Robotics

Major Change: Five Fresh Degrees

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:43:34 +0000

Major Change: Five Fresh Degrees Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:43

Kelsey Yandura

Did Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film boost Birkenstock sales? Does a high-fat diet increase anxiousness? How are business leaders addressing “Zoom fatigue” among employees? Can a jellyfish-inspired robot track climate change?

The questions facing industry professionals today can range from complex to straight out of a science fiction novel. To keep up with and prepare students for the ever-evolving times, academic institutions need to constantly reevaluate course content and degree offerings.

CU Boulder’s leadership strategically approaches the challenges of continuous modernization in higher education by examining both what and how students learn. This allows the university to remain on the leading edge of education while empowering students to navigate a fast-changing world.

“Our degrees don’t focus on a finite set of competencies, but on teaching students how to learn and lead,” said Katherine Eggert, vice chancellor for academic planning and assessment at CU Boulder. “What our graduates learn today may be outdated by tomorrow. They’ll need to acquire new skills quickly from the moment they start their careers.”

The university’s academic strategy is centered on equipping students with adaptable, real-world skills in programs that embrace multidisciplinary approaches, foster collaboration and generate creative solutions to complex problems.

Here are five of the latest undergraduate and graduate degree paths CU Boulder has unveiled over the past four years.

Corporate Communication (MA)

CU Boulder Online

When Kiana Junior (MCorpComm’25) graduated from the University of Wyoming in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in nutrition, job prospects in her field of study were dire.

“I took the first job I could, which happened to be in the real estate industry,” said Junior. Three years later, she’s bounding ahead on a totally new path: working as a brand communicator and pursuing her master’s in corporate communication at CU, a fully online degree program introduced in 2020.

In the field of corporate communication, professionals study the way companies and organizations communicate with internal and external audiences to share information and manage brand perception.

“It’s the practice and art of distilling information with integrity and consistency,” said Junior. “Consumers and employees expect transparency and social responsibility from corporations, now more than ever — especially when it comes to social responsibility, environmental compliance and diversity.”

The curriculum is designed to be student-centric. “The students learn from a mix of university faculty and current and distinguished practitioners who are working in the field,” said Tobias Hopp, director of the program. “It’s a dynamic educational experience.”

The results speak for themselves.

“I could read something in class one day and take it to work the next day,” said Junior. “It’s directly applicable every single week.”

Business Analytics (BS)

Leeds School of Business

Businesses have access to more data than ever — but it’s what they do with this data that provides value. Streaming site subscriptions, airline loyalty memberships, coffee shop sales and nail salon customer reviews — each of these datasets can provide a wealth of information for the respective businesses.

That’s where business analytics comes in: using data to glean insights, inform strategic decisions and recommend meaningful changes within a business. This fast-growing field of study became a new undergraduate focus within the Leeds School of Business in 2022.

“It’s about critical thinking with data,” said Kai R. Larsen, professor of information systems at Leeds. “Datasets are only getting bigger. We tried to imagine what a major would look like so that students could really understand the story behind the numbers.”

Business analytics students learn how to translate and distill hard numbers into helpful information. It is designed to be paired with another area of emphasis within the business school, such as marketing, finance or accounting.

“The beauty comes from how to put all these parts together,” said Larsen. “Not only understand the problem, but be able to analyze and also distill the information into something that’s valuable.”

Public Health (BA)

College of Arts and Sciences

After wildfires in California in 2008, Colleen Reid, an associate professor of geography at CU Boulder, began studies to understand how wildfire smoke affects population health. Recently, she has been collecting data to understand how wildfire smoke gets into homes and schools and may affect children’s health in the Denver metro area. Reid hopes school districts can use the findings from her work to protect children from future high air pollution events, such as wildfires. Her work demonstrates the importance of careers in public health.

Starting in the fall of 2025, CU students will have the opportunity to pursue similar lines of work through the new public health major (BA) — a discipline focused on protecting and improving the health and well-being of communities and people. The field examines the underlying determinants of health within populations. For this new major at CU, students will learn about public health through courses within many different disciplines, including biology, statistics, geography, physiology, sociology, psychology and more.

“Public health goes beyond just individual bodies,” said Reid. “Seat belts are public health. Parks are public health. Climate change policy is public health. Food safety inspections at restaurants are public health.”

CU’s public health program plans to equip students with the tools to address the needs of today’s world — making strides to not only solve health problems, but also prevent them.

Biomedical Engineering (BS, MS, PhD)

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Earlier this year, a CU Boulder-led team made strides in the quest to develop naturalistic materials that can repair and replace human tissue. Their breakthrough focused on creating a “Band-Aid for the heart,” and the process consisted of 3D printing adhesive, elastic materials that are strong enough to support tissue mechanically.

This work, which can lead to revolutionary uses such as internal bandages and cartilage patches, demonstrates the innovative possibilities in biomedical engineering. By connecting engineering principles to the fields of medicine and biology, professionals in this discipline create enhancements to health care.

“A biomedical engineer on a team can form a crucial bridge between the clinicians and the engineers,” said Jessica McLaughlin, a teaching assistant professor in CU’s biomedical engineering (BME) department. “It’s critical to have someone at the table who can speak both languages.”

Since 2020, students at CU Boulder have had this professional pathway open to them through undergraduate and graduate biomedical engineering degrees. The multidisciplinary major teaches students how to create technology to address complex health problems.

“Anyone who cares about human health should be interested in this,” said Corey Nue, a biomedical professor at CU Boulder. “As engineers, we’re really uniquely positioned to impact the field through new devices, diagnostics and therapeutics.”

Robotics (MA, PhD)

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Perhaps the most futuristic major on the list is CU’s new graduate program in robotics, which kicked off in the fall of 2023. The program combines coursework and research from a variety of engineering fields, bridging the gaps between science, engineering and artificial intelligence.

“Robotics takes everything from computer science to mechanical engineering to electrical engineering,” said Sean Humbert, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Robotics Program at CU Boulder. “These are the types of students we want to be getting — folks that want this multidisciplinary background to solve all sorts of problems.”

From agriculture and health care to security and defense, the applications of a robotics degree are endless. Students enrolled in the program can choose from more than 40 different courses taught by experts in areas like field robotics, reasoning and assurance, smart materials, human-centered robotics and biomedical robotics.

When leading the charge to bring the robotics program to life, Humbert envisioned a department built on flexibility and an eye for developing trends.

“It’s a rapidly changing field, and our terrific faculty span all of these different bins of research,” said Humbert. “We’ll be able to educate students and develop new classes as the new tools appear. It’s really exciting.”

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Illustrations by Israel Vargas

Take a peek at five new undergraduate and graduate degree paths CU Boulder has unveiled over the past four years.

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Campus News Briefs: Fall 2023

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs: Fall 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 00:00

Accreditation for CU Art Museum

After a five-year process, the CU Boulder Art Museum gained its first accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) this summer. Only about 3.5% of the nation’s estimated 33,000 museums — including 26 in Colorado — have this designation. AAM awarded the art museum accreditation for its professional standards for education, public service and care of collections.

New Robotics Degrees

This fall, CU Boulder began offering a master’s and doctorate program in robotics. The program, which is one of about 15 like it in the nation, will equip students for careers in security, agriculture, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing and first response. Specific courses include “Machine Learning,” “Medical Device Design” and “Introduction to Virtual Reality.”

In Couples, Opposites Don’t Attract

A CU Boulder analysis of more than 130 traits in heterosexual couples found that partners were more likely to have traits in common than not. The study looked at data from existing and new research for millions of couples, and found that partners were most likely to be similar in about 80% to 90% of traits, which can range from preferences in politics to religion or substance use habits.

“A lot of models in genetics assume that human mating is random. This study shows this assumption is probably wrong,” said the study’s senior author Matt Keller, who is director of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics.

The authors are studying same-sex couples in separate research.

Heard Around Campus

“You may tip your hairdresser, but do you tip your physical therapist? Probably not, but why?”

— CU Boulder economics professor Jeff Zax, who told CU Boulder Today this summer he believes the U.S. economy would be healthier without tipping practices and would like to see employees compensated more fairly instead.

Old Main Beehives

In August, CU Boulder extracted two beehives from Old Main that were nearly a century old. The bees will be rehomed.

8/15

Date beekeeper removed the hives

80+

Years old

~20,000

Bees in both of the hives

Pounds of honey collected

Feet long (larger hive)

2024

Old Main restoration project expected to begin

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Photo courtesy University of Colorado; iStock/izusek (robot)

Bees, CU Art Museum and a new robotics degree.

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Campus News Briefs — Spring 2018

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 07:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs — Spring 2018 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 00:00

Varsity Lake

2.1

Million gallons of water, at capacity

1888

First bridge built; replaced 1935

Thousand square feet surface area

4/1

Date irrigation ditch starts feeding lake, a manmade water source for campus irrigation systems

11/1

Date ditch supply is shut off for season, lowering water levels

Resident red-eared slider turtles (approx.)

John Grisham Liked It

Bestselling novelist John Grisham found an article by Colorado Law professor Paul Campos so compelling, he calls it the inspiration for his latest book, The Rooster Bar.

As Grisham — author of the The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client and other huge bestsellers — publicized the new book late last year, he repeatedly cited Campos’ 2014 nonfiction article in The Atlantic, telling CBS This Morning that it “really opened my eyes. It was a great piece. The novel was quickly born from that.”

Campos’ article, “The Law School Scam,” is about the perils for students and society of expensive for-profit law schools with questionable admissions standards.

Three students attending a fictional for-profit law school are at the center of The Rooster Bar.

After the book came out, Grisham sent Campos a copy and a note.

“It was nice, needless to say, to have a story like that featured in a John Grisham novel,” Campos told the Boulder Daily Camera.

Let’s say you see a great white shark and you are scared and your brain wants to form a memory of what’s going on. You have to make new proteins to encode that memory ”

— CU Boulder scientist Charles Hoeffer, on his recent research about the role of the protein AKT.

Soft Robots

CU Boulder engineers are developing a new breed of “soft” robot that can handle fragile objects, such as fruit, yet also lift heavy ones, such as a jug of water. Made of various elastic materials and liquids and powered by electricity, the versatile, self-healing robots depend on something like artificial muscle to generate “the adaptability of an octopus arm, the speed of a hummingbird and the strength of an elephant,” said Christoph Keplinger, the mechanical engineering professor whose research group leads the work.

For more details, see CU Boulder Today online.

Read about Varsity Lake, John Grisham, a memory protein and soft robots.

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No Piano? No Problem

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 20:02:00 +0000

No Piano? No Problem Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/01/2017 - 14:02

Christie Sounart

Kristof Klipfel (TAM’17) disappeared for a moment.

“Sorry, I get into this,” he said distractedly, absorbed in the blues beats he was making on the fly.

Satisfied with his rhythm, he looped the track on his laptop and began overlaying new notes in the key of A. Music boomed, though no instrument was in sight.

No traditional instrument, anyway — Klipfel was making music through the gloves on his hands, using an ordinary table as his keyboard.

He continued drumming his fingers, encased in a pair of black construction gloves covered in buttons, switches and wires connected to his laptop. The harder he pressed, the louder the sound of specific notes played. Flexing his fingers triggered a sensor that adjusted overall volume and sound distribution. By flicking a switch on the side of a finger, he could shift from piano to drums or saxophone.

Software on his laptop recorded it all.

“You’re always in the right key and the right scale,” said the inventor, a 22-year-old senior from Reno, Nev.

Klipfel calls his device MIDI motion gloves. MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface, which links electronic instruments and enables them to communicate.

Basically, he said of the gloves, “It’s a wearable electronic musical instrument.”

Klipfel is not the first person to develop musical gloves. But his are unique in their ability to generate any note in any key for major, minor, blues and pentatonic scales.

A musician since 6th grade, when he began playing saxophone, Klipfel eventually learned dozens of instruments, including the trombone, drums and piano. He started composing electronic music in high school.

Klipfel designed the gloves in spring 2016 for a course on wearable technologies in the ATLAS Institute, part of the College of Engineering & Applied Science.

“I got tired of playing piano, then jumping to the computer and back and forth,” he said.

He realized MIDI might offer a solution.

“The gloves as a whole are a MIDI controller,” he said. “They send specific signals to the music software, which then interprets the signal and triggers any sound I define within the program.”

The gloves were Klipfel’s first experience with circuitry and robotics, and he spent a lot of time on Google figuring out how to make everything work. The project cost him about $300.

“I advised Kristof to start with one sensor on his glove and go from there,” said Alicia Gibb, his instructor. “He came in the next class with five sensors working on one glove. From that point, I knew these gloves were going to be epic.”

In March, Klipfel took the gloves to Hiyoshi, Japan, for the Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interactions conference. There he showed them off for hundreds of people at a student design challenge — and walked away with the award for best project implementation.

As far as Klipfel is aware, none of the other music gloves on the market have as much flexibility in sound as his do. But for now, he has no plans to patent or commercialize his product.

“I’m just trying to graduate,” Klipfel said. “I wanted to do something off the wall and really cool. This ended up being that.”

Making the gloves introduced him to other interests and has inspired him to consider careers in virtual reality, robotics, web development or game development, he said.

Between now and graduation next fall, Klipfel will devote himself to the drone racing club he started at CU, hiking around Boulder and creating a video game with his brother. He’s also working on another ATLAS side project called Paper Mech, which aims to get children interested in mechanical engineering by using paper and household items to make things move.

“There’s always new stuff that I’m working on,” he said. “I know now I can complete something pretty complex from scratch.”

Photos by Patrick Campbell

All you need are Kristof Klipfel's musical gloves.

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Robotics

Major Change: Five Fresh Degrees

Corporate Communication (MA)

Business Analytics (BS)

Public Health (BA)

Biomedical Engineering (BS, MS, PhD)

Robotics (MA, PhD)

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Campus News Briefs: Fall 2023

Accreditation for CU Art Museum

New Robotics Degrees

In Couples, Opposites Don’t Attract

Heard Around Campus

Old Main Beehives

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Campus News Briefs — Spring 2018

Varsity Lake

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No Piano? No Problem

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