News Tidbits From CU Boulder Fall 2021
JILA physicist Jun Ye wins Breakthrough Prize
Theatre program receives record-breaking gift from alum Roe Green
Ancient Elephant Bone Tools
CU researchers surveyed the highest number of flanked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids ever discovered.
400,000
Years ago humans produced sophisticated tools from bones near Rome, Italy
13 ft.
Height of the straight-tusked elephants whose bones made the tools
98
Tools identified
1
Smoothing tool found that wouldn’t become common until 100,000 years later
1979–1991
Years the site, Castel di Guido, was excavated
2021
The team’s findings were published in the journal Plos One
Alum Wins Breakthrough Prize
JILA physicist Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97) was awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his groundbreaking atomic clock research. The optical lattice clock he designed enables precision tests of the laws of nature. His clocks are so precise, they would not gain or lose a second in about 15 billion years. Ye has worked at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and CU Boulder, for more than two decades.
Theatre Program Receives Record-Breaking Gift
Roe Green (Comm, Thtr’70) gave $5 million to CU Boulder’s theatre program, the largest ever for the Department of Theatre & Dance. The gift will fund an acoustic upgrade for the University Theatre, establish endowed funds for student scholarships and fund events designed to further students’ careers. In recognition of the donation, CU will change the name of University Theatre to the Roe Green Theatre, which is expected to reopen after renovations in fall 2023.
Fish Fins Inspire New Designs
The long, thin bones in fish fins contain segmented hinges that enable the fins to be flexible and strong. CU Boulder mechanical engineering professor Francois Barthelat and his team are studying the little-researched mechanical benefits of this segmented structure, with the hope that similarly modeled designs could aid in better underwater propulsion systems, new robotic materials and aircraft design.
Heard Around Campus
When people ask you, ‘Why do you like horror?’…they phrase that really carefully. … What they really mean is, ‘Why are you such a weirdo?’”
— CU Boulder English professor of distinction Steven Graham Jones in a CU Boulder Today interview talking about his new horror novel My Heart is a Chainsaw, published by Simon & Schuster.
Photos courtesy CU Boulder