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The work of chemists permeates almost every aspect of modern life, from engineering life-saving vaccines and medicines to supporting industry, agriculture, material science and the energy sector.

Given the importance of their work, it’s a little surprising that in an age of automation, some of the most time-consuming tasks chemists perform are accomplished much as they were a century ago: Lab processes are often manual and repetitive, and they frequently require a great deal of low-level task monitoring. Efforts to change this have been limited, primarily because chemistry labs are such high-risk environments—toxic chemical exposure, fires and explosions lead to tens of thousands of injuries each year.     

However, a team of researchers at CU Boulder was recently awarded $1.8 million by the National Science Foundation for a project, titled "Human-Robot Collaboration for the Future of Organic Synthesis," to help change this. Led by Carson Bruns, assistant professor of mechanical engineering with the ATLAS Institute, the team aims to shift some of the most time-consuming tasks to robots by developing new, open-source robot software and innovative hardware designs. 

“Our goal is to develop technology that can be the hands of the chemists,” says Bruns, “freeing them up so they can do the hard cognitive work that only people can do.” Advances in robotic chemistry assistants could help transform synthetic chemistry worldwide, accelerating progress in critical fields like biomedicine, material science, and energy production and storage.

Divided over four years, the award falls under the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, an NSF initiative focused on augmenting human performance by developing more sophisticated human-technology partnerships. Bruns’ principal CU-based collaborator is Alessandro Roncone, assistant professor of computer science at CU Boulder. A third partner on the project is Dan Szafir. A colleague of Bruns’ at the ATLAS Institute until Spring 2021, Szafir is now an assistant professor of computer science with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where his work will be supported with $600,000 of the total award amount.

This isn’t Bruns’s first foray into chemistry-related automation. For the last three years, a PhD candidate he advises, Kailey Shara, has been developing a lab robot that automates repetitive chemical reactions. Her latest prototype is able to heat, cool and stir precise quantities of wet and dry reagents—technology she's commercializing with the launch of a private company, Chembotix, which won awards from CU Boulder’s New Venture Challenge (first place) and, in November 2022, Lab Venture Challenge.

Alessandro Roncone works with a student in his lab, the Human Interaction and Robotics Group.

Complementing Bruns’ knowledge in chemistry automation, Roncone brings critical skills to the project with expertise in human-robot interaction. Director of the Human Interaction and Robotics [HIRO] Group in the Department of Computer Science, Roncone specializes in developing robotic technologies that facilitate close, natural and extended cooperation with people. 
 

However, designing a robot that can operate alongside people in cluttered and crowded spaces where dangerous chemicals are present, is no small challenge. Most mobile robots currently rely on visual cues for navigation, but when objects or people obscure lines of sight, visual information has limitations. To address this issue, Roncone plans to incorporate a flexible artificial skin on the robot that is equipped with accelerometers, along with proximity and pressure sensors. “For a robot to be effective in this context, its actions must build confidence and trust,” says Roncone. “It’s not enough that it never collides with anything or anyone; people must also feel comfortable and safe working alongside it.” 

They will be adapting a sophisticated commercial robot that was purchased in 2019 with funds from a joint proposal submitted by Szafir and Bruns. While still at ATLAS, Szafir used the robot for several studies aimed at developing software to facilitate robot-human collaboration: One focused on improving a robot’s ability to select specific objects in a cluttered space based on verbal cues from a human. Another was aimed at helping robots recognize active group conversations that should not be interrupted. Szafir’s role will be to continue this work, shaping software to achieve the team’s objectives. 

Final confirmation for the award came through from the NSF in September. It was a moment to celebrate to be sure, and also the moment when aspirations become a concrete challenge. 

The team begins with a deep well of relevant experience and knowledge, and their work has the potential to accelerate chemistry research in many different fields. It will also have wide-ranging impacts on similar development in other fields—a robot that is able to move around a crowded chemistry lab, performing useful tasks while safely handling dangerous chemicals will be capable of many less challenging tasks. 

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The ATLAS Institute is delighted to welcome Anthony Pinter to the CU Boulder faculty this fall as a teaching assistant professor. He teaches courses on web development, computational thinking and programming, focusing on how data represents us, our lives and the worlds around us.  
His research focuses on understanding the experiences people have during life transitions and how those experiences are represented in sociotechnical systems. He is particularly interested in how people make decisions about the data that are left behind when romantic relationships end, and how those decisions contribute to the formation of post-break-up identities.

discusses "algorithmic cruelty" and how social media has made breakups more difficult. See Pinter’s Spring 2022 ATLAS Colloquium talk, “Hi, I’m Anthony”. 

Before joining the ATLAS faculty, Pinter completed a PhD in Information Science, advised by Jed Brubaker. He completed a B.S. and M.S. in Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University in 2015 and 2017, respectively. He remains connected to Penn State as an adjunct faculty instructor with The Pennsylvania State University's World Campus. He spends as much time as possible out and about on skis and mountain bikes and coaches track and field at Boulder High School.
 

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Graduating in May 2022 with degrees in Creative Technology and Design, the graduate and undergraduate students listed below are recognized for exceptional accomplishments, having demonstrated initiative in their academic and extracurricular activities, completing outstanding research or creative projects, or contributing significantly to the ATLAS community.

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You're standing in the middle of this vast—as far as the eye can see—grassland. And this thing that you just let go of in downtown Boulder has traveled there on its own. There's this moment of disbelief until you're right there with it. ~ Zack Weaver, CEAS lecturer, ATLAS Institute

Video from almost 101,000 feet, beginning shortly before the balloon bursts.

First students built the instrumentation. Then they attached it to a high-altitude weather balloon that took it to an altitude of 101,000 feet. Thanks to the geolocation technology they had incorporated, they were then able to locate it 120 miles away in Eastern Colorado. 
 

The collaborative project was part of a class taught by ATLAS Lecturer Zack Weaver called Creative Technologies, a required class in the College of Engineering MS in Creative Technology and Design, offered through the ATLAS Institute. 

The instrumentation they built included an Arduino microcontroller connected to sensors that measured and recorded location, temperature, air pressure and altitude. A GoPro was sent along for the ride, capturing continuous video of the four-hour flight that began outside the Boulder Public Library’s BLDG 61 Makerspace, where Weaver works, and ended in a field in Eastern Colorado 120 miles away.

The students, many of whom began the class without much of a technical background, wrote and tested the code for the microcontroller, designed and built the insulated casing that held the camera and protected the electronics and batteries from temperatures of approximately -35° Fahrenheit. The payload design allowed environmental sensors and a GPS antenna to capture and record data to an SD card. The students were then able to plot and compare flight simulation data and actual data visualized in Google Earth.

“The students learned which creative technologies could be used to pull off this feat,” Weaver said. “It’s probably not the right terminology, but they get a ‘crash course’—learning many things very quickly.”

Besides coding and electronics, students also learned wireless communication, design and fabrication techniques, including laser cutting, 3D printing and integrating electronic components into the student-designed payload. As required by the Federal Aviation Administration, the team registered the balloon flight, providing its anticipated flight path based on their models.

“This class is a blast,” said Neill Shikada, who is enrolled in the Creative Industries track of the ATLAS Creative Technologies and Design master's program. “I've come from knowing nothing about electronics to designing quite a few aspects of the instrumentation for our balloon flight."

Alejandra Guerro, a social impact master’s student, echoed Shikada’s sentiments. “I'm definitely enjoying the class,” she said.  “A lot of technologies that seemed intimidating or difficult, now feel more accessible. I've learned that I can learn just about anything with enough Googling, patience and help from classmates.”

“Needle in a stack of needles”
As the pressure decreased with the rising altitude, the 7-foot-diameter balloon at ground level expanded to an estimated 25 feet before bursting. Its dizzying descent was captured .

Prediction software provided an estimate of the balloon’s location within a five-kilometer radius. Then, using the Automated Packet Reporting System (APRS), a ham radio network connected directly to a web server, they were able to pinpoint the balloon’s location to within one-tenth of a mile. As a backup, the team put a small commercial GPS tracker onboard that tracked the balloon's position online in real-time, but the APRS system worked perfectly. 

“We added as many redundant tracking systems as possible without weighing it down more than necessary,” Weaver said. “Every gram is critical to how high the balloon can fly.”

Because the flight took approximately four hours, Weaver and some of the students had plenty of time to drive out to Eastern Colorado, initially aiming for where they thought the balloon would land and then course-correcting once they had actual coordinates. 

“We dream of seeing this thing coming down, but in Eastern Colorado, it’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles,” Weaver said.

Crash course
In addition to mapping the actual flight path on Google Earth, students were asked to analyze variations and anomalies compared to the predicted flight path. While examining the data, students discovered that the sensors recorded higher temperatures than the APRS reported and concluded they were mistakenly measuring the interior of their insulated casing. They also learned the limitations of a $5 altitude sensor, which loses accuracy over 60,000 feet.  

“These limitations, and the opportunity to read the data to discover them, are intentionally baked into the experience,” said Weaver. “It contextualizes the affordances and constraints of the toolset.”
 
“The project helped the students understand that they can’t learn all creative technologies,” he added. “We set a context that provided constraints for deciding which technologies are needed and to what extent. It helped them to not be overwhelmed by an overabundance of choices.” 
    
The balloon flight was the key project for the first half of the Creative Technologies course; the second half is designed so students use the balloon experience as a reference for their independent design projects. There’s also a lineup of guest speakers, giving students diverse perspectives on similar types of technologies and how they are used professionally.

“I've shown them a reasonable amount of new technologies,” Weaver said. “The students will define any additional technologies they need to work with on a more individual basis. So at this point, they're in charge of the class, and I'm just there as support to run logistics and to bring in cool people for them to meet.

“I remember sometimes feeling almost complete isolation as a grad student on campus," said Weaver. "Getting off-campus and out in the world came as such a novelty. I think this group of students had that experience, particularly driving out to Eastern Colorado. And they didn't just learn how to work with electronics and design tools; they applied them, and it took them to new places."

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After rebounding from a major flood with vibrant new leadership and a new toolbox of performance technologies, the ATLAS Institute’s B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance now offers more varied and interesting opportunities to artists, engineers, creative technologists and performers than ever before. As challenging as the post-flood refit was, it provided B2 with the opportunity to install some exciting new capabilities into the Black Box Experimental Studio and the other spaces that make up B2. Topping this list are an 8-camera motion capture system, a 44-speaker spatial audiosonic array and the latest in low-latency video relay technology.

What possibilities does this open up? They are endless: With the physical movement of performers digitized, it can be processed and projected in the same space with appearances transformed into, say, an animated character or moving points of light or whatever an artist can dream up. Physical movement can also be programmed to trigger certain sound events that, projected across the 3D audiosonic array, are percieved differently, depending on where the listener is in the space. 

Confused? That's understandable; there's nothing familiar about these technologies. "There's certainly no other facility in Colorado with these capabilities, and there are probably only a handful in the whole country," says Ondine Geary, executive director of B2.

To make these technologies more accessible to the community, the ATLAS Institute is offering two new summer classes in August: one focused on using the motion capture technology and the other on the 3D audiosonic system.

“These classes will empower the community by teaching them how to use the new technologies,” said Geary. “I'm excited to see what ideas emerge and how the use of these technologies evolves.” 

Both classes emphasize the design elements and skills needed to utilize the technologies in a performance context. The curricula will accommodate undergraduate and graduate students with varied skills and objectives, including technologists, performers, designers, choreographers and composers. The intensive courses will be taught over three weeks during Augmester, so as not to disrupt artists during their B2 residencies.

Intermedia Motion Capture (ATLS 3519-051)—focuses on the motion capture technology in performance and serves as a broad overview to the technology available in the ATLAS Black Box; students will use the motion capture system to interact with the ambisonic sound system, DMX controlled LED lighting and 360-degree video projection.  

Immersive Audio & Ambisonics (ATLS 3519-052)—focuses on the applications of immersive audio technologies in both media production settings and live performance contexts. The course focuses specifically on understanding the basics of immersive audio and then applying, prototyping and iterating these concepts hands-on with the spatial audio system. 

Brad Gallagher, an ATLAS-affiliated PhD student in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance, created and will teach “Performance Technologies: Intermedia Motion Capture,” which focuses on non-traditional uses of motion capture technology, particularly those applicable to live performance, including generating sound with movement, controlling and affecting lighting and interacting in real time with 360-degree video projection. To a lesser degree, the course also covers using motion capture to create animation through skeleton tracking. The goal of the course will be to produce solo and collaborative performances using these technologies. 

Sean Winters, an ATLAS-affiliated lecturer for the Department of Critical Media Practices and the College of Music, created and will teach “Performance Technologies: Immersive Audio & Ambisonics,” where students will learn how to use the 44-channel audio system in the ATLAS Black Box Experimental Studio. Students will produce sonic content from scratch for ambisonic diffusion, record 3D sound fields and become familiar with the specific tools needed to edit/mix ambisonic content. Technically, they will gain advanced knowledge of immersive audio production, ambisonic recording techniques and a solid understanding of how to employ these concepts using the ATLAS Black Box’s state-of-the-art audio system. 

Geary says the courses involve historical and theoretical information, but the real thrust is to “get your hands dirty and use these tools.”

She envisions participants meeting artists from multiple disciplines and establishing collaborative relationships. 

“Technological know-how is one component, but understanding how, when and why to implement those technologies in art-making is also an important component,” she said. “Students can expect to gain enough understanding of these tools to be able to expand their creative practices. These courses will give them the confidence to independently use these technologies. ”

[video:https://vimeo.com/530168490]
Brad Gallagher's "Rumpus Room for Dancers" demonstrates motion capture triggering specific sounds. His project will be exhibited at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe in June.

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For the second year running, Creative Technology and Design students won first place at the largest university hackathon in the Rocky Mountain region, HackCU, held this year March 5-6 on the CU Boulder campus. Another student, whose two majors include CTD and computer science, took second place this year as the sole member of his team. 

Océane Andreis (MS-CTD), Katherine Tran (BS-CTD), Sangati Shah (engineering and business, CTD minor) and Patricia Chin (computer science, minoring in CTD and business) together won first prize overall, as well as the social impact prize, for their project , which helps users understand what they consent to when agreeing to data privacy terms and conditions. The team of four formed after working together as organizers of the ATLAS Institute’s 2022 , a hackathon that aims to attract women and other groups typically underrepresented at such events. (majoring in computer science and CTD, with a business minor) won second prize overall for his solo invention, , a web-based game engine/platform where technical novices can create their own remixes of the classic Wordle game. Creatle also won the Best Game and Entertainment Prize.

Last year, CTD undergraduate students Mason Moran and Colin Soguero, working alongside Colin's brother, Luke Soguero (computer science), took first prize at HackCU for their project, ChessLens, an augmented reality application that helps chess players improve their game.
 
HackCU is an annual invention marathon where participants build and share their creations in just 24 hours. This year there were 29 submissions from 96 participants. The TL-DR team and Bodzianowski won electronics and other prizes. 

All of this year's ATLAS winners said that participating in T9Hacks was a key component of their success.
 
“We felt inspired by the T9Hacks participants who worked incredibly hard, and we wanted to work just as hard,” Andreis said.
 
Inspired by others

Bodzianowski said his Creatle invention was inspired by T9Hack’s winning entry, Complexify, a Worldle-like game platform. 

“Creatle is my attempt to create a platform for people to create, share and play their own remixes of the classic Wordle format with minimum effort,” he said.

But things did not go well at first for Bodzianowski. First he arrived an hour late to the hackathon; then at 3 a.m. he decided to scrap the experimental technologies he was using and restart his project. He almost quit, he said, but then pivoted to the technologies he used during the 2022 T9Hacks hackathon. 

“With the help of a copious amount of caffeine, I was able to get a working prototype of Creatle finished just in time for judging,” he said. 

At that point the actual "create" part of Creatle wasn't working— instead Bodzianowski showed the judges how he made the games through a development database and focused on the technical and design aspects of the project. 

TL-DR allows users to take control of their data by encouraging them to stay informed about their data privacy. The solution is two-pronged: first a Google Chrome extension displays the terms and conditions of a viewed platform in short digestible bullet points. There’s also a website that helps users visualize the data that they willingly provide when blindly agreeing to website terms and conditions.

All of TL-DR’s team members had completed ethics classes where data privacy was covered, such as the "Meaning of Information Technology." Those ATLAS classes helped inspire their project idea, Tran said.  

“Most people accept the lack of data privacy as the price to pay for free services,” she said. “Having learned about the extensive information that huge technology companies collect and seeing how invasive and harmful it can be, we felt motivated to respond to this topic.”

Everyone on the TL-DR team played to their strengths, Shah said. Andreis coded the Chrome extension and worked alongside Tran on the website. Chin prototyped the team’s  visuals while Shah pulled together the sample data and reviewed terms and conditions.
  
“In the midst of all the coding and designing, we had lots of fun eating the food, attending the side events, and, of course, just enjoying each others’ company—like any other team would,” Tran said.

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Zack Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, stands in front of Maker Made 2020. Weaver is a creative technologist at BLDG 61: Boulder Library Makerspace and a curator for Maker Made.

A group of six artists and technologists connected to the ATLAS community contributed to Boulder Public Library’s , which runs through March 28.

Who: Everyone is invited

What: Maker Made 2022, a gallery show celebrating the diverse and inspiring work by local makers.

When: Runs through March 28. The exhibit is open whenever the library is open.

Where: Canyon Gallery, Boulder Public Library, 9th Street and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder

Cost: Free

The fourth annual gallery show celebrates the diverse and inspiring work by local makers, representing the collective energy and ambition of a community of inventors, designers, engineers, artists, craftspeople and tinkerers.

“There’s no better way to celebrate a period of creative output than a party and a show-and-tell, and that’s what Maker Made has become,” says Zack Weaver, one of the show’s curators and a creative technologist at BLDG 61: Boulder Library Makerspace.  BLDG 61’s makerspace provides maker education to the public for free in an “inspiring and inclusive environment.”

Weaver, an ATLAS lecturer who played a key role in establishing the ATLAS BTU Lab, says inspiration for Maker Made dates back to his days as a Carnegie Mellon student of Professor Mark Gross, now director of the ATLAS Institute. Gross, along with university colleagues organized annual exhibitions, similar to the ATLAS Expo, Weaver says.

The ATLAS Connection
Creative Technology and Design graduates Luciano Mejia and Chaz Golin helped curate Maker Made 2022. Hired as "Contract Killer Creative Technologists" in late 2021, the two were major contributors to the show’s success. For exhibits by members of the ATLAS community, see below.

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Imagine yourself sipping coffee at a café wearing augmented reality glasses and summoning a virtual screen and keyboard that immediately appears in front of you. Wearing haptic feedback gloves, as you type, you feel each keystroke on your fingertips, and if you run your fingers along the edge of your keyboard, you feel its edges. You can also move the keyboard around on the table—it feels as if it's real, and the screen hovering at an ergonomically optimal height above the keyboard looks like a normal screen. However, to a passerby, the only thing in front of you is a cup of coffee. Your fingers are moving in thin air and you are looking intently at nothing.

Realizing technology that makes this possible is a goal of Reality Labs Research at Meta (previously Facebook), where ATLAS PhD student Purnendu has been helping develop soft, wearable devices, such as wristbands, rings and gloves, that deliver just the right level of haptic feedback to a wearer in response to contact with an object in virtual or augmented reality. Haptic feedback is created a variety of ways, including through tiny electric motors (actuators) and shape-changing materials.

"This is a great opportunity not only to build upon my earlier work at ATLAS, but also to be around peopletasked with inventing the future of human interaction in augmented and virtual reality,” says Purnendu, who will remain at Meta in Redmond, Washington through August.

The work aligns with Purnendu's doctoral research on shaping materials using electrostatic fields and developing human-centered applications. During the internship, Purnendu plans to explore building body-worn solutions—leveraging insights from his past research which emphasized the shape-changing behavior of soft electrohydraulic actuators.

Purnendu holds an integrated master’s degree in physics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in India and has a background in material science and design. He is advised by Assistant Professor Carson Bruns and Associate Professor Gregory Whiting.

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At just 8 years old, Casey Hunt taught herself some basic web skills so she could help her father develop a website for his small business. As an adult, she developed software and managed data for a pharmaceutical company. But despite those experiences, she lacked confidence about her coding abilities, she said.

A turning point came when Hunt’s team won the 2020 , a hackathon at CU Boulder’s ATLAS Institute aimed at promoting interest in creative technologies, coding, design and making among college women, nonbinary individuals and other groups that are underrepresented in technical fields. This year, the seventh annual “invention marathon” happens Feb. 18-19 at the ATLAS Institute. 

“I was undervaluing my skills because I didn’t know where I fell in the coding spectrum,” said Hunt, a Creative Technology and Design PhD student who builds web applications in the ATLAS THING Lab. “After winning T9, I was willing to take on more code-based projects;  before T9 I would not have had the confidence to say to my advisor that coding was part of my skill set.”

At the 2020 event, Hunt and her team worked through the night to develop “Brain Break,'' an award-winning project that periodically encourages those using Google Chrome to take breaks from the Internet by switching to healthy exercises or brain games. 

Who: Open to current college students and recent college graduates. Participants need not be CU Boulder students or graduates to attend.

What: Seventh annual T9Hacks, a hackathon designed for women and traditionally underrepresented students, but open to everyone.  

When: Feb. 18, 4:30 p.m. – Feb. 19, 9 p.m.  

Where: University of Colorado Boulder, Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St.   
Cost: Free
 

Etc.:

Also, in an effort to have a greener event, organizers ask that participants bring a reusable water bottle. 

Additional ways to participate:

• Sign up to become a mentor and advise participants with their projects or teach workshops.
• Sign up to  before or during the event and be part of an extraordinary team of students.       

Today Hunt collaborates with University of Washington’s Kids Team to build applications for children to play with toy robots together over the Internet. Her PhD research also involves designing cozy, privacy-conscious, smart environments through a variety of techniques, including e-textiles, long-range RFID (radio frequency identification) and swarm robotics.  

In-person event
One of the last in-person events to take place before the lockdown, the 2020 T9Hacks was Hunt’s first hackathon. After last year’s virtual event, she’s looking forward to participating again in person when T9Hacks kicks off this year on February 18 at 4:30 p.m. Participants will be required to follow CU Boulder's COVID-19 health policy. 
 
Beyond coding
Student organizers emphasize that no coding or other technical skills are required to participate in the 24-hour invention marathon and that everyone is welcome. The 2022 theme is “Go Beyond.” 

“As students with busy schedules, we often don’t take the time to explore,” says Océane Andréis, a second-year ATLAS graduate student (CTD-Social Impact), who along with Neha Kunapuli, a senior majoring in computer science, are again co-organizing this year’s event. “At T9, participants will go beyond the day-to-day grind. They will be intellectually challenged. They will learn new skills and will be supported by mentors.”

In 2016, T9Hacks was created to be a safe and welcoming environment for women and traditionally underrepresented students to learn, share and play with code.  “T9” refers to “Title IX,” an amendment to the Civil Rights Act prohibiting gender-based discrimination in education. At T9Hacks 2021, 66 hackers participated virtually; 74 percent were women and non-binary and 44 percent were first-time hackers. Previous in-person events brought in as many as 120 participants.

This year T9Hacks features four tracks: climate change, accessibility, empathy and education. 

The organizers encourage participants to meet new people, including event sponsors and mentors. New sponsors this year include CU Boulder’s Cardinal Peak, Earnifi and Verily as well as T9 sponsor veterans Twitter, Tortuga AgTech and Wunderman Thompson. Aileen Pierce, teaching associate professor, is the faculty advisor. 

While attending the 2020 T9Hacks, Hunt met many sponsors, mentors and participants, and three of Hunt’s team members became part of her “pandemic bubble.”

“Having a community of women to study with throughout the pandemic contributed greatly to my academic success,” she said.

This year T9Hack’s Climate Change track is being sponsored by the , a donor-supported initiative to help CU Boulder students work on climate solutions. The Mission Zero Fund works with many groups across campus on projects exploring carbon-zero living and sustainability.

“Students are the route to dealing with climate change, the ones who can make an impact on businesses and find solutions to this existential crisis,” says Scott King, founder of Mission Zero.

King says that Mission Zero Fund’s partnership with T9Hacks fits well because T9 not only offers an opportunity to mentor students around climate change, but it also supports an underserved population.

“An important part of the impacts of climate change is the inequities around climate justice,” King says. “Those without resources are impacted more significantly by climate and weather extremes and have less resources to deal with these events.”

Overall, all T9 participants are welcome to join the Climate Change track. Solutions can range from engineering to communications projects and anything in between, depending on the students’ strengths and passions.

“I don’t want students to feel like they are alone in this crisis,” King says. “There are mentors and business people who care deeply. Don’t look at climate change in a dark space. Together we can define what the future looks like.”

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