Students

Student feedback drives major ME curriculum changes for fall 2026

alse6588 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:52:20 +0000

Student feedback drives major ME curriculum changes for fall 2026 alse6588 Wed, 02/04/2026 - 09:52

Alexander Servantez

Mechanical engineering students at CU Boulder can expect some big changes to their curriculum coming soon.

Janet Tsai, associate teaching professor and associate chair for undergraduate education, said the changes will help improve student learning experiences for all current and prospective students.

Here’s a breakdown of what students can expect starting fall 2026:

1. Splitting MCEN 1025 into two courses

The first change involves MCEN 1025, currently a four-credit computer-aided design (CAD) and fabrication course required of all mechanical engineering undergraduate students.

Students performing fabrication work in the Idea Forge.

The course will be split into two courses:

A three-credit CAD class (MCEN 1026) that will include classroom lectures and activities centered on learning the basics of CAD software.
A one-credit fabrication class (MCEN 2026) that will allow students to perform hands-on fabrication work in the Idea Forge machine shop.

Student feedback indicates the change will help resolve scheduling issues and improve flexibility—especially for transfer students—as they move through their college journey.

Tsai said the new class structure will also help create a clearer progression of hands-on experiences for students throughout the curriculum.

“The nice thing about the fabrication course is that it will be a 2000-level class,” Tsai said. “Currently, students take MCEN 1025 during their first year and have a year-long gap before their next hands-on course. But starting in the fall, there will be opportunities for hands-on, project-based learning in every year of the curriculum.”

2. Adjusting credit allocations across multiple courses

The second change tackles a student concern about class workloads not matching credit hours.

Many students expressed that certain classes were much more time consuming and difficult than the course’s allocated credit hours suggested. In order to address this issue, the department is restructuring credit allocations to better represent the amount of time and work students should expect in their courses.

Starting in the fall, students will no longer be required to take a three-credit standalone Math/Science Foundations class. The department will also be eliminating the lab component in MCEN 1030: Introduction to Engineering Computing and reducing the course’s credit hours from four to three.

Students studying in the Discovery Learning Center.

This frees up four total credit hours that the department will allocate to four other three-credit classes in need of adjustment. The classes that will receive an increase in credit hours are:

MCEN 3025: Component Design
MCEN 4026: Manufacturing Processes and Systems
MCEN 4043: System Dynamics
MCEN 4045: Senior Design I

Tsai believes the changes will help streamline degree requirements and stay compliant with registrar guidelines without adding or removing any credit hours. If students get caught between the old and new requirements, they will work very closely with them to ensure they can graduate on time.

“Right now, first- and second-year students are being advised of these changes so that they can schedule accordingly,” said Tsai. “Most juniors and seniors have achieved a majority of the old curriculum so they are still on track. But there are a couple of students in the middle that we are working on moving credits around with and they will definitely graduate just fine.”

Both of the changes were guided by a series of department-led student town hall meetings that began during the fall 2024 semester. The events served as a direct venue for students to voice any concerns they have regarding department leadership, programming or education.

“We believe it’s very important to hear directly from our students,” Tsai said. “So far it’s already led to a lot of great ideas and solutions that leadership and students are looking to build upon together.”

For example, the department is working to create a student advisory board, which will include students with a wide range of journeys and experiences. Tsai and her team are reviewing student-submitted applications to find a cohort that can help represent the student ecosystem and foster healthy discussion.

Above all, Tsai wants mechanical engineering students to know their changes and efforts are always implemented with their best interests in mind.

“These credit changes are something that we’ve been talking about for a long time and will greatly benefit our students,” said Tsai. “We want to show them that we are actively listening to their feedback and evolving to ensure they are getting credit for their work and receiving the best hands-on experience possible.”

Starting in fall 2026, the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering is rolling out two major curriculum changes—guided by student feedback—that aim to rebalance credit allocation and streamline degree requirements. Janet Tsai, associate teaching professor and associate chair for undergraduate education, said the changes will help improve student learning experiences for all current and prospective students.

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Engineers develop real-time membrane imaging for sustainable water filtration

Alexander James Servantez — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:32:55 +0000

Engineers develop real-time membrane imaging for sustainable water filtration Alexander Jame… Tue, 12/16/2025 - 15:32

Professor Victor Bright, Professor Emeritus Alan Greenberg and PhD student Mo Zohrabi have helped develop a laser-based imaging method called stimulated Raman scattering to improve the performance of desalination plants by allowing real-time detection of membrane fouling. The advance could help make desalination more efficient and reliable as global demand for clean water rises.

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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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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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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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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.

Campos Student Center celebrates community and future success

Alexander James Servantez — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 21:47:12 +0000

Campos Student Center celebrates community and future success Alexander Jame… Fri, 09/05/2025 - 15:47

The College of Engineering and Applied Science honored the ribbon cutting ceremony of the newly named Campos Student Center in recognition of a $5 million investment for student success from Marco Campos and the Campos Foundation. Fourth-year mechanical engineering student Julia Wall weighs in on the importance of the center and how important the investment will be for its future.

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ME undergraduate student works to address methane crisis in summer project

Alexander James Servantez — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 18:06:04 +0000

ME undergraduate student works to address methane crisis in summer project Alexander Jame… Fri, 08/29/2025 - 12:06

Alexander Servantez

Alex Hansen stepped foot in a landfill this summer for the first time to study the consequences of methane emissions. What he saw sparked a growing interest in climate change research and environmental data analysis.

Hansen, a rising senior in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, spent his summer break in CU Boulder’s Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR).

Alex Hansen (right) working alongside graduate student SPUR mentor Gabriela Cortes (left) in the Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research Lab.

The program aims to increase undergraduate research engagement and interest by pairing nearly 125 engineering students from across the college in research labs with faculty members and graduate mentors. For 10 weeks, students foster unique, hands-on research experiences—like a trip to a landfill in Los Angeles—and develop crucial skills that serve them well beyond their undergraduate journey.

For Hansen, it was a special curiosity that led him to the SPUR program. One that started from a simple conversation.

“I spoke with someone I ran into one day a while back who worked at a landfill. He was telling me how dangerous methane is and how important it is to burn off methane,” said Hansen. “I was just so fascinated by it all. When I saw the project description on the SPUR website, I knew it was something I wanted to learn more about.”

And dangerous is an understatement. Methane, one of Earth’s most potent greenhouse gases, is one of the primary contributors to climate change. Its atmospheric lifespan may be shorter than other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, but it can trap significantly more heat per molecule, making it extremely hazardous to human and environmental health.

According to the UN Environment Programme, methane is 80 times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. It’s also responsible for nearly 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times and is a key culprit for the formation of ground-level ozone, which causes one million premature deaths every year.

It’s a spiraling issue, but Hansen says his SPUR project titled “Characterizing Landfill Methane through a Low-Cost Ground-Based Sensor Network,” looks to attack the crisis by addressing some of the world’s most prevalent methane emissions sites.

“Landfills are one of the largest emitters of methane in the United States,” Hansen said. “I believe waste is about third for methane emissions across the entire world. If we are able to study a landfill and learn more about the way methane spreads in the atmosphere, maybe we can find a way to make improvements to landfill infrastructure and lower emissions.”

To do this, Hansen and his lab mates in Professor Michael Hannigan’s Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research Lab started working with a network of 24 low-cost air quality sensors called L-Pods that were deployed across a landfill in Los Angeles at the beginning of 2025.

The L-Pods are equipped with two metal oxide sensors that collect air pollutant data and another sensor that tracks temperature and relative humidity. The data is then stored locally and transmitted to the cloud every 10 seconds for ongoing monitoring.

These unique sensors may not be as individually powerful as the industry-grade technology used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but they are cheap and efficient. This allows the group the ability to position more sensors across a landfill than they previously could, giving them a precise methane reading that represents a much larger region.

Hansen showcasing the inner workings of an L-Pod air quality sensor.

Hansen spent a majority of his summer SPUR experience helping the team analyze the data gathered from the sensors. But he was able to see the sensors in action firsthand at the Los Angeles landfill where they are deployed.

It was crazy seeing how much trash we make and the operations needed to contain it all,” said Hansen. “And these low-cost sensors were awesome to see, too. We can add so many more positions and measure way more often than traditional measuring devices. It’s super exciting to see the data we collect in real-time and how impactful it is.”

Hansen’s journey through the SPUR program ended with a final presentation at the end of July. It was a chance for him to share his learning and reflect on his summer.

In many ways, he said it was a rollercoaster ride filled with highs and lows. Some seasoned researchers might call that the typical research experience.

But Hansen also said it was valuable and fulfilling. So much so, that he might be eyeing a future career in research.

“Being in the lab was definitely a learning curve at first. Just learning the terminology and trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible was tough,” Hansen said. “But there’s so many opportunities to make a big impact in research. I’ve learned so much from amazing people this summer and I am definitely curious about pursuing research in a master’s program after graduation.”

Rising senior Alex Hansen spent his summer break in CU Boulder’s Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) studying the consequences of methane emissions. His work analyzing data gathered from unique methane detection sensors can one day help researchers address the methane crisis at some of the world's most prevalent methane emissions sites.

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Beyond Arrakis: Dune researchers confront real-life perils of shifting sand formations

Alexander James Servantez — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 19:25:46 +0000

Beyond Arrakis: Dune researchers confront real-life perils of shifting sand formations Alexander Jame… Mon, 08/18/2025 - 13:25

Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend is leading a research effort exploring how sand dunes evolve over time, shifting and surging across the landscape. Her team ultimately wants to answer a pressing question: Can humans efficiently shift or even halt the flow of the planet’s largest dunes?

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Why are hourglasses filled with sand and not water?

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:29:47 +0000

Why are hourglasses filled with sand and not water? Alexander Jame… Wed, 08/13/2025 - 14:29

Alexander Servantez

The hourglass, one of mankind’s earliest forms of timekeeping, is at the forefront of a new, interactive display in the basement of the Engineering Center.

A group of former seniors in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering designed a series of hourglass displays for their Senior Design capstone class this past semester. The project aimed to answer a simple question: why are hourglasses filled with sand and not water?

But be warned—the team’s Logistics Manager Max Van Cleave says the question isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend standing in front of the hourglass display in front of her lab window.

“Water is governed by Bernoulli’s Law, which physically states that the flow rate changes as the fluid level changes. The more water you have, the faster it will flow out and vice versa,” said Van Cleave. “Sand is different—it creates force chains that transmit the load to the edges of an hourglass. The friction created keeps the sand particles together and allows the sand to descend at a constant rate.”

There are other factors that play a role, as well. Things like the angle and shape of the hourglass, or even the size of the sand particles can affect the speed in which the sand and water flow down the funnel.

Van Cleave mentioned it was difficult for his team to account for all of these different variables. But he said it was also extremely interesting to see how much complexity and nuance can be packed into something as small and ancient as an hourglass.

“This question we answered—it’s not really a question you even think about until you absolutely have to. Everyone has used an hourglass, but they don’t realize how advanced they are,” Van Cleave said. “There was a lot of physics involved in this project and it was fun to play around with all of those factors.”

A closer look at the detachable, lightweight aluminum frame the senior design team used to mount their hourglass display.

The project features three motorized hourglass units mounted on a lightweight aluminum frame. Two of them are filled with sand and one is filled with water.

Equipped with wheels, the detachable aluminum frame functions like a cart, allowing the group to transport the display with ease. It’s also fitted with modular components, making it easy to extend or adapt if needed.

With one click of a button on the control panel, users can flip the hourglass displays individually or all at once and observe various flow behaviors firsthand. Project sponsor and Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend says the display is a great way to demonstrate complex fluid dynamics principles in an understandable way.

“I chose the prompt because I was looking for something nice and educational to put in front of my lab windows,” said Vriend. “There’s some interesting science hidden in these hourglasses. It’s fun, interactive and we can use it to teach high school and middle school students at outreach events.”

Van Cleave is returning to CU Boulder as a part of Rady Mechanical Engineering’s Bachelor’s-Accelerated Master’s program. Every time he passes Vriend’s lab windows he will see his hard work front and center, like many others already have.

But he says the real fulfillment will come from how others interact with the project.

“It feels great to know that people enjoy it,” Van Cleave said. “It’s hard to boil down granular flow principles into something anybody can engage with, so it’s awesome that people are already learning a thing or two from the display.”

You can try out the hourglass display yourself in the Granular Flow Laboratory located at ECNW 1B90 in the basement of the Engineering Center.

A group of former seniors designed a series of hourglass displays for their Senior Design capstone class this past semester that currently sit in the window of Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend's Granular Flow Laboratory. The project, located at ECNW 1B90 in the basement of the Engineering Center, aims to answer a simple question: why are hourglasses filled with sand and not water?

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