Call it high-altitude kombucha: CU Boulder biologist Valerie McKenzie has developed a probiotic solution that inoculates boreal toads from a virulent infection. Once common throughout the Mountain West, the mountain-dwelling toads have become increasingly threatened over the past three decades by a fungus that invades the amphibians’ skin cells and releases spores that interfere with vital bodily functions. The Colorado boreal toad population is considered endangered. In conjunction with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, McKenzie and her team developed an anti-fungal solution that incorporates naturally occurring beneficial bacteria from the toads’ own habitat. (The liquid’s distinctive purple color led McKenzie’s students to dub the project “Operation Purple Rain.”) The survival rate for toads that soaked in the solution for 12 hours increased by 40 percent, providing an encouraging proof of concept for fish and game managers s they search for a natural way to revitalize a threatened species.

Principal Investigator:
Valerie McKenzie

Funding:
National Science Foundation (NSF); Keck Foundation; John S. Templeton Foundation

Collaboration/Support:
Jordan Kueneman, Douglas Woodhams and Holly Archer; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Native Aquatic Species Restoration Facility; Colorado Parks and Wildlife 

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Jennifer Balch
Assistant Professor of Geography and Director, Earth Lab

Current wildfire policy can’t adequately protect people, homes and ecosystems from the longer, hotter fire seasons caused by climate change, according to a recent research paper led by CU Boulder.

Efforts to extinguish every blaze and reduce the buildup of deadwood are becoming increasingly inadequate. Instead, the authors, led by Tania Schoennagel, a research scientist at the , urge policymakers and communities to embrace reforms that will promote adaptation to increasing wildfire and warming.

Some of their recommendations might be unpopular, such as allowing more fires to burn in wildland areas and intentionally setting more fires to reduce natural fuels. They argue that forest-thinning projects should be targeted to specific areas, instead of being widely used. And they suggest reforms to federal, state and local policies on land use and development to limit expansion of communities into fire-prone areas.

“We have to learn that wildfire is inevitable, in the same way that droughts and flooding are,” Schoennagel says. “We’ve tried to control fire, but it’s not a control we can maintain. Like other natural disasters, we have to learn to adapt.” 

Principal Investigator:
Tania Schoennagel

Collaboration/Support:
Jennifer Balch, Hannah Brenkert-Smith and Nathan Mietkiewicz; Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR); Geography; numerous universities

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As the top public university for NASA research funding, CU Boulder is famous for aerospace. But students pursuing nonscience majors had trouble participating—until now. In 2016, the university established a space minor to bring artists, historians and others into the fold.

“We have a burgeoning aerospace industry, and some may assume there is no role for them in it. There can be,” says Steve Nerem, faculty director of the new minor. An English major could become a tech writer for an aerospace company, he explains, or an artist could do graphic design for NASA.

The minor kicks off with Pathway to Space, a series of guest lectures covering space exploration. Other new electives delve into relationships between the arts, history, computer technology and space. “A lot of things we don’t understand yet lie at the intersections between different disciplines,” Nerem says. “Having this minor can really improve a student’s employability.”

Principal Investigator:
Steve Nerem

Funding:
Grand Challenge

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Most particle physics experiments take place in a lab, but these days, JILA professor Dana Anderson prefers taking his to the air. Recently, Anderson and colleagues from his startup company, ColdQuanta, flew a small singlepropeller plane from Boulder to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and back carrying valuable cargo: a modified magneto-optical trap that he and his colleagues developed. This device harnesses a cloud of 10 million individual atoms cooled to near absolute zero and locked in place by lasers. At that ultracold temperature, the atoms take on more fundamental sensitivity and become useful for inertial sensing, which provides information equivalent to an accelerometer and a gyroscope—both essential tools for aviation. Anderson hopes that once the delicate setup can reliably withstand a little turbulence, it could one day supplant GPS as a more accurate navigation system for air travel.

Principal Investigator:
Dana Anderson

Collaboration/Support:
Physics; JILA; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); ColdQuanta; Vescent Photonics

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Through collaborative research, new forms of graduate teaching and training, and engagement with the wider Boulder community, CU Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts is reshaping research and education across traditional program boundaries.

The center aims to do for the humanities and arts what the university’s institutes have done for the sciences: create an environment of scholarly curiosity and shared knowledge that enriches work in multiple fields. Speaker series, workshops and transdepartmental seminars help foster mutual interests on campus and beyond, while fellowships—available for both faculty and students—provide time and support for interdisciplinary research and creative projects.

“We think about education in a broader sense than just individual home departments,” says Helmut Müller-Sievers, director of the center and Eaton Professor of Humanities and Arts. “We’re making it the care of a larger community to educate our students and expose them to expertise beyond the program in which they’re enrolled.”

Principal:
Helmut Müller-Sievers

Collaboration/Support:
Humanities and Arts; Center for Humanities and the Arts

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Graduate student Lila Finch’s luminous sculpture lends artistic form to scientific function. Supported by a gift from Oracle Academy in the ATLAS Laboratory for Playful Computation, her 9-foot creation, which resembles an expansive tree with outstretched branches, uses colored lights to visually demonstrate the health of a hydroponic garden growing one floor above in the Roser ATLAS Building. Sensors measuring moisture in the plants, light intake and other biological stats funnel data into a database, which communicates wirelessly with microcontrollers in the sculpture. Depending on whether the plants are thriving or withering, the colors and timing of the piece’s 230 LED lights change in response to the data. Finch, a PhD student in the Technology, Media and Society program, hosts workshops for youths to construct their own “expressive lanterns” and is designing curricula with science, art and computer science teachers to be implemented in middle and high school classrooms next year. They’re learning the basics of programming and communications, and how science and art can integrate to illuminate our world. “I wanted to think about how you could value art and science equally in learning and learn from one another,” Finch said. “The combination, I think, can be really useful for both fields.

Principal Investigators:
Lila Finch, Ben Shapiro

Funding:
Oracle Academy

Collaboration/Support:
ATLAS Institute; Laboratory for Playful Computation; Computer Science

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New shelf-stable vaccines could bolster lifesaving immunization deliveries worldwide

Vaccines are crucial to the health of millions in developing countries, but timely delivery of these lifesaving immunizations has always been hindered by the need for refrigeration. Now, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute aims to change that.

Professors Robert Garcea, Theodore Randolph and Al Weimer specialize in different areas of biochemistry; but recently, the trio banded together on a multiyear effort to develop shelf-stable, nonperishable vaccines that can be stored at high temperatures for months rather than days.

If successful, such an advancement would radically ease the difficult task of distributing immunizations to rural hospitals and population centers.

The magnitude of the challenge requires a wide range of skill sets and ideas, something that the researchers were all too happy to take on. “It’s really merging three different people with three different sets of expertise into one project,” Garcea said.

In Garcea’s lab, investigators work on new vaccines such as those for human papillomavirus (HPV), a leading cause of cervical cancer that is particularly devastating to women in developing countries.

One corridor away, Randolph’s team, which focuses on creating stable dosage forms for therapeutic proteins and vaccines, developed a process for making vaccines thermostable, or resistant to damage from heat or cold. In its final form, this vaccine resembles a glassy powder.

The two began collaborating about two years ago and even formed a spinoff company, Vitravax Inc., which has seen encouraging results in mice thus far.

Weimer contributed the final piece of the puzzle. His lab coats the vaccine microparticles with protective layers of aluminum oxide, a process known as atomic layer deposition. This nanometerthick barrier shields the vaccine particles while helping trigger the body’s immune response.

The trio are now forming extended-release vaccine dosage forms. When the formulation is injected, the outer layer provides an initial vaccine dose. Next, the aluminum oxide layer slowly dissolves, eventually releasing the inner core, which acts as a second dose of vaccine. Patients receive their second or third “dose” without ever knowing it and without a return trip to the doctor.

Individual results have been promising, but scaling from test batches in the lab to manufacturing millions of vaccines for public use is a challenging process that might not succeed quickly—or at all. “We’ve done many of the individual parts of this project,” Randolph said. “Now we’ve got to put those pieces together and have it work.”

Still, the professors say they are optimistic about the collaboration, which might never have happened if not for their proximity on CU Boulder’s East Campus and the interdisciplinary mission of the BioFrontiers Institute, which drives innovation by combining researchers from different fields.

“One of the hopes of the BioFrontiers Institute is that investigators will, by their proximity, do new and interesting things,” Garcea said. “In a sense, we’ve fulfilled the mission. If the technology works, we’ve really fulfilled the mission.”

Principal investigator
Robert Garcea, Theodore Randolph, Al Weimer

Funding
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; BioFrontiers Institute; Chemical and Biological Engineering; Vitravax Inc.

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Mounting evidence shows healthy resident bacteria can play a pivotal role in supporting physical health. New research by CU Boulder integrative physiology professor Chris Lowry suggests it can also bolster mental health, fending off anxiety and possibly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Lowry’s study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in May, was named among the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the leading nongovernmental funder of mental health research.

It found that when healthy mice were injected with Mycobacterium vaccae and placed with an aggressive male for 19 days, they exhibited fewer anxiety-like behaviors and behaved more proactively. They were also less likely to suffer stress-induced colitis, produced more of an enzyme key to production of the feelgood brain chemical serotonin and had less inflammation.

Lowry is now studying the efficacy of an oral probiotic for veterans with PTSD.

Ultimately, he believes, good bacteria could be given to soldiers and emergency room workers to prevent stress-induced disorders.

Principal Investigator:
Christopher Lowry

Funding:
Department of Veterans Affairs

Collaboration/Support:
Integrative Physiology; University of Colorado School of Medicine

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How to prepare young scientists to tackle the problems of our 21st-century world? That’s the question that CU Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS), School of Education and the Denver Public Schools (DPS) are tackling with a partnership aimed at teaching science concepts in a new way.

Tamara Sumner, director of ICS, leads the project to develop innovative science curricula that reflect the , incorporate technology and are freely available online. For their latest unit, “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?,” CU researchers partnered with teacher educators from DPS who, after collaborating on the design, took the lessons to their students for pilot testing. The teachers returned with insights about the successes of the lessons, and researchers used that data to improve the unit.

The partnership seems to be on the right track: Achieve Inc., a nonprofit education organization that helped develop the NGSS, awarded the unit with one of its highest quality ratings to date.

Principal Investigators:
Tamara Sumner, Bill Penuel

Funding:
National Science Foundation (NSF); Moore Foundation

Collaboration/Support:
Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS); University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR); School of Education; Denver Public Schools; Northwestern University

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More than 5 million people suffer from fibromyalgia, a syndrome characterized by chronic muscle discomfort, sleep problems, pain hypersensitivity and sometimes mood disorders.

No definitive lab tests exist and symptoms vary, so patients often struggle for years before being diagnosed. But new research at CU Boulder’s could someday lead to neuroimaging-based tests and improved patient care.

For a study published in October 2016 in the journal Pain, researchers conducted functional MRI (fMRI) brain scans on 37 fibromyalgia patients and 35 healthy people as they exposed them to nonpainful visual, auditory and tactile stimulation, as well as painful pressure.

Among those with fibromyalgia, areas of the brain associated with pain lit up more during the painful pressure. They also showed a distinct “brain signature” during nonpainful stimulation.

Judging by neuroimaging results alone, researchers could identify the fibromyalgia patients with 93 percent accuracy.

Ultimately, this neurological roadmap could be used to speed diagnosis and help doctors determine which subtype patients are, said lead author Tor Wager, a professor of psychology and neuroscience.

“That could help us recognize fibromyalgia for what it is—a disorder of the central nervous system—and treat it more effectively,” Wager said.

Principal Investigator:
Marina López-Solà

Funding:
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Collaboration/Support:
Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS); Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory

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