Research

Using nanoscale membranes to clean water on the Moon

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 14:47:43 +0000

Using nanoscale membranes to clean water on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/16/2024 - 08:47

Jeff Zehnder

Kian Lopez (L) and Anthony Straub (R) in the lab.

Anthony Straub is making major advances in water purification technology for industry and human consumption on Earth and in space, with his work on a nanotechnology membrane process taking a major step toward commercialization, thanks to a new NASA grant.

An assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder, Straub’s research focuses on using membranes to improve water treatment.

“The membrane technology that is widely used now is essentially half a century old, and it has well-known limitations,” Straub said. “ It works well for many applications, but it has a tendency to let certain impurities through and it degrades if exposed to certain harsh chemicals.”

NASA has awarded Straub and one of his PhD students, Kian Lopez, a phase one Small Business Innovation Research award to develop a pilot water purification system for astronauts to use on a future Moon base.

Current space water purification systems are bulky and prone to repairs. The technology Straub’s lab has developed only requires a pump to pressurize water, reducing size and weight. Low weight is especially important in moon missions, where every kilogram of cargo can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“Current membranes remove impurities based on size and charge and, as a result, allow for small impurities to bypass the membrane,” Straub said. “What we’ve designed traps a very small layer of air inside a membrane and the only way for the water to cross the barrier is by evaporating and then re-condensing on the other side, which impurities inherently cannot do.”

The entire process occurs over a 100 nanometer span, a distance 160 times smaller than the width of a human hair, and the water that results is nearly pure H2O – distillation quality — since it has been turned to steam and then back to liquid.

These new membranes can be made from a wide variety of materials; the advance is in modifying them to create the air trapping layer. Although the work has been a longtime focus of Straub, he had not considered space applications or commercialization until Lopez returned from an internship at NASA.

Schematic of the membrane process.

“My mentor at NASA said this technology looks promising and the biggest impact we could have would be to start our own company,” Lopez said.

Straub and Lopez decided to attend the New Venture Launch class together in the CU Boulder Leeds Business School, participating in campus technology transfer initiatives, including the New Venture Challenge and Lab Venture Challenge. They founded Osmopure Technologies, Inc. in January of this year.

Space is but one application. Other potential is in municipal water systems and industry, particularly semiconductor or computer chip manufacturing, which requires ultrapure water.

Although ultrapure sounds like a marketing buzzword, it has a formal definition: water free of all minerals, particles, bacteria, microbes, and dissolved gasses. The needs go far beyond water that is safe for human consumption.

“The minimum for ultrapure water in chip manufacturing is a 14-step process right now. The final product must contain less than one 10-nanometer particle per milliliter of water, which would be the density equivalent of having only a single person on the entire planet Earth,” Lopez said.

Semiconductor chips are manufactured in clean rooms, and ultrapure water is necessary to maintain temperature and humidity as well as to wash away residue produced during chip etching. Even the tiniest water impurities can damage the chips.

“Our work starts with NASA, but the beachhead market here on Earth is in ultrapure water production for semiconductors,” Straub said. “This is a huge potential market, and we have filed a provisional patents with Venture Partners at CU Boulder.”

Straub is optimistic the grant will enable them to make significant progress in the coming months.

“This has been a four-year process, and at the beginning we didn’t know if it would work,” Straub said. “We started with theory and then went into the lab to test. The fabrication has gone through several iterations here in the CU labs. Now we are moving towards a commercial product, and the performance is impressive.”

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CU Boulder will share atmospheric science tech, expertise through new grant

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 22:27:53 +0000

CU Boulder will share atmospheric science tech, expertise through new grant Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 16:27

Jeff Zehnder

Drone technology and atmospheric science instruments developed by the University of babyֱ��app Boulder will be available to researchers nationwide through a new grant.

The National Science Foundation has awarded CU Boulder a three-year, $1 million grant to establish a Community Instruments and Facilities program titled Mobile Uncrewed Systems for Atmospheric Science (MUSAS).

“We have a track record for atmospheric research with the equipment we’ve created and the campaigns we’ve partnered in. Whenever atmospheric scientists need to collect data in environments they can’t get other ways, that’s where we come in,” said Brian Argrow, principal investigator for the grant.

Argrow, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is a nationally recognized expert in uncrewed aerial systems. He and CU Boulder colleagues have spent decades developing fixed-wing and quad-copter-style drone systems to study weather and other atmospheric conditions.

Their work has spanned the globe, including in extreme conditions like the North Pole and several campaigns in the United States to analyze supercell thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes.

The new grant will provide the larger scientific community access to CU Boulder’s instrumentation and know-how.

“We’re bringing aerospace to the atmospheric sciences community,” Argrow said. “We have the expertise, the drones, the deployment systems, and regulatory approval to fly in the national airspace system.”

Although the program does not officially begin until Nov. 1, Argrow said they have already been contacted by a university with a partnership proposal.

Inspecting a RAAVEN drone while on deployment.

“By increasing access to small uncrewed aerial systems, we’ll increase the amount of data available to the broader community to help solve some of the toughest problems in atmospheric science. Our technology can sample the physics and chemistry of the lower atmosphere and offer new perspectives on this environment,” Argrow said.

MUSAS joins a network of NSF-supported initiatives across the country that allow universities to share research equipment and expertise.

Through the program, partners will have access to CU Boulder’s personnel as well as the RAAVEN and Super RAAVEN fixed-wing drones and the CopterSonde 3 quad-copter, along with deployment and tracking vehicles.

Argrow anticipates an array of research to come from the partnerships, including into boundary layer processes, coastal circulations, aerosol processes, turbulence and turbulent fluxes, surface-atmosphere exchange, high-latitude environments, and severe weather.

“Building on the initial investment from the CU Grand Challenge Initiative, we have assembled infrastructure which is unique,” Argrow said. “CU Boulder has extensive experience operating and developing these systems, and this gives us the opportunity to expand our impact.”

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Professor earns two major grants to advance AI for autonomous systems

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 17:29:05 +0000

Professor earns two major grants to advance AI for autonomous systems Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/06/2024 - 11:29

Jeff Zehnder

Zach Sunberg’s research developing better artificial intelligence systems is getting a major boost from two federal grant awards.

Sunberg is receiving a $599,000, five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and is a partner on a related $4 million multi-university initiative from the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

Both projects focus on advancing game theory algorithms so AI systems can better solve problems in real-time in the field.

“I’m excited to receive the recognition that I’m looking at important problems to solve in both of these areas,” Sunberg said. “ONR shows the relevance for defense applications, and the NSF award focuses on making our nation and our world a better place.”

Sunberg is an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder. His research focuses on autonomous systems and AI, with an emphasis on game theory.

Although game theory has origins in solving tabletop board games and card games, it is a broad field of research that studies problem-solving in complex, real-world situations.

“You might think of a game as a board game, but any situation where multiple agents are interacting and have their own goals can be mathematically represented as a game. Poker has clear rules, but so does driving a car; there are just a lot more variables,” Sunberg said.

AI systems like those used in self-driving cars typically rely on offline reinforcement learning. In such a system, automakers use historical data collected from a fleet of vehicles to optimize an algorithm to react to future situations. Sunberg is seeking to develop online decision-making systems, where an AI can think in real time to interact with situations that do not match historical data.

“This has previously been considered a computationally intractable problem” Sunberg said. “But our lab recently had a breakthrough with single-agent planning where we proved we did not need a lot of computation even in a large state space. What we want to do next is work on more complex multi-agent situations.”

The research focuses on a framework used by scientists and engineers to model possible outcomes when full data is not available, called partially observable Markov stochastic games.

“An application is airborne collision avoidance. In the past, the other pilot’s actions would be modeled as a probability distribution. That wasn’t satisfying to me. The other pilot is a decision maker themselves, so it would be better to model as a multi-agent game, but we don’t know how to solve partially observable games like that using online systems,” Sunberg said.

The research from the NSF grant has applications across an array of autonomous systems, from search and rescue robots, to self-driving cars, to how satellites navigate while orbiting the Earth. The Navy award is focused more on AI deception and counter deception in the military realm.

“An enemy is going to try to deceive you in some way, so we want to focus on how that can happen and how do we make AI resistant to it. We’re also looking at developing AI that can deceive an adversary. If you have a drone that you want to avoid enemy air defenses, how can it use bluffing to help it do that,” Sunberg said.

The ONR award is brings together four universities. The project is being led by the Georgia Institute of Technology with partners at the University of California Santa Barbara, CU Boulder, and the University of Texas at Austin. Sunberg’s portion of the $4 million grant is worth roughly $1 million.

“The current most widely used methods for AIs, these offline systems, are really a function approximater. It’s kind of an intuitive reaction or instinct. We want an AI that can go further, like people, and think and deliberate about a situation. There’s huge potential with this work,” he said.

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How Earth’s most intense heat wave ever impacted life in Antarctica

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 20:47:39 +0000

How Earth’s most intense heat wave ever impacted life in Antarctica Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/04/2024 - 14:47

As part of a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project in Antarctica, a research team led by Associate Dean for Research Mike Gooseff found that the unexpected melt followed by a rapid refreeze likely disrupted the life cycles of many organisms and killed a large swath of some invertebrates in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

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Why do plants wiggle? New study provides answers

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 16:59:39 +0000

Why do plants wiggle? New study provides answers Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/15/2024 - 10:59

In a new study, researchers from the United States and Israel — including CU Boulder computer scientist Orit Peleg — may have gotten to the bottom of a quirky behavior of growing plants and a mystery that intrigued Charles Darwin during the later decades of his life.

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AI for mental health screening may carry biases based on gender, race

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 16:00:52 +0000

AI for mental health screening may carry biases based on gender, race Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/05/2024 - 10:00

Some artificial intelligence tools for health care may get confused by the ways people of different genders and races talk, according to a new study led by CU Boulder computer scientist Theodora Chaspari.

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CU Boulder receives $1M grant to advance biofabrication training for PhD students

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 21:11:35 +0000

CU Boulder receives $1M grant to advance biofabrication training for PhD students Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/15/2024 - 15:11

Susan Glairon

The Materials Science and Engineering Program at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder received a $1M grant to fund interdisciplinary doctoral research training in biofabrication, a rapidly developing field which enables more precise and effective ways to study and treat various medical conditions, such as growing new organs for transplants or repairing damaged tissues.

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CU Boulder, Elevate Quantum partners ready for $127M regional quantum boost

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 16:42:34 +0000

CU Boulder, Elevate Quantum partners ready for $127M regional quantum boost Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/02/2024 - 10:42

Elevate Quantum, of which CU Boulder is a key partner, announced today that it has received a Tech Hub Phase 2 implementation award from the Department of Commerce, unlocking more than $127 million in new federal and state funding. The award is expected to drive more than $2 billion in additional private capital and cement the Mountain West as a global leader for quantum innovation.

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Atmospheric research in the most extreme place on Earth: Antarctica

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:26:43 +0000

Atmospheric research in the most extreme place on Earth: Antarctica Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/24/2024 - 09:26

Jeff Zehnder

Abhi Doddi (PhDAeroEngr’21) is collecting scientific data outdoors in a 70 mph whiteout blizzard. It is just another day of life in Antarctica.

Doddi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder, is leading a major study involving high-altitude balloons to improve weather forecasting on the Antarctic continent.

He endured years of planning and an ocean voyage aboard an icebreaker ship to reach this remote and dangerous corner of the Earth, and despite the weather, he is excited to be here.

“This sort of data has never been collected before,” Doddi said. “We want to gather small-scale turbulence data over the polar vortex using complimentary observations from radar and balloon-based instruments. This data is very important to improve the representation of turbulence due to the atmospheric gravity waves and the polar jet stream in the current numerical weather prediction models.”

Ship Journey

Most U.S.-based researchers who study the Antarctic weather do so from McMurdo Station, a United States-run base that is surprisingly accessible, with daily flights aboard military cargo planes during the Antarctic summer.

Doddi’s research required a much more arduous journey. He needed access to a specialized mesosphere–stratosphere–troposphere (MST) radar, and there is just one on the continent – at Syowa Station, a Japanese base only accessible by ship. Japan’s naval icebreaker Shirase makes one trip there each year. Doddi boarded in Australia. From there, it took 20 days to reach Syowa and 38 to return.

“I don’t get seasick, but it gets uncomfortable when swells are 7-8 meters tall, and you’re being tossed in all directions, even while you sleep,” Doddi said.

Breaking the Ice

The ship could travel at 30 knots on the open ocean, but when they reached the Antarctic ice pack, travel slowed considerably as the vessel needed to repeatedly back up and accelerate forward to break through the ice.

The Shirase carried roughly 180 crew plus 100 scientists and engineers. Doddi and his research partner, Tyler Mixa (MAeroEngr’14, PhD’19), were the first non-Japanese researchers to visit Syowa station.

Timelapse video of the Chirase reversing and accelerating forward to break through the Antarctic icepack.

“The language barrier was the hardest thing. Of the entire crew, there were only about 10 people who spoke conversational English,” Doddi said.

With no option for quick departure in the event of a medical emergency, every person on the trip needed to be in perfect health.

“They want you to be bulletproof. If you get a cavity before the trip, until your dentist provides proof that it’s been filled, and your doctor has signed off on your health, and the Japanese medical team has reviewed the records, you’re not getting on the ship,” he said.

Research Variety

Doddi’s work focused on Antarctic atmospheric conditions, but there were a litany of other teams conducting studies across scientific disciplines. There were multiple oceanographers and aquatic life experts, as well as people doing bird studies, ice core samples, and geological surveys.

“One of the teams discovered 3-4 new species of microorganisms on the trip, which was fascinating. No one had ever laid eyes on those organisms before,” he said.

Even after reaching Antarctica, there was more travel – by air. Due to shallow water, the Shirase must anchor 10 miles off shore and ferry the crew and supplies to the base via helicopter.

Blizzard Balloon Launches

Once they landed at Syowa, Doddi’s research got underway in earnest – readying dozens of balloon payloads that would fly to 20 km in altitude while drifting up to 100 km laterally and relay turbulence measurements back in real time.

The work paired broad measurements from the MST radar with precision instruments aboard the balloon-borne instrument systems developed at CU Boulder. As a major goal is improving weather forecasting, Doddi spent plenty of time outdoors in less-than-ideal weather.

“We experienced three different blizzards, each lasting up to three days, with winds in excess of 60-70 mph,” he said. “Those conditions were hands down some of the best experiences of my life. That’s the data we want, even if it meant we were staying up for 48 hours. My sleep cycle was totally messed up,” he said.

It did not help that during the Antarctic summer, the sun never sets.

When it was not snowing, the temperature typically hovered just below freezing – practically balmy for an Antarctic summer – with the warmest days topping out at 5°C (41°F).

Abhi Doddi and Tyler Mixa launching a balloon payload on a very windy day at Syowa Station

Syowa Station, which is spread across 60 buildings, offered few comforts during down time.

“The bunks on the ship were larger and more comfortable than those on the base. It was four people to a room, with no doors on any room, just curtains, and communal baths, like a gym locker room,” Doddi said.

What's a Vegetarian?

He also faced a unique obstacle with food. Doddi is a life-long vegetarian, but base meals were via a single Navy cafeteria cooking everyone the same food.

“I’m a vegetarian from birth, and the concept of vegetarianism doesn’t exist in Japanese culture. They don’t even have a word for it. So I brought 240 shelf-stable meals as part of my personal supplies,” he said.

Although Antarctica is frozen year round, there is still plenty of local wildlife. Doddi saw hundreds of emperor penguins and over 1,000 adelie penguins, in addition to seals, petrel seabirds, and albatross. He was able to do some hiking, but safety precautions were necessary.

“If you were going beyond the perimeter of the base or to access a restricted portion, one of the Navy personnel had to go ahead of you to assess the conditions of the ice for cracks and crevasses,” he said.

Analysis Back Home

With the Antarctic field campaign complete and Doddi back in babyֱ��app, phase two of the project begins – complex and lengthy analysis.

“This was a two-month data collection project followed by a three-year modeling program,” Doddi said. “We need massive super computers to do this modeling. The overarching goal is to provide guidance to improve the weather forecasts for people in Antarctica, so this will help researchers for years to come.”

In addition to Doddi at CU Boulder, collaborators on the project are Mixa from Global Atmospheric Technologies and Sciences (GATS) in Boulder, the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, and Kyoto University.

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Leeker using Fulbright to study the impact of oral storytelling on African descendants in STEM

Anonymous — Fri, 03 May 2024 22:15:51 +0000

Leeker using Fulbright to study the impact of oral storytelling on African descendants in STEM Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/03/2024 - 16:15

Wendy Martin

Jessica Rush Leeker of CU Boulder’s Lockheed Martin Engineering Management Program has been awarded a prestigious fellowship to research the impact of oral storytelling on African descendants in STEM, focusing on how historical and cultural narratives can enhance the sense of identity, belonging and confidence among engineering students.

Leeker, the Stephen M. Dunn Professor of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship, serves as babyֱ��app director of undergraduate education and ESCEND for the program.

Starting in July, she will embark on a two-year tenure as a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Brazil, where she will conduct research on the impact of oral storytelling in STEM education, mentor interdisciplinary engineering students, and deliver lectures at institutions across the country. Leeker also hopes to foster lasting collaborations between CU Boulder and UFBA, including student and babyֱ��app exchange programs, that could potentially extend to other Brazilian educational entities.

“I want to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists who are grounded in their history and confident in their future contributions,” Leeker said. “The Fulbright scholarship is more than just a research opportunity; it's a chance to make a lasting impact on the educational experiences of African descendants in STEM, both in Brazil and internationally.”

For Leeker, the Fulbright award presents an invaluable opportunity to expand upon her innovative research on the role of oral storytelling in STEM education, particularly among African descendants. Her project will explore how narrative traditions can empower students by connecting them with their historical and cultural roots, fostering a stronger sense of identity and resilience in STEM fields.

Leeker's research will capture and analyze the oral histories shared by elders within the African-descendant community, focusing on their contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This qualitative approach aims to uncover how these narratives influence young students' perceptions of their capabilities and potential careers in STEM. By integrating these stories into the educational model, Leeker seeks to challenge existing deficit-based educational frameworks and replace them with asset-based approaches that highlight the cultural wealth of students.

“I plan to develop educational tools and frameworks that can be replicated beyond UFBA, enhancing the broader educational landscape by incorporating these rich historical narratives into STEM education,” Leeker said. “This will not only benefit students at UFBA but also create a model that can be adapted and used in other contexts, transforming how underrepresented students engage with STEM globally.”

Leeker believes that by reconnecting African-descendant students with their ancestral legacies of innovation and problem-solving, her research can significantly contribute to increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. Her goal is to build bridges between generations, linking personal and communal histories with contemporary educational and professional opportunities in STEM. This approach is expected to enrich the academic and personal development of students, thereby broadening participation and success rates among minorities in STEM disciplines.

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