A new open-source tool is reshaping how engineers design multi-material objects.

Charles Wade, a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder, has created a design system software package that uses functions and code to map not just shapes, but where different materials belong in a 3D object.

OpenVCAD, a new open-source tool created to help engineers efficiently design multi-material objects.

The project, called OpenVCAD, was developed in the Matter Assembly Computation Lab led by Assistant Professor Robert MacCurdy of the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. The team is publishing a new paper in the top 3D printing journal Additive Manufacturing on October 13 that will highlight the design tool and its potential to transform 3D printing by enabling engineers to design multi-material objects smarter and more efficiently.

“There’s certainly a history of multi-material design study and practice that existed well before OpenVCAD,” said MacCurdy, who is also affiliated with computer science and the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. “But we believe the overhead of writing specific code for specific projects every single time prevents engineers from doing as much design as they could.

“With OpenVCAD, we’re doing all of that work once—and doing it really well—so that people have built-in infrastructure to represent these spatially varying multimaterial designs.”

Pushing the limits of multi-material design

Designing objects with multiple materials has long pushed the limits of conventional computer-aided design (CAD) software.

According to Wade and MacCurdy, traditional design tools tend to represent objects as boundary surfaces only. This means they operate with an implicit assumption that everything inside of a boundary surface is all made up of the same material.

One of the major areas of interest in mechanics is something called gradient design, in which two materials are gradually blended together from one to another—like a shoe sole that shifts from firm at the bottom to soft at the top. But without a powerful design tool, translating rough steps into smooth transitions can be overwhelmingly difficult.

That’s why Wade developed OpenVCAD. The software package acts almost as a set of convenience tools that allow people not only to easily compose complex functions, but also to assign them as materials to objects in a 3D printer.

“This is the first multi-material, code-based design tool that is widely available,” Wade said. “It allows for good complexity when printing objects, it’s accessible and it’s intuitive to write and design. Unlike traditional CAD software, where you’re forced to sketch everything out for each change and you cannot represent graded materials, our tool allows users to change one small variable and watch the whole design update in an easy way.”

A broad impact for all to explore

The team’s new paper will explore OpenVCAD’s capability across a variety of 3D printers, including one available to MacCurdy’s lab group that allows for object printing with up to five materials at a time.

However, it’s the project’s potential impact for the entire engineering community that excites them.

A multi-material scan-to-print medical model for pre-surgical planning.

According to MacCurdy and his team, the OpenVCAD software can be used to help researchers design objects relevant to just about any industry and field. Surgeons in need of realistic planning models to practice on can take advantage of the tool’s gradient mixing properties. Soft robotics experts can use it to create flexible actuators that bend in one direction, but remain straight and stiff in another. Engineers who need to simulate complex multimaterial objects can design in OpenVCAD and easily export a simulation-ready file.

OpenVCAD can even apply specific mechanical properties to specific parts of lattice structures, which are often used for impact-absorbing capabilities to achieve more complicated designs. The possibilities are endless.

“We’re able to rely on OpenVCAD’s core capabilities to represent multi-material objects in a bunch of different domains,” said MacCurdy. “But there is a lot more coming in certain areas that we are excited about and we’re really hoping this approach to multi-material design takes off.”

OpenVCAD is a completely open-source tool, meaning it is widely available for engineers around the world to use. It even comes equipped with a Python implementation so that any user can easily import the team’s repository and get to work with just a single line of code.

“We want this to be widely available to people,” Wade said. “We have a growing base of external researchers from other institutions who are using this tool and we hope to enable that community to do their best work.”

Assistant Professor Robert MacCurdy and fourth-year PhD student Charles Wade have created an open-source design system software package that uses functions and code to map not just shapes, but where different materials belong in a 3D object. The project, called OpenVCAD, has the potential to transform 3D printing by enabling engineers to design multi-material objects smarter and more efficiently.

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A multi-material lattice structure with a gradient design used for its impact-absorbing capabilities.

homepage news

Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread

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Brewing engineers: Inside CU Boulder’s new food engineering program

Early path to food engineering

Crafting a complete student experience

The future of the program

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A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time

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Smart toilet designs in Cambodia held promise, but a key piece was missing

An easy, effective sanitation solution

The interesting, important results

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Researchers redefine hip arthroscopy with breakthrough surgical device

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Mechanical engineering students shine at the 2025 CSC Finals

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ME researchers and alumni among this year's Lab Venture Challenge winners

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Researchers pioneer fluid-based laser scanning for brain imaging

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Xu selected to receive a 2025 Packard Fellowship award

A history of Packard Fellows at CU Boulder

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New open-source software allows for efficient 3D printing with multiple materials

Pushing the limits of multi-material design

A broad impact for all to explore

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