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ATLAS EXPO highlights

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:03:25 +0000

ATLAS EXPO highlights Michael Kwolek Mon, 04/20/2026 - 10:03

Caitlin Rockett

Every project at ATLAS EXPO is a passion project, often driven by its creator’s (or creators’) interests, frustrations or dreams.

On Friday, April 24, 2026 (3:30 - 6:00PM), Creative Technology and Design (CTD) students will fill four floors of the Roser ATLAS Center with more than 100 projects this year, spanning digital and physical games, electronics, augmented and virtual reality, interactive and immersive experiences, fabrication, motion capture, and more. (See Eventbrite for event and parking info and to register for free tickets.)

We’ve rounded up a few projects to whet your whistles for this year’s collection of curios.

All Things End - Kaitlyn Callaway

All Things End was inspired by CTD senior Kaitlyn Callaway’s love for music and its impact on human emotion. The immersive experience tells a story of human emotion through music and audio reactive visuals projected around an audience. This show is designed to evoke emotion and challenge perspective, with the idea that each person will resonate differently.

“It is the culmination of personal experience, musical production, creative design, and technology,” Callaway said. “It is the embodiment of my style, music, art, and soul.”

All Things End is one of several music-focused projects Callaway has produced in her four years as a CTD student, including a prosthetic device to help people learn to play piano.

“CTD has been so impactful for me,” she said. “This program has not only taught me technical and engineering skills but also influenced me to use those skills to create what makes me passionate. I would not be the engineer and creator that I am today without the support and structure that CTD facilitates.

ECHO was here - Peter Burke, Zeke Thoreson

Echo comes to life through a blind-box series of four collectible figurines, each tied to a different instrument and part of an original song. An animated short and interactive speaker invites viewers to mix the music themselves by placing each figure into its slot, alongside a large-scale character table.

A Heavy Heart - Jeb Davis

CTD senior Jeb Davis (they/them) asks users to step into their personal struggle with anxiety and depression through a 3D puzzle game called "A Heavy Heart".

“The main in-game driver for this is a device strapped to the player's chest that's powered by a black hole,” Davis explained. “This device comes from a more personal inspiration; I generally describe the physical feeling of anxiety and depression as this inward pull in my chest, almost like a black hole. It acts as the ‘tangible’ metaphor for mental health, but it's also the main driver for evolving gameplay, story, and environment, acting as a metaphor for how a mental health struggle affects the self.”

Davis took cues from the first-person puzzle-platform video game series Portal for A Heavy Heart, paying homage to the former series’ minimalist aesthetic and narrative-driven experience.

“What draws me to game design is the vast possibility of experiences through agency and interaction,” Davis said. “I've felt the possibility of what you could experience through games for the longest time, but I hadn't really pinpointed what made games different from other art. It's only more recently that I've been able to recognize that there's something unique and special in the interaction of games that makes them art in their own right. With A Heavy Heart, I've only scratched the surface of exploring what I can do with game design, and I'm excited to keep exploring what else I can do with it in the future.”

Riem - Sylvia Robles

Riem, by CTD master’s student Sylvia Robles, is an interactive art installation that lets visitors control lighting to explore how shadows transform through stereographic projection. The projection is inspired by the Riemann Sphere, a mathematical model that represents all complex numbers plus infinity—and if that seems complicated, don’t worry.

“I've always viewed mathematics as the language we use to understand and model the natural world around us, whether through numbers, equations describing speed and distance, or patterns in nature,” Robles said. “What excites me most is discovering mathematical applications in places people wouldn't normally expect—art, natural phenomena, even magic tricks. The moment I learned about stereographic projection, I saw its potential to create beautiful art. These sculptures, built on mathematical principles, surprise and challenge people's perceptions with their unexpected shadows.”

Robles built custom-designed sculptures and paired them with motorized lighting systems that allow people to manipulate projections in real time, showing how geometric properties change as light moves. She hopes the exhibition makes abstract mathematical concepts tangible and engaging for general audiences.

“Even though I'd always been a creator, I didn't have the computational fabrication skills to bring Riem to life before coming to ATLAS,” Robles said. “CTD gave me the technical skills to fully realize the creative ideas I'd been developing since my undergraduate math degree.”

RotoClimb - Joe Yoder

For the many climbers in Colorado, RotoClimb could be a high-demand training tool of the not-too-distant future. The motorized prototype allows hand and foot holds to rotate, turning traditional board climbing into a more interactive and creative experience. Tackling a 5.10 climb like it's nothing? RotoClimb could shift the jugs, slopers, pinches, pockets, crimps, edges, and underclings in a matter of moments to present you with a more challenging 5.11.

Yoder’s concept further innovates on existing training boards like Kilter and Tension.

“RotoClimb brings my passion for climbing into my senior capstone project,” says creator Joe Yoder. “I believe passion-driven work creates the best results, especially in a radically creative program such as CTD.”

Sopris Board - Aidan Youell and Ellyse Jensen

The Sopris Board is a modular snowboard with swappable tails, allowing the rider to adjust from morning powder to afternoon park laps. It was built out of “frustration with overpriced snowboards, gear clutter, and a desire to introduce modularity into an otherwise stagnant sport,” says co-creator Ellyse Jensen, a senior in CTD. Project collaborator and fellow snow sports enthusiast Aiden Youell—also a senior in CTD, with a minor in computer science—handled construction research while Jensen focused on the modeling and technical aspects, coming together for the actual fabrication.

Named after Mount Sopris in Colorado's Elk Mountains, Jensen says the board’s name reflects the creative duo’s design philosophy.

“Mount Sopris began as a single underground formation, later shaped by time and natural forces into two distinct peaks, each with its own character,” she explained. “Our snowboard follows a similar concept: a unified core paired with interchangeable tails that transform its performance. The name also serves as a tribute to Colorado, where the board was designed, built, and tested.”

The Sunnyside Scrambler - CU Boulder Theme Park Engineering and Design Club

The Sunnyside Scrambler is the CU Boulder Theme Park Engineering and Design (TPED) Club’s second entry into the national Ride Engineering Competition. This competition asks teams of engineering students across the country to create a theme park ride intended for candy riders (i.e., literal sweets) while adhering to real-world safety standards. The Sunnyside Scrambler adds a kick to the traditional scrambler setup (cars on two separate axes creating intense centrifugal force) by placing the cars atop a moving scissor lift.

“When designing the ride, we started with the ride type, a scrambler, and from there we threw around different themes but loved the idea of doing a play on words,” said CU TPED member and CTD sophomore Erin Fels. “Finally, our goals of scoring well in categories like safety and mechanical design led to the full design of the Sunnyside Scrambler. We couldn't be happier how the final product turned out and were so excited to see the ride vision come to life."

The Sunnyside Scrambler was designed and documented in adherence with professional ride design standards, including ASTM F2291. The team placed second in the west division out of 16 teams at the Ride Engineering Competition.

ATLAS EXPO 2026

When: Friday, April 24 (3:30 - 6:00 PM)
Where: Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder, CO
Tickets: Go to Eventbrite for event and parking info and to register for FREE tickets

A selection of this year’s collection of curios from Creative Technology and Design students

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2026 ATLAS student award winners announced

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:34:41 +0000

2026 ATLAS student award winners announced Michael Kwolek Wed, 04/15/2026 - 11:34

ATLAS awards recognize undergraduate and graduate students in our Creative Technology & Design programs who demonstrate remarkable qualities, such as academic excellence, innovative thinking, research efforts, leadership, community mindedness, creativity and/or technical performance.

Our winners exemplify the ATLAS ethos, bridging engineering skill, creative prowess and a sense of community. They are curious, passionate, and persistent in their pursuit of discovery and understanding of the world around them.

A special shout-out to two students, Josie Armstrong and Henry Nguyen, who received awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science this year for their exceptional work. Josie earned the Academic Engagement Award and Henry earned the Community Impact Award.

ATLAS Undergraduate Student Awards

Josie Armstrong – Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award

Josie Armstrong is graduating from CU Boulder with a BS in Creative Technology & Design and a BA in Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts (Production Track). For the past two years, Josie has worked as a Learning Assistant (LA) for coding and web design courses at the ATLAS Institute. As an LA, Josie found a passion for teaching and pedagogy, and now researches LA pedagogy and program structure under Dr. Anthony Pinter. Through their research and work as an LA, Josie hopes to support future generations of students and LAs at the ATLAS Institute.

Josie has found a home like no other in the CTD program. They value the collaborative and welcoming environment highly, and they prioritize contributing to that environment as a student and an LA. Josie’s capstone project is a digitally integrated web-based tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) that combines their experience in game design, web design, and book design. In their free time, they enjoy crocheting, reading, raising houseplants, and occasionally throwing darts. After graduating from CU Boulder, Josie will be pursuing a JD at the University of Chicago Law School, where they intend to focus on media/technology IP and data privacy law.

Lily Dykstra – Distinguished Student Award

Lily Dykstra graduates summa cum laude from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Bachelor of Science in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) and a certificate in User Experience. As a student and in life, Lily approaches challenges with radical flexibility and an open mind, always eager to explore everywhere creative processes can lead. She has specifically focused on product and hardware design of various materials, applications and utilities. Both on Boulder’s campus and abroad during her semester in Florence, Lily’s studies have attended to the substance, construction, and history of various art and design forms. This was highlighted during her work in the second classroom iteration of “Hacking the Apocalypse,” in which she helped her group make an automated greenhouse sensitive to potential future water and food scarcity concerns.

The combination of Lily’s unique experiences has afforded her a varied, innovative, and socially conscious perspective of the creation of material products in contemporary and historical society. During Lily’s time with CTD, she has served as an ATLAS ambassador and as a learning assistant for two core CTD courses, Image and Form. Throughout her work, she has enjoyed supporting her peers to bring their ideas to life, teaching everything from Photoshop and animation to 3D modeling and physical fabrication. To round out her CTD curriculum, her senior capstone tackles the topic of accessibility in baking. Lily and her team put together an assistive baking device that helps those with limited mobility in their hands with small baking measurements. While her future is undecided, she is eager to embrace the hugeness, beauty, and glorious uncertainty of the world. She knows she will create a vivid and meaningful life in which CTD’s teachings will continue to support and guide her creative innovations.

Sam Jarzembowski – Distinguished Student Award

Sam Jarzembowski graduates magna cum laude from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), a minor in Engineering Management, and a certificate in User Experience. During his time in CTD, Sam concentrated his studies in user experience design. He completed a UX audit for the FlyDelta app, redesigned the Denver Zoo’s ticketing experience, and created a parking guidance device in the form of an interactive stoplight. All of these projects, along with the rest of the CTD curriculum, fostered his passion for interaction design and a blend of physical and digital design. For the past two years, Sam has served as a Learning Assistant (LA) for ATLS 2200, one of CTD’s core courses that teaches web design and development. He has thoroughly enjoyed his time in the classroom guiding students through assignments, answering questions, and providing feedback on their work. Sam is immensely grateful for the opportunities that the ATLAS Institute, the CTD program, and the University of Colorado Boulder have provided him.

For his senior capstone project, Sam worked alongside two team members to create Measurely, an assistive baking device. Measurely combines an automated ingredient dispenser, scale, control panel, and web app to make baking more accessible to those with limited hand mobility or dexterity. His role included interaction design, user testing, and programming. This fall, Sam will be attending graduate school to further his education and gain more experience in his field. He will focus on human-centered design and how people interact with both physical and digital experiences.

Jordyn Rabinowitz – Distinguished Student Award

Jordyn Rabinowitz graduates summa cum laude from CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Bachelor of Science in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), as well as minors in space and engineering management. Throughout her time at ATLAS, she has combined technical creativity with a strong commitment to teaching, mentorship, and building accessible learning experiences.

At CU, Jordyn serves as head learning assistant for Image (ATLS 2100), where she leads lab-style recitations, supports first-time coders, and helps manage a large instructional team. She also works in the Helio Lab, leading workshops in areas such as VR, AR, CAD, photography, and digital media. In addition, she contributed to STEM education through video production for NCWIT Teach Engineering, creating educational content for K–12 classrooms.

One of Jordyn’s most meaningful ATLAS projects was helping rebuild the Image course’s VR/WebXR unit, transitioning it from Glitch to GitHub. By writing student-facing onboarding guides and improving the setup process, she helped reduce technical barriers for beginners and make creative coding feel more approachable and accessible.

She is known for her thoughtful leadership, low-floor/high-ceiling teaching approach, and ability to make technical concepts engaging for a wide range of learners.

Outside the classroom, Jordyn is also a climbing coach and mentor. Her current capstone project, Surge Harness, is a wearable resistance system designed to help climbers train movement control and stability safely while climbing. Starting this summer, she will attend UC Irvine’s Master of Arts in Teaching program to prepare to become a secondary mathematics teacher, continuing her interest in the intersection of education, technology, and hands-on design.

Lindsey Trussell – Distinguished Student Award

Lindsey Trussell graduates from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design and a minor in Creative Writing. She has served as a Learning Assistant for Computational Foundations 1 (ATLS 1300) and Web (ATLS 2200), supporting students in developing foundational skills in programming and web development. Lindsey also collaborated with faculty to co-design Pedagogy 2, a course that prepares ATLAS students for teaching roles as Learning Assistants, reflecting her sustained commitment to mentorship and education.

Lindsey is an active presence in the BTU Lab, where she regularly assists peers, troubleshoots complex projects, and offers thoughtful, detail-oriented feedback across disciplines. Her approach to both teaching and making is grounded in patience and persistence, allowing her to carefully work through technical challenges.

Her creative work explores the intersection of analog audio systems, physical computing, and interactive design, with a focus on manufacturing and fabrication practices. For her senior capstone, she is developing a guitar pedal that maps live audio signals to DMX lighting effects, translating sound into responsive visual environments.

Lindsey’s interdisciplinary practice integrates poetry with visual media and fabrication, combining written language with physical form. Across her work, she demonstrates a strong commitment to craftsmanship, collaboration, and the creation of expressive, carefully constructed experiences.

Joseph Yoder – Distinguished Student Award

Joe Yoder graduates from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), maintaining a 3.96 GPA. He is the third member of his family to pursue a CTD degree, following his two sisters, who also graduated from the program.

Joe’s senior capstone project, RotoClimb, is a climbing wall with holds that rotate to different angles using motors and custom controls, changing the difficulty of routes without manually resetting the wall. The project explores how rotating holds can expand training possibilities for all levels of climbers, while demonstrating hands-on prototyping and engineering design.

Joe also contributed to EcoSort, an AI-powered waste sorting robot. EcoSort was designed to help public spaces like universities improve recycling accuracy and reduce waste contamination. The complete business pitch won 1st place out of 11 teams in Joe’s business minor capstone competition. In addition to technology focused builds, Joe enjoys woodworking, memorably building an optical illusion cutting board made from three contrasting hardwoods that was featured in the ATLAS Expo 2025.

Outside of school, Joe has spent the past 10 months working at Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery as a line cook and server, and was recently promoted to shift lead manager. At work Joe has developed strong teamwork, communication, and leadership skills in a fast-paced environment. After graduation, Joe is seeking a full-time position to continue his radical creativity and strong work ethic.

ATLAS Graduate Student Awards

Krithik Ranjan - Outstanding Graduate Student Award

Krithik Ranjan graduates with a PhD in Creative Technology & Design at the ATLAS Institute and CU Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Krithik is a designer, researcher, and educator passionate about imagining and developing innovative technologies to support people’s creative technology interactions. In his research, he develops and studies environments for creating and learning with computers that support open-ended creativity and tinkering across domains. His dissertation promotes deeper material engagement in computing technologies that leverage physical craft materials to offer expressive, explorative, and playful means for creativity that are low-cost, low-barrier, and learner-driven in diverse formal and informal educational environments.

Krithik has designed a number of novel technologies towards this goal, such as toolkits for creating animations from drawings on paper, creative science simulations, intuitive physical computing platforms, and tangible toolkit and curriculum for AI literacy. As a graduate student in ATLAS, he has served as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for Object (ATLS 3300) and Computational Foundations II (ATLS 2270), and formally and informally mentored a number of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students on research, thesis, and course projects. Krithik was also a finalist for the 2026 Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT) at CU Boulder. Moving forward, he plans to continue to design and research technologies for enabling meaningful, maker-driven, and material-rich computational interactions for makers of all ages.

Caitlin Littlejohn – Distinguished Student Award

Caitlin Rai Littlejohn graduates from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Master’s in Creative Technology and Design (CTD): Social Impact. Her work sits at the intersection of design and technology, and community-centered problem solving, with a focus on making complex systems more accessible and equitable.

During her time in the program, Caitlin has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects addressing both environmental and social challenges. As the lead designer on ClimateThreads: Patterns in Air. Stories in Data., she contributed to branding, user experience, and visualization for a multimedia platform that translates air quality data into accessible, tactile formats, highlighting environmental inequities across the Denver-Aurora region. In partnership with AdventHealth, she contributed to user experience research for NurseWell, conducting interviews, identifying key gaps in nurse retention, and developing research-informed concepts and solutions to address these challenges, with pathways toward implementation. Additionally, Caitlin partnered with Denver Public Library’s IdeaLAB to redesign internal observation processes that support more effective program evaluation and user insight. Her work is grounded in a thoughtful, user-centered approach that prioritizes accessibility, storytelling, and meaningful impact.

For her practicum, Caitlin is developing and leading ATLAS’s inaugural pre-collegiate summer program, a studio-based experience engaging high school students in creative technology, design methodologies, and collaborative problem-solving. Through this work, she continues to expand her passion for mentorship and education.

Following graduation, Caitlin plans to apply her interdisciplinary background to expand equitable access to STEAM education in underserved communities through the development of community-centered makerspaces.

Klara Nitsche – Distinguished Student Award

I’m Klara Nitsche, a Master’s student on the Creative Technology and Design track. At ATLAS, I’ve had the pleasure of serving as an LA for two courses and a research collaborator in the ACME lab studying human-robot-interaction. I also branched out and joined the HIRO lab in the department of computer science, furthering my technical knowledge of robots and seeing where creativity can support robotics. In the graduate program I hosted tours, social events, and on-campus outreach as an ATLAS social recruiter and designed, documented, and advertised events at the B2 Blackbox Theater.

My experiences have culminated in a couple projects I feel proud of here, most notably a communal handwritten typeface called ‘Code of Conduct’ and my MS thesis: edible robots. My work was always about studying novel interactions between humans and materials, but my time at ATLAS has given me the tools to create these interactions myself. I’m excited to continue exploring these themes and research interests after graduation as I continue studying the field of human-robot-interaction!

Harsita Rajendren – Distinguished Student Award

Harsita Rajendren (she/her) is a master’s student in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work focuses on animation and motion design, with an emphasis on storytelling and human-centered experiences.

At ATLAS, Harsita has explored how animation can be used as a tool for communication and empathy. One of her key projects includes a hyperhidrosis awareness campaign, where she created an animated piece to shed light on a condition that is often overlooked yet deeply impacts daily life. She also developed an advertising campaign centered on first-time travelers, highlighting the unspoken social expectations and challenges newcomers face when navigating unfamiliar environments. Through these projects, she aims to make complex or overlooked experiences more visible and relatable.

Her approach combines animation with insights from UI/UX and human-computer interaction, allowing her to design work that is both visually engaging and psychologically informed. As an empathetic observer, she pays close attention to subtle human behaviors and emotions, translating them into meaningful visual narratives.

In addition to her creative work, Harsita has served as a physics peer mentor at the Student Academic Success Center, where she supported more than 30 first-generation undergraduate students. Through teaching and mentorship, she developed a deeper understanding of how individuals learn differently and the importance of adaptable, student-centered approaches.

Her capstone project is a choice-based interactive game that explores the idea of self-love as an active process of growth and self-accountability. Moving forward, Harsita aims to deepen her expertise in animation while continuing to explore motion design within interactive and user-centered contexts.

Katherine Rooney – Distinguished Student Award

Kate Rooney is a graduate student in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) at the ATLAS Institute, with a background in mechanical engineering. Her work sits at the intersection of engineering, design, and human experience, shaped by projects that span extreme environments and immersive technologies.

During her time at ATLAS, Kate designed and built an environmental system to support sustainability in Antarctic field camps and led the design and build of an interactive water education exhibit and topographical table for CIRES in Alamosa as part of the We Are Water project. She also developed a raycast-based system for the B2 Black Box, which continues to serve as a reference for immersive interaction within ATLAS.

Kate’s thesis project, Earth Contours, explores immersive terrain visualization through both a mobile app experience and a full-scale installation in the B2 Black Box. The project reimagines how people engage with landscapes, transforming geospatial data into intuitive, interactive, and visually compelling experiences that foster curiosity and connection to the natural world.

Kate’s approach blends technical rigor with creativity, using design to make complex systems tangible and human-centered. She has taken on leadership roles in student projects, mentoring teams and guiding interdisciplinary collaboration, while also engaging with CU’s startup community. She has especially valued the ATLAS community and maker spaces, where collaboration and experimentation bring ideas to life.

She is excited to build a career that spans engineering, design, and immersive experience across various environments and industries to create meaningful, impactful work.

Elizabeth Saunders – Distinguished Student Award

Elizabeth Saunders earned her master’s degree in Creative Technology and Design (Social Impact Track) from the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute, graduating with a 4.0 GPA.

At ATLAS, she served as the sole learning assistant for Aesthetics of Design, a 120-person hybrid course bridging the ATLAS Institute and the Mechanical Engineering Department. She also contributed as a student researcher with CU’s Sustainability Research Initiative under Dr. Jane Zelikova, launching Sustainability on Tap—a monthly speaker series bringing sustainability research into local breweries and fostering accessible, community-driven conversations that inspire action.

No course influenced Elizabeth’s thinking more than Zack Weaver’s Hacking the Apocalypse series, which shaped the guiding instinct behind her work: not just how to create something, but for whom—and what happens when it fails. Elizabeth applies this mindset through a blend of human-centered design and systems thinking, developing solutions that are equitable, resilient, and grounded in tangible, real-world impact.

This approach is evident in her practicum project: a LiDAR-based iOS foot scanning app developed with SCARPA. The app guides users through a 3D capture process to generate personalized ski boot recommendations, enhancing fit, safety, and accessibility while minimizing return-related emissions. Elizabeth also served as project manager for Give5 Mile High, a citywide volunteer platform in Denver, from conception to launch.

When she wasn't in the grad lab or the BTU, Elizabeth was outside—volunteering for Eldora ski patrol, coaching adaptive rowing, cycling, and alpine skiing, and logging over 200 ski days.

She came to ATLAS with a head full of ideas, a love for the outdoors, and a conviction that technology could do more good in the world. She leaves with the skills, the people, and the proof that it can—and the passion to continue building a more equitable and sustainable future.

College of Engineering & Applied Science Graduating Student Awards

Henry Nguyen – Community Impact Award

Creative Technology & Design taught me the importance of community and diverse perspectives gained through meaningful connections. A fellow graduate mentored me in my early years, showing me firsthand the creative freedom and remarkable people this program cultivates.

What I'd want prospective students to know about ATLAS is that it's a place where the mix of tech, art, and design opens doors to ideas you never knew you had, all while fostering a community of people who genuinely inspire one another.

Josie Armstrong – Academic Engagement Award

The biggest lesson I took away from my time as a CTD student is to try everything and put in 100%! The process is the point, and I've grown so much by trying, stumbling, and trying again. I think that's something that is uniquely possible and encouraged in CTD.

To future students, you will have so many opportunities to find and build community in your time at CU. Try as many of them as you can—you just might find something life-changing among those opportunities.

Over a dozen ATLAS students are recognized for their achievements this year.

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ATLAS student takes the TEDxCU stage to discuss the bonds humans form with machines

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:05:40 +0000

ATLAS student takes the TEDxCU stage to discuss the bonds humans form with machines Michael Kwolek Mon, 03/23/2026 - 11:05

Caitlin Rockett

If you’ve roamed the halls of the ATLAS Institute in the last year and a half, you’ve seen purple-haired Leo Heuring, likely clad in an American Ninja Warrior hoodie with his handmade robot Corndog perched on his shoulder.

The sophomore in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) first found the spotlight as the “Dyslexic Nijna” (a deliberate misspelling referencing his dyslexia) on season 17 of the NBC obstacle-course reality TV show American Ninja Warrior, but it’s Heuring’s lifelong love of robotics that will put him on the stage next as a speaker for TEDxCU on April 4 at CU Boulder’s Macky Auditorium.

Addressing the event’s theme “On the Contrary,” Heuring plans to use his network-controlled quadruped crawler to illustrate a discussion on the bond humans form with machines. “My favorite example—because everyone can relate—is autonomous vacuum cleaners,” Heuring said. “There are people who will effectively ‘adopt’ their robot vacuum cleaner, name it, welcome it to the family like a pet. Some people become so attached to these vacuum cleaners that when they send it in for a repair under warranty, they’ll stipulate that they want their exact unit returned to them.”

The Houston native has been interested in robotics since he first watched Transformers on television as a kindergartener, but it was the boredom and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic that motivated Heuring to build his first machine in eighth grade.

“I had one Zoom class each day at 8 a.m., so I had the rest of the day free,” he explained. “I wanted to do something productive. My parents had bought me a good 3D printer, and I wanted to mess around with it and see what I could do. From there, I just tried new things, and every project taught me a valuable lesson in some way.”

Heuring developed foundational robotics skills by building interactive 3D-printed helmets, starting with a recreation of Master Chief’s headgear from the Halo video game series. The helmet worked well enough for cosplay, but Heuring wanted to incorporate a camera for a heads-up display that could project information and help with navigation. “That was more complicated than I expected, but it gave me an idea of how the basics of the software work,” he said.

When his sister asked for an Iron Man-style helmet a la Tony Stark from the Marvel Comics universe, Heuring got the chance to learn how various motors “can interact and how to drive them properly,” he said. “That’s how I learned to build the physical movement that Corndog is now known for.”

Corndog is becoming something of a local celebrity. As an ATLAS ambassador, Heuring now brings Corndog to tabling events and STEM conferences to illustrate the flexibility of the CTD program to prospective students. Using a portable gaming device, Heuring instructs Corndog to sit, shake and waggle side to side when people come for a closer look. It’s an apt example of the CTD program’s blend of engineering and design.

Built on a foundation of classical engineering curriculum and integrated with deep design skills and a block of customizable electives from across the university, a degree in CTD allows students like Heuring to focus on physical computing and robotics, while others focus on learning to build immersive art exhibitions, human-centered UX/UI, alternative arcade games, experimental textiles, interactive soundscapes and more.

“Creative Technology and Design is a great program for people who don't fit neatly into any disciplinary category,” said Zack Weaver, an assistant professor and director of the BTU (Blow Things Up) Lab at ATLAS. “CTD celebrates generalization over hyper specialization and what that means is often we're not solvers of known problems but the inventors of new problems. Leo is one of those people.”

Weaver taught Heuring as a sophomore in a class called Object, focused on the fundamentals of physical computing—concepts on which Heuring was already well versed. “Leo represents an uncommon opportunity for faculty because he is so technically and creatively skilled,” Weaver said. “Leo puts the faculty in the position of player-coach, where the learning process is spontaneous and improvisational. It feels like creative collaboration, not rote instruction.”

Heuring now acts as a Learning Assistant for Object, helping other students fabricate objects from scratch and then integrate microcontrollers, sensors, actuators and other components to create a functional device.

Outside of class, Heuring and a handful of other CTD students worked alongside Weaver to launch Sh!tty Hacks in February, an “anti-hackathon” celebrating the joy of creation rather than polished pitches. “It was refreshing to be in a space where people aren’t trying to be the next Steve Jobs,” Heuring said. “Instead, people just enjoyed themselves and built goofy things.”

After college, Heuring hopes to share his passion for robotics with others by turning Corndog and other projects into sellable kits, “something people can make and assemble and see that it’s not that complicated,” he said. “I want to use Corndog as a stepping stone for people to experience STEM at a different level.”

TEDx: CU presents “On The Contrary”

Saturday, April 4, 2026, 2 p.m.

Macky Auditorium, 1595 Pleasant St., Boulder, CO 80309

More Info + Tickets

Former American Ninja Warrior contestant Leo Heuring and his robot Corndog continue to find the spotlight.

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Exploring the ethics of AI: Can we use tools like ChatGPT consciously?

Michael Kwolek — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 16:57:39 +0000

Exploring the ethics of AI: Can we use tools like ChatGPT consciously? Michael Kwolek Tue, 02/24/2026 - 09:57

Michael Kwolek

As adoption of AI tools speeds up on campuses worldwide, students, faculty, and staff may be tempted to simply adopt-and-go. But it pays to consider the ethical implications of how we approach such technologies.

Nikolaus Klassen, business analyst at Google, teaches Applied AI Ethics for undergraduate and graduate students at the ATLAS Institute. With a PhD in classics and work in data processing and reporting, Klassen’s career has zigzagged between the humanities and the tech world.

We discussed the ethical implications of AI tools and how students are thinking about them. This conversation was lightly edited for space and clarity.

If you were to distill the concept of AI ethics to a few major themes in our current moment, what would they be?

I think AI ethics specifically—and tech ethics more generally speaking—is often presented as a trade-off: You can use this tool for free, but we'll invade your privacy. For me that's the core of the problem, because very often it's not easy to break out of this trade-off.

Do you look at utilitarianism, at the consequences, or do you set up unbreakable rules? Again, it’s almost like a trade-off.

So my core approach to AI ethics and tech ethics in general is: How can we ask better questions and find better frameworks that will bring us beyond this simple trade-off between the good and the bad?

Is there a way to offer people better choices and to offer choices in a way that [helps us] make good decisions? Instead of letting our privacy be invaded all the time and giving away our data because the defaults are set up in a certain way, how can we dig deeper and find more root causes of bias in the data?

For me, ethics is more about how can I use these frameworks to expose structural problems and maybe make them better? Alleviate the problems or solve them where possible, rather than just accept that they're part of this bad trade-off.

Key ethics concepts

Utilitarianism - The theory that the most moral action is the one that maximizes good and minimizes suffering for the greatest number of people.
Deontology - The theory that there are absolute moral obligations that must be followed regardless of consequences, exceptions, or potential benefits.
Moral licensing - A phenomenon in which people justify an immoral action after having previously done something good.
Law of the instrument - A cognitive bias toward over-reliance on a familiar tool for solving problems, regardless of suitability.
Choice architecture - A deliberate design of a tool or environment that influences how people make decisions without directly restricting choice.

Why do you think your AI Ethics class is so popular among ATLAS and non-ATLAS students?

I think students are pretty concerned about AI. Is it going to take away all the jobs? It seems to for entry-level jobs, so there is a direct impact. And I see students honestly grapple with how they should use AI in their own studies.

People frame it as: Is AI my crutch or is it a good tool that I'm using?

It's not like this is an abstract academic phenomenon. If you're going through your surroundings with open eyes, you can see bad impacts of unethical AI usage, so I think this is very concrete and applicable for students.

What do you hope students take away from spending a semester considering the ethical implications of AI technology?

For me it's really all about the questions—I want students to have a toolbox of questions they can ask and to teach them when they see a phenomenon not to just take it at face value. Be it a technology, an app, a use case, whatever their friends are using. To say, “Hold on a minute, let me ask some questions here,” and give them good questions to ask. To say, “How can I dive deeper into a problem?” and understand the root cause or the assumptions that are hidden here and sharpen these analytical tools to cut through the noise.

How do you think about AI in general? A tool? A platform? A way of life?

As humans, we experience these gateway transitions where we change something and then open up a new world. Agriculture enabled cities and civilizations and division of labor with all the bad and all the good [associated with that]. We suddenly could finance full-time poets and musicians and spend more resources on meaning making and culture.

Then you have the mechanical engine and the revolution that came with it. We have a lot more mobility today. We don't have to work so hard. Our life expectancy has basically doubled since then. It has enabled all kinds of different ways of living.

I think AI is probably going to be the same. The amount of information that we have in the world today is far beyond what humans can process. Because there's so much information around, it's hard to cut through it. For better or worse, we need technology to help us process it. We cannot do so on our own anymore. I think this will be the next gateway.

Most likely we will go through a valley like we did after the agricultural revolution and the mechanical revolution with unemployment rising or people being more and more hooked on digital technology. I feel like this is happening whether we want that or not.

The speed of change feels unprecedented. How does ethics apply to a phenomenon that is evolving so quickly?

I don't think it's ever going to be too late to make AI more ethical. If you think about the industrial revolution, the life of workers got so much worse when they started to work in the factories than it was when they were working in the fields. It took 50 or 100 years or so to rectify that. And within that comparatively short time span, the life of workers was better than the life of farmers. And we probably have stronger social ethics today than we had in the 18th century, so I don't think it's impossible for AI to do that. I would expect it to happen.

Want to learn more? Check out our follow-up story Using AI ethically: 6 tips for bringing AI tools into learning and work.

As tech advancements speed up, consider how best to incorporate AI tools at school and work.

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Inside Sh!tty Hacks: An Anti-Hackathon at CU Boulder

Michael Kwolek — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:54:22 +0000

Inside Sh!tty Hacks: An Anti-Hackathon at CU Boulder Michael Kwolek Thu, 02/05/2026 - 12:54

Sometimes the process of making and creating loses its “fun” streak, so why not put on a 24-hour hackathon that awarded the weird, wild, and possibly destructive nature of making and engineering?

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Coding with creativity: How ATLAS students think beyond algorithms

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:07:35 +0000

Coding with creativity: How ATLAS students think beyond algorithms Michael Kwolek Mon, 12/01/2025 - 11:07

Caitlin Rockett

With his computer plugged into a projector at the front of the room, Hudson Blankner, a freshman in Gabe Johnson’s Computational Foundations 1 class, displayed his final project: a trio of classic games—rock, paper, scissors; tic tac toe; and table tennis.

The assignment required students to build an interactive game using the programming skills they’d learned over the semester, and to experiment with different problem-solving strategies—including, if they wanted, “vibe” coding, the practice of prompting artificial intelligence models to generate code.

Blankner did try using AI, and he wasn’t subtle about his feelings.

“I coded this all in one prompt, but I really hate vibe coding,” Blankner told the class. “AI is like a Division I gaslighter. It took 15 prompts to make the game look like this.”

Johnson expects students to explore AI tools, as he sees more and more companies requiring software engineers to use AI to some extent to program more, and faster. But Johnson also expects students—like professional software engineers—to understand the logic behind their programs and learn to write their own code, that way they know what AI gets right, wrong, good, bad or mediocre.

“These students, for the most part, have not programmed before—they’re coming into this class fresh,” said Johnson, who teaches introductory computer programming courses for the Creative Technology and Design (CTD) curriculum at the ATLAS Institute. “Maybe some of them had taken ‘computer science classes’ in high school, but that’s often just building a web page.”

Engineering meets design

CTD degrees are granted through the College of Engineering, where coding and computational thinking are essential skills across disciplines. At ATLAS, CTD majors build that engineering foundation alongside deep design practice, giving them a holistic and strategic approach to problem solving. Rather than following trends or treating design as aesthetics alone, CTD students learn to analyze human needs and create solutions that are usable, meaningful and durable. That means students not only learn to code, they also build skills in web development, interaction design, physical prototyping, audio and video production, digital media, theory and project management.

“I think CTD students can better explain their programming work,” Johnson said. “Yes, they have the technical knowledge, but they fit that knowledge into the broader context of society, of designing for humans. Communicating what you are doing is almost more important than the thing you are doing. CTD students are able to explain not just what they did, but why and how and what else they considered. Telling a story is much richer—much more human.”

Creative logic in action

When presenting midterm projects, Johnson found first-time programmers in his Computational Foundations I class thinking outside the engineering box to solve problems. Laura Baker, a sophomore, wrestled with how to determine when a player-controlled bee had reached a flower at the center of a maze.

“This was an annoyingly difficult problem that seemed so simple,” Baker said. “I took an artist's approach using a simple Boolean statement and an array of RGB color codes: If the bee was touching the appropriate color, then it stopped moving. I was very proud because I didn’t use AI to help me. I tend to lean toward artsy solutions in all of my projects. The only setback with the solution I used for the bee in the maze is that you cannot change the color of the walls of the maze because then the RGB code will not link back up to the if statement correctly. It worked for my presentation, though.”

While Baker could have created a traditional hitbox math test to determine where rectangles intersect, Johnson was impressed with her solution: “She needed to figure it out, and she had a creative solution rather than the ‘right’ solution.”

Of course, Johnson teaches Computational Foundations students the “right” solutions as well, but he fosters unconventional thinking because it can lead to innovation—more necessary than ever in a world driven by generative artificial intelligence.

“Programming is in upheaval right now because of AI,” Johnson said. “Future programmers are going into a world where large language models and AI chatbots can do all sorts of creative-approximate stuff. Programmers need skills that AI can’t approximate. One of the main functions of a university is to teach people to think critically, because now we have machines that can do thinking-like things. So future programmers can either evaluate the machines and push back against them, or just roll over and let the machines win.”

A ‘joyful experience’

Johnson, who also teaches introductory programming classes for computer science majors, believes creativity is necessary for coding. Far too many people, he said, see programming as “an arcane mathematical thing.”

Creative Technology & Design

Learn more about the ATLAS Institute and CTD programs including undergraduate major, minor and certificate; professional master’s; and PhD.

Online info sessions about all CTD programs are held regularly throughout the year.

Prospective students can email atlascommunications@colorado.edu to schedule a student-led tour.

That creative mindset shows up in his students’ work. Computational Foundations I students blended math and design in midterm projects, with one student creating billowing clouds moving across the sky, and another coding a Price Is Right-style Plinko game simulator—both of which present a visualization of a Gaussian distribution.

“I teach Computational Foundations I basically in the same way I teach Computer Science 1300, except in Computational Foundations I, I have much more leeway in making it fun and design-oriented,” Johnson said. “I provide the most creative and joyful experience that you can have when learning to code, and let students figure out for themselves whether they want to learn more. And because it's so fun, many of them are enthusiastic about doing it.”

Baker—who had “very minimal coding experience before starting Computational Foundations”—said her view of coding has changed dramatically since taking the class.

“This class has shown me how creative coding is, that you can design with code and get an awesome, artistic output,” Baker said. “Coding has given me a new medium to make art with, and I’m very excited about that.”

Computational Foundations I teaches code as a technical and expressive skill.

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The weight of words in the age of AI

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 17:41:52 +0000

The weight of words in the age of AI Michael Kwolek Mon, 10/20/2025 - 11:41

Caitlin Rockett

ATLAS Academic Programs

Go to the ATLAS Institute website to learn more about Creative Technology & Design programs including undergraduate major, minor and certificates; professional master’s and PhD.

Info sessions: online sessions on CTD programs are held throughout the year.
Tours: Email atlascommunications@colorado.edu to book a student-led tour.

ATLAS Associate Professor Joel Swanson thinks a lot about the weight of words. He has calculated that an average-length English word on newsprint weighs about 5 grams—a digital word has a nearly imperceptible weight.

But it is the philosophical matter at the heart of the idiom that was the central focus for a recent first-year engineering seminar led by Swanson: What is the figurative weight of words as humans increasingly turn to generative artificial intelligence to write?

“AI is getting so good,” said Swanson, who teaches part of the undergraduate Creative Technology and Design (CTD) curriculum, which has degrees granted by the College of Engineering and Applied Science. “I could use ChatGPT to come up with an essay prompt for my students, and then they would respond to that prompt with AI, and then I would grade it, and back and forth. What does that communicate? It's saying words don't matter anymore. So I was really invested in coming up with a project that would show students that words are powerful—that the words they speak and write are meaningful because they wrote them.”

As a tenured professor in the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics and Society, Swanson and his colleagues weave humanities and ethics into their engineering courses, with a goal of fostering well-rounded engineers. With that goal always in mind, Swanson asked his students in the First-Year Seminar—a five-week elective for first-year students in Engineering Connections—to write the first sentence of their memoir, “something AI couldn’t do a good job with,” he said. Then students pushed their creativity further by transforming their words into a vibrant, layered image using a Risograph printer.

The task—and the seminar itself—is purposely outside traditional math-and-science-based engineering education, and combined with Swanson’s signature focus on language and technology, students got a firsthand look at life as a CTD student.

Before they wrote their sentences, Swanson’s students—along with more 1,000 other Engineering First-Year Seminar students—spent the first three weeks of the course discussing texts from authors such as Plato, Thomas Merton and Audrey Lorde, zeroing in on university community values like belonging, agency, ownership, inclusivity and service.

“The essays are carefully chosen to challenge these students to think about why they're at the university and what's at stake in terms of higher education,” Swanson said. “The seminar gives students a very high-contact experience to balance out the rest of engineering, which can feel a little anonymous at times.”

Since fall 2023, nearly 70 instructors—with at least one from every major degree program in engineering—have taught 164 sections of the First-Year Seminar, with an average of 19 students per section. Engineering Dean Keith Molenaar has taught a section since the seminar’s inception. Instructors get the last two weeks of the seminar to cultivate the values discussed in the assigned texts through their own areas of expertise and interest. The previous two times Swanson taught the seminar, he used the 1982 dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner to examine the nature of humanity in the age of AI. But for his most recent iteration of the class, Swanson wanted to do something “a little bit different,” while still focusing on language, creativity and technology.

“We talked about the greatest first sentences in English literature, like ‘Call me Ishmael,’ from Moby Dick,” Swanson said. “It can be confusing, it can be loaded, it can be offensive, but it sets the tone for the rest of the novel.”

Once students had workshopped their sentences, Swanson gave them a crash course on graphic design so they could turn their sentences into Risograph prints, a cross between screen printing and photocopying where one color is printed at a time. Because paper must be fed through the Risograph printer multiple times—once for each color—minor misalignments between layers result in a charming, handmade aesthetic.

“All of their designs impressed me, and some of them brought me to tears,” Swanson said. “I showed them some examples of things I had created and different ways of using the Risograph and then just let them at it. I think students are already so in tune with visual design because they're seeing design of language in social media every day, so they understand what fonts communicate certain vibes.”

At the end of the five weeks, students signed and exchanged prints, then sealed their own design (along with their Blue Book responses to the readings earlier in the seminar) in an envelope with a promise to Swanson to open them upon graduation.

“This is where you are right now—in four or five years, where are you going to be?” Swanson asked them to consider. “I asked them to put it on their calendar to open this package up and think about who they were in that first semester of college.”

For some students, CTD’s focus on project-based learning is a perfect fit, particularly for self-motivated students who want to explore their own ideas. With electives in game design, wearable electronics, big data, virtual reality, neurohacking and more, Swanson’s section of the College of Engineering’s First-Year Seminar can act as a gateway to CTD, where students see and feel the human and artistic side of technology. But no matter their degree focus, Swanson hopes students walk away from the seminar with an appreciation of the role creativity plays in engineering.

“My mantra for this class was: How can I curate the best out of them as humans and as engineers,” Swanson said, “to get them to ask those questions that they're not going to get asked anywhere else in their engineering education.”

ATLAS faculty–led seminar challenges first-year engineering students to explore the power of language in a digital age.

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Whaaat!? Festival brings experimental gaming goodness to ATLAS

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 20:05:21 +0000

Whaaat!? Festival brings experimental gaming goodness to ATLAS Michael Kwolek Wed, 10/15/2025 - 14:05

Michael Kwolek

Attending Whaaat!? Festival

Saturday, October 25, 2025
9am - 5pm

Roser ATLAS Center
1125 18th St., Boulder, CO

All ages (ideal for 16+)

Regular entry: $16; VIP & pay-what-you-can option available!

Info + Tickets

Experimental video games, arcade classics, mini golf, student-designed creations, a riff on Taskmaster and more—Sounds like Whaaat!? Festival time again.

Coming Saturday, October 25th, 2025 (9am - 5pm), in the Roser ATLAS Center, Whaaat!? Festival is a celebration of weird games and experimental play for anyone interested in exploring the frontiers of digital and physical game design. Plus, all-you-can-eat breakfast cereal!

We spoke with festival organizer and associate teaching professor, Danny Rankin, about what to expect from this year’s fest.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is the Whaaat!? Festival all about?

It's a weird cereal-fueled arcade fest with different speakers, events, workshops, games, alternative controllers and experimental interactive art.

We started it eight years ago because we felt there's so much more in the world of games and play beyond conventional industry ideas.

Hang out for a day and play—that's the thing.

Give us a little bit of your background and why this is important to you.

I've worked in graphic design and fabrication and art design for a long time, and I came to grad school here.

I got really into games because I thought it was fun to see people at play. So I started making alternative control games that we showed at festivals around the world, as well as board games.

I've played video games my whole life, but I didn't realize just how cool and weird and exploratory and artistic they can get. So for me, I have always wanted to see more unusual forms of play.

I teach classes at ATLAS on game design and on alternative interfaces and weird controllers. That's a big part of what I do as director of the Whaaat!? Lab, which is a creative studio space for designing interesting experimental games and interactions.

What is the theme for this year’s festival?

This year the theme is Summer Camp, even though it's October. We're theming all of the arcades around weird cabin vibes and nature games. There's also a gambling cabin [note: not real gambling!] and a creature cabin.

The Media Archeology Lab will bring a bunch of old game consoles and hardware that people can play.

We're building miniature golf holes, running games of foursquare and playing with a giant rainbow parachute. And we'll also run a game that we're calling “Scoutmaster” as a live conversation about that work, while also torturing people through various menial tasks. It's like the game show Taskmaster, except at scout camp.

We just decided to go a little wild this year. More embodied activities, less sitting and listening to somebody talk.

Sounds like the festival will take over the Roser ATLAS Center.

We'll use a lot of the building for exploration, but we'll be running games outside, weather dependent. We might be running some stuff out there in the elevator and the roof—all over the building and in the Black Box Experimental Studio.

Who should come to Whaaat!? Festival?

Anybody who likes to have fun and play. You don't even have to be a lover of video games, although we'll have a lot of really cool video games on display. But we also just think about play as a really big, exciting thing. You can get a lot of people to do fun experiments with that.

And if you like merit badges, we're going to have a bunch you can earn this year. If you like gamifying your life into a series of bizarre achievements, like whether you got attacked by a person in a bear suit at a festival, there's a merit badge for that.

So it’s much more than video games.

Yeah, I think that we can think about video games as this one-sided forum where you are meant to be entertained or immersed. I love that about games, but we're also interested in video games that are humorous or provocative or really experimental and strange. Games that explore play as an interactive art form, things that you wouldn't even conventionally call a game—maybe it's a digital experiment.

A lot of game industry people have come to the festival over the years. I try to expand their imagination of what's possible because we spend most of our time not playing any kind of big studio, conventional, successful games. People play those at home and don't need to come to a festival to do that.

We curate a selection we hope will blow people's minds around what video games can do.

Are there special guests?

We're inviting some artists from out of town. One of my longtime collaborators and co-founder of the Whaaat!? Festival, Matt Bethancourt, is coming in.

Artists from around CU and grad students from the Creative Technology & Design program are all working on this thing we're calling It Came From Camp Whaaat!? It’s a one-week game jam where we're creating a bunch of in-place experiments in the building, including miniature golf holes and experimental controllers for games that are going to be showcased.

Why is ATLAS the right venue for the festival?

ATLAS is really interested in the fusion between digital and physical environments. So anywhere you're creating things with computers, but are also interested in how people physically show up and experience those things, that's a big part of our DNA.

ATLAS is all about radical creativity and invention. And I think that applies to games.

Cereal-fueled celebration draws gamers of all ages to explore the frontiers of game design.

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2025 ATLAS student award winners

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:35:03 +0000

2025 ATLAS student award winners Michael Kwolek Wed, 04/30/2025 - 15:35

Every year, ATLAS awards recognize distinguished graduating students in our Creative Technology & Design programs who demonstrate remarkable qualities, such as academic excellence, innovative thinking, research efforts, leadership, community mindedness, and outstanding creativity and/or technical performance.

Every award winner this year is unique, but together they all exemplify the ATLAS spirit and all have made their mark on our community through scholastic pursuits, contributions to our community, positive energy, persistence, curiosity, and compassion.

Nefeli Hadjiyiannis - ATLAS Outstanding Student Award

Nefeli Hadjiyiannis graduates Summa Cum Laude from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) and a minor in Art Practices. Nefeli has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the ATLAS community and has become part of the fabric of the CTD program. She has been a Learning Assistant for Text (ATLS 2300), a core class in the CTD major curriculum focused on graphic design and typography. Additionally, she is part of the student staff in the BTU Lab, the ATLAS maker space, supporting students in fabricating and designing their project work. Nefeli has also worked as an undergraduate research assistant with the Utility Research Lab, which combines computational fabrication, materials science, and sustainable design practices. There, Nefeli explored bio-based material formulations to make sustainable textile fibers and helped develop various formulations of gelatin-based dissolvable textile fibers with unique properties and colors. She has also worked on research projects exploring wellbeing and digital device use. She has also been active in CU’s Society of Women Engineers/SWE and participated in several leadership positions to provide support and resources to other engineering students. Nefeli is interested in interactive textiles and innovative sustainable fabric creation. She is also interested in installation work and using computation for fabrication. After graduation, Nefeli hopes to attend graduate school to further her studies in engineering and creative design.

In addition to her ATLAS award, Nefeli received the Research Award from the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

“I am incredibly grateful to the ATLAS community. Genuine enjoyment of learning has been a key factor in my success with multiple previous projects but also in keeping me inspired and motivated. I've made many close friends that have been such a support system in academic and professional settings. The opportunities that CU provides for research have also been incredibly important to me. The research I've completed in the Utility Research Lab has shown me what I want to continue learning.”

Sophie Berry - ATLAS Distinguished Student Award

Sophie Berry graduates from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design (CTD). As an undergraduate, Sophie has worked as a Research Assistant in the Utility Research Lab at ATLAS. As her initial project, she demonstrated remarkable tenacity and out-of-the box thinking to design a custom extrusion set-up to prototype different bio-based materials as candidates for 3D printing. She then continued her work creating a novel material based on gelatin and agar-agar (from seaweed.) While the team are still running tests, preliminary results suggest this material’s strength is on-par with typical thermoplastics—the outcome of this could be a huge breakthrough in sustainable 3D printing materials. Sophie has approached her endeavors with fierce determination and curiosity, rapidly learning and methodically experimenting to understand how materials behave. Sophie has also served as a Learning Assistant in Object (ATLS 3100), a core class in the CTD major on fabrication and modeling. She has demonstrated a unique comprehension of technical systems, their relationship to each other, and how to see creative solutions to problems. For her senior capstone project, Sophie is building ornithopters, a group of tiny flying robots. The project is highly technical and ambitious, requiring an immense amount of investigation and fabrication expertise.

Seneca Howell - ATLAS Distinguished Student Award

Seneca Howell graduates Summa Cum Laude from CU with an engineering major in Creative Technology & Design (CTD) and a minor in Technical Theater. She has served as head Learning Assistant/LA for Image (ATLS 2100), a core course in the CTD major. As an LA, Seneca demonstrated terrific leadership and was dedicated to helping students learning technical skills and applying them to coursework and projects. As an undergraduate research assistant in the ACME Lab at ATLAS, Seneca worked on designing the interactive curriculum for high school students using Cartoonimator, a low-cost, paper-based and tangible kit for computational thinking and keyframe animation. The research project utilizes computer vision algorithms running on a smartphone to detect and process hand-drawn or printed illustrations on paper templates and produces a digital animation. The paper that details the keyframe animation evaluation has been submitted to the ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction for review. Additionally, during her time at CU, Seneca has been involved with the Engineering Honors program and the Society for Women Engineers.

Kaya Hamon - ATLAS Distinguished Student Award

Kaya Hamon graduates from CU with an engineering major in Creative Technology & Design (CTD) and a minor in Art Practices. Kaya serves as the head Learning Assistant for Design Foundations (ATLS 1100), a large lecture class taught in the CTD program, where she demonstrates a rich combination of strong technical and mathematical abilities with a passion for design and ceramics. Kaya has been a student employee at ATLAS for 3 years working with communications. She is currently Social Media Manager, where she demonstrates herself to be remarkably intrepid. Kaya has the natural ability and confidence to step into a lab, understand dense research or technical material, and convey it in creative and compelling ways. As a member of the TYPO Lab at ATLAS, Kaya works as an undergraduate research assistant contributing to research and creative projects in typography and technologies of language. She is also an active student member of the BTU makerspace, where she seamlessly meshes herself into all aspects of fabrication in the lab. She is known as a capable mentor on design and UI/UX projects. A natural leader, Kaya is always interested in finding common ground, building connections and finding engaging solutions with partners and fellow students.

Andrew Widner - ATLAS Distinguished Student Award

Andrew Widner graduates from CU with an engineering major in Creative Technology & Design (CTD). He has served as a Learning Assistant in Form (ATLS 3100), part of the core curriculum in the CTD major, teaching topics including CAD, 3D modeling and digital sculpting. He is described as an exemplary, responsible and responsive LA. In conjunction with his CTD studies, Andrew developed a true passion in 3D printing and took the initiative to launch CU3D, a student club he now leads. He has developed a vibrant student community around 3D printing, rallying a diverse group of students around this passion with meetings, workshops, projects and campus outreach. Andrew has independently advocated for the club and represented the group eloquently, even securing corporate sponsorship of 3D resources and equipment. Additionally, Andrew has worked as a student production artist at CU’s Fiske Planetarium where he has demonstrated an outstanding enthusiasm for the immersive media development and 3D animation. He also serves as one of the student leaders of the BTU Lab, the ATLAS makerspace, demonstrating himself to be a true zealot for design and fabrication and leveraging novel perspectives or approaches to creative problem solving. Additionally, Andrew serves as a student ambassador for the CTD program, leading tours and participating in presentations about ATLAS for prospective students. He is articulate and passionate about the program and shares his academic path and student experience at CU as a CTD major.

College of Engineering & Applied Science Graduating Student Awards

Creative Technology and Design students were well represented in this year's College of Engineering & Applied Science Graduating Student Awards.

Community Impact Award & Perseverance Award - Ari Guzzi, BS in Creative Technology & Design

What was the biggest lesson you took away through all the community work you have been involved in during your time as a CU student?

One of the biggest lessons I've learned through my community engagement at CU is the value of applying my education to contribute positively to the world around me. I worked with Blueprint Boulder (a CU student-run organization) to develop websites and apps for nonprofits. That work taught me that education extends far beyond the pursuit of a paycheck. It's a powerful tool for societal betterment and self-growth.

As you reflect on what you’ve persevered through to make it to graduating, how would you say your time as a student has prepared you for the future?

Many times throughout my time as a student, I felt overwhelmed and considered giving up. However, without completing my education, I would never have received the opportunities I have post-graduation. I learned that although sometimes things feel hopeless, setbacks are temporary, and positive outcomes are just over the horizon with persistence.

What is it about ATLAS that you think would be most exciting to prospective students?

I loved my experience at ATLAS because it offers a unique blend of aspects in engineering that most majors wouldn’t get the opportunity to learn. However, the most significant skill I developed at ATLAS was the ability to approach and persevere through challenging problems. We frequently encountered tasks that initially seemed daunting and beyond our immediate capabilities. However, the program encouraged us to be self-reliant and resourceful, teaching us to seek out and apply solutions independently. This ability to persevere and innovate in the face of obstacles is perhaps the most valuable skill ATLAS taught me, significantly influencing every aspect of my life.

Research Award - Lily M. Gabriel, BS in Creative Technology & Design

What did you focus your research on in the Unstable Design Lab?

My focus in research is really on the structural study of fiber, specifically in fabricating textiles through a variety of methods, (like spinning, knitting, and weaving) along with how older methods of textile production might be used in modern e-textiles.

What was the most important thing you learned as a research assistant?

The most important thing I learned as a research assistant might be how to approach research in an organized way, how to actually produce written work from my findings, and how to work with others in a lab setting.

Research Award - Nefeli Hadjiyiannis, BS in Creative Technology & Design

What did you focus your research on in the Utility Research Lab?

I was completing materials design research on fabricating fibers and alternative 3D printing filament from diverse biomaterials for the creation of bio-based, sustainable smart textiles and fabrication methods. As well as researching mechanical properties of various bio-based polysaccharides and proteins in the use of dry-jet wet spinning fiber creation.

What was the most important thing you learned as a research assistant?

In my previous research positions, I was tasked with purifying specific proteins and performing laboratory tasks while following detailed instructions, whereas at the Utility Research Lab I was able to freely explore topics that I found not only intriguing but also motivating. The most important thing I learned in this exploration was how to design my own experiments, fail, and continue to redesign new tests. It takes an immense amount of mental rigor to fail over and over again until a positive result is achieved, especially when those failures are a result of tests you designed.

Three ATLAS students received awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science for community impact, perseverance, and research, while five earned student awards from ATLAS.

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ATLAS students learn design skills through the lens of the apocalypse

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 16:53:27 +0000

ATLAS students learn design skills through the lens of the apocalypse Michael Kwolek Fri, 04/11/2025 - 10:53

Michael Kwolek

With the popularity of post-apocalyptic narratives like “Fallout” and “The Last of Us” along with ongoing coverage around global climate turmoil, we are culturally primed to ponder our place in the world—and the skills we could bring to an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise.)

At the ATLAS Institute, we approach challenges as engineers and designers, and one class in particular aims to impart practical skills on students with an eye toward becoming more capable in such times of crisis.

Assistant teaching professor and BTU Lab director Zack Weaver’s new course, Hacking the Apocalypse, teaches undergraduate and graduate students how to apply design thinking to address basic survival needs. This semester’s focus is water: students are tasked to research, design and build novel systems for collecting, storing, treating and distributing water using fabrication techniques and Arduino-based electronics.

Weaver elaborates on the origin of the idea: “I was looking at geopolitics, economics and the way I applied the technologies that we teach in the [Creative Technology and Design] program with a lot of pragmatism and practicality. In my own classes, when I'm assigning prompts, it's often whimsical—it's meant to spark play and creativity.”

Water is a surprisingly complex topic, touching on geology, chemistry and climatology as well as law, ethics and politics—before you even consider the engineering, technology and design challenges associated with harnessing and using it. In fact, the class has attracted students from several different majors.

In developing the course curriculum, Weaver says he “found some really interesting reading on water policy and all kinds of design/build projects for collecting and storing water—things like rain barrels and even dew collection in the middle of the desert, which sounds impossible.“

Watershed moments

�鶹��Ժ took a field trip west of campus to the Mountain Research Station, hosted by Jen Morse (MRS climate, water, snow technician), to learn about Boulder’s watershed and the complex monitoring systems they have in place to measure snowpack, humidity, flow rate, water quality and other data.

Elizabeth Saunders, Creative Technology and Design master’s student (social impact track), shares her impressions: “The experience was eye-opening, especially learning about the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Program and the Mountain Climate Program, which has been collecting climate data from the Colorado Front Range since 1952. One of the most fascinating facts I learned was that the air samples collected from the station serve as the global standard for air quality research. This underscores just how pristine and significant this environment is for understanding atmospheric changes on a worldwide scale.”

�鶹��Ժ were surprised to discover the facility uses similar sensor technology to what they receive in the physical computing kits they buy for class. Weaver notes, “The Arduino platform makes things inexpensive and friendlier than a lot of commercial electronics,” though at the cost of reduced durability and accuracy.

The increasing accessibility of such technologies undergirds much of the popularity in DIY culture and maker spaces like the BTU Lab, and is indicative of the can-do spirit that defines the ATLAS community.

photo credit: Graham Stewart

Wave of innovation

�鶹��Ժ also visited the Innovation Center of St. Vrain Valley Schools (SVVSD). Weaver notes, “The Innovation Center might be one of the best technology STEM programs in a public school in the world.” They offer flight simulator training, a full aeronautics program, entrepreneurship, competitive robotics, and more.

The Innovation Center even works with Boulder County Parks and Recreation to survey watersheds and test water quality and conserve the Northern Leopard Frog in Colorado’s Front Range.

SVVSD biosciences teacher, Jayme Sneider, led ATLAS students in experiencing what water quality testing looks like at scale, demonstrating what they test for and how. The class then focused on replicating that work on the DIY level to develop open source alternatives to expensive commercial technologies.

A cascade of expert insight

The class recently hosted Mark Giordano, Professor and Vice Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Giordano previously held multiple roles at the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute, winner of the Stockholm Water Prize—the "Nobel Prize for Water." He shared insights on water, emphasizing the importance of understanding its physical and social aspects to address global challenges.

Giordano detailed how climate change has two main impacts on weather events: intensity and frequency. “We expect that when it rains in the future it will rain even more, and then there will be longer periods between when it rains again.”

Water scarcity is a growing concern that manifests in many ways. Contrary to common assumption, Giordano noted that as much as 90% of our water goes to agriculture, not drinking water or sanitation. We may also believe water scarcity is an issue exclusive to arid places, but we have seen in recent years how inadequately-maintained infrastructure in American cities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, can create clean water scarcity even in places with abundant supply.

Water is a political issue, with implications around where it originates, where it flows and who claims ownership over it. Giordano elaborated, “You need clean water to live. You need it every day. It's not particularly expensive in most parts of the world to provide the minimal amount of water it takes to live a healthy life. Investment in basic water has really high returns, and yet over and over and over, we see it not being not being provided.”

A wellspring of water projects

�鶹��Ժ are tasked with developing a water-related project over the course of the semester leveraging the tools and techniques they learn in class. They focus on one or more key areas: treatment, distribution, storage, power and collection.

ATLAS undergraduate student Rystan Qualls explains, “I’m working in the distribution group. We’re making a water distribution system that will allow a community in the apocalypse to send water to various sites like a garden or to the showers.”

Saunders details her project: “This semester, I am researching plant resilience and decay in extreme environments, with a particular interest in graywater and saltwater agriculture. My project seeks to answer the question: ‘How quickly can I kill plants so the future Utopian people don’t?’ While the phrasing is unconventional, the research focuses on identifying environmental stressors that lead to rapid plant degradation, with the broader goal of developing strategies for sustainable plant growth in challenging conditions.”

Other student projects range from a storm runoff irrigation system to a 3D-printed moisture evaporator to a smart rain barrel and even a 3D-printed steam engine prototype.

Flow of information

Hacking the Apocalypse - Fall 2025

Hacking the Apocalypse will run again in Fall 2025 with a focus on food.

�鶹��Ժ will research, re-create and design novel systems for growing containers, soil mediums, soil and water quality monitoring, and indoor/outdoor urban agriculture systems utilizing fabrication techniques and electronic input/output systems based on the Arduino platform.

ATLS 4519/5519 Hacking the Apocalypse: Food (3 credit hours)

Learn More

Weaver describes his ambition for Hacking the Apocalypse: “Each class is supposed to end in documentation of the projects to a degree that you can hand it off to lay people who don't have to be particularly highly trained to understand it. This is ‘Book One.’”

The goal is to follow this semester with versions of the class focusing on other basic needs—food, clothing and shelter—before returning to water. “Then that water class will inherit everything the first class did, and their expectation will be a different set of design challenges where they have to incrementally improve or iterate on what people did before.”

As for takeaways from this semester, Saunders says, “My research in Hacking the Apocalypse builds upon my background in water policy and sustainability, as well as my ongoing work with FLOW [a legal organization dedicated to protecting the Great Lakes Basin.] My work in this class has given me hands-on experience in water purification, sustainable irrigation and the challenges of resource-limited environments.”

As the semester concludes, Weaver observes, “I'm rediscovering the whole world. I've engaged with it becauseI'm outdoors all the time. But I never understood the planet from a systems perspective, and this is just blowing my mind.”

ATLAS students can now add “apocalypse preparedness” to the engineering, design and creative skills they develop here. Though Weaver does clarify, “It's not an apocalypse class. It's about if you do certain things, you avoid the apocalypse. I'm trying to tell the students it's a utopian class.”

photo credits (unless otherwise noted): Ashley Stafford

At the ATLAS Institute, students tackle real-world challenges through design. Hacking the Apocalypse, a course led by Zack Weaver, teaches undergraduate and graduate students to apply design principles to address a surprising topic: apocalypse preparedness. Using Arduino-based electronics and fabrication techniques, students develop novel water collection and treatment systems.

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