Rachel Sauer

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder commits to green chemistry

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 18:47:17 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder commits to green chemistry Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:47

Rachel Sauer

In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry��an effort being encouraged and advanced by students

For much of the history of chemistry, the science was done how it was done��with fleeting or no thought given to things like lab energy consumption or the environmental persistence of toxic chemicals used in experiments. Those things were simply considered the wages of scientific progress.

As early as the 1940s, however, some chemists began asking if there were better, less hazardous, less environmentally damaging ways to do the science. By the 1990s, chemists Paul Anastas and John Warner had given a name to this new approach: green chemistry. In their 1998 book Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, they detailed the 12 principles of green chemistry, which include preventing waste rather than trying to treat it or clean it up after the fact and designing chemical products to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

Since that time, green chemistry has become a movement as universities and labs around the world evolve the practice and teaching of chemistry to reduce its impact on environmental and human health and safety.

In May, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwarts and Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to green chemistry in practice and principle but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

The �鶹��Ѱ�� has been very involved in the green chemistry movement, and in May Chancellor Justin Schwartz and then-Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to green chemistry in practice and principle, but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

��Signing (the Green Chemistry Commitment) is an important step toward integrating green chemistry into curriculum, theory, toxicology and lab applications,�� says Forrest Yegge, chair of the Green Chemistry �鶹��Ѱ��Student Government (CUSG) Environmental Board subcommittee and a junior studying philosophy and ecology and evolutionary biology.

��Social justice-wise, I think it��s our responsibility to be more aware of the effects we are having on the environment,�� adds Jules Immonen, a first-year student studying chemistry who serves as secretary of the CUSG Environmental Board. ��Obviously, sustainability is something I��m passionate about, but even people who aren��t should be able to learn how to incorporate these practices in an easy way.��

Doing better chemistry

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder��s embrace of green chemistry has been growing for years, says Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Green Labs Program manager. The Department of Chemistry and Green Labs have been partnering on green chemistry efforts on campus, leading initiatives on everything from education opportunities to sustainable lab practices. Signing the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) is an important step, Ramirez-Aguilar says: ��It��s a huge opportunity to involve students in designing curriculum, and it aligns with CU��s Climate Action Plan outlined last year.�� In fact, she adds, members of the CUSG Environmental Board have been at the vanguard of bringing the GCC to the attention of campus leadership.

Ashley Ley, a chemistry graduate candidate and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, emphasizes that green chemistry is most importantly about practice, not just theory. ��If you look at someone like Dr. (Jacquie) Richardson, she��s been making changes to methods, working toward greener methods using less harmful chemicals in the Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs. In Organic Chemistry 2, there��s a lab focused on atom economy, and one of the previous (Green Labs Chemistry) team leads worked with Dr. Richardson to incorporate acetone recycling, so now organic chemistry teaching labs only use recycled acetone for cleaning.

��These labs have also started using water recirculatory buckets because there are reflux reactions where you need a ton of water and normally it would go through the condensers and down the sink. Now it��s being recirculated, and we��re saving a lot of water. Last summer, they incorporated no-touch doors in the labs [as part of a collaborative project with Green Labs], so you can get in and out of the labs without having to take off your gloves.��

In another campuswide green chemistry application, Amrita George, a professional research assistant of many years in the Department of Integrative Physiology and volunteer lead for the Green Labs Team, is working on introducing a chemical sharing initiative in which research labs share chemicals within their research building.

Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar (left), �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Green Labs Program manager, and Matt Wise (right), director of chemistry instruction and Department of Chemistry associate chair, give a presentation about incorporating green chemistry into the introductory chemistry curriculum. (Photo: Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar)

��This has a lot of support from the Environmental Health and Safety group,�� George says. ��It aligns with one of the principles of green chemistry, which is to reduce the total amount of hazardous chemicals used and, therefore, waste created. [The initiative] allows researchers to see the chemical inventory of other labs within their building and share amongst themselves rather than ordering new stocks for each lab, which is usually what researchers do. Often these stocks sit on the shelf and expire before the lab ever uses them again.��

Ramirez-Aguilar adds that the chemical sharing initiative is also a money saver for labs by reducing purchasing��which also benefits a reduction in carbon emissions similar to a campuswide focus on reducing labs�� energy consumption, as labs are among the most energy-intensive spaces on campus.

Valentina Osorio, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, adds that General Chemistry teaching faculty have adapted student experiments and lab processes so that they can use drops of a chemical rather than milliliters of it. This makes a significant difference when thousands of students are conducting the experiments each year.

Performing research sustainably

While the benefits of green chemistry practice and teaching are broad and affect many communities and populations, among those most affected are students, says Ana Curry, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee: ��I��m currently working in materials chemistry, and I believe strongly that if my research is focused on sustainability, I should also be performing that research sustainably.��

Osorio notes that while her research focus is environmental chemistry, ��I��m studying the impacts of air and water pollution, and while I��m not really synthesizing anything, what I��m researching is largely impacted by what humans are doing.��

Yegge adds that in addition to the environmental and social justice benefits of green chemistry, ��as I prepare for grad school and I��m increasingly worried about securing funding, I think that sustainable practices on campus and in labs are crucial for resilience in academia and in research. We need to be adopting these strategies so we can keep doing the science we��re doing.��

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In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry��an effort being encouraged and advanced by students.

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Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 13:54:40 +0000

Students learning dam good lessons from nature's busy builders Rachel Sauer Fri, 10/31/2025 - 07:54

Rachel Sauer

In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers

Beavers are so much more than nature��s most eager builders. In many ecosystems, they play a key role in nature-based solutions to flood control, habitat restoration and fire mitigation.

They are a keystone species that can increase biodiversity in suitable habitats, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), but they also are a source of human-wildlife conflict in Colorado. For example, beavers have been known to build dams and inadvertently flood areas that ranchers or homeowners don��t want flooded.

Jack Carter, Amanda Opp and Colin McDonald (left to right) completed a Masters of the Environment capstone project studying beavers and how they live alongside humans in partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective. (Photo: Masters of the Environment program)

The question for conservationists, land managers and any human who cares about wildlife, then, is how to live alongside this native species that broadly engenders mixed feelings. It��s a question that �鶹��Ѱ�� Masters of the Environment (MENV) students Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald addressed in their capstone project, which they will publicly present today at the 2025 MENV Capstone Symposium.

Partnering with the Boulder Watershed Collective (BWC), Opp, Carter and McDonald examined the social perceptions and ecological impacts of beavers via surveys, research and data collection. They talked with land and wildlife managers across the Front Range to study how public agencies make beaver management decisions, and they participated in two beaver reintroductions, developing a monitoring plan to measure ecological metrics at the sites where the beavers were reintroduced.

��I think we all read the book ��Eager�� by Ben Goldfarb, about beavers in America and how there was a high reduction in numbers from trapping in the 19^th century,�� McDonald explains. ��Now there��s a movement to reintroduce them, and we have this thing about ��coexistence�� as one of those kind of trigger words. We tried to come up with multiple things like ��living with beavers�� in place of ��coexistence�� or ��reintroduction,�� which somehow give off the vibe that your life is going to change by the presence of these animals coming back, which isn��t necessarily the case.��

Back from the brink

Not too long ago, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. At their population peak before the fur trade began in earnest, there were anywhere between 60-400 million North American beavers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), but by 1900 there were fewer than 100,000.

As beaver populations began to rebound in subsequent decades thanks to conservation and reintroduction efforts, another issue emerged: Humans had moved into beaver habitat, converting ��wildlife-rich wetlands into agricultural lands�� and building towns nearby, according to USFWS.

For many years along the Front Range, beavers and humans have lived in an uneasy and sometimes nonexistent d��tente, so one of the goals of the students�� capstone project was to gather data that might help inform CPW��s beaver conservation and management strategy, which is currently being developed.

Some of the points of conflict that Opp, Carter and McDonald learned about as they collected data included ranchers concerned about losing rangeland to flooding and homeowners who were ��very concerned about mosquitoes and thinking that if beavers are creating marshy areas, the risk for West Nile increases,�� Opp says.

One of the beaver releases on private land near Nederland in which Amanda Opp, Jack Carter and Colin McDonald participated for their MENV capstone project. (Video: Colin McDonald)

Working with the Boulder Watershed Collective, they learned the nuances of effective conservation, which must include education, collaboration and partnership between stakeholders, Carter says: ��Due to conflicts over public infrastructure and Colorado water law, reintroducing beavers is not as easy as it may seem.��

At the beginning of the 20th century, the North American beaver was on the verge of extinction because of 19th-century fashions that required the under fur of beaver pelts. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

��I think BWC, and a lot of people involved with conservation, when they��re conveying the message of ��Hey, these are beneficial animals,�� they have to meet people where they��re at,�� Opp says. ��One of biggest concerns in Colorado is fire mitigation, so when we��re thinking about unique solutions, nature-based solutions that might not have been considered in the past, beavers have been a really important pitch: ��If you have a wet environment with wet soil and healthy grass, you��ll probably have reduced risk of fire reaching your property.��

Not just a cute animal

The two reintroductions in which Opp, Carter and McDonald participated happened on private land near Nederland, with the landowners inviting BWC to release beavers in ponds or wetlands on their land. Several of the reintroduced beavers came from Aurora, where they had been causing problems, McDonald says, so BWC and Aurora wildlife officers worked together to ensure that the beavers were trapped in families so they could be released together.

��Beavers aren��t endangered anymore, so there��s zero protection for them,�� Carter explains, adding that the areas in which the beavers were released are far from settlements, hopefully giving the beavers the greatest chance to thrive.

At one of the relocation sites, the beavers had monitors attached to their tails, enabling researchers and wildlife officials to track their movements, Opp says. And at both locations, the landowners are reporting their visual observations of beaver movement to BWC, which is included in the MENV students�� monitoring plan. Their plan also includes measuring how wide the bodies of water into which the beavers were released become.

For the students, each of whom came to the MENV program as committed conservationists, their work with beavers for their capstone project was about more than busy, charismatic rodents.

��I��m really passionate about conservation and passionate about protecting animals in the wild, and this project instilled in me how rewarding this work is,�� Opp says, a sentiment that McDonald echoed, adding that he appreciated learning how to build community partnerships and how to maximize impact at small nonprofits.

��Before this, I don��t think I really appreciated beavers,�� Carter says. ��I didn��t realize how important they are to an ecosystem. One of the biggest things that��s happening right now is biodiversity loss, and beavers create essential habitats for moose, for certain amphibian species. A lot of amphibians are going down the drain, especially in a state like Colorado, and beavers can help solve that problem.��

��The best way to move forward with all the damage humans have done is to realize we��re not separate from our environment,�� Opp says. ��We have to do everything we can to protect it, and beavers are a really awesome keystone species that��s not just this cute animal; they can play an important role in solving the climate crisis.��

Jack Carter, Colin McDonald and Amanda Opp (left to right) on their way to release a beaver on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

A beaver after being released on private land near Nederland. (Photo: Amanda Opp)

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In a capstone project partnership with the Boulder Watershed Collective, Masters of the Environment students study what it means to live alongside beavers.

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Top photo: Amanda Opp

Students finding strength in numbers

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 20:57:16 +0000

Students finding strength in numbers Rachel Sauer Wed, 10/29/2025 - 14:57

Rachel Sauer

Started by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder applied mathematics Teaching Professor Silva Chang, Colorado Math Circle is celebrating 20 years of bringing middle and high school students together in a community that has fun with math

It��s not always easy to be the student who does math for fun.

Even if the other kids aren��t weird about it, they still might not understand, so sometimes it can be easier to just brush it off. ��Oh, math? Yeah, it��s OK.�� But no, math is wonderful.

When one of Silva Chang��s high school teachers showed her a brochure for the six-week Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) program, she wasn��t necessarily doing math for fun in her free time, but she was very good at it.

Silva Chang, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder teaching professor of applied mathematics, was inspired to start the Colorado Math Circle in part from her high school experience in the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program.

��I think he knew that I needed to get out of the city,�� recalls Chang, a �鶹��Ѱ�� full teaching professor of applied mathematics. ��My parents were not college educated, they didn��t speak English, so I think he saw it as an opportunity that would open up my worldview.

��(HCSSiM) was a program where we did math 24-7, and it was the most fun I��ve ever had. I can say I wouldn��t be doing what I��m doing today if I hadn��t had that experience. (The program) was transformative, it made math really fun, it made it silly, it presented math as an art form that��s not just useful for practical applications, but that��s beautiful by itself.��

Chang��s experiences at HCSSiM inspired her 20 years ago to start the Colorado Math Circle, an extracurricular organization that offers opportunities and mentoring for middle and high school math enthusiasts around Colorado. Further, she was interviewed about how HCSSiM inspired her for the documentary ��Hunting Yellow Pigs,�� of which there will be a free screening at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, in Benson Earth Sciences room 180.

��I knew of certain students along the Front Range��all top students, some nationally ranked��and I wanted to be able to bring them together so they would have peer support,�� Chang explains of starting Colorado Math Circle in 2005. ��Some students can find peers, but some can��t. If you say, ��I enjoy doing math problems all day,�� people might laugh at you, and you might try to hide that interest. I thought there should be a place where students didn��t have to hide their enthusiasm for math.��

��Come and enjoy math��

For Chang, an interest in math grew from attending John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, New York, a school with a nontraditional pass/fail grading system and a longer, eight-hour day that allowed students to take more classes and explore their interests.

If you go

What: Free special screening of ��Hunting Yellow Pigs,�� a documentary about the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program

When: 3:30-5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2

Where: Benson Earth Sciences room 180

Chang��s parents had emigrated from southeast China, and while they may not have been intimately familiar with the vagaries of the U.S. educational system, they knew that education led to opportunity, Chang says. However, when Chang��s teacher suggested she attend the six-week HCSSiM, her parents initially didn��t understand the significance.

With some parental convincing and bolstered by her membership on a New York City-wide high school team of top math students, Chang applied and was accepted. Initially, her family was asked to pay a small amount to attend, ��and my parents said no. They didn��t have a lot of money, but I don��t think that was their reason. They were nervous about me leaving home. So, someone from HCSSiM called me up and said, ��You turned down the acceptance, can you tell us why?�� and I said the reason was financial, so they offered a full scholarship.��

HCSSiM was started by Hampshire College founding faculty member David Kelly, who died June 20. Program organizers describe it as ��college-level mathematics for talented and highly motivated high school students. It is demanding and expanding. Participants spend a major portion of each day actively engaged in doing mathematics (not simply learning the results of mathematics).��

��(David Kelly) was running the program when I attended in the 1970s, and he set the tone,�� Chang says. ��He just made it fun. Some of us were coming from more competitive or grade-oriented backgrounds, but his perspective was, ��Come and enjoy math. Math is fun, math is beautiful, get what you can out of this program, take away what you can.�� They were teaching fairly high-level math, but it wasn��t competitive at all. It was like, ��Let��s all do math together, let��s all learn together.��

Creating a community

Participants in the Colorado Math Circle engage in a hands-on math learning activity. (Photo: Silva Chang)

After Chang came to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and her children entered high school, she began thinking that she��d like to create a program similar in spirit and practice to HCSSiM, where students could come have fun doing math with others who love it, too. She also thought about the New York City-wide math team of which she��d been a member and wondered if there was a way to combine the two.

In 2005, she began contacting Front Range high schools and students to assemble a 15-member team that would compete in the 2006 American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) national math competition at the University of Nevada. The team won first place in its division that year ��and that was very motivating,�� Chang recalls, ��because we were competing against teams from around the country.��

Colorado Math Circle has sent a team comprised of students from around Colorado to that competition every year since, but after that first year Chang thought it was important to create a place for students who may not want to compete but who want to get together to do, discuss and learn math.

During the school year, students either come to the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder campus or participate in weekly problem-solving Zoom sessions. Initially created with a focus on high school students, Colorado Math Circle grew to include middle school students and help those who are interested prepare for the MATHCOUNTS competition.

��The first year we were more focused on preparing for competition, but after that we expanded it to a place where students could come learn about a variety of math topics,�� Chang says. ��Members of my department have come to give talks about their work, and we��ve been doing it long enough that we have math circle alumni coming back now.��

For the first 17 years of Colorado Math Circle, Chang was the sole director, but now program alumnus Thomas Davids serves as co-director and ARML coach.

In its 20 years, Colorado Math Circle has steadily grown; last year, more than 110 students from 45 Colorado schools participated. Over the years, students from as far as Grand Junction, Pueblo and Rangely have participated. ��We don��t draw many students from any one school��the two largest are Fairview and Cherry Creek��it��s often one student from one school,�� Chang says. ��The main goal of the Colorado Math Circle is to teach students math, yes, and teach them problem-solving skills, but what we really provide is a community.

��These students teach themselves a lot of math, so the need we fill is helping them to create a community of friends who love math, too.��

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Top image: The 2023 Colorado Math Circle team that competed in the American Regions Mathematics League national competition, coached by program alumnus Thomas Davids (far left, holding plaque). (Photo: Silva Chang)

New learning center more than just a place to study math

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:30:48 +0000

New learning center more than just a place to study math Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/20/2025 - 15:30

Rachel Sauer

The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center, opened last month after a summer-long renovation, invites students to collaborate, hang out and learn

In one corner of the common room, Ben Sewald is writing an equation on a whiteboard. A first-year �鶹��Ѱ�� student, he��s still deciding whether to major in aerospace engineering or applied mathematics but knows one thing for sure: Discrete math is his favorite class.

��The whole time before this, I��ve been learning math, but in this class it��s about how we can prove that these things are true,�� he explains as he writes.

Ben Sewald, a first-year �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder student, writes an equation for his discrete math class in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Not far from him, but on a different whiteboard, Atticus Fretz, a sophomore studying environmental engineering, is tutoring two Calculus I students, pointing with a blue marker to explain each part of the equation as he writes it.

And through the rest of the common area��and in the three classrooms arrayed from it��the hum of applied mathematics hovers around students solo studying or clustered in groups; around tutors explaining the finer points of differential equations, algorithms and data structures and every level of calculus; and around faculty members expanding on what they taught in class��but from the comfort of a lounge chair.

It��s the middle of a Thursday afternoon, and the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center (CALC) is hopping.

Opened last month after a summer-long, $1.7 million renovation of a section of a classroom wing in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Engineering Center, CALC is designed to be ��a warm, inviting space for undergraduate students, especially engineering calculus students, to learn, hang out and work on their coursework,�� explains Mark Hoefer, professor and department chair of applied mathematics.

The space, in ECCR 252, formerly was a computer lab, ��but it wasn��t heavily used,�� says Silva Chang, a full teaching professor of applied mathematics. ��So, we started talking about creating a comfortable, welcoming place where students could feel at home and hang out with their friends while they study and learn.��

When it was a little-used computer lab, the space was darker and not especially comfortable, so the renovation included jackhammering through concrete walls and replacing them with glass to allow in natural light, painting the walls in lighter colors, replacing carpeting and lighting and arranging comfortable chairs and benches around the space.

��We want this to be a space that supports collaboration,�� Chang says.

CALC will become a home to all-day drop-in office hours with faculty members and teaching assistants; tutoring with applied mathematics-trained tutors; small, learning assistant�Cled study groups; workshops on study strategies; and proactive student outreach, Hoefer says. Further, faculty and staff will continually work with students to assess how they��re using the space and what would improve or enhance their experiences in it.

��I think people are slowly discovering this space,�� Silva says, gesturing to students grouped around tables and in comfortable chairs or writing on whiteboards. ��It��s especially important for first-year students to have a place where they can find mentors and connect with classmates; those things are so important for student retention, so they can feel that this is a place where they belong.��

For Maxwell Minson, a first-year student studying bioengineering and, on this particular afternoon, writing Calculus 3 equations on a whiteboard, CALC is a place where ��I feel really comfortable,�� he says. ��I��m here all the time.��

Atticus Fretz (kneeling, wearing purple hoodie), a sophomore majoring in environmental engineering, tutors Calculus 1 in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center offers drop-in hours with faculty members and teaching assistants as well as tutoring with applied mathematics-trained tutors. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Renovation of a little-used computer lab in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Engineering Center included replacing concrete walls with glass ones to let in more light, including one etched with the Department of Applied Mathematics logo. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

Elizabeth Wallis McGuire (crouched, pointing at whiteboard), a junior studying electrical and computer engineering, tutors Calculus 1 in the Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

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The Applied Mathematics Community and Learning Center, opened last month after a summer-long renovation, invites students to collaborate, hang out and learn.

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Long live the King in modern music

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:51:19 +0000

Long live the King in modern music Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/30/2025 - 18:51

Rachel Sauer

In what would have been B.B. King��s 100^th birthday month, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder music scholar Shawn O��Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025

B.B. King was born to sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Leflore County, Mississippi, and began his musical career in the church choir, teaching himself to play guitar while listening to the ��King Biscuit Time�� radio show.

Sabrina Carpenter was born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and began posting videos of herself singing Adele and Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube around age 10. As a teenager, she starred in the Disney Channel series ��Girl Meets World.��

Culturally and musically, they��re about as different as two artists can be. But if the roots of rock ��n�� roll and even pop grow from blues��which they do��then it should be possible to hear B.B. King and other legends of blues in the sly pop confections of Sabrina Carpenter.

Shawn O'Neal is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and Center for African and African American Studies executive committee member.

So, Shawn O��Neal, a �鶹��Ѱ�� musicologist and assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies, cues up Carpenter��s song ��Manchild,�� currently No. 6 on the Billboard Top 100: ��Right away, the first thing I hear is that call and response of where she��s singing something and then answering her own question or statement back to herself,�� he notes. ��Call and response is such a foundation of blues music��whether Sabrina Carpenter knows that or thinks about it, or even has to, she got that from somewhere.��

Further, he asks, who were some of the first to sing about taking care of business��working all day, making a home at night��while a no-good partner is off catting around? The women of blues.

��They were the first to talk about sexuality, to talk about the issues they were having with their partners, even sometimes to talk about the fact that they were having love interests of the same sex,�� O��Neal says. ��All of those tropes are very defined in (Carpenter��s) music, and then there��s just that drumbeat, that very four-on-the-floor beat that��s a hallmark of blues. I think you could take that Sabrina Carpenter song and turn it into a blues song very easily.��

And it��s not just Carpenter. Even on current Top 40 lists that seem to owe more to computers and electronics than to the sawdust floors of Delta juke joints, blues touchpoints are audible. B.B. King, who died in May 2015 but would have turned 100 this month, and other legends of blues live in the music of 2025.

��B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey��I hear them in all this pop music,�� O��Neal says. ��I can��t not hear it, because it��s there; it��s in the DNA.��

��What they call rock ��n�� roll��

In 1957, a Hearst interviewer asked rock ��n�� roll pioneer Fats Domino, ��Fats, how did this rock ��n�� roll all get started, anyway?�� and Domino replied, ��Well, what they call rock ��n�� roll now is rhythm and blues. I��ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans.��

It was an acknowledgment that what felt revolutionary and sonically groundbreaking was actually a long time coming��the latest brick in a long- and well-established foundation.

It��s a direct lineage, O��Neal says: Pop grew from rock ��n�� roll; rock grew from blues, jazz and gospel; which grew from spirituals and field hollers; and those were first-generation descendants of African musical and narrative traditions brought to North America by enslaved people.

��Spirituals were sung in the cotton fields on the plantations,�� O��Neal explains. ��People were creating this music as subliminal communication, and the enslavement masters didn��t understand what they were talking about. They had to create a new language, and so much of it was speaking to spirituality��save us, help us, let me find some solace. It comes from pain and struggle and being completely removed from who you are, and we can sugarcoat it and syrup it up, but foundationally that��s where American music is coming from.��

Though the roots of American music are twisting and complex��and also woven of European folk and classical traditions��there��s a through line of African American musical tradition, O��Neal says. Gospel evolved from spirituals and give birth to its lyrically secular offspring of blues, which birthed jazz, rock and pop, as well as the direct descendants that are rap and hip-hop.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder music scholar Shawn O'Neal notes that blues legends like B.B. King stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe (pictured above), Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The earliest blues artists began developing a distinctive sound that became known for 12-bar chord progressions��a form based on the I, IV and V chords in a musical key��that are fundamental to the blues genre and are prominent in rock ��n�� roll, O��Neal says. Classic blues music also followed a pattern of one line being repeated four times in a verse, which 20th-century artists evolved the AAB pattern that became the blues standard: a three-line verse structure in blues music where the first line (A) is repeated, and the third line (B) offers a conclusion or response, often using a "question-question-answer" pattern within a 12-bar blues progression.

Blues legends like B.B. King, who stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Lead Belly and Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, experimented with the foundational elements of blues, which also included the ��walking bass�� rhythms and pitch-flattened ��blue notes,�� and broadened the sound and scope of the genre. Rock and pop, as well as myriad blues subgenres, were natural progressions, O��Neal says.

Drenched in the blues

Even now, as cross-pollinated and subdivided as music is, O��Neal says, listeners hear the blues regardless of whether they recognize it: ��For example, when you think about the foundations of electronic music or EDM, we��re talking about house music, and those DJs were originally playing rhythm and blues records. And in pop, you hear that foundation of disco, and they were also playing soul and rhythm and blues in the clubs.

��None of this music being played today was conjured out of thin air; it��s based on musical traditions that go back 100, 200 years.��

He adds that in hip-hop culture, B.B. King has been sampled from the earliest days of the genre ��because those were the records in our parents�� record collections. And obviously it��s never been just Black artists who��ve sampled and built on the blues. If you start at a place like Led Zeppelin, they obviously were heavily influenced by B.B. King and just drenched in blues, Jimmy Page especially. You take songs like ��Since I��ve Been Loving You�� or ��The Song Remains the Same�� and slow them down to that really draggy riff��that��s blues.��

When O��Neal has taught students to hear these influences in Reiland Rabaka's Introduction to Hip Hop Studies classes and Critical Survey of African American music, ��they come up to me after almost every class saying, ��I never knew that was in there.��

The challenge, he says, is respecting the artistic quest for newness and innovation while acknowledging and honoring the foundation on which it lives.

��As an artist, you have to understand that even if you want to think it��s your own original song, it��s still based off things that already happened,�� says O��Neal, who also is a renowned DJ and musician. ��Taylor Swift? Well, that��s Motown, that��s what she��s doing��three chords, simple progressions, prominent melodies, emotional lyrics. Whether artists now want to acknowledge it or not, the sounds they��re playing started a long time ago.��

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In what would have been B.B. King��s 100th birthday month, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder music scholar Shawn O��Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025.

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Top image: B.B. King playing at the University of Hamburg in November 1971. (Photo: Heinrich Klaffs/Wikimedia Commons)

We Are Art Buffs building an arts community

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:40:21 +0000

We Are Art Buffs building an arts community Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/25/2025 - 13:40

Rachel Sauer

At Sept. 17 gathering, representatives of the arts at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, in Boulder and across the Front Range built connections in the nascent We Are Art Buffs initiative

First, the question: What is an art buff?

��There is a journey within this question that speaks to the heart of what we are trying to curate,�� said John-Michael Rivera, dean of arts and humanities in the �鶹��Ѱ�� College of Arts and Sciences. ��We��re fostering not simply an appreciation of the arts but cultivating a lived and embodied inquiry into the creative. To engage the arts is a trait that all should appreciate in daily life.��

Then the idea: What if �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was the heart of the arts in Boulder, on the Front Range and in Colorado��a place where every student is supported in creative inquiry; where partnerships are made and strengthened between the university, artists and arts organizations in communities across Colorado and, someday, the nation; where there are infinite paths to the infinite ways of engaging with the arts?

John-Michael Rivera (at podium), dean of arts and humanities, speaks at the Sept. 17 We Are Art Buffs gathering.

So, dozens gathered Sept. 17 in Norlin Library, representing the arts at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, in the broader Boulder community and across the Front Range��taking steps and building connections in an initiative called We Are Art Buffs.

��From the very beginning��18 months ago, 19 months ago��we said, ��Let��s really start talking about the arts at �鶹��Ѱ��and have more pathways and connections with the community around us,�� Rivera said, addressing leaders from organizations including the Museum of Boulder, the Clyfford Still Museum, the City of Boulder Office of Arts and Culture, the Arvada Center, the Dairy Arts Center and many others.

��Right now is a tough time to be an artist, but it��s also a wonderful time to be an artist because the arts are really going to be the place that interprets this world we��re living in right now.��

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz noted the importance of the arts in ��connecting us as people to one another and to ourselves. The arts not only provide richness to our lives, they provide unique and different types of connection to people. The fact that we are such a vibrant arts community is what makes us such a strong community in general.��

A key outcome of the partnerships that will grow through the We Are Art Buffs initiative is strengthening student success, Schwartz added: ��We know successful learning experiences outside the classroom are vital to student success. We talk about student success internally, and we��re also going to be looking to our community to help us advance the success of our students.��

With community partnerships, Rivera said, ��we can guarantee that our students find their way or, better yet, create new paths as they walk them; whether in the arts or arts-adjacent fields or any profession, our students will show employers what we already know: that creative inquiry transforms every career, transforms every life.

��We owe students a vision of their future, a future with all of us in it.��

��We know successful learning experiences outside the classroom are vital to student success," said �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz. "We talk about student success internally, and we��re also going to be looking to our community to help us advance the success of our students.��

We Are Art Buffs, Rivera added, also is about creating venues for coming together to create pathways and break down barriers between the university and the community. For those in attendance Wednesday, that could include many things, from the practical to the philosophical��from clearer information about parking on campus to broader access to venues on and off campus, expanded work-study opportunities for students and interdisciplinary research projects.

��We have space that��s available to rent��it��s kind of small but let us know if that��s something you��d be interested in,�� said Tracy Travis with The New Local in Boulder. ��Or if you��re interested in getting students involved in seeing how a nonprofit runs, seeing how a gallery runs, seeing how you can get the community involved.��

��We would love to open pathways between our student bodies,�� said Erin Hauger, professor and chair of visual arts at �鶹��Ѱ��Denver. ��We have a great film program; we have a thriving visual arts program that I think has different majors than �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and we would love to infoshare and love to create different opportunities for students between downtown Boulder and downtown Denver.��

��We��re a giant building, so we have lots of possibilities for partnerships,�� said Jen Clements, deputy director of the Dairy Arts Center. ��One of the programs we have is our co-production program, which is a mechanism for early-career artists, for emerging artists to get their foot in a venue without the financial risk that is usually associated with getting your foot in a venue�� and we also have ample volunteer opportunities always.��

Erika Randall, interim dean and vice provost of undergraduate education, also emphasized the importance of building connections between students and the arts outside of campus: ��I have so many folks who are artists at heart or artists in major or art curious, and they only see it as way to extend the time to graduation and a way to disappoint their parents. We need help changing that story, and we need all of you to help in that because we know that the soft skills are not soft, they are hard-won and they are hard-fought.��

While the We Are Art Buffs initiative is in its nascent days, Rivera said that a foundational element is already in place, which is creating venues for coming together ��in very perilous times. What is it we want to be as a collective? What is it we want to do for the arts? How are we going to create pathways and break down barriers between the university and the community? I hope this is the beginning of all of us getting together and thinking what we want for the future of Boulder, the future of Colorado, and then becoming a national model.��

Cindy Sepucha (holding microphone), artists and venues program manager for the City of Boulder Office of Arts and Culture.

Collin Parson (laughing), Arvada Center director of galleries and curator, talks with Chris Taylor, executive director of Museum of Boulder.

Jim Walker, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Norlin Scholars teaching faculty member

A participant takes notes at the We Are Art Buffs gathering Sept. 17.

Attendees at the Sept. 17 We Are Art Buffs gathering responded to the question "What can we learn from your career experience about how to affect students?"

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At Sept. 17 gathering, representatives of the arts at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, in Boulder and across the Front Range built connections in the nascent We Are Art Buffs initiative.

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It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:37:27 +0000

It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon Rachel Sauer Wed, 09/10/2025 - 16:37

Rachel Sauer

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions

The photos and videos were all over Chinese social media last autumn: a grid-like pattern that suddenly appeared in two colliding waves on the Qiantang River and looked��if you didn��t know better��like a glitch in the matrix.

This rare phenomenon, called a matrix tide, is caused by two tidal bores��or events in which the front edge of an incoming tide forms a wave that travels up a river against the current��approaching each other from different directions, colliding and forming a grid pattern.

It��s visually stunning and, until very recently, mathematically confounding. However, in newly published research, Mark Hoefer, �鶹��Ѱ�� professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues detail how they��ve cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Mark Hoefer, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues recently cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Previously, matrix tides were only studied in one dimension but, because of their characteristics, needed to be studied in two. Adding that second dimension, however, required developing computationally intensive numerical simulations and the mathematics to interpret the results, building on the previous work of mathematicians Gerald B. Whitham, Boris Kadomtsev and Vladimir Petviashvili.

��There are certain equations that model how these waves change in time and space, and those equations simplify when you��re working with just one-dimensional waves,�� Hoefer explains. ��They start out as Euler equations, the partial differential equations of three-dimensional fluid dynamics��basic models in engineering and science broadly��and when you restrict shallow water waves to move in one dimension, they can essentially be simplified. In some cases, you can simplify them further to ordinary differential equations, which is something we teach in lower-division, fourth-semester calculus. They are much easier and accessible to analyze mathematically.

��When you add more dimensions, you��ll inherently get a partial differential equation in time and space, and, for the matrix tide that we studied, the equation will be nonlinear and not reducible to an ordinary differential equation. Nonlinear means that the nature of the waves you see��how fast they move, their shape and the patterns they make��all depend on how big they are. These are all factors that challenge the mathematical analysis of the patterns in these multidimensional, nonlinear waves.��

Studying the matrix tide

In some truly propitious timing, Hoefer and his colleagues Gino Biondini and Alexander Bivolcic at the University of Buffalo had been working on the question of multidimensional, nonlinear waves when Hoefer's wife, Jill, showed him a video that his mother-in-law had sent.

��I started this research because the general field of study I work in is waves,�� Hoefer says, adding that he studies waves in a variety of applications, including the types whose expression can be seen in undular bores, which are tidal bores with smooth, wave-like profiles. ��Waves like undular bores arise in a variety of physical settings��from waves in water, air, light and even matter in quantum mechanics��and the fundamental mathematical reason why that��s the case is that all of them are modeled by similar partial differential equations.��

For a long time, the study of these wave phenomena focused on analyzing them in one dimension, in which they move in one direction and there��s no variation in the perpendicular or transverse direction. ��But my colleagues and I recognized that we really needed to extend their mathematical description to more than one dimension because the world is multidimensional,�� Hoefer says.

A numerical simulation of the matrix tide.

So, the researchers began studying undular bores in two dimensions. They had made good progress and had core results by fall 2024, which is when Hoefer��s mother-in-law sent an Instagram video to his wife, saying, ��These waves are so cool, you��ve got to show Mark!�� he recalls. ��I thought, ��Whoa, this is awesome!�� I immediately realized, ��Oh, these are the waves we��re predicting in our mathematical analysis.��

Hoefer contacted former �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder applied mathematics PhD student Yifeng Mao, now a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and who is from China, and asked her to help him get to the bottom of the images and videos he was seeing on social media. She discovered that a tide association for the Qiantang River completed a tidal survey last fall, adding a new tide type to the eight previously identified ones. Piecing together that and other data, Hoefer and his colleagues identified the multidimensional waves they had been studying as what was seen on the river��s surface in the matrix tide.

Expanding the model

Among the challenges in studying waves in undular bores is that while certain physical effects can be disregarded at the outset when studying other types of waves, they must be considered with undular bores, Hoefer says. For example, when the wave oscillations are short enough, gravity causes them to move slower than longer waves. This effect, called negative wave dispersion, can be set aside in the mathematical analysis of longer waves because there are principles that account for it.

��In this setting, though, those effects are things we can��t neglect in our first pass-through,�� he says. He and his colleagues used a supercomputer at the University of Buffalo��s Center for Computational Research and graphical processing units to run many wave simulations in a few hours that would each take a day on a regular computer.

A simulation of the Mach stem and colliding undular bores.

They used shallow-water wave models, in which fluid depth is much less than the horizontal wavelength. ��Counterintuitively, shallow water models can apply even in the open ocean,�� Hoefer says. ��The reason is when you have something like a tsunami, where an earthquake suddenly shifts the ocean bottom and displaces huge amounts of water at the surface, it generates a wave that can be many, many miles wide. Fishermen may be on their boat and not know that a 200-mile wavelength wave is passing under them. There, the tsunami wave is so long that dispersion can be neglected. It��s only when it gets close to shore and the depth gets lower that the waves shorten, compressing the energy and creating destructively large waves. So, the same kind of dispersive wave model that describes near-shore tsunamis is what we used to describe this bore.��

Hoefer and colleagues�� mathematical analysis of two obliquely colliding undular bores predicts that, for a special collision angle, the biggest waves in the matrix tide are eight times the size of the original waves: ��This critical angle prediction was borne out in our wave simulations and marks a fundamental change in the shape of the waves from a matrix tide to another pattern called a Mach stem,�� he says.

Hoefer adds that the applications to describing these waves in more than one dimension extend beyond the surface of water��to fiber and crystal optics, quantum mechanical Bose-Einstein condensates and magnetic materials, meteorology and other applications.

��We have a number of directions to go,�� Hoefer says. ��We are looking for examples of the Mach stem from colliding undular bores. Maybe this will be the tenth tide type discovered during the next river survey.��

On the mathematical modeling, Hoefer adds that the model he and his colleagues used "is what we would consider in the field to be the simplest model to describe this setting. Another thing we assumed was that the waves are not too big, so they��re not breaking. But if you look at the Instagram videos of this phenomenon, you see them break. Another assumption we make in this model is that the variation in the direction that is transverse to wave propagation is not too large, so we want to quantify what that means and see if there are any other possible wave patterns.

��There are these assumptions in the model, so we want to gradually start adding more terms to the equations representing more physics and allow for more complications to see if new things happen. This will make the mathematics harder, but the challenge and reward of predicting new physical phenomena from mathematical models is why I keep doing applied math research.��

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions.

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Top photo: the grid pattern of a matrix tide (Photo: �� Creative Commons)

From Huffy to high tech, it's been a wild ride

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 19:29:05 +0000

From Huffy to high tech, it's been a wild ride Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/05/2025 - 13:29

Rachel Sauer

For �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Todd Carver, what he learned in the lab as a student inspired industry-rocking innovation in developing digital bike-fitting technology

For a long time, one of the unspoken truths of cycling was that if you ride hard and long enough, it��s going to hurt: foot or hand numbness, back pain, shoulder pain, the list is intimidating.

Every rider feels it differently. For Todd Carver (IntPhys��00, MIntPhys��02), ��my lower back is the problem. I struggled with my position but finally got to the point where I could ride pain-free as I understood the human body more and was actually able to make changes to my position on the bike.

��Plus, the bike��s adjustable, right, so you can move the seat, you can adjust your touchpoints to the bike, your hands, butt and feet can all be adjusted. And if you don��t adjust those and just plop yourself on the bike, there��s a chance you��re not going to perform well and you��re going to get injured.��

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Todd Carver (IntPhys��00, MIntPhys��02) co-founded Ret��l, a bike fitting and product matching technology now used by professional cycling teams, performance centers, rehabilitation centers and bicycle retailers worldwide.

While working with Bill Byrnes and Rodger Kram, associate professors emeritus in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Integrative Physiology, in the Applied Exercise Science Laboratory during his graduate studies, Carver began wondering if competitive cycling��or even long-distance recreational cycling��needed to end in pain.

��The big thing the cycling world was missing was information about the rider��the human aspect,�� Carver explains. ��How should riders fit on a bike? How do you position a rider to be powerful, efficient and perform well? All the things I was learning in my academic career under Bill Byrnes and Rodger Kram��the focus of my research��was in predicting cycling performance, who��s going to perform well and who��s not.��

The problem was, there just weren��t that many tools to assess a rider��s position on their bike and give them a three-dimensional, dynamic bike fit. So, Carver and two colleagues developed one: Ret��l, a bike fitting and product matching technology now used by professional cycling teams, performance centers, rehabilitation centers and bicycle retailers worldwide.

Ret��l wrought such a change in the cycling world that Specialized acquired it in 2012. Now, as head of human performance for Specialized, Carver continues to innovate at the vanguard of cycling fit and performance.

��Riders just want to be pain free,�� Carver says. ��And even if they don��t care about being fast, they don��t want to push on the pedal and not go or push on the pedal and it hurts.��

Bike = freedom

Carver discovered young that pushing on a bike pedal is bliss and freedom in equal measure. ��My first bike was a Huffy, and it was frickin�� rad,�� he recalls. ��As a kid, I realized that on a bike I can go way farther. So, I had this Huffy that I rode around the neighborhood, and it gave me a lot of freedom as a kid.��

Celebrate cycling (and correctly fitted bikes) Sunday, Sept. 7, at the Buffalo Bicycle Classic!

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His first ��real�� bike as a recreational and then competitive cyclist was a mountain bike, which he rode while figuring out what to do during the several years he lived in Breckenridge between high school and college. ��I moved to Breckenridge and just got hooked on endurance sports, especially mountain biking, and I said, ��I need to go study the science of this.��

He came to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and joined the cycling team, eventually realizing that he didn��t want to pursue professional cycling and that the science of riding held a lot more fascination for him. Plus, he brought to the performance lab and insiders knowledge of the problems cyclists could have.

��One of the studies that we did with Rodger (Kram) was measuring aerodynamic drag on bikes, and I saw how big of an opportunity fit was,�� Carver says. ��You can have a really fast bike, and that��s good, but the human body makes up 80 to 90% of drag.

Todd Carver (left) works with a cyclist to gather data for a bike fitting. (Photo: Todd Carver)

��To this day, we still do that analysis with all of our pro riders. We take them to the velodrome, measure aerodynamics and then work with fit to try to improve it. I��d almost say that one of the biggest impacts we��ve had is helping send professional and career cycling more toward science.��

After earning his master��s degree, Carver worked at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, where he and an engineer colleague, Cliff Simms, soon realized that people were flying in from as far as Europe to get fitted for bikes. He wondered why they couldn��t get fitted in their hometowns, ��and it really came down to the technology. For a bike shop to get the digital technology was too expensive and it was too hard to run��you basically would need a master��s degree in biomechanics to do it��so this engineer friend and I started to look at how we could break down those barriers.��

They began developing a motion-capture system that measures length and trigonometric relation between small LED markers placed all over the cyclist��s body and synchronized to flash at certain times, a process that happens in milliseconds. 3D cameras positioned around the rider record the data, which is immediately analyzed and used to fit riders to bikes with millimeter precision.

Affordable, portable, easy to use

With partner Franko Vatterott, Carver and Simms founded Ret��l in 2007 with a goal of making bike fitting more affordable, portable, easy to use and data driven.

��I say I got my MBA starting a company,�� Carver says. ��I knew nothing, and I learned it starting a company. One big thing we learned is you better have a darn good product, and what we felt we had was a really good product, so that made some things easier. We didn��t need to take investment initially; we were able to just bootstrap it and work off the money we were making (during development).��

They also were building a database containing everything they were learning about different types of bodies and how they fit on bikes��data they knew would be appealing to bike manufacturers. In fact, he adds, the goal was always to sell to Specialized, which had worked with doctors on ergonomic design and lacked only data from digital fitting.

Todd Carver (right) shows a cyclist data from a digital bike fitting. (Photo: Todd Carver)

They initially worked with professional riders, drawing on connections Carver had made with riders in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder performance labs, and marketed Ret��l to fitting pro teams. ��Then bike shops were coming to us saying, ��We��d like to buy one of your systems.��

��From the rider point of view, what I was hearing was, ��Wow, that feels way better, and it��s easier for me to pedal�� or ��That completely got rid of my injury and now I can push harder.�� The problem might not be the bike itself, it just might be the saddle or the shoe or the footbed, or it just might be that the rider needs to reposition themself on the bike. From the rider point of view, that��s powerful because they could see that bike shops weren��t always trying to sell them a new bike, but had the data to say, ��Let��s try a new saddle.��

��More fun with data��

As head of human performance for Specialized, Carver continues to work with riders at all levels and in all areas of cycling.

��We work in optimizing athlete and product performance using science,�� Carver says. ��In addition to fitting pros and selling fit systems to retailers, we do a lot of research and development��we take that fit knowledge we have and are able to then use that for ergonomic design of saddles, shoes and hand grips.

��How hand grips are shaped, for example, affects how a rider��s hand sits, which can mean the difference between a comfortable hand and one that goes numb. So, what we do is prototype and test and gather data for better design. We do so much work in saddles, which is the hardest thing on a bike to get right, so we��re always testing with pressure mapping.��

The overarching goal, Carver says, is to solve riders�� problems, ��and that��s more fun with data.��

Carver often considers whether his life��s work is science or art, and figures it lives somewhere between the two: ��We use scientific tools, have all these ranges, but we can��t know everything from that. I think that��s where the art comes in. You need to work with a lot of different riders��some who just want to ride bikes down to the grocery store and don��t want to be aerodynamic or fast��and you have to be able to empathize with that as well as the more competitive side of cycling. You have to have the human side, too, and really read people, have really good interviewing skills and listening skills to know what they want to do on a bike.

"I think I can empathize because I still love to ride, and I still feel that freedom when I get on my bike.��

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For �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Todd Carver, what he learned in the lab as a student inspired industry-rocking innovation in developing digital bike-fitting technology.

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Top image: A cyclist receives a bicycle fitting using technology co-developed by �鶹��Ѱ��alumnus Todd Carver. (Photo: Todd Carver)

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:09:59 +0000

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/27/2025 - 17:09

Rachel Sauer

Opening Sept. 5 at the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, ��Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020�� focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections

The joy��and sometimes frustration��of ceramics may be found in its contradictions: its fragile strength, its rough refinement, its elastic rigidity. Drop it and it might shatter, or it might survive millennia.

��It��s a material that��s about so much transformation,�� says Jeanne Quinn, a �鶹��Ѱ�� professor of art and art history. ��It goes from being very plastic and malleable to something that��s more like stone. And embedded in ceramics is all kinds of material meaning. Our students who are trained in ceramics are really trained to dig into technical mastery with the material but also dig into how you find meaning in the material itself, how you��re using the material as metaphor.��

Myers Berg Studios, United States, ��in plain sight, 2025, ceramic, maple, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec.19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; ? Myers Berg Studios)

For students in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder ceramics program, the material also represents connection to an artistic lineage that has grown in breadth and renown through successive cohorts. It is a lineage nurtured by ceramics faculty Quinn, Scott Chamberlin and Kim Dickey, who have been teaching together and broadening the program for 25 years.

It is the length of those associations, in fact, that planted the seed of what has grown into the exhibit ��Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020,�� kicking off with an opening celebration Sept. 4 at the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum and opening to the public Sept. 5.

��鶹��Ѱ��has a really long history of investing in ceramics and having a very strong ceramics program,�� Quinn explains. ��Kim (Dickey) had this idea that it��s our silver anniversary of teaching together, we have this incredible group of alumni, so many amazing artists who have come through, as undergrads, as post-bacs and as grad students, so we should create an exhibit to celebrate that.��

A ceramic tradition

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder has long championed the arts and supported artists, including ceramic artists who have created a student-focused program that prioritizes learning, technical mastery and artistic exploration. The ceramic program was significantly bolstered by Betty Woodman, an internationally renowned artist whose 2006 retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was the first such show by a living female ceramicist, and who taught at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for 30 years.

Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020

What: The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder ceramics program is celebrating its history with faculty Scott Chamberlin, Kim Dickey, and Jeanne Quinn. To honor the achievements of artists who graduated from this program, faculty curators are partnering with the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum to present a retrospective exhibition.

When: Opening celebration Sept. 4 from 4�C6 p.m.; exhibit opens to the public Sept. 5-Dec. 19. There will be an all-day symposium celebrating the exhibit Sept. 5.

Where: �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum

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Chamberlin was a colleague of Woodman, and Quinn was a student of both Woodman and Chamberlin before joining the ceramics faculty in 1997.

��In this program, there is a real commitment to ceramics and its incredibly rich history,�� Quinn says. ��Every civilization from the beginning of time has had ceramics, so it��s an incredible kind of medium to work with and have the opportunity to reference all that. But I also feel like we have a very non-dogmatic approach to teaching��there��s so much history, but also so much space for experimentation and invention.

��Ceramics is a very demanding material. Anybody who��s ever sat down and tried to throw a pot on the wheel realizes oh, you don��t just toss this off. Every step requires real skill, real technical skill, but we��ve worked to build a program where students receive this amazing education in learning how to learn and learning how to grapple with the material and how the material can offer so many different avenues of expression.��

Erica Green, a post-baccalaureate student in the program between 2011 and 2013 and one of the exhibit��s 30 featured artists, credits the ceramics program��s emphasis on exploration with helping her forge her path as an artist.

��Ceramics is always my first love, but the nice thing about this department is you��re encouraged to follow the idea and not just the material,�� Green says. ��One of my professors in the program suggested I set clay to the side and focus on fiber and being more in tune with the material.��

Green��s work in the exhibit, ��California King,�� centers on a bed covered in a blanket of knotted felt and wool-blend fibers. ��I work a lot in knots as a metaphor for mending and repair and healing.��

Artist Lucero Aguirre, who earned an MFA in the ceramics program, created the quilted tapestry ��Mije�� to include thousands of iridescent ceramic sequins��bringing together ��the spaces of brownness and queerness in its sequined message,�� Aguirre explains. ��The term ��mije�� is a gender-neutral version of the often-used Spanish term of endearment ��mija,�� or daughter.��

In transforming ��mija�� into ��mije,�� Aguirre considers the ��affective labor of navigating brownness as a queer subject. The piece responds to the way that intimacy is often gendered in Mexican and Latine spaces, leaving queer Latine bodies at once inside and outside.��

Erica Green assembles her work "California King" (2022, knotted fibers on mattress) for the "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020" exhibit opening Sept. 5 at the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum. (Photo Rachel Sauer; ? Erica Green)

��You can do anything with clay��

Quinn emphasizes that even though the exhibit celebrates the ceramics program, it also includes textiles, video works, photography, live performances and other media. ��(The exhibit) runs the gamut of materials, but the unifying piece is that you can see that sense of commitment to the craft, to really handling a material with authority and also expressing something beyond the material.��

The hardest part, she adds, was choosing exhibit participants ��because we��re in touch with all of these alumni, we��re following what they��re doing, they��re sending us updates.��

At the same time the exhibit participants were being chosen, Quinn and her colleagues were working with �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum staff to envision and plan the exhibit��a time-intensive but rewarding process, says Hope Saska, �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum acting director. Saska also partnered with Quinn, Dickey and Chamberlin to organize an all-day symposium September 5 celebrating the exhibit; it will include performances, conversations and in-gallery artist talks.

��You say ceramics and people have this idea of, ��Oh, you��re making pots on the wheel,�� Quinn says. ��And ceramics certainly fits in this kind of lane, that is absolutely part of what we teach. But you also have an artist like Casey Whittier, who made thousands of ceramic beads and then strung them together into this gorgeous textile piece that hangs on a wall. Casey has taken ceramics, which you might think of as fixed and static, and then created this piece that hangs and moves and is as much a textile as it is ceramics.

��So, we want people to come to the exhibit, and especially we want students to think, ��Oh, you can do anything with clay.��

Lucero Aguirre, mije, 2024, handmade and lustered ceramic sequins, thread and batting and fabric, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; ? Lucero Aguirre)

Linda Nguyen Lopez, United States (1981), Gummy Worm, Ombre Dust Furry, 2021, porcelain, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer, ? Linda Nguyen Lopez)

Joanna Powell, United States (1981), Flower Vessel no. 1, 2019, earthenware, majolica, gold luster, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; ? Joanna Powell)

Sandra Trujillo, United States (1967), Mosaic - Yellow, 2024, Mexican Smalti (glass), Wedi (polystyrene board), wood, steel, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; ? Sandra Trujillo)

Julie Poitras Santos, United States (1967), The Conversation, 2019, single channel video, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; ? Julie Poitras Santos)

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Matthew McConnell, United States (1979), Didn��t Miss a Thing, 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; ? Matthew McConnell)

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Top image: Matthew McConnell, "Didn��t Miss a Thing," 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: �鶹��Ѱ��Ceramics Alumni 2000�C2020," �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, Sept. 5�CDec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; ? Matthew McConnell)

That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 18:39:18 +0000

That lightbulb represents more than just a good idea Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/08/2025 - 12:39

Rachel Sauer

In research recently published in Science, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientists detail how light��rather than energy-intensive heat��can efficiently and sustainably catalyze chemical transformations

For many people, the role that manufactured chemicals plays in their lives��whether they��re aware of it or not��may begin first thing in the morning. That paint on the bedroom walls? It contains manufactured chemicals.

From there, manufactured chemicals may show up in prescription medicine, in the bowls containing breakfast, in the key fob that unlocks the car, in the road they take to work. These products are so ubiquitous that it��s hard to envision life without them.

Professor Niels Damrauer and his �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and CSU research colleagues were inspired by photosynthesis in designing a system using LED lights to catalyze transformations commonly used in chemical manufacturing.

The process of transforming base materials into these desired products, however, has long come at significant environmental cost. Historically, catalyzing transformations in industrial processes has frequently used extreme heat to create the necessary energy.

Now, continuing to build on a growing body of research and discovery, �鶹��Ѱ�� scientists are many steps closer to using light instead of heat to catalyze transformations in industrial processes.

In a study recently published in Science, Niels Damrauer, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of chemistry and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow, and his research colleagues at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and Colorado State University found that a system using LED lights can catalyze transformations commonly used in chemical manufacturing. And it��s entirely possible, Damrauer says, that sunlight could ultimately be the light source in this system.

��With many transformations, the economics are, ��Well, I need this product and I��m going to sell it at this price, so my energy costs can��t be larger than this amount to make a profit��,�� Damrauer says. ��But when you start to think about climate change and start to think about trying to create more efficient ways to make things, you need different approaches.

��You can do that chemistry with very harsh conditions, but those harsh conditions demand energy use. The particular chemistry we are able to do in this paper suggests we��ve figured out a way to do these transformations under mild conditions.��

Inspired by plants

Damrauer and his colleagues��including first authors Arindam Sau, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder PhD candidate in chemistry, and Amreen Bains, a postdoctoral scholar in chemistry at Colorado State University in the group of Professor Garret Miyake��work in a branch of chemistry called photoredox catalysis, ��where ��photo�� means light and ��redox�� means reduction and oxidation,�� Damrauer explains. ��This type of chemistry is fundamentally inspired by photosynthesis. A lot of chemistry��not all of chemistry, but a huge fraction of chemistry��involves the movement of electrons out of things and into other things to make transformations. That happens in plants, and it happens in photoredox catalysis as well.

��In photosynthesis, there��s a beautiful control over not only the motion of electrons but the motion of protons. It��s in the coupling of those two motions that a plant derives functions it��s able to achieve in taking electrons out of something like water and storing it in CO2 as something like sugar.��

Further inspired by photosynthesis and a plant��s use of chlorophyl to collect sunlight, the research team used an organic dye molecule as a sort of ��pre-catalyst�� that absorbs light and transforms into a catalyst molecule, which also absorbs light and accelerates chemical reactions. And because the four LED lights surrounding the reactor are only slightly brighter than a regular home LED lightbulb, the transformation process happens at room temperature rather than extreme heat.

The molecule is also able to ��reset�� itself afterward and harvest more light, beginning the process anew.

��We set out to understand the behavior of a photocatalyst that was inefficient at this process, and my student Arindam discovered there was this fundamental transformation to the molecule occurring while we did the reaction,�� Damrauer says, adding that the team discovered there are key motions not just of electrons, which is essential for photoredox, but also of protons.

��In our mechanism, the motion of the proton occurs in the formation of a water molecule, and that very stable molecule prevents another event that would undermine the storage of energy that we��re trying to achieve,�� Damrauer says. ��We figured out what the reaction was and, based on that reaction, we started to make simpler molecules.

��This was a really fortuitous discovery process: We were studying something, saw a change, took the knowledge of what that change was and started to design systems that were even better. This is the best advertisement for basic science��sometimes you can��t design it; you��ve got to discover things, you��ve got to have that freedom.��

A sunny future

Damrauer, Sau and their colleagues in the multidisciplinary, multi-institutional Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis Research Center (SuPRCat) are continuing to build on these discoveries, which happen at a small scale now but may have the potential for large-scale commercial use.

In an essay for The Conversation, Sau noted, ��Our work points toward a future where chemicals are made using light instead of heat. For example, our catalyst can turn benzene��a simple component of crude oil��into a form called cyclohexadienes. This is a key step in making the building blocks for nylon. Improving this part of the process could reduce the carbon footprint of nylon production.

��Imagine manufacturers using LED reactors or even sunlight to power the production of essential chemicals. LEDs still use electricity, but they need far less energy compared with the traditional heating methods used in chemical manufacturing. As we scale things up, we��re also figuring out ways to harness sunlight directly, making the entire process even more sustainable and energy efficient.��

Damrauer adds that he and his colleagues aren��t trying to change the nature of manufactured chemicals, but the approach to how they��re made. ��We��re not looking at making more stable paint, for example, but we��re asking if it costs a certain number of joules to make that gallon of paint, how can we reduce that?��

In addition to Niels Damrauer, Arindam Sau and Amreen Bains, Brandon Portela, Kajal Kajal, Alexander Green, Anna Wolff, Ludovic Patin, Robert Paton and Garret Miyake contributed to this research.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about chemistry? Show your support.

In research recently published in Science, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientists detail how light��rather than energy-intensive heat��can efficiently and sustainably catalyze chemical transformations.

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Top image: dreamstime.com

Rachel Sauer

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