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Driven to win: CU Boulder qualifies again for national Chem-E-Car competition

Susan Glairon — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:47:24 +0000

Driven to win: CU Boulder qualifies again for national Chem-E-Car competition Susan Glairon Wed, 04/29/2026 - 11:47

Susan Glairon

Izzy Culver starts her team's zinc battery car, the Stinkinator, at the Rocky Mountain regional competition held in Salt Lake City, Utah from April 10-11.

James Hempfling, Mizuki Green, Alex Tibbits and Izzy Culver hold their First-Place Poster Presentation and Second-Place Performance awards for their car, Stinkinator, which is powered by a zinc–alkaline battery system.

A little car named "Stinkinator" placed second in the Chem-E-Car car performance competition, qualifying CU Boulder for the national American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Chem-E-Car competition next fall.

This marks the second consecutive year that CU Boulder has advanced to the nationals, which will take place in November in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This year, CU Boulder sent two teams to the Rocky Mountain regional competition held in Salt Lake City, Utah from April 10-11. Teams are composed of students representing chemical and biological engineering, mechanical engineering and various other engineering disciplines.

“Qualifying for the national competition again is both exciting and intimidating,” said Captain Mizuki Green, a sophomore in chemical engineering whose car, Stinkinator, qualified for the national competition. “We are proud to continue CU Boulder’s legacy in this event and recognize the high standard set by previous senior teams. At the same time, we’re eager for the opportunity to learn, grow and build new connections within the chemical engineering community.”

The competition's goal is to design a shoebox-sized car powered by chemical reactions— such as a battery or an internal combustion engine — that stops at a specified distance using a time-dependent chemical reaction. The target distance is revealed just before the competition, and the team whose car stops closest to that distance wins.

Stinkinator placed second in the car performance competition and took first place in the poster presentation. The second-place win for car performance secured CU Boulder a spot at the national AIChE competition.

The second car, a pressure car named “Pushin' P,” took second place in the poster presentation and fourth in car distance.

“We have never done this before, so it was difficult figuring out how to build an operating pressure car in general,” said Captain Katya Jassem, a junior in chemical engineering. Unlike the first team, the second team was made up entirely of chemical and biological engineering students.

Ethan Blair, Katya Jansem and Sergio Morales with their second-place Poster Presentation award, for their car, Pushin' P. Pushin' P is powered by an acid–base reaction between citric acid and sodium bicarbonate to produce carbon dioxide gas. The buildup of gas creates pressure, which powers a pneumatic motor to drive the car

Stinkinator is powered by a zinc–alkaline battery system using pure zinc anodes and a potassium hydroxide electrolyte separator. The cathode is a copper–manganese dioxide paste with activated carbon, which serves as the primary energy source. To stop the car, aqueous hydrochloric acid is released into a sodium thiosulfate solution, triggering a reaction that produces solid sulfur—hence the name, Stinkinator.

Pushin’ P uses an acid–base reaction between citric acid and sodium bicarbonate to produce carbon dioxide gas. The buildup of gas creates pressure, which powered a pneumatic motor to drive the car. After the reaction, the gas was directed through steel tubing from the reaction chamber to the motor, where it turned the system and propelled the car.

To control when the car stopped, the team used a calibration curve relating system pressure to travel distance, allowing them to calculate the correct reactant amounts in advance.

Throughout the year, CU Boulder students designed, built and tested their car ideas in the chemical engineering undergraduate teaching lab, supported by Assistant Teaching Professor Ehsan Keyvani.

"These competitions involve an intensive, year-long process of iteration and refinement to master their craft.” Keyvani said.

The first semester is typically focused on brainstorming and initial engineering/testing. Once the second semester begins, activity ramps up. The first half is dedicated to testing, solidifying the car design and preparing the required competition documentation. In the second half of the spring semester, the team meets multiple times per week for extended sessions to ensure everything is competition-ready.

CU Boulder's Chem-E-Car club is supported by funding from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and has received Engineering Excellence Fund support in the past. �鶹��Ժ interested in joining CU Boulder's Chem-E-Club can send an email to chemecar@colorado.edu. The club can also be followed on Instagram at @boulderchemecar.

A little car named "Stinkinator" placed second in the Chem-E-Car car performance competition, paving the way for CU Boulder to compete in the national competition next fall. The competition's goal is to design a shoebox-sized car powered by chemical reactions— such as a battery or an internal combustion engine — that stops at a specified distance using a time-dependent chemical reaction.

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2026 Outstanding Alumni Mentor of the Year: Ben Rains

Susan Glairon — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:51:39 +0000

2026 Outstanding Alumni Mentor of the Year: Ben Rains Susan Glairon Fri, 04/24/2026 - 07:51

Susan Glairon

Ben Rains (ChemEng’19) was named the 2026 Outstanding Alumni Mentor of the Year for his dedicated mentorship of Himaghna Kuntumalla, a graduating senior in chemical and biological engineering. A liaison for the Senior Design Projects class, Rains shares his insight to help students navigate career paths that align with their passions.

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Honoring our 2026 undergraduate college awardees

Susan Glairon — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:44:16 +0000

Honoring our 2026 undergraduate college awardees Susan Glairon Tue, 04/14/2026 - 14:44

Thirteen chemical and biological engineering undergraduate students won 18 awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Please click on their names to read more about our students' accomplishments.

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Major osteoarthritis research featured in The New York Times

Susan Glairon — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:35:41 +0000

Major osteoarthritis research featured in The New York Times Susan Glairon Wed, 04/08/2026 - 09:35

Professor Stephanie Bryant is leading a $33.57 million federal grant to reverse osteoarthritis, and the New York Times is taking notice.

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A simple shot shows promise to reverse osteoarthritis within weeks

Susan Glairon — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:58:40 +0000

A simple shot shows promise to reverse osteoarthritis within weeks Susan Glairon Mon, 04/06/2026 - 15:58

A CU Boulder-led team has developed a suite of new therapies aimed at reversing osteoarthritis in a single injection. With animal studies showing promise and funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health extended, the team could be ready for human trials by 2028. Professor Stephanie Bryant is the principal investigator of the project.

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Kristi Anseth receives the Biomaterials Global Impact Award

Susan Glairon — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:12:51 +0000

Kristi Anseth receives the Biomaterials Global Impact Award Susan Glairon Tue, 03/31/2026 - 07:12

Distinguished Professor Kristi Anseth has received the Biomaterials Global Impact Award, which recognizes distinguished research and development accomplishments in the field of biomaterials.

The award will be presented at the 35th Annual Conference of the European Society for Biomaterials in Antwerp, Belgium, from September 7-11, 2026.

Anseth, also the associate faculty director of CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, designs biomaterials that interact with living tissues to promote repair and regeneration, aiding in healing injuries and diseases. Her lab works with hydrogels—a degradable biomaterial—to deliver molecules at the right time and sequence to accelerate the healing process. Her team is also growing miniaturized versions of heart cells and tissues, known as organoids, to better understand disease mechanisms and explore new types of heart disease treatments, such as to repair heart muscles after heart attacks.

Anseth is also among the select few innovators elected to all three National Academies: Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Beyond her scientific contributions, she has been recognized with more than 50 major awards and delivered over 60 honorary lectureships worldwide.

Distinguished Professor Kristi Anseth has received the Biomaterials Global Impact Award, which recognizes distinguished research and development accomplishments in the field of biomaterials. Anseth is known for developing tissue substitutes that improve treatments for conditions like broken bones and heart valve disease.

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Could 3D-printed livers make transplant lists a thing of the past?

Susan Glairon — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:30:09 +0000

Could 3D-printed livers make transplant lists a thing of the past? Susan Glairon Tue, 03/24/2026 - 08:30

CU Boulder researchers and partners at MIT, Harvard and Columbia are working to recreate the human liver’s complex structure in the lab. With support from a $25 million ARPA-H grant, the team aims to develop 3D-printed, transplantable liver tissue made from human cells that the body won’t reject. Professor Jason Burdick's lab at CU’s BioFrontiers Institute will lead the 3D printing component of the project.

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Scientists develop hydrogel platform that mimics human tissue

Susan Glairon — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:55:27 +0000

Scientists develop hydrogel platform that mimics human tissue Susan Glairon Thu, 03/12/2026 - 16:55

Susan Glairon

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (purple) interact with a hydrogel matrix (green). In viscoelastic materials, the cells can spread and reshape the matrix.

For decades, lab-grown cells have been studied in materials that don’t reflect the softness and flexibility of human tissue.

Bruce Kirkpatrick

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a water-rich, Jell-O-like material that more closely mimics how real tissues move, stretch and relax and whose liquid or solid state can be precisely controlled by light.

The work was recently published in the journal Matter and was directed by Distinguished Professor Kristi Anseth.

These new hydrogels will help scientists understand how mechanical cues from tissues affect cells, said Bruce Kirkpatrick, (PhDBioEngr'25), the paper’s first author and a third-year medical student. These insights could help improve our understanding of disease and how cells respond to drugs. It could also shed light on cell development—how stem cells mature into specialized cell types.

“The convention of growing cells on plastic for drug testing is problematic because plastic is stiff, while human tissue is flexible,” Kirkpatrick said. “Unless you're studying bone or other cells adapted to rigid environments, it’s not an appropriate mechanical setting for studying how cells respond to drugs.”

Kirkpatrick added that a key advantage of the hydrogel-based cell culture platform is its three-dimensional structure, which better reflects the environment cells experience in the body.

“The material we developed will help researchers better understand how mechanical environments influence cell behavior, not just the biochemical cues cells receive through surrounding liquid and nearby cells,” he said.

Shaped by light

Lea Hibbard

Most hydrogels form spontaneously when two liquids are mixed, but these gels provide less control and precision than the newly developed materials, Kirkpatrick said. In addition, researchers traditionally have shaped hydrogels using extrusion printing, a process similar to squeezing Play-Doh through a tube.

Instead, Kirkpatrick and the research team combined the new hydrogel’s dynamic properties with photopolymerization, using light to transform liquids into solids and encapsulate cells during three-dimensional printing. The new approach is faster and provides precise control over shape and material properties, Kirkpatrick said.

“With photopolymerization, we can control exactly how much light is applied, where it goes and when the hydrogel forms,” Kirkpatrick added. “The amount of light determines how much the material gels and its resulting mechanical properties. It gives researchers control over the shape, timing of cell encapsulation and spatial variation in properties.”

For example, if cells are encapsulated in a droplet and one side is exposed to light for only a few seconds while the other receives a longer or stronger dose, researchers can study what happens at the boundary between those regions, observing how cells migrate between them and how differences in mechanical properties influence their behavior.

Abhishek Dhand

The researchers also studied intestinal organoids—tiny lab-grown versions of the intestine—to see how they behaved in different environments. In the body, these cells exist in a soft, viscoelastic environment, where tissues stretch or deform under stress.

When the team placed the organoids in a hydrogel with similar properties, the cells took on natural shapes and expressed the right proteins. In other words, they behaved like they do inside the body.

“These findings suggest that viscoelasticity is essential for proper cell function and organization,” Kirkpatrick said.

Next steps

The researchers’ long-term goal is to use three-dimensional printing to produce large, cell-laden arrays of the new material for drug testing or disease modeling. This approach allows them to quickly create identical samples with high quality control and study how cells respond to gene mutations—such as removing a disease-linked gene—or to varying drug concentrations in the hydrogel environment.

The material could also help scientists study fundamental processes, such as how embryos organize cells to form correctly shaped organs, and investigate diseases like fibrosis, in which the body overproduces scar tissue in response to injury or chronic inflammation.

Co-first authors Abhishek Dhand, (PhDBioMedEngr’25), and PhD student Lea Hibbard (ChemBioEngr’24) contributed equally to this study. CU Boulder faculty involved in the project included Professor Jason Burdick, Distinguished Professor Christopher Bowman and Professor Tim White.

A new light-controlled hydrogel developed at CU Boulder mimics the movement and flexibility of real tissue, giving scientists a more realistic way to study cells and disease. The work was recently published in the journal Matter and was directed by Distinguished Professor Kristi Anseth.

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PhD student Erin Dunphy honored with Ludo Frevel Scholarship

Susan Glairon — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 23:07:01 +0000

PhD student Erin Dunphy honored with Ludo Frevel Scholarship Susan Glairon Thu, 02/12/2026 - 16:07

Susan Glairon

Chemical and Biological Engineering PhD student Erin Dunphy has won the prestigious International Centre for Diffraction Data’s Ludo Frevel Crystallography Scholarship, which recognizes research promise in the field of crystallography. Crystallography, the science of figuring out how atoms are arranged inside a solid material, has been essential in developing X-ray, electron and neutron diffraction methods to reveal the atomic structure of materials.

Tell me about your research

My research examines how polymers (long-chain molecules) and hydrocarbon (molecules made of hydrogen and carbon, such as fuels) attach to the surface of Ruthenium-based catalysts, which are used to speed up chemical reactions. Understanding this interaction is critical to improving catalytic processes for polymer upcycling, an innovative approach for converting plastic wastes into valuable products, such as jet fuels. By studying these interactions at the atomic level, we gain insight into how the materials bind and react, helping guide the design of more efficient catalysts.

What does receiving the Ludo Frevel Crystallography Scholarship Award mean to you?

Receiving the Ludo Frevel Crystallography Scholarship is a great honor that marks a milestone for my academic career. It's exciting that my research inspires others and reminds me that fundamental research is critical to the development of new technologies.

How will this scholarship support your research or academic goals?

Receiving this scholarship reinforces my commitment to tackling complex scientific challenges by developing techniques that deliver real-world solutions. I aim to continue pushing boundaries at the intersection of fundamental science and technology development.

What drew you to crystallography as a research focus?

My first experience with advanced crystallography was during a science undergraduate laboratory internship when I worked at the National Synchrotron Light Source II. While there, I realized that materials optimization, improving a material’s properties so it performs as well as possible for a specific application, is often the key bottleneck limiting progress in energy and infrastructure technologies.

What are you most excited to work on?

I am excited to finish my CU Boulder research and to defend my thesis in June. I am performing my final single-crystal diffraction studies at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. This technique allows scientists to map the atomic structure at the crystal interface.

For these experiments, I designed a custom reaction chamber that can operate at temperatures up to 250°C and pressures of 15 bar, allowing us to study materials under realistic working conditions. I also developed specialized software that processes and analyzes the data in real time.

What are your future research or career goals?

My sights are set on integrating renewable energy onto an industrial scale. Plastics recycling using catalysis offers a route to sustainable fuel generation which is part of creating a circular energy infrastructure. Ultimately using multiple forms of green energy generation (solar, wind) is all a part of the renewable energy infrastructure.

I hope to work with industry professionals to optimize new technologies and streamline deployment onto national and international scales.

How do you hope your work will contribute to the field?

My research looks at how molecules or atoms (called adsorbates) attach to the surface of a single crystal under realistic conditions for thermal catalysis. I hope my work encourages other researchers to study surfaces in environments that go beyond the extremely clean, ultra-high vacuum conditions typically used to more real-world operating conditions. Ultimately, my work helps expand surface science to investigate materials in contact with liquids, oils and membranes under practical pressures and temperatures, making the findings more relevant to real-world applications such as in thermal catalysis.

Dunphy's research involves studying interactions at the atomic level to design more efficient catalysts for polymer upcycling, an innovative approach for converting plastic wastes into valuable products, such as jet fuels.

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In America science-sceptics are now in charge

Susan Glairon — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:44:57 +0000

In America science-sceptics are now in charge Susan Glairon Wed, 02/11/2026 - 10:44

Professor Michael D. McGehee and his team are advancing tandem solar cells—pairing silicon with a high-efficiency material called perovskite—that could significantly improve the economics of renewable energy. While the technology shows great promise, making perovskites durable enough for commercial use remains a key challenge. In October 2025, just as the research was gaining momentum, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the team’s federal grant.

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