Climate & Environment

Column: What Do We Call This Feeling?

Anna Tolette — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:15:21 +0000

Column: What Do We Call This Feeling? Anna Tolette Mon, 07/20/2026 - 13:15

Pedro DiNezio

For those of us old enough to remember a different climate, the feeling is one of loss: the summers of childhood, the winters that arrived on time.

For younger people, the feeling may be different, but no less real. It’s closer to dread — a sense, even without personal memories of a better time, that things are accelerating toward the unknown.

I grew up near the coast in Argentina, where people spent all year waiting for summer: the beach, warm nights, relief from winter. Now, many people I know are apprehensive about its arrival. These months increasingly bring long stretches of brutal heat that feel like a warning.

Japan recently gave that feeling a name. In April 2026, Japan’s Meteorological Agency oﬃcially adopted the term “kokushobi” to describe days when temperatures reach 40°C or higher — a threshold now frequent enough to require its own word. The character “koku” carries moral weight in Japanese: harsh, merciless, cruel. It was the first time the agency introduced a new weather term since 2007, when “mōshobi” — “extremely hot day” — was coined for days over 35°C. The fact that the language had to be updated again, within a single generation, says something statistics alone cannot.

In Colorado, this anxiety takes a different shape. It’s not scorching summers so much as uncertain winters — whether there will be enough snow and water to sustain the rhythms of life as we know it. In 2021, a destructive wintertime wildfire in �ֲ��ý County became part of a growing trend of fire activity extending well beyond the summer. That detail — fire in winter — also captures something data doesn’t: the old categories no longer hold.

What we do with our grief — our older generation’s loss, our younger generation’s dread — is the only climate question that matters now. The science is settled. The feeling is not.

Pedro DiNezi is an associate research professor at CU �ֲ��ý’s ATLAS Institute.

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Illustration by Kara Fellows

For those of us old enough to remember a different climate, the feeling is one of loss: the summers of childhood, the winters that arrived on time.

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CU Alum Takes An Affordable Approach to Indoor Farming

Anna Tolette — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:20:19 +0000

CU Alum Takes An Affordable Approach to Indoor Farming Anna Tolette Mon, 03/09/2026 - 15:20

Marc Zarefsky

Maximilian Knight (EnvEngr’17) was in sixth grade when he saw a documentary that changed his outlook on the world around him.

The Cove, which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2010, featured an in-depth look at a small town in Japan known for capturing and selling dolphins to aquariums around the world. The film featured graphic footage and raised critical questions about dolphin hunting practices.

Knight was transfixed.

“It was a pretty tough subject, but through that film, I became more aware of things going on in the world,” Knight said. “The whole community of people trying to do good in the world and trying to make the world a better place — that really inspired me and continues to.”

Knight took that inspiration and found his own way to improve the world. As founder and CEO of �ֲ��ý-based Rooted Robotics, Knight’s mission is to provide affordable automation systems to indoor farms of all sizes.

The company, founded in 2019, offers game-changing technology to small and mid-size controlled-environment growers who can’t afford industrial-sized — and industrial-priced — services.

“If we look to 50 or 100 years from now, if climate change does get significantly worse, as is largely expected, we need to be able to feed ourselves,” Knight said. “We need to be able to do that at scale without having millions or billions of people starve because we can’t grow as much food in the same ways that we used to.”

Enter controlled-environment agriculture, a term Knight explained refers to incorporating a more technology-focused approach to farming. In these environments, which often exist as vertical farms or greenhouses, growers can control everything from temperature and sunlight to humidity and nutrients, along with countless factors in between.

This flexibility allows growers to customize what they grow and when they grow it in a way traditional farmers cannot.

Rooted Robotics offers products that help farmers with seeding, harvesting and cleaning. Each system is designed with simplicity, reliability and sustainability in mind. Everything the company sells is also made to be upgradable with customized add-ons, allowing the machines to grow with the farms they support.

Knight’s own expertise in the field dates back to his time in CU �ֲ��ý’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, where he learned many of the technical skills he routinely applies to his work. But perhaps the biggest takeaway from his time at CU was, as he describes it, learning how to learn.

“I studied environmental engineering, which is not really what I do today,” Knight said. “Even though I’m not doing water treatment engineering or sanitation engineering, I learned how to teach myself new skills.”

Christian Maljian (left), Sebastian Vazquez-Carson (middle) and Maximilian Knight (right)

Knight also met Rooted Robotics’ chief technology officer at the school. He and Sebastian Vazquez-Carson (Phys’17) were friends as undergraduates, and the two reconnected in 2022 when Vazquez joined the company to help with a robotic system.

When Knight considered undergraduate programs, he was drawn to the community he found at CU. Today, with his company still housed in �ֲ��ý, he has kept close ties to the school. Christian Maljian (Engr’19) is co-founder and head of mechanical engineering. Of Rooted Robotics’ seven part-time employees, six are students from the College of Engineering & Applied Science or the Leeds School of Business.

Rooted Robotics also hosts summer interns from CU �ֲ��ý. In addition, the company partnered with the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering this year to sponsor a capstone project. The senior students involved with the project are helping Rooted Robotics develop a variation of the company’s seeding machine.

Knight’s hope is that, through the partnership and the innovation he’s brought to the company since its founding, Rooted Robotics can continue to be an inspiration and valuable resource for indoor growers.

“A beautiful vision that could exist in 50 to 100 years would be that we’re growing most of our agriculture in these controlled environments,” Knight said. “Because of that, nature will be able to reclaim a lot of the farmland that blankets the Earth. That can also help with reversing climate change at scale. That’s part of the future that we want to create.”

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Photos courtesy Maximilian Knight

Maximilian Knight’s company Rooted Robotics takes an affordable approach to indoor farming.

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CU Research Finds Human Rights Under Threat

Anna Tolette — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:11:21 +0000

CU Research Finds Human Rights Under Threat Anna Tolette Mon, 03/09/2026 - 15:11

Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, July 2016

Yvaine Ye

Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, July 2016

More than 99% of the world’s 7.7 billion people face at least one threat to their environmental rights, according to a new study.

In 2022, the UN formally recognized that everyone on the planet has the right to a healthy environment. But according to the most comprehensive analysis of environmental inequality to date, CU �ֲ��ý researchers found that nearly half of the global population lives in regions facing three or more of the five environmental threats analyzed: polluted air, unsafe water, extreme heat, food insecurity and biodiversity loss.

“Over the years, communities around the world have been fighting for local environmental justice,” said first author Naia Ormaza-Zulueta (PhDEnv St’25), a researcher in CU �ֲ��ý’s Better Planet Lab. “We want to stitch their stories into a single, undeniable global tapestry.”

For their study, Ormaza-Zulueta and Zia Mehrabi, a data scientist in the Better Planet Lab, calculated whether an individual in a given location around the world is experiencing, or has recently experienced, any of the five environmental threats that violate their rights.

The team found that almost everyone on Earth lives in a place that has recently experienced at least one of these environmental threats. The report indicated that over 45%, or 3.4 billion people, have at least three rights threatened, and 1.25%, or 95 million people, experienced all five environmental threats studied.

Disadvantaged populations, such as those with lower incomes and those living on Indigenous lands, are far more likely to experience poor air quality, excessive heat and limited access to clean water.

Many of the poor environmental conditions around the globe result from the activities of wealthy nations, the study found. For instance, the large demand for products in the United States and Europe has caused biodiversity loss and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

“No matter where we live, our rights are inherently connected to those of people in other parts of the world,” Ormaza-Zulueta said.

The analysis was published in September 2025 in Environmental Research Communications.

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Photo by Ibama from Brasil

Billions live in environments that violate human rights.

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Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, July 2016

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Andrew Mayock Joined CU to Accelerate Climate Solutions

Anna Tolette — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:08:00 +0000

Andrew Mayock Joined CU to Accelerate Climate Solutions Anna Tolette Mon, 11/10/2025 - 11:08

Christie Sounart

In March 2025, Andrew Mayock joined CU �ֲ��ý as its first vice chancellor for sustainability. Mayock previously served as chief sustainability officer for the United States government, where he led the Biden administration’s efforts to decarbonize federal operations and accelerate clean energy adoption.

What spurred you to work in higher education?

I see it as a really critical piece of my work to help grow the next generation of leaders in climate sustainability. At CU �ֲ��ý, it is a great opportunity to do that at scale. In considering this role, I found CU has an extraordinary foundation of sustainability work that goes back decades, and pent-up demand to build on that legacy.

Where do you see CU �ֲ��ý already excelling in sustainability?

We have extraordinary existing efforts and assets across research, education, operations and community engagement — for instance, the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research’s (INSTAAR) work in critical longitudinal atmospheric carbon studies, the Mountain Research Station, the two sustainability master’s degrees recently approved through engineering and business, eliminating single-use plastic beverages campuswide and much more. Also, the kind of progress we’re making in embedding sustainability in the curriculum is taking it right back to where it all belongs — with the students.

What opportunities do you see for improvement?

There were places where we were once at the frontier, but we haven’t kept pace. It’s time for a recharge in these areas, so we can be a leader again. And then there’s areas where we’re at the frontier, and we need to accelerate and define a new frontier. The newly created Buckley Center for Sustainability Education is redefining leadership opportunity, for instance. The Buckley Center is going to help us respond to student demand for more sustainability in the curriculum and experiential learning, and it is also going to serve students interested in non-sustainability-related majors and disciplines across campus.

How do you see CU �ֲ��ý leading the way in sustainability to become recognized globally?

One clear initiative is to gain more recognition in work that we’re already doing. I’m thinking of engineering professor Evan Thomas (AeroEngr, Jour’06; MEngr’06; PhD’09) and the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience’s work improving clean water supply in east Africa, for example. Here, through many others’ work, we’re having an outsized global impact across the planet, and we plan to amplify this work in places such as November’s COP 30 climate conference in Brazil and September’s Climate Week NYC.

What role do students have in CU sustainability?

Students are at the center of the efforts. My draw to �ֲ��ý included seeing the efforts already underway by the student community, like Ralphie’s Green Stampede or the EcoVisits. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level. The vision is to make this university more of a living lab, bringing research to education on campus and enabling students to help make progress on the Climate Action Plan.

Are there specific innovations or technologies you’re excited to explore at CU?

�ֲ��ý startups are moving cutting-edge research from lab to market, like the carbon-negative cement company Prometheus Materials. Their innovation and dynamism are helping solve the climate crisis through research-driven products. [Bill Gates’] Breakthrough Energy’s selection of the university as a new partner is another example of this work. �ֲ��ý is approaching the quality and vibrancy of Stanford.

What else should we know about campus sustainability?

It’s a top priority of the chancellor and our office to double down on how CU �ֲ��ý delivers sustainability solutions for Colorado communities. We have an ability and obligation, due to the talent and programming we have here, and we have a need in this urgent moment to be an even stronger partner to our state communities.

What are your interests outside of work?

I generally try to keep up with my 10- and 12-year-olds in their many pursuits, like soccer and the arts. We’ve also had the opportunity to get to the mountains, including Eldora and Snowmass, and experienced some of the great hiking and birding and rafting Colorado has to offer.

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Photos by Glenn Asakawa

Andrew Mayock has joined CU �ֲ��ý as the university’s first vice chancellor for sustainability, aiming to elevate its global leadership in climate action.

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CU �ֲ��ý in the Spotlight: Rankings, Research and Innovation

Anna Tolette — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 18:06:50 +0000

CU �ֲ��ý in the Spotlight: Rankings, Research and Innovation Anna Tolette Mon, 11/10/2025 - 11:06

Julia MacLean

Herd

A Leader in Free Speech

CU �ֲ��ý ranked fifth nationally for its free-speech climate, the highest in the state. The assessment, based on input from more than 68,000 students, comes from the 2026 College Free Speech Rankings by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and its survey partner College Pulse.

Authors Earn Spotlight

Historical horror novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by CU �ֲ��ý English professor Stephen Graham Jones made former President Obama’s 2025 summer reading list. Meanwhile, Ann Schmiesing’s The Brothers Grimm: A Biography earned acclaim as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 and a New Statesman Best Summer Read of 2025. Schmiesing is senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and professor of German and Scandinavian Studies.

Water Reckoning

Emerging CU �ֲ��ý research shows that human pollution, including greenhouse gases and aerosol emissions, has been driving the prolonged megadrought in the U.S. Southwest by altering the Pacific Ocean’s natural cycles that normally bring rain to the region. As a result, the Southwest is experiencing its driest period in over 1,000 years. Study author Jeremy Klavans, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department, suggests that water planners need to prepare now by building stronger water systems and exploring new options, such as desalination plants.

Campus Talk

“I want people to understand that a first-gen student like me — who didn’t have much — can do it if [they] bring passion, grit and skills to the table.”

-Marco Campos (CivEngr’98) and the Campos Foundation donated $5 million to support the Campos Student Center, formerly the BOLD Center, in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The gift will secure the center’s long-term future and bolster its programming to help amplify student success.

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Photo by Casey A. Cass

Digits

Elimination of Plastic Single-Use Beverage Containers

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Start of CU �ֲ��ý’s elimination of plastic beverage containers from campus

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All single-use, sealable plastic beverage containers to be eliminated from campus, including vending machines

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Pouring agreement with PepsiCo Beverages

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Intended percentage of campus emissions by year 2050, per the CU Climate Action Plan

CU �ֲ��ý news on free speech, faculty author recognition, megadrought research and sustainability initiatives.

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A Century of Chautauqua in �ֲ��ý

Anna Tolette — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:52:12 +0000

A Century of Chautauqua in �ֲ��ý Anna Tolette Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:52

Christie Sounart

The Chautauqua movement began in the late 1800s as an experimental approach to adult education, combining literature, music, science, international affairs and social issues in one setting. Founded in 1874 on Chautauqua Lake in western New York, its retreat-style blend of learning, entertainment and open dialogue quickly inspired similar programs across America — including �ֲ��ý.

In 1898, to attract Texans seeking relief from the summer heat, �ֲ��ý city leaders partnered with the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway and Texas educators to establish a Chautauqua retreat at the foot of the Flatirons. Attendees originally stayed in tents, but cottages began to be built the following year. The final cottages, many of which are still in use today, were completed by the mid-20th century.

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Photo courtesy Carnegie Library for Local History/Museum of �ֲ��ý Collection

The Chautauqua movement brought a unique blend of education, culture and community to �ֲ��ý in 1898, creating a historic retreat that still thrives today.

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How a Fish Proved a Mathematical Breakthrough

Anna Tolette — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:06:33 +0000

How a Fish Proved a Mathematical Breakthrough Anna Tolette Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:06

Alison Van Houton

On a March day in 2023, Ben Alessio, then a research assistant at CU �ֲ��ý, was wandering around the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California, when he clocked a surprising sight: a male ornate boxfish undulating in the water, tessellating with violet and tangerine hexagons. It was dazzling — but more importantly, it was vindicating.

The rare fish’s markings were a real-life example of something that he and Ankur Gupta, CU �ֲ��ý assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, had previously only modelled mathematically. It confirmed that they were onto a scientific breakthrough.

Turing Patterns

To understand Gupta’s research, one must first understand morphogenesis. Morphogenesis is the process by which cells, tissues and organisms develop their shapes.

Nearly 75 years ago, the famed British mathematician Alan Turing published a paper titled “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis.” Since then, Turing’s work has been key to our understanding of how many — but not all — patterns form in nature.

“That’s sort of the foundational thinking, mathematically speaking, for this area of work,” said Gupta.

Turing had an uncommonly innovative mind — his ability to think beyond the status quo and make connections between various fields of thought led to breakthroughs in electronic computing, artificial intelligence, code breaking in WWII and, in this case, mathematical biology.

When it came to morphogenesis, Turing was interested in how heterogeneity, or diversity, arises out of homogeneity, which is when something is composed of all one type of thing. In other words, why does a zebra have both black and white stripes instead of a coat with hairs that are all one solid color, like gray?

The reason is diffusion — which is central to Turing’s theory. Diffusion is the movement of molecules from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower concentration; molecules tend to spread out until there’s an even distribution (much like people in an elevator). In chemistry, diffusion often dominates systems, especially when particles are tiny.

“Diffusion essentially promotes homogeneity,” said Gupta.

What he means is that if you drop blue dye into clear, still water, for example, it will slowly diffuse, in a gradient, until the whole container is equally blue. Similarly, when mixing red and blue dye in a diffusion-dominated system, one expects the colors to blend, ultimately yielding a homogenous purple hue. However, when a chemical reaction also occurs, something different may happen. In certain conditions, even a diffusion-dominated system can promote heterogeneity from homogeneity.

“Essentially, what [Turing] argued was that under the right conditions, if there is diffusion as well as [a chemical] reaction between different components — if I have five or six dyes, or three or four dyes, and they’re reacting with each other — then essentially it’s just a delicate dance between these two processes.”

These days, the term “Turing pattern” is generally applied to any reaction-diffusion pattern. This natural pattern forms when chemicals react with one another and spread out, often resulting in wavy lines or spots. A notable example of a Turing pattern in nature is the sparkling blue zebra fish, a slender creature that’s gilded with horizontal, blurry-edged golden stripes.

However, some wild animals feature very crisp markings.

“Why would a diffusion model describe something that is so striking and sharp?” Gupta wondered.

An Accidental Discovery

Gupta didn’t initially set out to answer that question. His focus was on diffusiophoresis, which is the combination of diffusion, described earlier, and phoresis, which describes how ultra-small dissolved particles — around a tenth or even a hundredth the width of a single human hair — can sometimes drag other things along with them in a solution. So, if diffusion is the way that blue dye spreads through clear water, phoresis is the movement of particles that happens because they’re temporarily dragged by that dye.

Alessio, who was doing computational research at the time, had been running mathematical simulations of reaction-diffusion systems that also had a diffusiophoretic element. The resulting visuals were notably defined, unlike the fuzzier ones that emerge from reaction-diffusion models (as seen in the zebrafish). And it was the striking violet and tangerine hexagon boxfish pattern that caught his attention in the Southern California aquarium.

“I was just literally simulating something like this on my computer,” thought Alessio when he saw it. He snapped a slew of photos and messaged Gupta excitedly. “I have something exciting to show you.”

Until that point, Gupta and Alessio had the models, but they didn’t have an example of them in nature.

“I didn’t have any sort of idea about this fish or anything like that,” said Gupta. “He showed me this, and then we sort of reverse-engineered the missing link.”

They dove into existing research and realized that chromatophores — cells that create pigment in the bodies of fish, reptiles and some other animals — can be carried by dissolved chemicals. In other words, they can move diffusiophoretically (like the particles temporarily dragged by dye).

In late 2023, Gupta and Alessio published a paper titled “Diffusiophoresis-Enhanced Turing Patterns” in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Their research advances Turing’s theory by describing how more precise patterns — like the one seen on the ornate boxfish — come to exist.

While Alessio is now working on a PhD in mechanical engineering at Stanford, Gupta intends to continue researching how diffusiophoresis factors into Turing patterns.

“On the pattern-formation side, it would be useful to see if we can replicate some of this synthetically,” he said.

It’s a tall order, but more investigation can potentially help us understand how to control things synthetically.

Gupta is now investigating this phenomenon at an individual-cell level, which he likens to studying a single human versus a population of people.

“If I’m thinking about a population, then one option is to track individual people, and one is to say, ‘What is the population density?’” he said. “It was the population density approach that we were taking in our first paper. But now, we’re examining individual cells, and that has been interesting, because now what we start to see is imperfect Turing patterns.”

While mathematical models tend to be perfect, in reality, you often see imperfections: deformed hexagons or hexagons sliced in half. Taking an individual-cell-level approach to diffusiophoretic Turing patterns could provide more insight into why patterns sometimes don’t appear as expected based on mathematical models.

“We think it’s exciting, because real systems actually are not perfect,” Gupta said.

A Pilgrimage

In October 2023, before the “Diffusiophoresis-enhanced Turing patterns” paper was published, Gupta’s wife was traveling to a conference in San Diego. With anticipation, he packed his bags, hoping to set eyes on the ornate boxfish that inspired their discovery.

Inside the Birch Aquarium, he did a lap around the right side, where most of the fish seemed to be. But he wasn’t sure exactly where to look, and he struggled to spot its telltale scales.

“I couldn’t see it,” he said. “It was hidden.”

Ten minutes passed, then 20. Increasingly worried, he considered enlisting a staff member to help him track it down. Finally, in a last-ditch effort, he ventured off in the direction of the children’s area, toward the other side of the building. There, at long last, he caught his glimpse of the elusive fish.

Eureka.

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Illustration by Petra Péterffy

CU �ֲ��ý's Ankur Gupta’s discovery of sharper, more precise natural patterns expands on Alan Turing’s mathematical theory.

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Colorado Firefly Field Guide

Anna Tolette — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:03:02 +0000

Colorado Firefly Field Guide Anna Tolette Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:03

Kelsey Yandura

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet,” science fiction author Arthur Clarke famously penned in the 1960s. If that’s true, CU �ֲ��ý computer science researchers have been busy studying the fairy tale of fireflies in Colorado.

The work looks romantic, but it’s no picnic: In twilight vistas across the state, doctoral student Owen Martin (PhDCompSci’25) and associate professor Orit Peleg tow cameras and computers to document firefly populations and decode their flash patterns. It’s all part of a longstanding effort to understand firefly communication.

When the scientists discuss their work, locals are often surprised.

“A lot of people here come from places like the Midwest, where they’ve seen fireflies,” Martin told CU �ֲ��ý Today in July 2024. “But they don’t know about them in their own backyards.”

That’s why he’s eager to raise what he calls “firefly literacy” in the state.

Fireflies have quietly flickered in Colorado for centuries, though the first formal documentation came in 2016, when naturalist Tristan Darwin Kubik identified a population near Fort Collins. Genetic testing suggested they may represent a previously undocumented species, potentially dubbed Photuris coloradensis.

In 2018, Martin and Peleg began tracking fireflies, which have been documented in at least 19 counties, including near Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Pueblo, Mofat, Divide, Durango and Carbondale.

Why are sightings so rare? Studies show fireflies prefer swampy environments — wetlands, meadows and areas near streams and ponds. Their patchy distribution and brief annual activity window leave many residents unaware of their presence.

As magical as these discoveries are, scientists warn they could be short-lived. Habitat loss, wetland drainage, livestock grazing, urban development and light pollution all pose serious threats.

“They are very special. We have a lot to learn from them, but also, they are under threat from environmental issues,” Peleg told CU �ֲ��ý Today.

Residents can help to protect these luminescent creatures by assisting with flash data collection, supporting habitat restoration, staying on marked trails and turning of outdoor lights from June to August, especially near wetlands.

“Biodiversity is magical,” Martin added. “And if we don’t alert the right people that these cool fireflies, that are really rare, are in this habitat, we’ll lose them forever. And then you lose the kind of wonder and magic they bring to you.”

To spot them, keep your eyes peeled from mid-to-late June through mid-July, usually after 9 p.m. in swampy or wetland areas.

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Illustration by Sunnu Rebecca Choi

CU �ֲ��ý researchers are uncovering the story of Colorado’s rare fireflies.

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Honoring Alice Eastwood’s Legacy at CU's Herbarium

Anna Tolette — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:01:03 +0000

Honoring Alice Eastwood’s Legacy at CU's Herbarium Anna Tolette Mon, 07/07/2025 - 14:01

Julia MacLean

Factoids

Specimen: Primula parryi A. Gray (Parry’s Primrose)

Location: Grays Peak, Colorado
Habitat: Found along streams and in moist meadows in the Rocky Mountain subalpine to alpine regions
Aroma: Has a skunky odor
Collected: July 1888 by Alice Eastwood

The University of Colorado Herbarium houses the world’s most complete documentation of Colorado flora. Located in the basement of the Clare Small Arts and Sciences building, the herbarium’s collection contains nearly 600,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and fungi.

The herbarium’s founding collection dates to the 1880s and belonged to Alice Eastwood, a self-taught plant scientist. During her life, she named 395 species — the fourth-highest of any female scientist.

Eastwood, who served as a teacher in Kiowa, Colorado, spent her summers collecting plants in the mountains. In the preface of her 1893 book, A Popular Flora of Denver, Colorado, Eastwood wrote that she created the publication “with the sole aim of helping students to learn the names of the plants that grow around Denver.” Her collection lived in the Colorado State Historical Society until CU �ֲ��ý’s herbarium, which is part of the university’s Museum of Natural History, acquired it under curator William Weber in the 1940s.

Today, Eastwood’s specimens, along with hundreds of thousands of others, support research on and of campus — even internationally. The robust collections are often toured by CU students, faculty, botanists, scholars and local plant enthusiasts.

Said botany collection manager Amber Horning: “I believe that natural history collections have the power to inspire an audience of all ages and backgrounds.”

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Photo courtesy University of Colorado Herbarium (COLO)

CU �ֲ��ý’s Herbarium is a resource for researchers and plant enthusiasts worldwide.

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Thinking Huts Is Printing a Brighter Future

Anna Tolette — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 20:24:56 +0000

Thinking Huts Is Printing a Brighter Future Anna Tolette Mon, 03/10/2025 - 14:24

Kelsey Yandura

In 2015, “3D printing” still conjured up images of the absurd, the novel or the futuristic — think custom tabletop game pieces, small replacement parts, decorative novelties and even 3D-printed chocolate.

But Maggie Grout (Mgmt’21) has never been one to think small. At just 15 years old, three years before she enrolled as a Buff, Grout walked up to her dad and asked a life-changing question: “What if we 3D-printed a school?”

The answer, in the form of Grout’s nonprofit Thinking Huts, would ripple out to impact not only her own future, but the futures of families and communities across the globe.

Welcome to Bougainvillea

In 2022, seven years after Grout’s initial idea sparked, Bougainvillea was born — a 700-square foot, 3D-printed school in south central Madagascar and Thinking Huts’ first officially completed project.

According to data from UNESCO and the United Nations, sub-Saharan Africa faces the highest education exclusion rates in the world. In Madagascar, the crisis is acute: three-fourths of secondary-age children don’t attend school due to issues like overcrowding and dangerous commutes. One-third won’t complete primary education, and 97 percent of 10-year-olds who finish primary school cannot read simple sentences.

Thinking Huts hopes to change that. Bougainvillea is small but mighty, holding up to 30 students and serving as a beacon of hope for the local community and proof of Thinking Huts’ potential to address the global education opportunity gap.

And while the grunt work of planning and preparing spanned the better part of a decade, the execution was swift — using an industrial-scale 3D printer and a cement mixture, an on-site team printed the modular wall components in just 18 hours. These units were designed to fit together seamlessly, forming a puzzle-like assembly to complete the structure. The roof, doors and windows, handcrafted by local artisans and builders, were added on several weeks later.

Grout recalls: “When I was looking at the walls being printed, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is crazy. It’s finally happening.’”

Patience Pays Off

Thinking Huts was forged at the intersection of two different causes: education and sustainability. For Grout, they are intimately connected.

“We know that in order for us to continue to increase access to education in these communities, we have to have a focus on sustainable building metrics,” said Kristen Harrington, director of development at Thinking Huts. “A lot of organizations focus on speed. But if you’re looking at how to build more holistic communities and better equip families and address the poverty cycle, you have to take the whole picture into account.”

While this kind of long-term, intersectional problem-solving does not lend itself to the immediate gratification of a “quick fix” — each decision requires careful thought, planning and foresight — Grout said the result is lasting.

“It’s not an overnight thing,” said Grout. “We’re trying to set up the next few generations to succeed and go further than us, rather than thinking of the short term. It’s a long haul type of journey.”

A Relational Approach

For Thinking Huts, this kind of holistic approach means focusing on building strong, equitable, sustainable relationships in their partner communities.

“Relationship building is a slow drip,” Harrington said. “It’s an opportunity for us to really assess what’s going to be able to create sustainability in these structures for generations.”

In order to create this sense of longevity, Thinking Huts spends time building trust with community leaders and students, taking their needs and skills into account and assessing how to collaborate with local workers, builders, artisans and technicians. For Bougainvillea, this meant partnering with area manufacturers in the construction process, handing off 3D operational skills that can be applied to future construction projects.

Grout said this relationship-first ethos has roots in her years at CU �ֲ��ý, where she said the people she met were the most impactful, including her mentorship with Mike Leeds (Fin’74).

“I think even now I’m realizing how critical it is to have a network of people around you,” she said. “The relationships I developed are the biggest things that I took away from school.”

CEO with a Story

Grout said her passion for educational opportunities has been a lifelong journey. Born and abandoned in a rural village in China, she was adopted by American parents at 18 months old and grew up in the U.S.

“I think I’ve already always been more aware of how people’s lives are different from mine,” said Grout. “I had big visions from a young age, just knowing my life could have followed a very different path. That’s what drew me more to understanding the importance of education.”

The result is a work ethic and leadership style that Harrington said extends beyond her years and has garnered international attention from major media outlets like Forbes and Good Morning America. In fall 2024, Grout was featured as one of Time magazine’s featured “Next Generation Leaders.”

“Maggie has this true grit and determination,” said Harrington. “She doesn’t want any child to feel like they don’t have the access that she had because she was adopted. So now she can bring opportunity to children in the pockets of the world that often don’t see innovation.”

Honeycomb on the Horizon

For Grout and her team of 10, Bougainvillea is just the beginning. Next up is the Honeycomb Campus. Named for its design of adjoining hexagonal bases, this multi-building project will serve three remote villages on the west coast of Madagascar. The project is set to include solar power and Wi-Fi access and will impact more than 200 students ages four to 16, starting in summer 2025.

When asked about her approach to the future and how she’d encourage other innovators in philanthropy and sustainability, Grout emphasized a sense of hope.

“I know that what we do now will have a major impact later on,” she said. “I am trying to aspire for a legacy of change, even if it takes time.”

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Photos courtesy Thinking Huts

Thinking Huts, founded by Maggie Grout, uses 3D printing technology to build sustainable schools in underserved communities.

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