Education  October 1, 2015

Winners announced for 2015 Governor’s Awards for High-Impact Research

DENVER — Scientists and researchers at federal labs and universities in Colorado will be recognized for their groundbreaking work in atmospheric science, foundational technology, public health and sustainability.

Teams will be honored at the Seventh Annual Governor’s Awards for High-Impact Research that will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in Denver.

“These projects highlight the diversity and impact of the science and technology coming out of Colorado’s labs that make our state and the world a better place,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a prepared statement.

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Many of the teams honored are a combination of scientists, researchers and engineers from the 24 federal labs in Colorado, and in some cases, collaborate with the private sector.

This year’s categories and winners are:

Earth Systems and Space Sciences

Bruce Jakosky at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder and his team are being honored for their involvement in the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission, a spacecraft that is orbiting Mars to explore its upper atmosphere.

Foundational Science and Technology

A team of geomagnetic experts from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences — a partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder led by Manoj Nair and Arnaud Chulliat has created representations of Earth’s magnetic field that are used daily by millions of people for military, mobile phone and other navigation needs including Google and Apple; and edgy innovations that someday may better detect tsunamis and navigate more accurately through cities or under ice.

Public Health and Life Sciences

Stephen E. Russek and his team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder are being recognized for their work in biomagnetic imaging as it relates to standards for magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, instruments. The instruments use a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body. In many cases, an MRI gives different information about structures in the body than can be seen with an X-ray, ultrasound or computed tomography, or CT, scan. The team’s work is helping create more precise measurements in medical imaging.

Sustainability

A team of 17 scientists from NOAA, CIRES and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University led by Curtis Alexander of CIRES and Stan Benjamin of NOAA are being recognized for research on a high-resolution weather model that is being used by forecasters across the country. The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model is giving emergency managers, pilots and wind-farm operators a more accurate depiction of hazardous weather, including critical details in rapidly-changing and evolving weather events.

The awards event is hosted by CO-LABS, the Alliance for Sustainable Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.

To attend the event, register online at www.CO-LABS.org.

DENVER — Scientists and researchers at federal labs and universities in Colorado will be recognized for their groundbreaking work in atmospheric science, foundational technology, public health and sustainability.

Teams will be honored at the Seventh Annual Governor’s Awards for High-Impact Research that will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in Denver.

“These projects highlight the diversity and impact of the science and technology coming out of Colorado’s labs that make our state and the world a better place,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a prepared statement.

Many of the teams honored…

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