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It’s been six years since the launch of startup company , co-founded by Professor Mark Rentschler of the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. The company has seen great success, including the development of a medical device designed to enable more efficient procedures in the small bowel region.

Today, with the help of a $4.5 million award through the Anschutz Acceleration Initiative (AAI), Rentschler and his colleagues are working to bring two new products to the market that will transform these types of procedures even further.

“We brought our first product out on the market in 2024,” said Rentschler, also a faculty member in biomedical engineering (BME) and robotics. “We are planning to bring a second and third product to the market in 12-18 months, and we are extremely excited to get these devices in the hands of interventional endoscopists.”

Professor Mark Rentschler holding Aspero Medical's patented Ancora-SB balloon overtube.

In 2023, Aspero received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market and sell the Ancora-SB device. The product is used during endoscopy procedures to diagnose and treat small bowel diseases.

According to Rentschler, operating within the small intestine can be time consuming and technically challenging. Equipped with a patented micro-textured balloon, the Ancora-SB overtube is designed to provide more traction and anchoring consistency than smooth latex or smooth silicone balloon overtube competitors.

“Balloon overtubes for small bowel procedures have been around for about a decade,” said Rentschler. “We’re not looking to change the small bowel enteroscopy procedure, but instead improve balloon anchoring performance during these procedures in the small bowel.”

Ancora-SB has allowed Aspero to prove their worth in hospitals. Their next products expand on this concept, of course, with additional features that can facilitate a less invasive interventional procedure than traditional open surgery.

The next generation balloon overtube will be used to remove cancerous lesions in the large bowel region. It features an extra working channel that allows for an additional tool to be utilized alongside the visualization scope. This offers physicians more control, access, and stabilization when maneuvering through the colon and performing advanced interventional procedures.

“Conceptually, these devices will enable triangulated surgery with two tools and centralized visualization so that physicians can more efficiently perform surgery from inside the lumen,” Rentschler said. “Instead of historically invasive procedures, where the patient is cut open, and the cancerous bowel region is removed, we’re assisting physicians as they remove the cancer from the inside of the lumen during an outpatient procedure.

“It's much less invasive, with potentially tremendous cost savings, and numerous benefits for the patient.”

Aspero’s third product will be another balloon overtube, this time with a working channel that enables minimally invasive cancer removal in the esophagus and stomach regions of the gastrointestinal tract. 

Rentschler showcasing all three of the medical devices in Aspero Medical's multi-product platform, including their two new highly anticipated devices.

Rentschler and his team say the two upcoming devices have the potential to replace a large, and growing, number of today’s conventional surgical procedures in the gastrointestinal region by enhancing safety and efficiency while reducing patient recovery time. Moving procedures from inpatient surgery to outpatient endoscopy can generate potential cost savings of up to 50 percent or more.

“Everyone knows this is the direction we need to go. Clinical outcomes from these types of procedures are incredibly strong, but the techniques and devices aren’t widely available yet,” said Rentschler. “We are creating products that help physicians and patients feel safe and comfortable without overcomplicating things. The paradigm is rapidly shifting, and we endeavor to push endoscopy forward.”

The company is currently finalizing the design of the second product. It’s about six months further along in development than the third product, but Rentschler says they are looking to have both devices FDA cleared by the end of 2026. 

When all three devices hit the market, Aspero will look to market a portfolio of products, rather than a single tool. But further innovation is on the horizon, this time incorporating the Ancora balloon technology with a robotic element.

“Ancora is a multi-product platform focusing on the small bowel, large bowel, stomach and esophageal regions,” Rentschler said. “Our next potential venture will be in flexible robots. We’ll continue with our balloon overtubes, but as anchoring platforms to be used with flexible robotic endoscopy systems.”

Until then, Rentschler and company are full steam ahead on these next products. The $4.5 million AAI grant is being offered over a four year span, but they anticipate spending that money much sooner so they can get the devices out on the market and begin positively impacting patients and physicians everywhere.

But that’s not their only goal. With a lot of Colorado involved in the company’s revolutionizing technology, Rentschler hopes to also tell another story.

“I started Aspero Medical with Dr. Steven Edmundowicz at ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Anschutz. We’ve received a number of grants from the state of Colorado and everyone involved is invested in our vision,” said Rentschler. “We believe that a rising tide raises all boats, and when we think of Aspero, we want it to be a successful Colorado story.”

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Nick Rovito, a first-year PhD student in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, was living on top of the world.

After submitting a technical publication to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fluids Engineering Division, he was named one of five finalists for the Young Engineer Paper Competition and was invited to present his research at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE) conference in Portland, Oregon.

Nick Rovito, first-year PhD student and winner of the American Society of Mechanical Engineer's Young Engineer Paper Competition.

Rovito’s award-winning research article is titled “.” The piece featured a multi-physics model coupling fluid dynamics, drug transport and reactions that emulates the clot-dissolving process in stroke treatment.

Simply being recognized amongst the other finalists at such a prestigious gathering was already the honor of a lifetime, he said. With over 1,600 research leaders across nearly 20 technical tracks, the IMECE conference features one of the largest and most diverse conference communities that ASME has to offer. It’s often touted as the largest mechanical engineering conference in the country.

But when presentations had concluded and the judges were done deliberating, Rovito wasn’t just a finalist. He was the winner.

As a graduate research assistant in the , led by Assistant Professor Debanjan Mukherjee at the University of Colorado Boulder, Rovito conducts computational fluid dynamics research analyzing the mechanisms of thrombolysis in the blood vessels of the brain. This primary mode of stroke therapy involves administering medication to help restore blood flow by dissolving blood clots that may be causing a stroke.

“The FLOWLab is very multidisciplinary,” Rovito said. “We study stroke and medicine by analyzing fluid motion and transport through the cardiovascular system. Recognizing this allows us to apply principles of mechanical engineering to an otherwise medically focused field.”

His work aims to answer two questions: why do stroke treatments fail, and how can we increase their efficacy in the future?

“When you have a stroke, there’s an artery in your brain that is being blocked by a blood clot. Tissue plasminogen activator is the only drug approved by the FDA to treat this, but nearly 50 percent of patients don’t actually see the clot fully dissolve,” Rovito said. “A stroke left untreated could spell permanent disability or death, so we want to study the fluid mechanics within the vascular structure and see exactly how that drug is being delivered to the blood clot.”

Thrombolysis is known to present other dangerous issues, as well. Tissue plasminogen activator is categorized as an anticoagulant or a blood thinner. The drug’s job is to interfere with the clotting process and prevent blood clots from forming or growing.

However, the drug is not capable of targeting specific blood clots. It will dissolve any blood clot, including those that are not causing the stroke. Rovito says this can lead to severe bleeding if the drug goes elsewhere in the brain, or if it is overused.

Assistant Professor Debanjan Mukherjee (left) and Nick Rovito (right). Rovito is a graduate research assistant in the FLOWLab, led by Mukherjee.

“Around twenty percent of the patients who receive this drug experience major bleeding whether the stroke treatment is successful or not,” he said. “Understanding drug delivery from a flow physics standpoint helps us understand what the drug is doing when it’s administered so we can potentially mitigate those issues in the future.”

“I felt confident about my work,” Rovito said. “But I was just happy to be there. Everybody’s work was phenomenal. Any of the finalists could have won. So when the results came out, I was thrilled.”

Mukherjee, a co-author of the publication, had no doubt that Rovito’s work had what it took to win.

“Drug delivery investigation is at the core of our research group, and a lot of the strides we’ve made in modeling and simulation tools have been because of Nick’s efforts,” said Mukherjee, also a faculty member in biomedical engineering (BME) at ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder. “This is a very complicated problem, and his research is novel. The fact that he was able to win this award three semesters into his PhD pursuit speaks to his great ability to accomplish these technical tasks.”

Rovito hopes to continue improving this model and solving problems related to the clinical challenges of today. Their next steps in this project related to stroke therapy will be in collaboration with the neurology team at the , a frequent collaborator with the FLOWLab.

Beyond his research, Rovito also hopes to translate his technical skills into a long-term teaching career.

“One of my passions is teaching and scientific communication,” he said. “¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder is a great place for me to continue my technical work and develop as an educator.”

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Aria Mundy, a dual-major mechanical engineering and applied mathematics student graduating this fall, has been selected to receive the ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science 2024 Outstanding Undergraduate Award.

The award is given to an undergraduate student who maximized their educational experience in a holistic way, with accomplishments across several areas.

Mundy is the fourth ME student to win the award since 1994. 

A home-grown love for engineering

Aria Mundy, recipient of the CEAS 2024 Outstanding Undergraduate Award.

Born and raised in the Boulder area, Mundy always dreamed of studying engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. She loved math, she loved science and with encouragement from her early educators, she learned the importance of women in engineering.

“I was one of just a few girls in my physics class during high school,” Mundy said. “One of my teachers encouraged me to pursue a career in STEM and inspired me to explore engineering.”

Mundy started her undergraduate journey in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder. But after her freshman year, she decided to explore different areas of study in the college, eventually settling on the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“The awesome part about ME is how versatile it is,” she said. “I’ve held some different internships across different industries. It’s been awesome to jump around and get exposure to many exciting areas.”

Success in-and-out of the classroom

During her time at ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder, Mundy demonstrated a talent for academic success. She was awarded a scholarship by the BOLD Center and was a part of the ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder Esteemed Scholars Program and . In her sophomore year, she was accepted into the Kiewit Design-Build Scholars Program.

Aria Mundy crossing the finish line at the USA Cycling Collegiate National Championships.

Mundy also exhibited success outside of the classroom. She has been a part of the ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Cycling and Triathlon Teams all throughout her college career, holding leadership positions on both teams. In the , Mundy brought four national championships back to Boulder, taking first in the Women’s Club Team Time Trial, Road Race, Criterium, and Omnium events.

Success has found Mundy as a member of the , as well. In 2023 and 2024, the squad took home two top-3 finishes in the .

“Being a part of the different scholarship programs helped expand my opportunities and community,” Mundy said. “As for athletics, being a part of sports has always been my escape whenever I feel overwhelmed in class.

“It’s been amazing to find some success at races. But at the end of the day, it’s really just about being a part of such a great community and finding balance alongside academics.”

Creating an inclusive culture

Mundy attributes her success in multiple arenas to the support of peers and mentors who took her under their wings.

Aria Mundy guiding middle school students through a science experiment. 

“When I was a freshman, stepping into sports felt intimidating at times. Cycling has few women and engineering has long been male-dominated,” she said. “But I’ll never forget the women who went out of their way to make me feel included. As I grew older, I felt the responsibility to create that same sense of belonging for others, too.”

In many ways, Mundy was on the front lines fighting for diversity and gender parity in engineering. As a member of ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder’s , she helped organize local workshops encouraging young women to explore STEM career opportunities.

She also participated in the Project-Based Learning in Rural Schools Soil Quality Inquiry Program (SQIQ). This experience took her to Paonia, Colorado where she partnered with Paonia K-8 to guide young students through soil-quality experiments, fostering their curiosity about science and research.

“¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder is a very welcoming place for women and underrepresented students,” Mundy said. "I strive to share my excitement and enthusiasm for engineering and community, showing others that they have a support system and can succeed in this environment.”

Making a broader impact

A strong love for engineering and outreach opened the door for Mundy to make an impact beyond the ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder campus, too.

Aria Mundy during her time at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). 

In summer 2022, Mundy traveled to Rwanda as a member of the ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Engineers Without Borders (EWB). She worked with her peers to design and implement a rainwater catchment system. She said it was “a true embodiment of what it means to be an engineer.”

“This project was a powerful reminder of how engineering can bring people together to create solutions that make a lasting difference,” Mundy said.

She also completed internships at companies in various engineering industries such as Tendeg, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, NIST, Specialized Bicycle Components and LASP. Mundy’s award nominator says she has contributed to new ideas and technologies at each company.

“My philosophy has been to try as many different things as possible,” Mundy said. “I’m truly grateful to receive this award, and for ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Boulder’s support in providing so many avenues for me to learn and grow.

“If I had more time, I would love to keep exploring new things. I’m sad my journey is coming to a close, but I’m excited for what comes next.”

The Outstanding Undergraduate Award will be presented to Mundy at the College of Engineering and Applied Science Graduation Ceremony on Dec. 19. Mundy is considering pursuing a master’s in mechanical engineering while exploring full-time opportunities. 

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Assistant Professor Kaushik Jayaram’s Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Laboratory recently won the , rising above around 3,000 other academic papers that were submitted to the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Along with Jayaram as the PI of the lab, PhD student Heiko Kabutz was the lead researcher of the paper, and PhD students Alex Hedrick and Parker McDonnell were coauthors, as well.

Their paper titled , improves upon their to demonstrate the ability to passively change its shape to squeeze through narrow gaps in multiple directions. This is a new capability for legged robots, let alone insect-scale systems, that enables significantly enhanced maneuverability in cluttered environments, and has the potential to aid first responders after major disasters.

Kabutz and Jayaram’s latest version is scaled down 60% in length and 38% in mass, while maintaining 80% of the actuation power. The robot weighs less than a gram but can support over three times its body weight as an additional payload. It is also over three times as fast as its predecessor reaching running speeds of 60 millimeters per second, or three of its body lengths per second.

Check out their video of mCLARI here: .

With the latest breakthrough that Jayaram and Kabutz have now achieved with their research, they are able to scale down (or up), their design without sacrificing design integrity bringing such robots closer in size to real-world application needs.

“Since these robots can deform, you can still have slightly larger sizes,” Jayaram said. “If you have a slightly larger size, you can carry more weight, you can have more sensors, you'll have a longer lifetime and be more stable. But when you need to be, you can squish through and go through those specific gaps.”

Kabutz, who leads the design of the mClari, has surgeon-like hands that allow him to build and fold the tiny legs of the robot. Kabutz grew up fascinated by robots and competed in robotic competitions in high school.

“Initially, I was interested in building bigger robots,” said Kabutz, “but when I came to Jayaram’s lab, he really got me interested in building bioinspired robots at the insect scale.”

Jayaram’s research team studies concepts from biology and applies them to the design of real-world engineered systems. In his lab, you can find robots modeled after the body morphologies of various arthropods including cockroaches and spiders. 

“We are fundamentally interested in understanding why animals are the way they are and move the way they do,” said Jayaram, “and how we can build bioinspired robots that can address social needs, like search and rescue, environmental monitoring, or even use them during surgery.”

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When Associate Professor Nathalie Vriend was named a  by the , a highly prestigious award in the experimental physics community, the foundation invited her to attend their annual conference. But she had to decline – she was in the middle of hiking the 567-mile with her family.

She’ll be there next year, though. The funding provides five years of support for her research, which is itself inspired by her love of nature.

The Moore Foundation’s  supports experimental physicists to tackle their most creative research ideas. Vriend will receive $1.25 million from the foundation to further her innovative research in granular flows in the natural environment. 

In her laboratory experiments, Vriend uses a technique called photoelasticity that analyzes how patterns of light within particles change according to the magnitude and direction of forces exerted upon them. The changing patterns of light can give Vriend a picture of the stress distribution between particles in situations like rockslides or cereals flowing out of a grain silo.

“We can measure how these tiny particles flow,” Vriend said, “and understand their acceleration and velocity and create models of their movement.”

With the funding from the Moore Foundation, Vriend plans to take her research to another level. So far, Vriend has focused on dry granular flows, like sand or snow, but now she wants to introduce fluid between the particles. In addition to the solid contact forces already exerted onto the particles, this would add hydrodynamic stresses as well.

“If you think about fluids like water, they behave in a certain way. We call it Newtonian. If you stress it harder, then it will resist harder, and it's very linear,” Vriend said. “But if you insert particles, it changes the fluids in a nonlinear way. And it makes it very difficult to model.”

The scientific community is completely in the dark about how particles function within particle-fluid states of matter, which are called “suspensions,” like mudslides or lava flows. Vriend’s research presents a unique opportunity to characterize suspensions by quantitatively measuring and modeling their interactions.

Ultimately, Vriend’s work has the potential to advance the analysis, modeling, and predicting of natural hazards like landslides, avalanches or ice formations.

“I love to work from nature,” said Vriend, who considers herself chiefly a mechanical engineer but versed in geophysics as well. At Cambridge University, Vriend spent nine years in the applied math department, where she worked on fluid dynamics before moving to the earth science department for three years.

For someone like Vriend who enjoys nature, Colorado is good place to be.

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Assistant Professor Robert MacCurdy and his collaborators have won the for their outstanding contributions in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation.

The award recognizes up to three papers a year that were published in the 10 years earlier and have amassed a high level of citations and deemed to be seminal. Their paper, titled “,” was the only paper to receive the award in 2023.

MacCurdy coauthored the paper along with , and , the latter being the head of the , where MacCurdy and his collaborators met and did the work.

The paper was inspired by the created by ; in his research, Sims demonstrated that computational evolution can produce morphologies that resemble natural organisms, but the potential for increasingly complex and natural morphologies hit a ceiling. It was hypothesized that the limitation in morphological types was due to the rigidity of the materials used in the design space and the direct encoding.

Addressing these problems in their paper, MacCurdy and his collaborators demonstrated how computational evolution can be pushed further through the creation of soft robots and the use of generative, evolutionary-based encoding that wielded the power of multi-objective optimization.

“When you’re trying to solve a design problem, it’s smart to show some humility because you don’t ever fully know the true nature of the problem,” said MacCurdy, “so it’s appealing to use a multi-objective design framework that gives you a whole population of very different solutions to that set of design objectives.”

Using their novel approach, MacCurdy and his collaborators were able to create a set of virtual robots whose locomotion resembled animals found in the natural world but also creatures whose gait was wildly idiosyncratic and unique.

“Some robots galloped like a horse. Others had the running gait of a dog or rolled along like a walrus,” MacCurdy said. “I think these designs were able to capture people’s imagination, while also motivating the use of generative algorithms and multi-objective optimization to solve challenging design problems, and that’s why the paper continues to garner citations and serve as an inspiration for others.”

A video of the work has garnered hundreds of thousands of views. Watch it here:

[video:youtu.be/z9ptOeByLA4?si=cNA1CG5olCEsncze]

The impact of the paper has received recognition at several conferences, while the SIGEVO Impact Award cements its importance in the robotics community. The real-life applications of the paper have furthered the study of evolutionary biology and the design of soft robots that can move in the real world.

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The Moore Foundation’s  supports experimental physicists who may lack flexible research funding to tackle their most creative research ideas. Vriend will receive $1.25 million from the foundation over five years to further her innovative research in granular flows in the natural environment. 

Vriend’s research addresses a major gap in the understanding of the precise role of
the discrete particle phase in dense suspensions – particle-fluid mixtures where the particles are separated by less than a particle diameter.

Even though liquid-solid processes are ubiquitous and can be measured and modelled on a system scale, the scientific community is completely in the dark on the details and the implications of the particle phase. Vriend’s methodology presents a unique opportunity to characterize dense suspensions by quantitatively measuring and visualizing network interactions due to solid contact forces with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution.

To accomplish this, Vriend will create dense particle-fluid mixtures using bespoke macroscopic photoelastic particles mixed in with fluids of different viscosities, densities and temperatures.

Photoelastic particles visually show solid contact forces (both normal and shear). The team will combine this information with Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV), directly resolving forces on particles and the fluid motion.

Vriend’s work on understanding the role that the particle-phase plays in suspensions has the potential to advance the analysis, modelling, predicting and forward-projecting of environment suspensions in natural hazards (e.g., landslides, avalanches), such as solid crystal mush mixed in with viscous magma deep in our Earth, ice crystals initiating in cold polar water reservoirs or sticky clay particles avalanching down the salty sea bottom in a turbidity current.

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