Mechanical Engineering
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.
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.
Chip Bollendonk graduated from ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder in 2017 with his BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering and a minor in leadership. He works at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder, where he designs and builds spaceflight instruments to enable cutting-edge space, earth and climate science.
Kevin Martin is the founder & CTO of unspun, a certified B Corp transforming apparel manufacturing through automated and localized production. Martin graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering.
Anthony Pigliacampo (MechEngr'02) is a ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder alumnus and entrepreneur whose career spans product design, consumer brands, and advanced manufacturing. He co‑founded Modern Market Eatery, helped grow it into a national restaurant platform, and now serves as CEO of Joseph Machine Company.
Associate Professor Xiaoyun Ding and medical collaborators at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Anschutz have created a new chip device to help give blood centers and hospitals a reliable way to monitor the quality of red blood cells after they sit for weeks in storage.
PhD student Laura Shannon, alongside Professors Greg Rieker and Peter Hamlington of the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering are setting fires inside wind tunnels to gain a better understanding of how fire spreads across different terrain. The team says their findings could help keep communities safer in a world where climate-driven wildfire is becoming more common—and more dangerous.
Faculty member Carmen Pacheco is the architect behind the Food Engineering Graduate Certificate, one of ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä Boulder's most innovative academic ventures. Launched in 2024, the program was designed to introduce engineering students to the science behind their favorite foods and career opportunities in the food industry, but it can also reinforce scientific concepts that students can apply to any engineering discipline.
Soil is comprised of an intricate network of bacteria and other microbes that humans depend on, but this complex environmental system is constantly shifting, making it difficult for scientists to measure. Associate Professor Gregory Whiting and his team of researchers are developing reliable, inexpensive and easy-to-deploy sensors that monitor soil in real time to help farmers optimize their use of fertilizers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money in the process.
Assistant Teaching Professor James Harper recently led a behavioral study analyzing toilet use in Cambodia. Their goal was to introduce a new, smart toilet design that can keep rural households safe and protect the environment. But while households reported that they liked the new system, a crucial piece was missing: using it correctly.