Dear Colleague,

Knowledge creation and translation are thriving at Colorado State University! Led by a vibrant faculty and staff of scholars and their students committed to pursuing their ideas and making a difference in our world, we have prepared ourselves for great things ahead. Our research enterprise is a strong engine with more than $300 million in annual expenditures since 2010, producing high-impact knowledge products of discovery and application and working on the ground to make an impact with our research in local communities and across the world. We have created rich partnerships that will facilitate our continued impact including with our beautiful city of Fort Collins and community business and civic stakeholders, creating a unique innovation ecosystem that was recently recognized as a place of Innovation and Economic Prosperity by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

CSU’s research impact is widely felt across our planet and touches unmet needs in agriculture, health, energy, and the environment. The land-grant ethos is strong in our pursuit in these areas, always seeking to nurture deep understanding of our world with the passion to make an impact. We also recognize that impact requires development and attention to scaling ideas to practice and have mature assets, such as the Energy Institute Powerhouse Campus and the Infectious Disease Research Center, to meet these challenges. These, and other areas, are supported by strong patent production and the creation of new companies that can take CSU ideas to market. These also provide fertile grounds for training a new workforce ready to take on these challenges as they look at new careers ahead.

We recognize that to thrive, we need to nurture all of the elements that help ideas grow. We are establishing best practices across our research enterprise to facilitate the pursuit of these dreams with diverse sponsors and investors from government, foundations, donors, and industry. To help drive our next chapter of discovery and impact, we recently launched a new research and scholarly success initiative that will prioritize our investments around providing new opportunities for our research community to come together and pursue new solutions and ideas that will dramatically prepare us for future research endeavors. Early investments in this initiative have been highly successful, including the Catalyst program that enables new teams of researchers to come together to pursue grand challenge problems; new investments in core research infrastructure; and a new VPR graduate research fellowship program. 

In this inaugural edition of our new research magazine, we are proud to highlight just a few of the exciting things we are doing, showcasing new ideas, actions, and the thought leaders and students on campus who inspire us. We hope it inspires you too.

Go Rams!

Alan