When the 2022 Olympic Games open in Beijing, China on Friday, an ATLAS graduate will be among the U.S. athletes, competing for her second time against the best of the best.

Joanne Reid (ICTD '17) will compete in the biathlon, a winter sport that combines rifle sharpshooting with Nordic skiing. The mentally and physically challenging sport is wildly popular in Europe, but less known in the United States.

It's Reid's second time competing in this sport in the Olympics. One month after receiving a graduate degree in Information and Communication Technology for Development (renamed Social Impact) from CU Â鶹ӰԺ’s ATLAS Institute, Reid was named to the 2018 US Winter Olympic team for biathlon and later competed with Team USA in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. 

Since then Reid has placed in World Championships held in Poklijuka, Slovenia (2021); Antholz, Italy (2020) and Ostersund, Sweden (2019). She also placed in the IBU (International Biathlon Union) World Cup in Antholz, Italy (2022) as part of a relay team; the 2022 IBU Cup (Brezno-Osrblie, Slovakia) and the 2019 US Biathlon National Championships (Jericho, Vermont).

Reid isn’t the first Winter Olympian in her family—far from it. Her mother, Beth (Heiden) Reid, and her uncle, Eric Heiden, both competed in speed skating in Lake Placid in 1980. While Beth came away with a bronze, Eric won five gold medals, which remains the most gold medals won by any Winter Olympian at a single edition of the games.

Competing on the CU Buffs ski team 2010–13, Reid distinguished herself in Nordic skiing as the 2013 NCAA freestyle champion. She didn’t take up biathlon until 2015, inspired when her grandfather passed down his biathlon rifle to her. Three years later, she qualified for the olympics team.

Reid focused the culminating project of her ATLAS graduate work on sport—specifically, on the challenges faced by today's female athletes who compete and train in an ever-present media and social media spotlight.

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"Sometimes change starts with a bunch of people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives coming together and tinkering around with an idea," she said. 

Read the full interview

       
    Photo: Elliott Whitehead

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Update April 15, 2021: Kailey Shara, ATLAS PhD student and a researcher in the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, won the NVC 14 Audience Choice Award detailed below, adding $1,000 to the $11,000 she has raised for her startup, Chembotix, over the last month.

Kailey Shara,  ATLAS PhD student and a member of the Emergent Nanomaterials Lab, and Darren Sholes, ATLAS PhD student and a member of the ACME Lab, will compete along with others for the Audience Choice Award. Both Shara and Sholes won highly competitive NVC14 awards recently, with Shara taking home $5,000 during the New Venture Challenge 14 Female Founder Prize after presenting her research, Chembotix, a robotic automation platform to dramatically speed up chemistry research and development.  Sholes won first place in NVC's newcomer competition, walking away with $5,000 for LoopSketch, a program that makes it possible for musicians to remotely collaborate.

During the online event, six other finalists will also pitch their business ideas online to a panel of judges and an audience for the opportunity to win more than $100,000 in prizes.  To make it to the NVC 14 Championships (NVC skipped 13 for superstition's sake), the six startup finalists competed in two previous competition rounds against more than 110 ventures that took part in this year's program.

ATLAS students who have successfully competed in past NVCs include the EdBoard Technologies team co-led by Cody Candler, MS-CTD '20, and Ruhan Yang, MS-CTD student, winning fourth place and taking home $12,500 in NVC 12. Ted Thayer, MS-CTD student, and two team members won fourth place and $7,500 at the NVC 11. 

For 13 years, the NVC has been CU Â鶹ӰԺ’s premier, cross-campus entrepreneurial program and competition, giving aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to build a startup through outstanding support and mentorship. Participants represent majors and departments from across the university. From undergraduates to graduates, PhD candidates to postdocs, and faculty to staff, everyone is invited to pitch their idea or watch and support.

Register Now to watch the NVC 14 Championships!

When: Tuesday, April 13 at 5:30 p.m.
Where: via Zoom

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ATLAS PhD student Nicole Johnson and affiliated ATLAS PhD student Abigail Zimmermann-Niefeld have been selected as 2019 National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) fellows. Shanel Wu, also an ATLAS PhD student, received a GRFP honorable mention. 

Advised by Tom Yeh, Johnson's research interests include accessible STEM content, tactile graphic usability and innovations in technology that will improve alternative-media systems in education. Zimmermann-Niefeld is a research assistant in Ben Shapiro's Laboratory for Playful Computation, and she conducts research on how young people can learn machine learning and statistical modeling through using the ALPACA ML toolkit to build models of athletic and artistic activities. Wu researches the intersections of cutting-edge technology and handicraft in Laura Devendorf's Unstable Design Lab, cultivating a passion for craftwork, education and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. 

GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, opportunities for international research and professional development and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose.

According to the NSF GRFP website, NSF Fellows are "anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching and innovations in science and engineering" and "are crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation's technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large."

In total for 2019, the NSF awarded 32 Graduate Research Fellowships to CU Â鶹ӰԺ students. An additional 14 students earned honorable mention recognition.

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Read more

Six CU Â鶹ӰԺ startup teams advance to the New Venture Challenge 11 Championships on April 3

Software company Nimb.ly alleviates staffing problem for caterers, wins first place in New Venture Challenge 11 IT Track Finals competition

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