Faculty
Assistant Professor Nicole Xu has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. The award provides some of the nation’s most promising early career scientists and engineers flexible funding to test novel ideas and lead research that drives real-world impact.
The project, like something straight out of a health sci-fi movie, combines RNA-based gene therapy with tiny microrobots for drug transport to help treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
The Biomedical Engineering Program (BME) at CU ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß is welcoming three new faculty members this fall semester. From responsive biomaterials and pedagogical research to quantum imaging, these talented scientists and engineers bring a wealth of knowledge and passion to our teaching and research missions.
CU ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß postdoc Catherine Saladrigas is helping bring high-resolution imaging into miniature microscopes for neuroscience research. Collaborators on this project include Juliet Gopinath, BME faculty member.
CU ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß engineer Nicole Xu, an assistant professor with BME, first became fascinated with moon jellies more than a decade ago because of their extraordinary swimming abilities. Today, Xu has developed a way to harness their efficiency and ease at moving through the water in ways that could make some types of aquatic research much easier.
A CU ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß research team that included BME faculty members Juliet Gopinath and Shu-Wei Huang have developed a new bioimaging device that can operate with significantly lower power and in an entirely non-mechanical way. It could one day improve detecting eye and even heart conditions.
A gecko-inspired technology developed by the Shields Lab, in collaboration with doctors at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, uses a specially designed material that adheres to tumors inside the body and steadily releases chemotherapy drugs over several days—potentially allowing for fewer but longer-lasting therapies.
Nearly 80% of all stroke survivors experience walking issues and turn to ankle braces for increased support, but ankle braces are still very limited and many stroke survivors report no improvements when using them. Assistant Professor Cara Welker is leading a new, collaborative research project that aims to transform the way these assistive devices are designed.
Researchers in the Shields lab, including a BME undergraduate researcher at the ¶¶Òõ´«Ã½ÔÚÏß have created a new way to build and control tiny particles that can move and work like microscopic robots, offering a powerful tool with applications in biomedical and environmental research.
With funding designed to foster groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research projects for the potential for high impact, Drs. Carson Bruns (BME, ATLAS) and Grace Leslie (ATLAS) are working to develop the seamless skin integration of brain/body computer interfaces.