Mental Health & Wellness

CU Is Revolutionizing Musicians’ Wellness

Julia Maclean — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:15:53 +0000

CU Is Revolutionizing Musicians’ Wellness Julia Maclean Mon, 03/10/2025 - 11:15

Ally Dever

When a CU Buffaloes football player gets injured, coach Deion Sanders enlists a team of professionals to ensure a swift recovery. That’s what professor James Brody does with students at the College of Music’s Musicians’ Wellness Program (MWP).

A study estimates that 90% of professional musicians experience playing-related pain or injuries due to misuse or overuse, and 80% of college-aged musicians report stress, anxiety or depression tied to their craft.

In response, Brody founded the MWP in 2003 to help students prevent and recover from injuries, sustain peak performance and maintain robust mental health throughout their careers.

“It became glaringly obvious this was a necessity when students came to me with injuries 20 years ago,” said Brody. “I was committed to finding ways to make a difference.”

The MWP was among the first of its kind, predating the National Association of Schools of Music’s 2005 mandate requiring music programs to address wellness. Since its inception, Brody and the MWP have expanded services and recently shared their work at three international conferences.

The program teaches performance psychology and exercise techniques for breathing, hearing and vocal health. It also includes on-staff therapist Matthew Tomatz, who provides therapy sessions to support students’ emotional well-being, including managing performance anxiety.

After 47 years of teaching, Brody will retire as director of the MWP on July 31, leaving behind a legacy that will continue to positively influence the health of College of Music students, faculty and staff — and wellness aspirants across the globe.

“The fact that we’ve already helped so many to continue to do what they love is truly gratifying,” he said.

With a search for a new director underway, Brody hopes the program will receive expanded funding to introduce initiatives like a certificate in musicians’ health, onsite physical therapists and medical professionals and hearing protection devices for students. But one thing’s for sure: Brody’s revolutionary vision ensures the program’s lasting impact on future generations of musicians.

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Photo courtesy Stacy Nick/KUNC

The Musicians Wellness Program was among the first of its kind.

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Spring 2025

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The Making of Colorado’s Quantum Valley

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:42:06 +0000

The Making of Colorado’s Quantum Valley Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 13:42

Dan Strain

Qizhong Liang (PhDPhys’25) squeezes around a worktable tucked into the back corner of a CU physics lab. Spread out in front of him is an intricate arrangement of mirrors, lenses and tubes. But what draws Liang’s attention is what seems to be an empty plastic bag.

“Want to guess what it is?” asks Liang, a doctoral student at JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The bag isn’t, in fact, empty but contains something almost precious: breath. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Colorado collected the sample from a child hospitalized with pneumonia. Liang’s tabletop apparatus will generate a powerful laser, known as a frequency comb, to scan the breath sample and identify the unique chemical fingerprints of the molecules floating inside.

Ultimately, Liang and his colleagues hope the laser can serve as a tool to diagnose children with asthma and pneumonia.

But he and his advisor, Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97), aren’t medical professionals. They’re researchers working at the forefront of a field called quantum physics, or the study of matter and energy at its most fundamental level, which deals in the bizarre behavior of things like atoms and electrons.

“This is brand new stuff,” said Liang. He notes that transforming such fundamental science into new technologies is thrilling, but also lonely. “You don’t have many [other experts] to talk to,” he said.

Yet the discipline may soon be a lot less lonely. Across the country, and particularly in Colorado, the momentum around quantum physics is gathering speed. Scientists and engineers are channeling their understanding of the field into technologies that could improve people’s lives.

“It’s a natural progression of the revolution that’s been ongoing since the 1960s,” said Ye, a JILA and NIST fellow and a professor adjoint of physics. “We are just getting faster.”

In Colorado alone, quantum technology companies employ roughly 3,000 people, a number that may jump to more than 10,000 across the Mountain West over the next decade, according to one estimate. Sitting at the center of this revolution is CU Boulder, where researchers have spent decades trying to lasso the quantum realm — earning four Nobel Prizes in physics in the process. The university has launched a suite of programs to turn quantum advancements into real-world technologies. CU is also nearly unmatched among public universities when it comes to training students to become the next generation of quantum workers.

“The reason the state of Colorado has been so successful in quantum has been CU Boulder,” said Heather Lewandowski (PhDPhys’02), a JILA fellow and professor in the Department of Physics. “It goes back to our foundational research and to our training and preparation of students.”

Colorado’s quantum future

This year marked a milestone for CU Boulder and the Mountain West in the global race for quantum innovation and leadership. In July, the coalition Elevate Quantum unlocked more than $127 million in federal and state funding for quantum advancements.

Elevate Quantum is a consortium of 120 organizations across Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming (CU Boulder is the powerhouse partner), with the mission of growing the Mountain West’s prowess as a global leader in the quantum industry.

After applying to the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Tech Hubs program, the coalition gained its official Tech Hub designation in 2023. Only 31 out of nearly 200 consortia were awarded the designation and could proceed to the program’s second phase: competing for implementation grants. In July, the federal government named Elevate Quantum one of the 12 Tech Hubs that would be awarded funding.

“It’s been a wild year,” said Scott Sternberg, executive director of the CUbit Quantum Initiative, which “convenes, coordinates and catalyzes” the quantum activities on campus. “The challenge is now to continue the fundamental discovery while also engineering quantum products and solutions for economic gain.”

The potential applications are vast. Ye, for example, leads a $25 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation called Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE). The bread and butter of his lab are atomic clocks — devices that tell time not with gears and hands, but by tracking the natural behavior of electrons. They’re so precise they can measure the change in gravity if you lift them up by just a fraction of a millimeter. One day, he envisions that scientists could use similar quantum devices to, for example, track magma flow deep below Yellowstone National Park, the site of a supervolcano.

Recently, he and his colleagues made groundbreaking work on a type of atomic clock known as a nuclear clock. It uses lasers to trigger, then measure, extremely small shifts in energy occurring within the nuclei of thorium atoms.

Another team of engineers at CU is using frequency comb lasers, similar to those in Ye’s lab, to detect methane leaks above oil and gas operations. Still others are using quantum sensors to map out the activity of the human brain and even search for elusive dark matter — the seemingly invisible substance that binds the universe together.

Quantum work is now expanding on CU Boulder’s East Campus as well, in an initiative funded by the NSF and led by CU’s Scott Diddams, professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering. The $20 million grant will launch a new facility, the National Quantum Nanofab, where researchers and quantum specialists from Colorado and around the country can prototype and build new quantum technology.

The university is also helping to bring something else to Colorado: the next generation of quantum experts.

Quantum leaders of tomorrow

Denali Jah (EngrPhys’25), a senior studying engineering physics and applied math, found his way to physics in high school. He was having a hard time at home, and his physics teacher noticed and made a point of showing Jah how exciting science could be.

“I really appreciated his approach to life in general — it was one of curiosity,” Jah said.

In 2023, Jah joined the university’s first-ever cohort of Quantum Scholars, one of several CU programs encouraging students to take an interest in quantum physics. As part of that program, Jah and fellow undergrad Annalise Cabra (Math’23) helped to organize the university’s first Quantum Hackathon, in which teams of students compete against each other to solve tricky problems in quantum computing.

Another CU experience, the Quantum Forge, is a year-long course offered through the university’s Department of Physics. It partners students with real quantum businesses in Colorado. Over the span of a year, the students lead a hands-on project for those businesses, such as designing components for an advanced cooling machine known as a “dilution refrigerator.”

Lewandowski, a member of the university’s Physics Education Research Group, noted that the quantum industry is in its infancy — companies are still trying to get a handle on what kind of employees they’ll need. CU Boulder, she said, trains students to be flexible in the field.

“Students can still have their core engineering or physics degree, but you supplement that with a few quantum technology courses, and that can make you very employable,” said Lewandowski.

Jah, for his part, wants to use his new skills to study quantum loop gravity, a trippy theory that seeks to explain how gravity works. He said that quantum physics takes a lot of work, but it’s a path that anyone can follow — as long as they have enough wonder.

“I hope other people can engage in this exploratory process of: How does the world work? Let’s see,” Jah said.

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Illustrations by Brian Stauffer

CU Boulder and Elevate Quantum partners are ready for $127M regional quantum boost. Here’s how it’s all coming together.

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Fall 2024

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How Ancient Viruses Fuel Modern-Day Disease

Anna Tolette — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:23:01 +0000

How Ancient Viruses Fuel Modern-Day Disease Anna Tolette Tue, 11/12/2024 - 10:23

Lisa Marshall

Peek inside the human genome and, among the 20,000 or so genes that serve as building blocks of life, you’ll find flecks of DNA left behind by viruses that infected our primate ancestors tens of millions of years ago.

Scientists have long considered these ancient hitchhikers, known as endogenous retroviruses, as inert or "junk" DNA that were rendered harmless millennia ago. But new CU research shows that, when reawakened, they can play a critical role in helping cancer survive and thrive. The study also suggests that silencing certain endogenous retroviruses can make cancer treatments work better.

“Our study shows that diseases today can be significantly influenced by these ancient viral infections that, until recently, very few researchers were paying attention to,” said Edward Chuong, an assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute.

After slipping into the cells of our primate ancestors, these invaders coaxed their unknowing hosts into copying and carrying their genetic material — passing their DNA on to future generations.

While endogenous retroviruses can no longer sicken their hosts or spread like live viruses, they can act as switches that turn on nearby genes, with both good and bad results.

On the plus side, they contributed to the development of the placenta, a critical milestone in human evolution. Chuong’s research also shows they can switch on genes that help us fight infection.

However, endogenous retroviruses also have a dark side.

Chuong’s latest study found that a lineage known as LTR10 is remarkably active in about a third of colon cancer tumors, where it appears to fire up genes that inflame cancer.

The good news: When those viral relics are silenced, the cancer-promoting genes go dark too, and tumor-shrinking treatments become more effective.

As a leading researcher in the burgeoning field, Chuong hopes that by better understanding these oft-neglected bits of the genome, scientists can come up with new ways to treat modern-day illnesses.

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Photo by Glenn Asakawa

Tens of millions of years ago, ancient viruses infected our primate ancestors, leaving flecks of DNA that made their way into the human genome. A new study suggests these “endogenous retroviruses” may not be as harmless as once believed.

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Fall 2024

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InsideU Helps Kids & Caregivers Build Emotional Literacy

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

InsideU Helps Kids & Caregivers Build Emotional Literacy Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/16/2024 - 00:00

Kelsey Yandura

“Have you ever thought about what’s going on inside your head?”

It’s no small question — and the first one school-aged users are asked to contemplate in episode one of InsideU, a web-based app that uses Pixar’s Inside Out as a platform for social-emotional learning.

Over the course of four animated episodes, a character dubbed “the Mind Worker” guides kids through real-world scenarios. Characters like Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust offer common language and frameworks to build emotional awareness in children and their caregivers.

“It's a platform for understanding some of our most difficult moments,” said Sam Hubley, an assistant research professor with CU Boulder’s Renée Crown Wellness Institute, whose vision for InsideU began nearly a decade ago with the release of the movie.

Hubley and his team at the Crown Institute have spent years in partnership with Pixar Animation Studios and the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver to create an accessible and free experience that is also fun.

“We wanted something that could be used in schools, as well as in less formal settings like after-school programs,” said Hubley. “I give this to six-year-olds who've never seen it and, within 10 seconds, they know exactly how to start playing.”

According to Marie Olivett, director of mental health programming at the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver, the app has become a vital part of their after-school programming.

“Technology is the language of kids,” said Olivett. “InsideU is very experiential and helps them gain control of how they want to make decisions in a way that's really empowering.”

Julia Zigarelli, deputy director of the Crown Institute, has seen tremendous results upon implementation.

“I could see a hundred clients in my office, but we'd never be able to reach this many kids at such a deep level,” said Zigarelli. “That accessibility and reach is really exciting to me. Our hope is that it reaches as many kids as possible.”

CU Boulder’s Renée Crown Wellness Institute has partnered with Pixar to launch a web-based application that can help kids better understand their emotions.

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