research

Bruns explores nanotech that turns plastic into fertilizer with RIO seed grant

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:27:46 +0000

Bruns explores nanotech that turns plastic into fertilizer with RIO seed grant Michael Kwolek Wed, 06/11/2025 - 10:27

Michael Kwolek

Plastic Fertilizer: Toward Sustainable Waste-Stream Plastics with Low Carbon Content and Cost

PI: Carson J. Bruns, ATLAS Institute + Paul M. Rady Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Co-PI: Merritt R. Turetsky, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) + Dept. of Ecology

“We must replace the ubiquitous 'forever plastics' with sustainable plastics that (i) degrade fast and harmlessly in the wild and (ii) minimize emissions by combining high recyclability with low carbon content.”

Plastics are a problem. They are made with petroleum, are rarely recycled, and turn into microplastics over time—an increasingly intractable global environmental and health concern.

Current bio-based alternatives have yet to see widespread adoption for a number of reasons. Carson Bruns, associate professor (ATLAS Institute, Mechanical Engineering), aims to change all that with a new line of research in his Emergent Nanotechnology Lab focused on turning agricultural materials into bio-based plastics that can be more easily recycled, composted or even used as fertilizer.

Bruns was recently awarded a 2025 Research & Innovation Seed Grant from CU 51��ý’s Research and Innovation Office for this work.

We discussed the thinking behind this research and possible applications (interview lightly edited for clarity):

What are the challenges with bio-based plastics?

The biggest challenge that everybody is dealing with in sustainable plastics right now is that the current options for bio-based and compostable plastics are not actually very good. They don't compete with the oil-based plastics in terms of how tough and flexible they are, so people don't like to use them as much because they crack and they're brittle.

And in reality, you cannot throw such plastics onto your backyard compost pile. They need special conditions to properly break down. You need a composting facility that heats the compost up to 60°C and it has all these fans and equipment to circulate it, and even then, it still doesn't work that well. [Note: This is one of the reasons why A1 Organics, 51��ý, Colorado’s main composting partner, stopped accepting these biodegradable plastics.]

Bruns and his team have partnered with Merritt R. Turetsky, Director of Arctic Security; Professor, Ecology, for key elements of this research.

How did the collaboration with professor Turetsky come about?

We've been working on sustainable alternative materials to oil-based plastics for almost the whole time I've been at CU. But the collaboration with Professor Turetsky came when we started trying to characterize the biodegradability of the materials we've been making in the lab.

We've worked with a number of different things—rubbery materials, hydrogels, elastomers, and adhesives [as] alternatives to oil-based rubbers and adhesives. If you want to characterize how biodegradable something is, there are different types of experiments you can do. We approached professor Turetsky to get her advice on how we could go about doing that.

Over the last two semesters, we've had an undergraduate student named Roan Gerrald. He did his honors thesis on this work with advice from professor Turetsky and Aseem Visal, my graduate student. He's done our first compostability experiments on some of the plastic alternative materials that we've already made that are not the ones we proposed in this project, but ones that we have in the lab.

Carson Bruns

What materials are you testing to make these new polymers?

The recipe is [a key] innovation. In general, what you do when you're trying to make a sustainable plastic is you buy some very high-purity materials from a chemical supplier and that makes your science easy to do because you know exactly what you have.

Just buying this molecule in a gallon drum is economically not at all competitive with petroleum. So how do we make something that is cost-competitive?

The idea is to try to recover these molecules as starting materials from waste so that they're not so expensive. You're a potato chip or french fry manufacturer, and you have to wash all of your vegetables, or even at intermediate stages you're soaking them in water or washing them with water, and then that water waste goes somewhere. But it has valuable stuff in it like starches and proteins from the vegetables. So we'd like to recover those valuable substances from the wastewater.

You're using these different materials that happen to be fertilizers in themselves.

The problem with using carbon for plastic is that even if it is highly recyclable, even if it is compostable, It's still going to turn into carbon dioxide at the end of its life.

"Agricultural fertilizer doesn't have carbon in it—it has nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and sulfur and things like that. So let's make our plastics out of that stuff, so that we don't have carbon in the air at the end."

We choose elements that plants need so that we avoid the carbon but still maintain compostability or biodegradability. But we can't get rid of the carbon completely—it's more of a carbon minimization than a carbon avoidance or removal in order for it to still behave as a plastic and have that kind of flexibility.

So if we can make a plastic that has not very much carbon, but it has a lot of other stuff that is good for soil, then you can use it as a fertilizer instead of as compost, because agricultural fertilizer doesn't have carbon in it—it has nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and sulfur and things like that. So let's make our plastics out of that stuff, so that we don't have carbon in the air at the end.

What do you hope to accomplish at the end of the initial 18-month grant?

I hope that we have at least one material that has good properties and that we show fertilizes soil. That's a very ambitious goal to have in 18 months, but we're going to try.

What sorts of products might be possible with this plastic alternative?

We want to make packaging plastics, something that you could cover your steak with at the grocery store or something like Styrofoam. But these are soft and flexible, and because of that they're a little bit harder to make from these low-carbon elements.

So I would predict that it will be harder for us to make those things, but if we can make the kind of flexible, more stretchy ones, then we can look to things like packaging, plastic bags, Ziploc bags, Saran Wrap, stuff like that. But if we can [only make] brittle things, then it's gonna be more like forks and cups and plates.

How might this research come to life in the real world?

Maybe in the future if it worked really well, there could be a reuse or recycling stream where you put it in your mixed-stream recycling and then they sort it and send it to somebody who is going to turn it into fertilizer.

But the other option is that you throw it in your at-home compost and it can degrade there and that would be great, too.

The Emergent Nanotechnology Lab team has begun research to develop new bioplastics made to be used as fertilizer at end-of-life.

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ATLAS students pair design and engineering to improve access to nature

Michael Kwolek — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 15:46:24 +0000

ATLAS students pair design and engineering to improve access to nature Michael Kwolek Tue, 06/10/2025 - 09:46

Creative Technology & Design master's students developed a system to help birdwatchers with mobility challenges continue to participate in this popular pastime.

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Robots and chemistry isn’t just a fun combo - Bruns says it’s the future

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 16:34:59 +0000

Robots and chemistry isn’t just a fun combo - Bruns says it’s the future Michael Kwolek Mon, 06/09/2025 - 10:34

Carson Bruns and his team are developing robots that collaborate with humans in lab settings to reduce work burdens and improve safety.

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Devendorf weaves computer science and craft to explore new possibilities for textile design

Michael Kwolek — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:11:51 +0000

Devendorf weaves computer science and craft to explore new possibilities for textile design Michael Kwolek Tue, 05/27/2025 - 10:11

Michael Kwolek

Unstable Design Lab resources

ATLAS lab page

Unstable Design Lab website

Experimental Weaving Talk series

Instagram: @unstabledesignlab

When we think about engineering and computer science, textiles may not come to mind first. Yet woven forms can be extremely complex and are useful in many scientific applications in addition to being aesthetically engaging.

Laura Devendorf, associate professor and director of the Unstable Design Lab, blends computer science and materials research through the lens of weaving and textiles.

She has nearly completed her 5-year NSF CAREER award, which has supported her work in advancing e-textiles research while building a community of artists, artisans, engineers and designers dedicated to exploring new realms of textile technology.

In that time, Devendorf has created experimental woven forms that can record and replay sensory data, that behave in novel and useful ways, and that can even be programmed.

If e-textiles are to become part of our everyday lives, she believes they need to be more playful and soothing than typical smart devices generally feel—closer to a favorite sweater than a sleek smartphone.

Devendorf aims to change our minds about the importance of craft and expand where we consider solutions for challenges in everything from space suits to stents to treat coronary disease. She says, “It's not just a hobby for a lot of people. These practices of creativity have a lot of value professionally if you're an artist or if you're working in textiles or aeronautics.”

Software supporting soft goods

A key facet of Devendorf’s work has been the development of AdaCAD, “an experimental workspace that applies parametric design to the domain of weave drafting. It supports algorithmic and playful approaches to developing woven structures and cloth, for shaft, dobby and jacquard looms.”

As the only open-source software for many hobbyist and professional weavers, AdaCAD supports a growing community of craftspeople, engineers and designers—a group Devendorf has dubbed “experimental weavers.”

She explains that AdaCAD is designed to give “a new representation for” the incredibly complex designs many weavers create. “That representation affords different points of connection, relationships and possibilities. It's not figuring anything out for you, but it's representing what you're doing in a more flexible format.”

Transforming an image into a woven textile with AdaCAD

CHI retrospective

Laura Devendorf and colleagues at CHI 2025

Devendorf had a substantial presence at ACM SIGCHI 2025 conference (Special Interest Group On Computer-Human Interaction) in Yokohama, Japan. The centerpiece was a demo booth where she created a sort of “lab in a box” showcasing over 7 years of research she and her colleagues conducted at the Unstable Design Lab.

Within the context of this engineering and science-focused audience, Devendorf notes the idea was to “promote weaving and weavers as an approach to doing interactive technology. We're highlighting our residency programs and we're highlighting some interactive demos that have emerged from these programs” including conductive yarns and textiles that enhance interactivity, along with resources designed for community building.

This bridging of seemingly disparate worlds—computer science and craft, lab research and community building—exemplifies Devendorf’s work. Creating visibility between craft and engineering is key for both worlds.

Devendorf observes, “If we're getting so jazzed up about 3D printing and fabrication, here's a fabrication method that has history, that has culture, that evolved in different spaces, that's multi-material.”

“Then that's where the residency programs and some of the resources come in to make complex textile design, not less hard, but to equip you with the right resources to navigate that difficulty so you can take advantage of the full potential of weaving looms and materials.”

“Your material range is huge and your ability to tune it is huge, so this idea of if we need to solve problems in the world and we're not using every available approach, we can't be getting the best solution. You have all these established materials and tools.” We don’t always need to invent a new polymer when we have textiles with centuries of history that could be adapted to the same properties.

While in Japan, she collaborated with master craftspeople who use historic Nishijin looms to make extremely complex and delicate silk kimonos. Together they are exploring ways to adapt AdaCAD software to support this craft steeped in centuries of tradition. She also toured a traditional indigo dyeing plant and other textiles facilities to further explore the interplay between legacies of craft and modern tools.

Devendorf and colleagues tour a weaving facility in Yokohama, Japan

Traditional indigo dyeing in Japan

Creating space

Building a community that bridges craft and engineering spaces means bringing new people into the lab setting.

“The people who gravitate to the research in my lab are not the same composition as the people who come to it through engineering and computer science. There's certainly overlap, but on a statistical level, people who would not typically pursue engineering and science are showing up for weaving and having their expertise validated as already worthwhile rather than having to prove that they matter—I think that's an important moment.”

She elaborates, “I could have made AdaCAD and not talked to anyone, and that wouldn’t have been unusual. It could have gotten published. But I think community-building was implicitly a goal the whole time. Also, even the lab itself, I want it to be a pleasant space. I don't want it to be a factory. I think it has a warmth to it, and it has people who care. And so it's well on its way” to becoming a community space.

Traditional machines, future possibilities

Weaving outside the context of craft is often misunderstood as an idle hobby that is prone to imperfection and unpredictability. Devendorf notes, “People have no idea that this is relevant to the extent I have to spend time in the grant explaining what weaving even is, how it works, and showing several examples that clearly demonstrate how useful it can be within engineering spaces.”

She concludes, “There's so much to explore in these machines, and I think the people who are the most capable of exploring it all are craftspeople. So there's a slightly propaganda piece of: I think these looms can give us better solutions than modeling something on a computer and printing.”

Devendorf presented a retrospective of her work at CHI 2025 including:

The Unstable Design Lab's demo booth at CHI 2025

Demo: Experimental Weaving at the Unstable Design Lab

This demo showcased "experimental weaving" as it has been explored by researchers and experimental weavers in residence at the Unstable Design Lab. The demo featured interactive woven textiles, software to support complex woven structure design and instructional resources for visitors to explore in their research.

Workshop: How do design stories work? Exploring narrative forms of knowledge in HCI

This workshop covered how stories are built, what narrative traditions they draw from, how they co-constitute research processes and what kind of knowledge can emerge from them. They explored the role of storytelling in HCI; the craft of writing stories; relations between fiction, truth and knowledge; and the risks, tensions and limitations of writing stories.

Workshop: Gathering Textiles at CHI: Convening a Meeting to Share, Make, and Speculate

This workshop created a meeting place for CHI researchers engaging textiles in any capacity through a day of skill sharing and collective speculating grounded in the textiles techniques and histories of Japan.

Panel: Regenerative Material Ecologies in HCI

This panel brought together a diverse group of design researchers working hands-on with materials ranging from biological to algorithmic to discuss regenerative thinking, shifting the focus from merely mitigating environmental harm to actively fostering cohabitation within more-than-human ecosystems.

As a computer scientist and artist, Laura Devendorf blends engineering and weaving to empower the craft community while pushing the boundaries of textile science for applications in human-computer interaction, health, art, aerospace and more.

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Utility Research Lab develops award-winning sustainability tech for 3D printing

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 22:11:29 +0000

Utility Research Lab develops award-winning sustainability tech for 3D printing Michael Kwolek Wed, 04/23/2025 - 16:11

Michael Kwolek

Over 460 million metric tons of plastic are created each year and only about 9% is recycled. This has led to ever-growing problems with waste disposal, litter, water contamination, microplastics and a host of other issues.

What if we could rethink our approach to plastics upstream in the manufacturing process before these problems manifest?

Michael Rivera, assistant professor and director of the Utility Research Lab, is doing just that, along with lab members Xin Wen, PhD student, and S. Sandra Bae, PhD candidate.

One of the challenges in recycling is that several types of plastic parts may be used to assemble a single item. These multi-material objects are more difficult, and in some cases near-impossible, to recycle because different plastics need to be processed independently, but cannot be easily separated.

A dissolvable solution

To improve sustainability in 3D printing, Rivera and his team propose using dissolvable interfaces between parts during assembly to simplify their separation for recycling at end-of-life. These interfaces can be made with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyvinyl butyral (PVB), high impact polystyrene (HIPS) or other materials.

Dissolvable materials like PVA are used as support structures, labels and other elements in 3D printed objects. The team goes further by printing PVA in objects themselves to simplify disassembly and recycling. To do so, they developed a computational design algorithm that automates the process of generating and cutting dissolvable interfaces in multi-material 3D-printed objects.

This idea is inspired by the concept of design for disassembly (DfD), “the consideration of ease of disassembly in the design process, aiming to enhance the efficiency of disassembling products by evaluating factors such as time, tools, and effort required for disassembly.”

For their work, the team has been awarded Best Paper (Top 1%) at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Yokohama, Japan, for Enabling Recycling of Multi-Material 3D Printed Objects through Computational Design and Disassembly by Dissolution.

Sustainable benefits

The team won the Innovation award at CU 51��ý’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Summit Student Ideas Showcase

The team has also found that their technique can improve the strength of bonds between different materials in a 3D-printed object. Wen notes, “We ran a bunch of tensile and shear tests that show that varying the parameters of the interface joints can increase the attachment strength” compared to standard multi-material printing.

Alternative manufacturing processes using lego-like building blocks can make reuse and recycling easier, but require more time to build and take apart. The Utility Research Lab’s techniques simplify both of these processes.

Results show their technique can allow for ~90% of the total mass of their designed objects to be recycled. The remaining 10% consists of dissolved material that also has potential for recyclability.

They note in their paper that “recycling 3D printed plastics is a key way to reduce their environmental impacts. Life-cycle assessment has shown recycling 3D printed objects made from PLA and PETG back into printing materials can reduce environmental impacts by more than 50%.”

Wen elaborates, “There are a couple ways you can recycle” these plastics. “There are some DIY recycling machines that you can buy or build off open source designs and there are companies like Printerior that recycle sorted and separated pieces.”

Currently, the team’s technique requires more time to print than conventional multi-material 3D prints due to increased complexity of printing requirements. But they believe with ongoing advancements in printing technology, much of that can be overcome.

For their efforts, the team work won the Innovation award at CU 51��ý’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Summit Student Ideas Showcase.

Winner: Best Paper (top 1%) at CHI 2025

Designs for impact

The team has filed a provisional patent. Rivera explains, “We'd like to be able to license to existing CAD software companies and build an extension inside current 3D printing slicers” by PRUSA and other brands.

They also plan to engage with a local recycling facility this summer to connect the research they are doing in the lab to real-world applications by understanding the logistics and methodologies of plastics recycling at scale.

Looking even further, Rivera sees opportunities in applying this research in the much-larger injection molding industry, a common manufacturing process where molten materials like glass, plastic and metal are injected into a mold to create a form. A pen for example may have separate injection molded parts for the shaft, clip and rubber grip.

Rivera details, “Our algorithm does not really care about the [manufacturing] process per se. If we were to move to injection molding, we would do a multi-stage [process] where you mold the first material, inject the dissolvable on top, and then do another one.”

The team is optimistic for the future of this research.

For those in the maker community, they have developed a plug-in for Grasshopper, a visual programming language in Rhino used for design and fabrication. It is available upon request for non-commercial use.

As for next steps, Rivera says, “For us to have long-term impact, we need the people who run the companies that make the tools. Our conversations with people doing injection molding will be enlightening.”

Recycling is extremely difficult for things built with more than one type of plastic. Michael Rivera and the Utility Research Lab team have developed a novel way to disassemble 3D-printed objects for easy recycling.

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Fabrics That Remember

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:30:44 +0000

Fabrics That Remember Michael Kwolek Fri, 04/18/2025 - 13:30

Laura Devendorf describes how wearable technologies like e-textiles can help people to gather insights into and reflect upon intimate moments rather than to modify or enhance them.

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Biodegradable nails make manicures more sustainable

Michael Kwolek — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:30:54 +0000

Biodegradable nails make manicures more sustainable Michael Kwolek Thu, 04/03/2025 - 10:30

ATLAS researchers developed press-on nails that are biodegradable, colorful and endlessly customizable with open-source technology and low-cost biomaterials for a more sustainable fashion moment.

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What’s your breakup song? This researcher wants to know

Michael Kwolek — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:21:31 +0000

What’s your breakup song? This researcher wants to know Michael Kwolek Tue, 02/11/2025 - 12:21

ATLAS assistant teaching professor, Anthony Pinter, researches breakup songs and how breakups affect our digital lives. He shares some top breakup songs and why they affect us.

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ATLAS PhD Kate Starbird wins PECASE award for research on crisis informatics and disinformation

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:50:44 +0000

ATLAS PhD Kate Starbird wins PECASE award for research on crisis informatics and disinformation Michael Kwolek Mon, 02/03/2025 - 10:50

Michael Kwolek

The ATLAS community is excited to learn that Kate Starbird, PhD (Technology, Media and Society ‘12) was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

The PECASE Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. The awards are conferred annually at the White House following recommendations from participating agencies.

Now associate professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, Starbird came to ATLAS on the recommendation of Bobby Schnabel, Computer Science department external chair and professor. She had a BS in computer science and a desire to broaden her expertise. The ATLAS Technology, Media and Society program (now Creative Technology and Design) seemed the perfect fit.

Schnabel recalls, “I was fortunate to meet Kate in summer 2006 connected to a visit to Seattle for the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Kate had just finished her professional basketball career and was exploring options for grad school, and from our discussion it was clear the multidisciplinary ATLAS PhD was a great fit for her interests. We were thrilled that she chose to enroll at CU, where she was a star student, and her career has blossomed ever since.”

Starbird began her research career with Leysia Palen, professor, founding faculty, Department of Information Science, who was conducting pioneering research in crisis informatics. They studied the use of social media during crisis events and developed mapping techniques to make the data useful to those affected, officials and volunteers. Together, they published the paper Working and sustaining the virtual "Disaster Desk" in CSCW 2013.

Over the years, Starbird found that rumors and misinformation spread on social media had become a bigger part of crisis events. Originally much of this was accidental, but in time it became clear that intentional disinformation was sinking into the infrastructure of social media. This has since become the greater focus of her research.

Palen was effusive in describing Starbird’s impact: “Kate demonstrated early on in her PhD degree that she is not only a gifted scholar, but a generous one. I saw it then and I see it today: as the leading pioneer in disinformation research, Dr. Starbird offers the fruits of her talents in ways that are intended to protect and improve our society. She is beloved and needed.”

Starbird notes the importance of the interdisciplinary nature of her work. “We're blending this understanding of technology, this understanding of media—and media is vastly reconfigured by internet technology and how it's been used in the last 15 to 25 years—and then the impacts, not just individually, but on society at large.”

This overlap of disciplines is signature of what makes ATLAS special. Our community members apply elements of engineering, design, and the humanities to analyze problems and develop sophisticated responses to them.

Design thinking is a key aspect of this approach. Starbird notes, “There are all sorts of folks that come into the space of studying mis- and disinformation from political science or other [disciplines]. I'm looking at what it is about the design of these information spaces and how people are using [them] that are shaping not just how information flows, but all of these other broader phenomena. So I do think design is critical in my work.”

Many of us can feel overwhelmed or even hopeless when it comes to navigating the current media landscape. From her perspective as a leading expert in the field of mis- and disinformation, Starbird offers some advice for staying engaged and informed:

I would approach information spaces right now with a lot of humility in the sense of not being overconfident about what you're seeing. We all have a tendency to think that the problem is someone else, and yet we know that there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of propaganda out there that individuals play a role in spreading. Sometimes that's aligned with where you want the world to go and then also in some cases, we become pawns in somebody else's political game.
In terms of how we approach information spaces, try not to tune everything out—I don't think that's a good idea. We need to be aware of what's happening. Definitely take breaks—there's a lot coming out. It can be really depressing at the moment for some of us and understanding that you don't want to be spending 24/7 in some of these information spaces, but do spend half an hour, spend an hour and be intentional about it.
I also don't want people to be too skeptical because [if] we get too skeptical of everything, then we tune out. Focus on learning what we can trust rather than not trusting anything. Try to build up a set of sources that you really feel you can trust. Look them up, look at who funds them. Where did they come from? How long have they been around? Spend some time with those.
When you go to social media, you don't get to determine what comes at you, especially if you're on TikTok and some of these algorithmic [platforms]. Be critical there, but also learn to find information sources that you can trust.

For more information on Kate Starbird’s work, refer to her page on the University of Washington website.

Photo credit: Doug Parry / University of Washington Information School

Kate Starbird (ATLAS PhD) was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the U.S. government’s highest honor for early-career researchers. Now an associate professor at the University of Washington, Starbird’s groundbreaking research in crisis informatics and disinformation highlights the value of interdisciplinary engineering and design.

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Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 19:19:01 +0000

Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup Michael Kwolek Fri, 12/13/2024 - 12:19

Breaking up is hard to do — especially when you can't control what you see online. Anthony Pinter weighs in on how people manage their data after experiencing breakups.

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