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JILA—Flari Tech Inc., a startup rooted in cutting-edge JILA research, has clinched one of the prestigious 2024 Lab Venture Challenge (LVC) grants from the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, advancing its pioneering work to build a breathalyzer for diagnostics use targeting life-threatening diseases such as lung cancer.

ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder Today—Go to the doctor to provide a blood sample and you’re typically faced with a needle and syringe and hours or even days of waiting to get results back from a lab. ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder researchers hope to change that with a new handheld, sound-based diagnostic system able to deliver precise results in an hour with a mere finger prick of blood.

ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder College of Engineering & Applied Science—Anthony Straub is making major advances in water purification technology for industry and human consumption on Earth and in space, with his work on a nanotechnology membrane process taking a major step toward commercialization, thanks to a new NASA grant.

News-Medical—Patients who go to the doctor to provide a blood sample are typically faced with a needle and syringe and hours or days of waiting to get results back from a lab. ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder researchers hope to change that with a new handheld, sound-based diagnostic system to deliver precise results in an hour with a mere finger prick of blood.

Fourteen teams of University of Colorado entrepreneurs, faculty researchers and graduate student innovators will compete for a combined $1.25 million in startup funding grants in this year’s Lab Venture Challenge (LVC) Showcases. Judges from Venture Partners at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder’s entrepreneurial network will hear Shark Tank-style pitches across two nights, one for innovations in biosciences and another for physical sciences and engineering.

Photonics Online—A new variant of liquid crystal is at the core of ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder startup Polaris Electro-Opstics' technology. Designed as a seamless drop-in enhancer of silicon photonic chips, Polaris's modulator technology paves the way for the next generation of optical interconnects critical to the future of data center disaggregation.

ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder Today—An international team of researchers led by an engineer at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder has revealed the underlying mechanism behind battery degradation. Their discovery could help scientists to develop better batteries.

College of Arts & Sciences—ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh and his team have achieved a remarkable milestone by receiving a Guinness World Records award for creating the world's most transparent material. Their aerogel, which has now been successfully patented, can be added to windows to boost thermal insulation, increasing the overall efficiency of a building.

ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder Today—A ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder-led team, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, has taken a critical step toward developing a new way to 3D print material that is at once elastic enough to withstand a heart’s persistent beating, tough enough to endure the crushing load placed on joints and easily shapable to fit a patient’s unique defects.

LASP—To learn more about how dust particles may affect future missions, NASA has awarded $1 million to a team from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Boulder to develop a Rubik’s cube-sized instrument. Once built and tested, CEDA (Compact Electrostatic Dust Analyzer) will be capable of measuring the speed, size and charge of tiny dust particles on rocky bodies less than 5 kilometers across.