Faculty

Toward safer self-driving cars

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:57:17 +0000

Toward safer self-driving cars Jeff Zehnder Mon, 04/20/2026 - 09:57

Jeff Zehnder

Majid Zamani is designing safer self-driving car technology with math.

An associate professor of computer science at the ��ý��, Zamani is working on a European Research Council (ERC) proof-of-concept project that uses mathematical models to guide autonomous vehicles, rather than relying on testing to capture every possible crash scenario.

“Existing autonomy software are not formally proven to work all the time,” Zamani said. “Waymo taxis carry sensor suites worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and are marketed as self-driving, yet they do not always operate autonomously. At times, they become stuck and require remote operator intervention, a limitation that can undermine public trust in the system.”

The issue is edge cases. Existing autonomous driving software incorporates results from millions of miles of travel, but cars still encounter new situations regularly. While humans easily adapt to unforeseen road conditions, machines do not.

When those incidents arise, automakers update their software to address the new scenario, each time adding more lines of codes. Some vehicles now exceed 100 million lines of computer codes, Zamani said.

“One might say that 98 percent of the challenge of autonomy has been solved, leaving only 2 percent unresolved. But that remaining 2 percent is still enormous. When measured against the millions of miles driven each day, even a small fraction of failure cases translates into a significant real-world problem,” Zamani said.

What if there was a better way?

Utilizing an ERC grant awarded through his visiting-professorship at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany, Zamani wants self-driving cars to rely on concrete physics and mathematical formulas rather than endless testing of scenarios.

“These are Newton’s laws. We understand the relationship between velocity and acceleration, and we can calculate how long it will take a car to stop once it detects an obstacle. The mathematics is clean, and if we succeed, we can certify the system’s effectiveness,” he said.

Zamani and his team are focused specifically on lane changes and have made significant progress. Through the grant, they plan to soon test their work on an embedded NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin platform using MORAI, a high-fidelity driving simulator that mimics real-world conditions.

“We have proven that our software is formally correct. Now we need to demonstrate it in practice,” he said.

Designing self-driving cars around mathematics and logic may seem like the obvious approach, but it requires substantial computation, which is one reason current systems do not fully rely on it.

“Imagine a busy intersection in a large city, with bicycles, pedestrians, traffic signals, other vehicles, and road conditions that shift with the weather. A mathematically grounded system must decide in real time how to respond, but the sheer number of interacting variables makes the problem extraordinarily complex, even though many of those interactions are ultimately governed by physics,” he said.

The team is developing methods to make its physics- and mathematics-based approaches more scalable. That includes both refining its algorithms and exploring neural networks and other machine learning techniques.

“Sometimes, a very small change in the model architecture can lead to an algorithm that scales much more effectively,” he said. “It is challenging, but we have made meaningful progress. Implementing the MORAI high-fidelity simulator is an important step toward showing that what we promise is possible and demonstrating provable safety in complex autonomous driving scenarios.”

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ME outreach program brings big engineering dreams to small rural towns

Alexander Servantez — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:56:29 +0000

ME outreach program brings big engineering dreams to small rural towns Alexander Servantez Wed, 04/01/2026 - 15:56

Associate Research Professor Daniel Knight and Professor Michael Hannigan are leading an outreach program that connects CU ��ý�� 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.

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How CU ��ý�� built a biomedical engineering powerhouse

Alexander Servantez — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:01:58 +0000

How CU ��ý�� built a biomedical engineering powerhouse Alexander Servantez Wed, 03/25/2026 - 15:01

When the first biomedical engineering class graduated from CU ��ý�� in 2023, about a dozen students walked across the stage. Today, that once-small start has evolved into a powerful engine for biomedical innovation and education. But how does a program go from modest beginnings to powerhouse in such a short time?

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Why do we get a skip in our step when we’re happy? Thank dopamine

Alexander Servantez — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:21:34 +0000

Why do we get a skip in our step when we’re happy? Thank dopamine Alexander Servantez Fri, 02/27/2026 - 13:21

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.

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Global collaboration to limit air pollution flowing across borders could save millions of lives

Alexander Servantez — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:04:48 +0000

Global collaboration to limit air pollution flowing across borders could save millions of lives Alexander Servantez Fri, 02/13/2026 - 11:04

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.

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Donated blood has a shelf life. A new test tracks how it's aging

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:20:27 +0000

Donated blood has a shelf life. A new test tracks how it's aging Alexander Jame… Wed, 01/21/2026 - 10:20

Associate Professor Xiaoyun Ding and medical collaborators at CU 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.

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ECEE welcomes new faculty for spring 2026

Charles Ferrer — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:51:14 +0000

ECEE welcomes new faculty for spring 2026 Charles Ferrer Wed, 01/07/2026 - 08:51

ECEE at CU ��ý�� is welcoming three new faculty members including Assistant Professor Logan Horowitz and and Assistant Professor Gonzalo Constante Flores. Additionally, award-winning physicist Matt Eichenfield, the inaugural Karl Gustafson Endowed Chair of Quantum Engineering, joined this semester.

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Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread

Alexander James Servantez — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:35:37 +0000

Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread Alexander Jame… Fri, 12/05/2025 - 11:35

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.

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Brewing engineers: Inside CU ��ý��’s new food engineering program

Alexander James Servantez — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 22:25:43 +0000

Brewing engineers: Inside CU ��ý��’s new food engineering program Alexander Jame… Wed, 12/03/2025 - 15:25

Faculty member Carmen Pacheco is the architect behind the Food Engineering Graduate Certificate, one of CU ��ý��'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.

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A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time

Alexander James Servantez — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:40:29 +0000

A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time Alexander Jame… Thu, 11/20/2025 - 14:40

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.

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Faculty

Toward safer self-driving cars

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ME outreach program brings big engineering dreams to small rural towns

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How CU ������ý���� built a biomedical engineering powerhouse

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Why do we get a skip in our step when we’re happy? Thank dopamine

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Global collaboration to limit air pollution flowing across borders could save millions of lives

Off

Donated blood has a shelf life. A new test tracks how it's aging

Off

ECEE welcomes new faculty for spring 2026

Off

Wind tunnel research could help predict how wildfires spread

Off

Brewing engineers: Inside CU ������ý����’s new food engineering program

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A window underground: New sensors measure emissions from soil in real time

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How CU ��ý�� built a biomedical engineering powerhouse

Brewing engineers: Inside CU ��ý��’s new food engineering program