2024-25

The beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 17:21:58 +0000

The beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 10:21

Rachel Sauer

“The Tender Hand of the Unseen,” an immersive video installation that was featured on the Daniels and Fisher Tower in downtown Denver, was the work of Molly Valentine Dierks, a Department of Art and Art History assistant teaching professor who is also a sculptor, interdisciplinary artist and self-described “nature geek.”

The artwork—which was projected onto the 140-foot canvas of the building—mimics the movements of large flocks of starlings, which take flight at twilight to dance in undulating, ever-shifting shapes.

In describing the work, which was part of the Night Lights Denver program, Dierks wrote, “The work is my way of confronting a socially fractured landscape, where screens more frequently mediate our understanding of self … overshadowing more embodied connections to each other and the natural world.”

Molly Valentine Dierks’ immersive video installation “The Tender Hand of the Unseen” shown on D&F Tower in Denver (Photo: Molly Valentine Dierks)

Principal
Molly Valentine Dierks

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Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

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Rebuilding lives after the disaster headlines fade

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 17:07:56 +0000

Rebuilding lives after the disaster headlines fade Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 10:07

Kelly Holguin

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Lori Peek with participants in the Gulf Coast-based youth empowerment program called SHOREline, which she co-created and that was designed to make fundamental changes in the lives of youth and their communities, including reducing inequality before and after natural disasters. (Photo: Jonathan Sury)

When headlines fade and emergency funding dries up, what happens to families still reeling from disaster? And what if a second or third crisis strikes before recovery is complete?

Lori Peek, director of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Natural Hazards Center and professor of sociology, has spent years studying the long-term effects of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf Coast communities. For families already facing chronic inequality, housing instability and under-resourced schools, each new disaster compounds the trauma.

Peek argues that we must shift our disaster recovery protocol from short-term aid to equity-centered, systemic change. A powerful example of this shift in action is SHOREline, a youth-centered initiative Peek co-developed with Gulf Coast communities to build long-term resilience and shape inclusive recovery frameworks.

Principal
Lori Peek

Funding
Baton Rouge Area Foundation; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

Collaboration + support
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science, Natural Hazards Center, Department of Sociology; Gabriella Meltzer (American University); David Abramson (New York University); SHOREline and the Columbia Climate School’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness

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Rebuilding lives after the headlines fade

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Tackling youth depression with a transformative research approach

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:56:09 +0000

Tackling youth depression with a transformative research approach Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 09:56

Chris Yankee

Youth depression affects more than two out of five adolescents, yet tools to understand and treat depression are limited. Standard research approaches are siloed within disciplines and fail to translate scientific findings into real world solutions.

In response, the newly established Center for Healthy Mind and Mood at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is pioneering a transformative approach to understand depression and promote healthy mood in young people.

Led by Roselinde Kaiser, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, the center unites transdisciplinary teams of scientists and informed youth partners. Research innovation draws upon neuroscience, psychology and lived experience of depression, for outside-the-disciplinary-box discoveries guided by youth voices.

Impact is maximized by translating research discoveries into programs with public health benefit in Colorado and beyond.

(Photo: Zoran Zeremski)

Principal investigator
Roselinde Kaiser

Funding
�鶹��Ѱ��

Collaboration + support
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Renée Crown Wellness Institute

Learn more about this topic:
Roselinde Kaiser receives Presidential Early Career Award

The newly established Center for Healthy Mind and Mood at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is pioneering a transformative approach to understand depression and promote healthy mood in young people.

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Making the digital accessible for everyone

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:45:52 +0000

Making the digital accessible for everyone Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 09:45

Joe Arney

(Photo: Carlos Barquero Perez)

Shamika Klassen was enraptured by technology as a girl. As she grew up, she saw the industry fall short of its ideals while leaving certain kinds of people—especially Black women, femmes and nonbinary people—behind.

Studying information science was an opportunity to bring her experience as a technology chaplain and her interest in technowomanism together in ways that encouraged her to ask questions about how technology could work better for people. While under the guidance of her advisor as a doctoral candidate in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Department of Information Science, Shamika’s interests expanded to the research ethics of how public data is collected and used.

Today, as a user experience researcher at Google, she’s challenging one of the industry’s biggest players to be more inclusive in the development and deployment of new technology.

Principal investigator
Shamika Klassen

Collaboration + support
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, Department of Information Science

Learn more about this topic:
Making the digital less discriminatory

Studying information science helped Shamika Klassen bring her experience as a technology chaplain and her interest in technowomanism together in ways that encouraged her to ask questions about how technology could work better for people.

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The enduring power of childhood stories

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:17:27 +0000

The enduring power of childhood stories Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 09:17

Adamari Ruelas

Books like The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by British author Frances Hodgson Burnett continue to be fan favorites for young children. That’s because children in books like these are empowered to figure things out for themselves and exist in worlds that are magical.

That kind of storybook magic attaches to children, which is why it can have lasting echoes into adulthood, said Emily Harrington, Department of English associate professor, who has taught a course on children’s literature.

While Hodgson Burnett held some questionable beliefs, including colonialist ideology from the early 20th century, and her works had undertones of racism, Harrington said people can take the best parts of those books and reject the parts of the books’ legacy that they don’t want.

Principal investigator
Emily Harrington

Learn more about this topic:
Meeting a little princess in the secret garden

Books like The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by British author Frances Hodgson Burnett continue to be fan favorites for young children. That’s because children in books like these are empowered to figure things out for themselves and exist in worlds that are magical.

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Hip hop gives students a voice in new initiative

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:01:58 +0000

Hip hop gives students a voice in new initiative Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 09:01

Cody DeBos

For many Black and brown youth in the Denver area, the Lyripeutics Storytelling Project is more than a way to express their creativity. It’s survival.

Founded by a collective of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholars, artists, educators and community organizers, Lyripeutics’ mission is to empower Black and brown youth through a medium many connect with—hip hop. The program is embedded in schools in the greater Denver area and aims to offer alternative learning environments for students who find themselves overlooked in traditional education systems.

“We don’t all learn the same, yet we have this system of education that’s been around for hundreds of years and is really geared for only one very particular type of student,” said Shawn O’Neal, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Lyripeutics’ founding member and co-director.

Principal investigators
Kalonji Nzinga; Shawn O’Neal

Funding
Renée Crown Wellness Institute

Collaboration + support
School of Education; Department of Ethnic Studies

Learn more about this topic:
Initiative gives students a voice with hip-hop

Founded by a collective of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholars, artists, educators and community organizers, the Lyripeutics Storytelling Project's mission is to empower Black and brown youth through a medium many connect with—hip hop.

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Walking in beauty

Allison Jane Miller — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:35:36 +0000

Walking in beauty Allison Jane Miller Tue, 11/04/2025 - 08:35

Bradley Worrell

"Growing Stronger"

"Simon Joe Benally is Looking for a Rich Girlfriend"

"Remembering Brittany"

"She's Singing"

Sharing social, cultural and political experiences through art

For Melanie Yazzie, professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

That’s because she describes her art as being much more than just about creating aesthetically pleasing work—it’s a medium for sharing social, cultural and political experiences shaping the lives of native peoples in the U.S. and beyond. Her artwork—which takes the form of paintings, printmaking, sculptures and ceramics—is shaped by her personal experiences, as well as events and symbols from her Diné (Navajo) culture.

“I think when you’re really digging deep inside yourself and you make a work about something that’s really important, maybe it’s a certain theme you are trying to get across, when someone else sees it and gets it and is affected by it, that’s when you really see the power in artmaking,” she said. “It can transform you as the maker and also the person who sees it.”

Yazzie said her artwork follows the Diné dictum, “walk in beauty”—the idea of creating beauty and harmony. “There’s always positive and negative in the world, a sort of yin and yang. In Navajo culture, walking in beauty is really about walking a balanced path and trying to stay in a positive frame of mind,” she explained.

That doesn’t mean avoiding controversial subjects in her art, but she said it does color the approach she takes.

“When I was younger and in grad school, I made artwork that was very much in your face,” Yazzie said. “And in a sense, I was preaching to the choir. People who understood what I was saying would stay and listen, but what I realized with that work was that the people I wanted to reach dismissed (my work) as just, ‘she’s an angry woman or she’s an angry person of color.’”

Today, much of her work straddles the line between abstractionism and representationalism, with recurring motifs of abstracted animal and plant forms, as well as people—notably women—who are rendered in a spectrum of colors. Yazzie said casual gallery viewers have described some of her paintings and prints with words such as beautiful, whimsical and even silly.

For those willing to inquire, however, there are deeper meanings to many of her works, which can tackle such serious issues as the horrible treatment of Native Americans in boarding schools run by the U.S. government from the 1880s to 1920s or the unsolved murders of indigenous women today.

“In a sense, it’s like using honey to draw people in and then educating them,” Yazzie said of her artwork today. “It’s a much slower path, but I’ve seen it over the years making bigger strides than when I was shouting ‘injustice.’”

Particularly with her earlier works, but even in some cases today, Yazzie said some people who are “very rigid” in their views don’t appreciate her art. While it’s not always easy to hear, she credits her upbringing on the Navajo nation in northeastern Arizona with keeping her grounded and confident.

“Since a very young age I was brought up among Navajo people and around really strong women role models. That was my foundation,” she said. “So, when people were sometimes rude or racist, I would think back to my grandmother, who only spoke Navajo, and she would explain (their outlook) to me by saying people will sometimes act like bad children, and they don’t understand how to behave, so you have to show more patience with them and have a kind heart.”

Principal
Melanie Yazzie

Collaboration + support
Department of Art and Art History

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Art and transformation are inherently connected, prof says

"Speak Truth" by Melanie Yazzie, professor of art practices and head of printmaking in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's Department of Art and Art History

For Melanie Yazzie, professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

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Melanie Yazzie with a collection of her prints. (Photo: Melanie Yazzie)

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Melanie Yazzie with a collection of her prints. (Photo: Melanie Yazzie)

Research in space, helping people on Earth

Allison Jane Miller — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 22:53:24 +0000

Research in space, helping people on Earth Allison Jane Miller Mon, 11/03/2025 - 15:53

Daniel Strain

The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida—marking BioServe’s first launch into orbit. (Photo: NASA)

BioServe founder Marvin Luttges in 1989. (Photo: BioServe)

Adeline Loesch assembles space “petri dishes” containing biological organisms in a lab on the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder campus. (Photo: Adeline Loesch)

BioServe marks 100th orbital launch

In April 1991, Louis Stodieck watched as the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

At the time, Stodieck was associate director of BioServe Space Technologies, a research center at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. He had helped to design a set of test tubes that would, among other things, not spill the moment they reached space.

BioServe, which was founded in 1987, works with scientists at companies and research institutions around the world to conduct life science experiments in space. Atlantis’ launch in 1991 marked the first time the center had sent scientific equipment into orbit
around Earth.

“I never get tired of launches,” said Stodieck, who served as BioServe’s director from 1999 to 2019 and is now its chief scientist. “The sound reaches you seconds after the launch because you’re a few miles away. When it hits you, it’s this low vibration, and you just feel it.”

This year, BioServe celebrated another milestone—its 100th orbital launch.

On April 21, 2025, a SpaceX Dragon capsule flew to the International Space Station (ISS) carrying equipment belonging to three research projects, or “payloads,” developed by BioServe. They included several colonies containing billions of bacteria and algae.

“This launch is an amazing milestone,” said Stefanie Countryman, the current director of BioServe. “It exemplifies the hard work of everybody at BioServe, not just our engineers and researchers, but also our students.”

BioServe began as a five-year grant from NASA under founder Marvin Luttges, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. Researchers at the center have since sent a wide range of living things into orbit. They include single-celled organisms but also ants, silkworms, mice and an intrepid “spidernaut” named Nefertiti.

Today, astronauts on the ISS can also peer through a microscope flight certified and launched by BioServe and grow cell cultures in four incubators called Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL) 1, 2, 3 and 4. BioServe even supplied the refrigerator where humans on the ISS store their food. On the ground, the center runs a mission operation and control center at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. There, BioServe staff talk to astronauts in real time on a giant screen.

“We’re replicating the sorts of biological labs that you can find at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in space,” said Tobias Niederwieser, a research associate at BioServe.

Over the years, researchers at the center have also kept one foot firmly planted on Earth—generating new insights into a range of human medical conditions.

More than two decades ago, for example, Stodieck and his colleagues designed a specialized habitat for mice to live on the ISS. His team’s research revealed new clues to why mammals lose bone mass when they leave Earth. Those insights, in turn, helped inspire new kinds of medications for osteoporosis in people.

Niederwieser and his colleagues have kicked off an effort to grow human hematopoietic stem cells in space. Doctors often transplant these cells into people to treat cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.

In a few early experiments, the group discovered that stem cells may grow more freely in space than they do on Earth. That could lead to a new vision for space—one in which stations in orbit around Earth produce various treatments for human illnesses, then send them back to patients on the ground.

“Humans have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years and have evolved with only one gravity,” Stodieck said. “It’s really been a privilege to understand how organisms work in another environment.”

Principals
Stefanie Countryman; Marvin Luttges; Louis Stodieck

Funding
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collaboration + support
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Ann & H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, BioServe Space Technologies

Learn more about this topic:
BioServe marks 100th orbital launch

BioServe, which was founded in 1987, works with scientists at companies and research institutions around the world to conduct life science experiments in space.

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Astronaut Christina Koch uses a microscope supplied by BioServe aboard the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)

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Astronaut Christina Koch uses a microscope supplied by BioServe aboard the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)

New space policy center will help shape our space future

Allison Jane Miller — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 22:27:49 +0000

New space policy center will help shape our space future Allison Jane Miller Mon, 11/03/2025 - 15:27

Chris Yankee

The aerospace community is reckoning with a proliferation of public and private space organizations and with new capabilities constantly emerging, all of which threaten to disrupt current practices and policies.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder established the Colorado Space Policy Center (CSPC) this year to explore this evolving landscape and study the present and future of space exploration, including research and development efforts and emerging policy issues.

The center will conduct original research and provide a venue for experts and key stakeholders to discuss and debate space policy issues. It will also provide a comprehensive educational program to address advances in space science and technology, the role of government in the changing space landscape, growth of commercial space, increase in global entrants, and interaction between civilian and military entities.

Principal
Dan Baker

Collaboration + support
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Research & Innovation Office, Office of the Provost, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Applied Science, and Leeds School of Business

Learn more about this topic:
�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder establishes Colorado Space Policy Center

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder joins Arizona State University to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites

Allison Jane Miller — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:12:01 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder joins Arizona State University to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites Allison Jane Miller Fri, 10/31/2025 - 13:12

Chris Yankee

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is leading the development of secure and resilient solutions for a $5.9 million Department of Defense CHIPS Act-funded project awarded to the Microelectronic Commons’ Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub. The project—Spaceborne Low Energy AI Computing—aims to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites, enabling real-time data analysis and reducing reliance on Earth-based systems.

Tamara Lehman, assistant professor in electrical, computer and energy engineering, and Calvin Chan, senior principal research associate at the Center for National Security Initiatives and research professor in electrical, computer and energy engineering, are teaming across a collaborative, multi-institutional team to integrate secure, resilient and efficient AI systems designed to function in the challenging environment of low Earth orbit.

This project will make substantial strides in enabling AI solutions for space, aligning with critical national security technology objectives and setting new standards in spaceborne computing capabilities.

Principal investigators
Calvin Chan;
Tamara Lehman

Funding
Department of Defense (DoD)

Collaboration + support
Southwest Advanced Prototyping (SWAP) Hub at Arizona State University; Air Force Research Laboratory, Raytheon Vision Systems, Sandia National Laboratories, University
of Southern California

Learn more about this topic:
The U.S. Department of Defense, leveraging the CHIPS Act, has allocated $5.9 million to Arizona State University’s (ASU) Southwest Advanced Prototyping (SWAP) Hub

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is leading the development of secure and resilient solutions for the Spaceborne Low Energy AI Computing project, which aims to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites, enabling real-time data analysis and reducing reliance on Earth-based systems.

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2024-25

The beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

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Rebuilding lives after the disaster headlines fade

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Tackling youth depression with a transformative research approach

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Making the digital accessible for everyone

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The enduring power of childhood stories

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Hip hop gives students a voice in new initiative

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Walking in beauty

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Research in space, helping people on Earth

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New space policy center will help shape our space future

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�鶹��Ѱ�����Boulder joins Arizona State University to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder joins Arizona State University to bring energy-efficient artificial intelligence to satellites