News & Events

Gov. John Hickenlooper announced today the appointment of Erik Mitisek, Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Technology Association, as the state’s new Chief Innovation Officer and as the Chair of the Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) board. The appointment is effective immediately.

"We're thrilled to have Erik Mitisek on board as our new Chief Innovation Officer,” said Hickenlooper. “Erik brings different strengths and a new energy to our efforts to grow Colorado as a global leader in innovation and technology. His strong background in tech will catalyze the partnerships between public and private sectors that will make Colorado the best place for innovation."

President Obama strongly believes that the United States must equip more students to excel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). That’s why the President’s 2016 Budget invests more than $3 billion, an increase of 3.6 percent over the 2015 enacted level, in programs across the Federal Government on STEM education. The 2016 Budget includes critical investments in a number of areas that will benefit students:

• Supporting more STEM-focused high schools, with a new $125 million competitive program at the Department of Education (ED) to help communities across America launch Next-Generation High Schools that will be laboratories for cutting-edge STEM teaching and learning.

Fort Collins is ground zero for American Zika virus research, even though there’s slim to no chance of anyone contracting the virus here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, located amid Colorado State University’s Foothills Campus, has conducted Zika research since 2007. For the last three months, though, the currently incurable virus has been the branch’s No. 1 focus.

Of the 80-some employees in the branch’s Arbovirus Laboratory, “there is not one person who is not working on Zika virus right now,” lab chief and research microbiologist Ann Powers said. “Everybody has been pulled in.”

Jan 25, 2016: The United States could slash greenhouse gas emissions from power production by up to 78 percent below 1990 levels within 15 years while meeting increased demand, according to a new study by NOAA and University of Colorado Boulder researchers.



The study used a sophisticated mathematical model to evaluate future cost, demand, generation and transmissio n scenarios. It found that with improvements in transmission infrastructure, weather-driven renewable resources could supply most of the nation's electricity at costs similar to today's.

Thanks to a fleet of six microsatellites launched almost a decade ago, scientists have access to a new database of temperature records that sprawl out in three dimensions through the lowest layers of the atmosphere. A partnership between the United States and Taiwan, the satellite system has proven to be an extremely accurate, precise, and stable space-borne thermometer, especially for the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, a region important to our understanding of climate change.

Called COSMIC—the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate—the system makes measurements of several key attributes of the atmosphere that are used to improve weather forecasting. COSMIC is a collaborative effort, conceived, planned, and managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) along with the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Air Force and Taiwan's National Space Organization.