ctd

��ɫ��Ƶ further solidifies ranking as top 20 graduate engineering program

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:03:22 +0000

��ɫ��Ƶ further solidifies ranking as top 20 graduate engineering program Michael Kwolek Wed, 04/16/2025 - 14:03

��ɫ��Ƶ ranks number 11 among public university peers for its engineering graduate programs according to U.S. News and World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings for 2025-26.

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ATLAS students learn design skills through the lens of the apocalypse

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 16:53:27 +0000

ATLAS students learn design skills through the lens of the apocalypse Michael Kwolek Fri, 04/11/2025 - 10:53

Michael Kwolek

With the popularity of post-apocalyptic narratives like “Fallout” and “The Last of Us” along with ongoing coverage around global climate turmoil, we are culturally primed to ponder our place in the world—and the skills we could bring to an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise.)

At the ATLAS Institute, we approach challenges as engineers and designers, and one class in particular aims to impart practical skills on students with an eye toward becoming more capable in such times of crisis.

Assistant teaching professor and BTU Lab director Zack Weaver’s new course, Hacking the Apocalypse, teaches undergraduate and graduate students how to apply design thinking to address basic survival needs. This semester’s focus is water: students are tasked to research, design and build novel systems for collecting, storing, treating and distributing water using fabrication techniques and Arduino-based electronics.

Weaver elaborates on the origin of the idea: “I was looking at geopolitics, economics and the way I applied the technologies that we teach in the [Creative Technology and Design] program with a lot of pragmatism and practicality. In my own classes, when I'm assigning prompts, it's often whimsical—it's meant to spark play and creativity.”

Water is a surprisingly complex topic, touching on geology, chemistry and climatology as well as law, ethics and politics—before you even consider the engineering, technology and design challenges associated with harnessing and using it. In fact, the class has attracted students from several different majors.

In developing the course curriculum, Weaver says he “found some really interesting reading on water policy and all kinds of design/build projects for collecting and storing water—things like rain barrels and even dew collection in the middle of the desert, which sounds impossible.“

Watershed moments

Students took a field trip west of campus to the Mountain Research Station, hosted by Jen Morse (MRS climate, water, snow technician), to learn about Boulder’s watershed and the complex monitoring systems they have in place to measure snowpack, humidity, flow rate, water quality and other data.

Elizabeth Saunders, Creative Technology and Design master’s student (social impact track), shares her impressions: “The experience was eye-opening, especially learning about the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Program and the Mountain Climate Program, which has been collecting climate data from the Colorado Front Range since 1952. One of the most fascinating facts I learned was that the air samples collected from the station serve as the global standard for air quality research. This underscores just how pristine and significant this environment is for understanding atmospheric changes on a worldwide scale.”

Students were surprised to discover the facility uses similar sensor technology to what they receive in the physical computing kits they buy for class. Weaver notes, “The Arduino platform makes things inexpensive and friendlier than a lot of commercial electronics,” though at the cost of reduced durability and accuracy.

The increasing accessibility of such technologies undergirds much of the popularity in DIY culture and maker spaces like the BTU Lab, and is indicative of the can-do spirit that defines the ATLAS community.

photo credit: Graham Stewart

Wave of innovation

Students also visited the Innovation Center of St. Vrain Valley Schools (SVVSD). Weaver notes, “The Innovation Center might be one of the best technology STEM programs in a public school in the world.” They offer flight simulator training, a full aeronautics program, entrepreneurship, competitive robotics, and more.

The Innovation Center even works with Boulder County Parks and Recreation to survey watersheds and test water quality and conserve the Northern Leopard Frog in Colorado’s Front Range.

SVVSD biosciences teacher, Jayme Sneider, led ATLAS students in experiencing what water quality testing looks like at scale, demonstrating what they test for and how. The class then focused on replicating that work on the DIY level to develop open source alternatives to expensive commercial technologies.

A cascade of expert insight

The class recently hosted Mark Giordano, Professor and Vice Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Giordano previously held multiple roles at the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute, winner of the Stockholm Water Prize—the "Nobel Prize for Water." He shared insights on water, emphasizing the importance of understanding its physical and social aspects to address global challenges.

Giordano detailed how climate change has two main impacts on weather events: intensity and frequency. “We expect that when it rains in the future it will rain even more, and then there will be longer periods between when it rains again.”

Water scarcity is a growing concern that manifests in many ways. Contrary to common assumption, Giordano noted that as much as 90% of our water goes to agriculture, not drinking water or sanitation. We may also believe water scarcity is an issue exclusive to arid places, but we have seen in recent years how inadequately-maintained infrastructure in American cities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, can create clean water scarcity even in places with abundant supply.

Water is a political issue, with implications around where it originates, where it flows and who claims ownership over it. Giordano elaborated, “You need clean water to live. You need it every day. It's not particularly expensive in most parts of the world to provide the minimal amount of water it takes to live a healthy life. Investment in basic water has really high returns, and yet over and over and over, we see it not being not being provided.”

A wellspring of water projects

Students are tasked with developing a water-related project over the course of the semester leveraging the tools and techniques they learn in class. They focus on one or more key areas: treatment, distribution, storage, power and collection.

ATLAS undergraduate student Rystan Qualls explains, “I’m working in the distribution group. We’re making a water distribution system that will allow a community in the apocalypse to send water to various sites like a garden or to the showers.”

Saunders details her project: “This semester, I am researching plant resilience and decay in extreme environments, with a particular interest in graywater and saltwater agriculture. My project seeks to answer the question: ‘How quickly can I kill plants so the future Utopian people don’t?’ While the phrasing is unconventional, the research focuses on identifying environmental stressors that lead to rapid plant degradation, with the broader goal of developing strategies for sustainable plant growth in challenging conditions.”

Other student projects range from a storm runoff irrigation system to a 3D-printed moisture evaporator to a smart rain barrel and even a 3D-printed steam engine prototype.

Flow of information

Hacking the Apocalypse - Fall 2025

Hacking the Apocalypse will run again in Fall 2025 with a focus on food.

Students will research, re-create and design novel systems for growing containers, soil mediums, soil and water quality monitoring, and indoor/outdoor urban agriculture systems utilizing fabrication techniques and electronic input/output systems based on the Arduino platform.

ATLS 4519/5519 Hacking the Apocalypse: Food (3 credit hours)

Learn More

Weaver describes his ambition for Hacking the Apocalypse: “Each class is supposed to end in documentation of the projects to a degree that you can hand it off to lay people who don't have to be particularly highly trained to understand it. This is ‘Book One.’”

The goal is to follow this semester with versions of the class focusing on other basic needs—food, clothing and shelter—before returning to water. “Then that water class will inherit everything the first class did, and their expectation will be a different set of design challenges where they have to incrementally improve or iterate on what people did before.”

As for takeaways from this semester, Saunders says, “My research in Hacking the Apocalypse builds upon my background in water policy and sustainability, as well as my ongoing work with FLOW [a legal organization dedicated to protecting the Great Lakes Basin.] My work in this class has given me hands-on experience in water purification, sustainable irrigation and the challenges of resource-limited environments.”

As the semester concludes, Weaver observes, “I'm rediscovering the whole world. I've engaged with it becauseI'm outdoors all the time. But I never understood the planet from a systems perspective, and this is just blowing my mind.”

ATLAS students can now add “apocalypse preparedness” to the engineering, design and creative skills they develop here. Though Weaver does clarify, “It's not an apocalypse class. It's about if you do certain things, you avoid the apocalypse. I'm trying to tell the students it's a utopian class.”

photo credits (unless otherwise noted): Ashley Stafford

At the ATLAS Institute, students tackle real-world challenges through design. Hacking the Apocalypse, a course led by Zack Weaver, teaches undergraduate and graduate students to apply design principles to address a surprising topic: apocalypse preparedness. Using Arduino-based electronics and fabrication techniques, students develop novel water collection and treatment systems.

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Creative Technology and Design master’s students collaborate with City of Denver to enhance civic engagement

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:28:39 +0000

Creative Technology and Design master’s students collaborate with City of Denver to enhance civic engagement Michael Kwolek Mon, 12/16/2024 - 10:28

Michael Kwolek

Building civic pride and engagement are essential for cities to thrive. This semester, teams of Creative Technology and Design (CTD) master’s students developed proposals in coordination with the City of Denver aiming to do just that.

The CTD program engages students in pursuing practical solutions to real-world design challenges by blending behavioral insights, technology, branding and marketing, and physical objects. This comprehensive approach can yield more meaningful outcomes than one-off fixes are often able to achieve.

Indeed, while CTD students pursue unique paths focusing on creative industries, social impact or performance technology, they also work on cross-disciplinary team projects that push their boundaries and prepare them to succeed in careers across many industries.

Many methods to design
This year’s cohort had the opportunity to collaborate with the City of Denver to propose solutions for two initiatives as part of Design Methods, a foundational class all CTD students complete.

By nature, good design has no one right approach. Design Methods, taught by Derek Friday and John Breznicky, familiarizes students with many different ways to address design prompts, including the concepts of deliberate observation (e.g. cultural probes, ethnography); “problem finding” and “design thinking”; “wicked problems”; iterative design; and alternative generation and assessment.

The class culminates with month-long final projects in which teams collaborate on proposals to address real-life design needs. This semester, four teams of CTD master’s students worked on projects in partnership with the Denver Mayor’s Office to develop solutions to support two remarkable initiatives.

They delivered final presentations in ATLAS’s B2 Black Box Experimental Studio. In attendance were representatives from the City of Denver, including First Lady Johnston, and Tran Nguyen-Wills, Deputy Outreach Director, along with Josh Wills, Creative Director & Partner at Consume & Create. Each team’s members brought a variety of skills, talents and interests to their groups and collectively they proposed a series of multidisciplinary solutions.

Friday noted, “[The teams] were able to generate solid ideas based on the brief and using the process that we taught them during the semester with the caveat that [the process of] developing your own method for problem solving continues to evolve throughout your entire creative process… They were pros and we were really, really proud.”

Here is some of what the teams presented:

Little Saigon / Saigon Azteca

Team 1 - Abena Gyimah, Julia McKeag, Harsita Rajendren, Shreya Pradeep Sekar, Justin Chan, Lavan Kumar Baskaran, Mythiresh Gajendra Babu
Team 2 - Sylvia Robles, Colin Egge, Jax Whitham, Jacy Ashford, Ayesha Rawal, Noah Reardon
Team 3 - Scott Ehrlich, Eli Skelly, Clayton Hester, Shraddha Shinde, Nick Barcalow, Arjun Ramachandran

Little Saigon Denver is a vibrant cultural enclave known for its rich Vietnamese heritage and community dating back over 40 years, as well as a growing Hispanic community. The City of Denver has identified opportunities to enhance cultural preservation, spark economic development and engage the community in this district.

City designers presented this strategy: “Exploring the intersectionality of the AAPI and Latino/Indigenous cultures, including music, dance, and ceremonies, will result in a compelling brand that amplifies the rich heritage of the communities that call this Cultural District home.”

Three teams proposed comprehensive design solutions incorporating branding (logos, color palettes, typography) and digital solutions (web and mobile integrations) along with physical interventions ranging from modular planters to signage to walkability improvements.

In lieu of an ornamental archway over a busy thoroughfare to mark the neighborhood, one team proposed a pedestrian bridge incorporating cultural design elements, with the aim to improve accessibility and safety. This combination of aesthetic enhancement and cultural relevance combined with practical, human-scale problem-solving powered by technology exemplifies what makes the CTD program special.

Josh Will, who developed the project briefs the students worked from, noted in his feedback to one team, “Given the community’s curb appeal—or lack thereof—it’s a very vibrant district and community, and you have done a great job of taking everything that exists on the inside. When you go into a restaurant or any of the businesses, the community is very welcoming and energetic, uplifting, bright and vibrant. And throughout your entire visualization and also the physical planters and archways—you’ve taken what exists inside and brought it outside.”

Give5 Mile High
Team: Aaron Neyer, Elizabeth Saunders, Pavan Dayal, Shawn Duncan Jr., Stephanie Babb

Give5 Mile High is a citywide volunteer initiative led by First Lady of Denver Courtney Johnston and the Mayor’s Office outreach team. This program empowers Denverites to come together to strengthen the community through collective service.

The City of Denver’s design team identified two key needs to ensure Give5 Mile High success:

A technology solution to support and connect volunteers, organizations and local businesses.
A marketing campaign to raise awareness among key stakeholders.

The student team presented a detailed mock-up of a mobile app designed to simplify connectivity and improve participation in Give5 Mile High. They also built a comprehensive brand and marketing strategy incorporating social media and local influencers to boost program awareness and engagement.

In her feedback to the team, First Lady Johnston said, “This is exactly what we were hoping [the team] would achieve. It made sense to think this should be a very user-friendly app that invites people to participate, and you all did it. This is incredible. I love that there are lots of things we didn’t even think about that you can do.”

Mayor Johnston was able to view the presentation remotely and added, “What I love about it is that it fundamentally understands and accelerates the two major principles of the project. One—how to make it so much easier for folks to sign up—the ease of sign-up is so powerful that the app makes possible. The second is the idea that the service is an act of community building. It is a way in which you serve with other people that binds you together, and this seamlessly connects you to other people.”

Additional project presentations
Aside from the work with the City of Denver, two more student teams presented projects combining engineering, design, data and art. Take a look:

Climate Threads
Team: Sara Runkel, Robyn Marowitz, Caitlin Littlejohn, Kate Rooney

Climate Threads aims to raise awareness about air quality and its impact on public health. Through data visualization and textile design, invisible disparities in air quality become visible and tangible. Explore the data on the project website.

Confluence
Team: Abe Homer, Shalimar Alvarado Cruz Hebbeler, Abhinav Mehrotra, Alexander LaFontaine, Cambria Klinger

Confluence is an interactive, immersive experience that explores the artistry of water. The dynamic fluid simulation can be interacted with by tilting a cairn on all four axes. Laser-cut and built using chipboard, the cairn represents the confluence of both the digital and physical world. The installation was completed with the use of projection, spatial audio, and soft ambient lighting for a peaceful and immersive experience. Learn more on the project website.

Designing through radical creativity and inclusion
Gordon Müller-Seitz, guest researcher and Chair of Strategy, Innovation and Cooperation at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) in Germany, provided students support and guidance throughout the semester. In addressing attendees, he summed up the ATLAS program by saying, “I really appreciated that you live up to your motto that you strive for radical creativity. But it is not only radical creativity—it is also this radical inclusiveness.”

Learn more about the Creative Technology and Design master’s program

Students proposed design solutions to bolster community interaction and pride in support of the Little Saigon neighborhood and local volunteering initiative, Give5 Mile High.

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Joel Swanson's artwork recognized in Denver and Chicago

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:28:48 +0000

Joel Swanson's artwork recognized in Denver and Chicago Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/23/2019 - 11:28

A prolific artist who exhibits nationally and internationally, Joel Swanson is having a successful spring. On April 15, his work, "Binary Pronouns," began streaming on 150 Mediastream, a 150-foot long by 22-foot high array of 89 LED blades located in the lobby of the iconic 150 North Riverside building in Chicago. Earlier in the month, he joined a distinguished group of artists in the Octopus Initiative, an innovative art-loaning program linked to Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art that allows members to live with a work of contemporary art in their homes for several months before returning it to the collective.

Swanson explains, "Since the Museum of Contemporary Art isn't a collecting museum and can’t technically buy artwork to support local artists, the Octopus Initiative is a way to support local artists and get their work into the hands of the public. They commission local artists to produce 25 works that then go on loan to the public through a free raffle system."

The brainchild of Adam Lerner, exiting director of the MCA, the Octopus Initiative maintains a rigorous evaluative process, beginning with a nomination from a leading member of the Denver arts community, followed by a review by Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art’s curatorial team who evaluates a nominee's suitability for the program, conducting studio visits and reviewing a wide body of work.

Swanson, who earned a BFA in digital art from ��ɫ��Ƶ, has exhibited his work extensively, including the Venice Biennale 2017; Republic Plaza in Denver (solo exhibition through June 12); the Broad Museum in Lansing, Michigan; The Power Plant in Toronto; the North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art; and Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where he had a solo exhibition.

Joel Swanson has been on the go this spring, with exhibitions opening in Denver and Chicago, and his joining the Octopus Initiative, an innovative program sponsored by Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art.

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Spring graduation numbers multiply eightfold as BS CTD popularity soars

Anonymous — Wed, 09 May 2018 21:44:26 +0000

Spring graduation numbers multiply eightfold as BS CTD popularity soars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/09/2018 - 15:44

The third class to graduate with the ATLAS Institute's Bachelor of Science degree in Technology, Arts & Media (TAM) includes 24 students, eight times the number of students to walk the aisle just one year ago when the institute’s first undergraduate degrees were conferred.

The spring 2018 group graduates just three years after the interdisciplinary major in the College of Engineering and Applied Science was established. And looking ahead, projections are for nearly 60 additional students to graduate with TAM degrees during the 2018-19 school year, making it the fastest growing undergraduate degree programs at ��ɫ��Ƶ.

The TAM bachelor's degree grew out of the ATLAS Institute’s popular TAM minor and certificate programs, which were launched in the late 1990s and now enroll around 1,000 students, more than 50 percent of whom are women. While students can combine the TAM minor or certificate with any undergraduate degree at ��ɫ��Ƶ, students must be admitted to the College of Engineering and Applied Science to pursue the TAM major.

Emma Wu displays a website she designed and coded.

Graduating senior Emma Wu said she originally enrolled as a TAM minor, but quickly switched to a TAM major after taking her first class.

“TAM is my favorite,” says Wu, who receives three degrees from three different colleges on May 10, along with a minor in business. “TAM truly allowed me to explore myself at the edge of technology and creativity. The instructors are so supportive of this community, and TAM is what I connect to the most because of the support.”

After graduation, Wu plans to look for a position as a user interface/user experience (UI/UX) designer in New York City.

“If I hadn’t taken David Schaal's Web class, I wouldn't know how much I love web development and UI/UX design,” continues Wu, who has two jobs: a web and poster designer for ��ɫ��Ƶ’s Student Academic Success Center, and a digital designer for a private firm. “I worked on one of his projects till three in the morning and did not realize the time.”

Graduate degrees
ATLAS also confers nine Master of Science degrees this May, including four from the Creative Technologies + Design (CTD) track and five from Information & Communication Technology for Development.

Angel Lam, a graduating CTD student advised by industry mentor Andy Stone, created “Yokaido” for her senior design project. A platform to leverage the collaborative energy of fandom, Yokaido provides a new way to share Japanese anime with the world.

“From a very young age, anime has been my source of courage, passion and strength, and I wanted to share that with the world,” Lam says. “I chose the CTD program because I wanted to start an anime company, and the program allowed me the flexibility to do so. I came to ATLAS to get the skills to turn it into a real company.”

Ian Smith focused on 3D design for his master's degree.

Ian Smith, another graduating CTD student, arrived at ATLAS with a film background and wanted to learn technical skills that would “take him to the next level.” Smith was advised by ATLAS Senior Instructor Aileen Pierce for his thesis project, "Protoplanet," an open-source platform for mixed-reality prototyping.

“I am leaving CTD with a whole range of computer science abilities I didn’t have before,” he says. “I never could have imagined two years ago that I would be programming network architecture. That’s been an interesting shift for me. It’s not something I was comfortable with, but now I can say, 'I know how to do it, and I know how to do it well.' ”

As the door closes on another academic year, ATLAS is already busy laying plans for the fall and beyond, with new labs opening and existing academic programs expanding. “The next few years are going to be transformational for ATLAS,” says ATLAS Director Mark Gross. “This year has seen a lot of change, but it’s only the beginning.”

The third class to graduate with the ATLAS Institute's Bachelor of Science degree in Technology, Arts & Media includes 24 students, eight times the number of students to walk the aisle just one year ago.

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Q & A with Creative Industries graduate Danny Rankin

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:01:58 +0000

Q & A with Creative Industries graduate Danny Rankin Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/01/2018 - 12:01

Instructor Danny Rankin discusses his research, classes and more in an interview with CU Connections.

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Game design class births survival quest featuring magic mushrooms, rabid raccoons and cannibalism

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 17:11:03 +0000

Game design class births survival quest featuring magic mushrooms, rabid raccoons and cannibalism Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/27/2017 - 10:11

ATLAS graduate student Danny Rankin, who graduated in May from the CTD track of the ATLAS master's program, launches a survivalist board game that exceeds promoter's Kickstarter goal by more than 2,000 percent.

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