Faculty
The Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½Æƽâ°æÏÂÔØ is welcoming four new faculty members this fall semester. From renewable energy technologies and robotic optimization to engineering education and computing, these talented scientists and engineers bring a wealth of knowledge and passion to our teaching and research missions.
The Office of Outreach and Community Engagement (OCE) at ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½Æƽâ°æÏÂÔØ has awarded five Public and Community-Engaged Scholarships (PACES) to faculty and students from the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. These awards connect research, creative work, and teaching and learning activities for faculty, staff members and students across campus with partners from Colorado communities and beyond.
Chunmei Ban has received a Fulbright Global Scholar award to explore the future of energy storage through next-generation battery technologies. The award will support collaborations with researchers in Singapore, the United Kingdom and Germany, where Ban will study safer battery materials, investigate emerging non-lithium battery alternatives and strengthen global partnerships in battery research and education.
Blood clotting is one of the body’s oldest survival mechanisms, protecting humans from dangerous bleeding for millions of years. But when severe injuries strike, nature’s solution can sometimes fall short. Now, Associate Professor Rong Long and his team are helping test a new type of engineered blood clot that forms faster and is more durable than the ones found in nature. The new technique could one day transform how doctors treat traumatic injuries and manage life-threatening blood loss.
A tightly packed ball of office staples can be surprisingly strong. Try to pull it apart and the tangled metal resists like a solid object. But with the right movement or vibration, that same bundle can quickly fall back into loose pieces. Professor Francois Barthelat and his team are exploring how this uncanny combination of strength and flexibility could inspire a new class of materials built on interlocking particles.
Associate Research Professor Daniel Knight and Professor Michael Hannigan are leading an outreach program that connects ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½Æƽâ°æÏÂÔØ students with rural high schools to introduce hands-on engineering experiences in the classroom. The initiative, known as the Science and Engineering Inquiry Collaborative (SCENIC), serves 12 schools and nearly 700 high school students across rural Colorado each year, turning local questions about air and soil quality into real-world research projects.
The ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½Æƽâ°æÏÂÔØ Graduate School has announced that Assistant Professor Cara Welker has earned one of this year's Exceptional Graduate Faculty Mentor Awards. The award honors faculty members for their outstanding contributions either to mentoring individual graduate students, improving the overall climate of graduate education within their program, or improving the graduate program itself.
Professor Alaa Ahmed is leading a study that highlights the central role that dopamine, a brain chemical associated with reward, seems to play in making people move faster when they want something. The findings could one day help scientists understand and even diagnose a range of human medical conditions, including Parkinson’s disease and depression.
Avalanche deaths are rare inside the boundaries of ski resorts, but the risk rises in the backcountry. Thirty backcountry avalanche deaths were reported in the U.S. during the 2022-23 season, 16 the following year, and 22 in 2024-25. In this article published by The Conversation, Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend explains what happens in an avalanche and techniques for surviving one.
A first-of-its-kind study, led by Professor Daven Henze and collaborators at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, assesses how health benefits of aggressive climate policy travel across international borders. The researchers say that ambitious climate action to improve global air quality could save up to 1.32 million lives per year by 2040.