10 Life-Changing Ideas

Colorado research universities are involved in cutting-edge research that promises to change the world and improve our lives. Following are 10 potentially life-changing projects happening right here at home.

Using Less H20 — With American cities facing water shortages driven by climate change, growing populations and crumbling infrastructure, the National Science Foundation teamed with Colorado School of Mines in 2011 to come up with new, sustainable strategies for managing urban water. Mines will provide its expertise in water reclamation and reuse, subsurface modeling and contaminant reduction. One idea is to include natural water systems in the urban water infrastructure, to improve water quality, boost water storage, and enhance habitats and urban landscapes.

Curing Paralysis — Anschutz Medical Campus researcher Stephen Davies, a CU medical school super scholar, is on the verge of a cure for spinal cord injuries using stem cells. In a recent breakthrough, the researcher developed a way to turn stem cells into nerve cells that fix injured spinal cords quickly, without chronic, debilitating pain. Davies has restored near-normal movement to rats with severe spinal cord damage, and is working to replicate that success in humans. His work is partly funded by a $150,000 grant from Christopher Reeve’s foundation. The actor was paralyzed in a horse riding accident and eventually died of complications from the injury.

Inhabiting Space — The University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) designs instruments for space research. That information may someday allow humans to inhabit other planets. LASP is the only lab in the world with instruments collecting data on all the planets in the Earth’s solar system. Started in 1948 and predating NASA, the lab’s instruments are on the state-of-the-art Hubble Space Telescope, which has made major discoveries such as planets beyond our solar system and phenomena such as dark energy.

Down Syndrome Solutions — The Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the Anschutz Medical Campus is the first global institute to combine basic and clinical research with clinical care to improve the lives of those suffering from Down syndrome. The institute’s research focuses on genetics studies as well as finding new treatments for Down patients’ cognitive problems, such as hearing loss and poor language development, and improving motor development.

Plugging Vehicles into “The Grid” — Colorado State University’s InteGrid Lab is developing infrastructure to integrate more renewable resources into the electric grid. The school is one of only 16 U.S. universities involved in the U.S. Department of Energy’s EcoCAR program with General Motors Corp. As part of the work, students are converting a Chevy Malibu into a next-generation hybrid/electric or fuel-cell vehicle. In 2011, CSU received a $44.5 million in-kind software award from Siemens AG for the project, the largest of its kind in the university’s history.

Chemistry Professor Amy Prieto founded Prieto Battery, a company expected to produce batteries theoretically up to 1,000 times more powerful and 10 times longer lasting and cheaper than traditional batteries. The development of this technology could revolutionize the military, automobile and healthcare industries.

Smart Houses, Smart Cars — CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a partnership between the university and NREL, is working with Toyota and Xcel Energy on a study whereby participants track their household electricity, including power used by their electric cars, using smart-grid technology. In early 2012, Toyota loaned the institute 10 Prius plug-in vehicles, in part to study how Toyota’s lithium-ion drive battery performs in cold weather and mountainous terrain.

Predicting Tornadoes — CSU engineering professor V. “Chandra” Chandrasekar is helping revolutionize how meteorologists detect tornadoes and other devastating storms. Chandrasekar’s low-power radar system, being introduced in the Dallas-Forth Worth area this year, is an inexpensive, reliable way to detect twisters and rain, hail and snow earlier to lessen potential damage. The new technology collects better data on particle shapes, thereby providing more accurate information about storms.

Life-saving Cookstoves — CSU spinoff Envirofit International has won major international awards for its cleaner burning cookstoves that are directly helping households across the developing world where indoor air pollution is the leading cause of death for women and children under age 5. CSU students and faculty helped develop a proprietary alloy for the cookstove’s combustion chamber as well as an orifice plate that helps the stoves reduce smoke and toxic emissions by up to 80 percent. Students continue to work to improve the technology. More than 300,000 stoves have been sold across India, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Envirofit is a private, non-profit technology leader using sustainable, scalable business models to solve global health and environmental problems.

Parkinson’s Breakthrough — Researchers at CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus have discovered a drug that stops the progression of Parkinson’s disease by turning on a protective gene in the brain. Drugs currently used just treat the symptoms, but the new CU drug — now being tested on humans after successful testing on mice — stops it from getting worse. More than 1 million Americans suffer from the degenerative illness.

“Talking Cells” — Scientists at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs are investigating how cells and tissues in the body communicate, and how cellular metabolism affects the immune system. The idea is to find ways to direct cells to treat illnesses such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and cancer. Their work is supported by CU’s Institute of Bioenergetics and the National Institutes of Health.

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