Tuesday, October 3, 2023
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
New Location: Student Commons Room 2600
Future Fest is an annual part of CU Denver's welcome back festivities that invites faculty, staff, students, and the broader Lynx community to learn about the progress of CU Denver's visionary 2030 Strategic Plan, hear from this year's Lynx Lecturers, and come together over a shared pride of the campus we call home.
Meet Our Lynx Lecturers
Lynx Lecturers will give a powerful four-minute, TED Talk-style presentation on their research or
an inspiring moment throughout their time at CU Denver.
Marc Swackhamer
Professor and Chair | Department of Architecture
College of Architecture and Planning
What You’ll Learn About: Biodegradable Landscape Infrastructure Pods (BLIP) aim to tackle the grand challenge of climate change related to landscape restoration after forest fires. BLIP strives to increase the success rate of forest regeneration and improve soil stability on burn scar sites. Inspired by nurse logs, which are fallen, dead trees in the forest that retain and distribute resources to new tree saplings, Swackhamer and his team’s design is a three-dimensionally printed, biodegradable vessel that decays over time as it nurses sapling trees through their first critical years of life.
Did You Know? Swackhamer has a passion for bringing diverse voices into the field of architecture, which has been one of his primary focuses as the chair of the Architecture Department since he joined CU Denver in 2019.
Cathy Bodine, PhD,
CCC-SLP 
Professor | Department of Bioengineering
College of Engineering, Design and Computing
Coleman Turner Endowed Chair in Cognitive Disabilities
Director, Innovation Ecosystem, Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute
Director, Center for Inclusive Design and Engineering (CIDE)
What You’ll Learn About: By 2030, one out of every five Americans will be at or above retirement age. One in two will experience decreased cognition, vision, hearing, and/or mobility impairments. The Advancing Research and Innovation for Aging and Disability (ARIAD) consortium of experts has converged to explore, develop and deploy safe, productive, and efficient technologies to support the needs of those living with, or aging into, disability. The team’s expertise ranges from engineering to medicine, humanities, and adult education. Their goal is for CU Denver to be recognized as a global leader and the destination for disability and aging technology innovation.
Did You know? In October, Bodine will travel to Seattle for a week to participate as a member of the Amazon Accessibility Board.
Highlights from the Future Fest 2021 event for you to get a flavor of the event.