Science & Technology

Antarctica is home to microbes found nowhere else on Earth

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:23:08 +0000

Antarctica is home to microbes found nowhere else on Earth Megan M Rogers Thu, 09/03/2026 - 10:23

New CIRES research has found that specific microbes in Antarctica's soils are endemic—located on the continent and nowhere else on Earth.

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$37.5M NSF award aims to define new quantum frontiers, take technology from lab to field

Scott Franz — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

$37.5M NSF award aims to define new quantum frontiers, take technology from lab to field Scott Franz Tue, 08/25/2026 - 08:00

JILA research associate Dr. Kenneth Wilson monitors a glow discharge for producing molecular ions in an infrared frequency comb spectrometer in the Changala laboratory. (Credit: Changala Laboratory/JILA/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

Scott Franz

A scientific quest to build more accurate clocks, faster computers and new sensors to detect the faintest signs of disease and disaster is getting a $37.5 million financial boost.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, through its Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes, is investing in the next phase of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and its partners’ work to advance quantum science research and engineering.

“We’re really world leaders in terms of building the best quantum technology tools and applying them to meaningful, impactful scientific problems,” said physicist Jun Ye, a JILA fellow leading the quantum research center based at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “There are still a lot of unknowns in the universe, and only by building some of the most sensitive instruments can we get some clue of what is behind them.”

Those instruments include the next generation of atomic clocks, the world’s most stable laser and sensitive biomedical sensors that can detect disease more quickly in human breath.

A VUV frequency comb probes a nuclear clock chamber. (Credit: Ye Lab / JILA/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

Ye leads the NSF Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (NSF Q-SEnSE) center. It launched at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 2020 with a $25 million award from NSF and has grown to include 39 researchers from 16 institutions.

“This is another example of the innovative, impactful research happening at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, building on more than 60 years of JILA, NIST and quantum science breakthroughs,” said �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder chancellor Justin Schwartz. "This funding will accelerate the development of transformative technologies, support the growth of Colorado’s thriving quantum ecosystem and further strengthen Boulder’s position as a global hub for quantum innovation in which �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder continues to play a key role.”

Quantum research led by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is already helping develop tools that can measure molecules, atoms and other tiny things much more precisely than conventional instruments.

The center’s research has been cited more than 7,300 times in 96 countries over just the past five years.

“It brings researchers together from different disciplines and areas,” NSF Q-SEnSE executive director Inese Berzina-Pitcher said of the center. “It’s also providing opportunities for graduate students to be involved in very relevant and exciting new research.”

A portion of the award will fund workforce development and training programs.

More than 30 quantum companies are headquartered along Colorado’s northern Front Range. As recently as Friday, Ye was fielding calls from an atomic computer company to help recruit and hire students.

Jun Ye

Greg Rieker, a professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and a co-principal investigator of NSF Q-SEnSE, compared the benefits of the ongoing quantum research revolution to the space race.

“A remarkable number of modern technologies have roots in the space race,” he said. “We’re now racing toward quantum computing, and generating spin-off technologies along the way that benefit society in surprising ways.”

One example is optical frequency comb technology. The same lasers used in optical clocks and quantum networks can also detect the smallest molecules in the air.

“You can use them to look at air quality or human breath to do a medical diagnosis. Those are just two examples of applications enabled by the NSF Q-SEnSE portfolio,” Rieker said.

Physics professor and JILA Fellow Cindy Regal said the research will also help scientists in the quest to make scientific discoveries.

“Quantum instruments can see minute effects and our team has the fundamental physics expertise to interpret interesting fingerprints in our measurements,” she said.

The �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder-led NSF Q-SEnSE is one of eight NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes that will collectively receive more than $290 million to advance foundational quantum research.

"For more than four decades, NSF has been laying the foundational groundwork of research and discovery that is powering today's modern quantum computing, sensing and communication," said Brian Stone, who is performing the duties of NSF director. "It's time for focused activities to leverage that base of knowledge to drive us even farther forward to the benefit of all Americans. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are a next step for us in understanding the quantum world we live in."

Funding from the National Science Foundation will expand the quantum workforce and advance research projects including more accurate atomic clocks and sensors for early detection of disease.

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Could engineered vibrations make passenger jets more fuel-efficient?

Megan M Rogers — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:49:27 +0000

Could engineered vibrations make passenger jets more fuel-efficient? Megan M Rogers Mon, 08/24/2026 - 11:49

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researchers are exploring how microscopic vibrations engineered beneath an aircraft's surface could delay turbulence and improve fuel efficiency in passenger jets.

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What happens inside a wildfire? A mechanical engineering grad student investigates

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:27:56 +0000

What happens inside a wildfire? A mechanical engineering grad student investigates Megan M Rogers Thu, 08/20/2026 - 08:27

Doctoral student Jas Shahanand is developing ways to study the hidden chemical reactions inside wildfires, laying the groundwork for more accurate emissions models, improved climate predictions and cleaner fuels.

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Scholar in residence aims to further synthetic biology engineering research

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:07:56 +0000

Scholar in residence aims to further synthetic biology engineering research Megan M Rogers Tue, 08/18/2026 - 13:07

Professor Chris Myers is developing data standards that could make synthetic biology more predictable and help AI become a more effective research tool.

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What can one tiny scanner detect in mammoth sunflowers?

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:47:36 +0000

What can one tiny scanner detect in mammoth sunflowers? Megan M Rogers Tue, 08/18/2026 - 12:47

Researchers in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms.

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Fast but error-prone: AI assists in solving a decades-old fluid mechanics problem

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:40:08 +0000

Fast but error-prone: AI assists in solving a decades-old fluid mechanics problem Megan M Rogers Tue, 08/11/2026 - 10:40

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder engineer Ankur Gupta discusses how AI, paired with rigorous human verification, helped answer a decades-old fluid mechanics question in just five weeks.

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Decoding smell: Study reveals how odor signals shapeshift in the wind

Scott Franz — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Decoding smell: Study reveals how odor signals shapeshift in the wind Scott Franz Mon, 08/10/2026 - 16:00

A plot of experimentally measured data for a laboratory-generated odor plume (blue/purple) carried by a moving wind field (rainbow arrows), captured at a single instant in time. Such measured datasets will allow researchers to analyze odor signal transformations in real-world conditions.

Scott Franz

Humans trust dogs to help find missing people and bees to pollinate their crops. But scientists still don't fully understand how these animals use their extraordinary sense of smell to locate the source of an odor.

New �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder research reveals that the wind itself plays an important role. As an odor travels, the turbulent air changes the timing of odor whiffs in systematic ways, creating patterns that may be useful to animals navigating toward an odor source.

The findings are part of the international Odor2Action research network, which brings together an interdisciplinary team of scientists from 16 institutions to tackle a core problem in neuroscience: how animals use odors to guide natural behaviors.

Elle Stark, lead author of the study into how wind and air affect odor plumes, poses in front of a computer screen displaying some of the data from the research in a lab at the �鶹��Ѱ��. (Credit: Scott Franz)

“By understanding how air and wind transform odor signals, we can better understand animal navigation behavior and eventually mimic it, in applications from search and rescue to locating hazardous chemical leaks,” said Elle Stark, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and lead author of the study.

Published on the cover of the journal PRX Life, the study bridges physics with neuroscience through a collaboration between �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder engineers and Professor Jonathan Victor, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medicine.

For the study, the team categorized odor signals in terms of frequencies they contain. Kind of like how people can identify songs by recognizing specific frequencies, Stark said, the “frequency content” of an odor signal may help animals to find the source.

The study identified three fundamental ways turbulence transforms odor signals as air carries an odor away from its source. The turbulence filters out some frequencies, spreads others around, and generates new ones.

Imagine, for example, a potent plume coming from a wild Bergamot flower. As odor leaves the flower with the hope of attracting a pollinator, Stark explains, turbulent eddies stretch this plume into filaments that fold, spread, rotate and mix.

When the plume finally reaches a bee, the odor signal is complex and dynamic. “There might be a burst of odor, a short whiff, and then empty air for a while, and animals somehow make sense of all of that, to be able to navigate to the source,” she said.

Scientists call this process “olfactory navigation”, and animals have been getting better at it through evolutionary adaptation for millions of years.

The research team hypothesizes that animals make use of the systematic changes in frequency that happen between the time that an odor leaves a flower and reaches a nose.

“These transformations are likely important ingredients in how animals interpret odor signals to determine distance and direction to the odor source,” said John Crimaldi, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, co-author of the study and lead principal investigator of the Odor2Action network.

The team also included Aaron True, an assistant research professor of environmental fluid mechanics.

Making the invisible visible

Odor plumes are invisible, making them hard to visualize and even harder to study. But what if you could see them?

Crimaldi’s group uses both computer simulations and laboratory experiments to do just that. By applying advanced techniques in experimental fluid mechanics–the branch of physics that studies how liquids and gases move–they have measured the intricate details of how air and odor move together within a plume.

In other work, the team generated real-world odor plumes in a wind tunnel, then shined lasers on them to make the invisible odor visible. When you watch a video of it, it resembles a column of smoke spiraling through the air after a candle wick is extinguished.

The technique allows them to not only visualize the flow and odor evolution but also to convert the images to quantitative datasets that help to shed light on the complex dynamics in these plumes.

In other work, the team generated real-world odor plumes in a wind tunnel, then shined lasers on them to make the invisible odor visible. (Courtesy/Elle Stark)

Sniffing the future

Stark and Crimaldi say understanding how turbulence transforms odor signals is only one step in the sensory process.

“Animals engage in what we call active sensing, which involves moving around through the plume, flicking their antenna, sniffing or other behaviors that modify the odor signal,” Stark said.

The signal is then modified again during neural processing.

“Future research can analyze how each step serves to transform the odor signal and then we can understand how animals use them to navigate.”

By understanding each stage of that process, researchers hope eventually to develop artificial systems that can do more than simply detect odors. Today's electronic noses can determine that a chemical is present, but they generally cannot determine where it originated.

"Our work suggests that by the time an odor reaches an animal, the airflow has already transformed the signal," Crimaldi said. "The next challenge is understanding how the nervous system takes advantage of that transformed information."

New research investigates the shifting patterns of odors as they travel through the air. The findings may help explain how animals navigate using smell and eventually inform development of odor-finding robots.

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What ancient eggshells can tell us about extinction

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 13:17:09 +0000

What ancient eggshells can tell us about extinction Megan M Rogers Tue, 08/04/2026 - 07:17

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Emeritus Gifford Miller contributed to a study that sheds new light on the extinction of one of Australia's oversized flightless birds—and could help scientists answer bigger questions about extinction.

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Building better batteries for a renewable future

Megan M Rogers — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 14:50:23 +0000

Building better batteries for a renewable future Megan M Rogers Mon, 07/27/2026 - 08:50

Affordable, reliable energy storage is one of the biggest challenges facing renewable energy—�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder engineering researchers are developing next-generation batteries to help solve it.

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Science & Technology

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