expo

Show and Tell: ATLAS EXPO Puts Creative Technology and Design on Display

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:39:21 +0000

Show and Tell: ATLAS EXPO Puts Creative Technology and Design on Display Michael Kwolek Mon, 04/13/2026 - 12:39

Caitlin Rockett

With project-based curricula and dozens of electives that allow students to follow their passions, the Creative Technology and Design (CTD) program at the ATLAS Institute doesn’t lend itself to tidy explanations—so at ATLAS EXPO, students take a show-and-tell approach.

CTD students will fill four floors of the Roser ATLAS Center with projects on Friday, April 24, showcasing web and mobile designs; multi-material physical fabrication; virtual and augmented reality experiences; video and sound installations; digital and physical games; interactive exhibitions; motion-capture projects; and works that simply defy definition.

“ATLAS EXPO is one of the rare spaces where you actually get to see and experience the full spectrum of what students are capable of,” explained Annie Margaret, an ATLAS faculty member who teaches CTD’s senior-year Capstone sequence, where students conceive of and create projects that showcase the skills they’ve developed throughout the program. Many of the 100+ projects visitors see at EXPO are developed in this program-culminating course.

“But EXPO isn’t just polished final products or projects for clients,” Margaret said. “It displays depth of thinking, weird ideas, emotional expression, technical skill, and creative risk all in one place. Games, tools, research, art, experiences—you’ll see something deeply personal sitting right next to something highly functional or market-ready. That combination, authentic creative expression alongside real-world application, is what makes ATLAS feel special.”

Storytelling as process

Students stand with their prototypes throughout EXPO to discuss their process, having spent much of the semester refining both the project itself and the narrative around the work.

“An integral piece of the CTD program is teaching students how to tell the story of their work,” said ATLAS Institute Director Mark Gross. “Storytelling is crucial to the design process—from communicating with team members to building the best product for your audience, it all comes down to how well you can talk about what you’ve created. And that includes talking about what didn’t work.”

Storytelling is woven into all six of the CTD core undergraduate classes—Image, Sound, Text, Web, Form and Object—which teach freshmen and sophomores the fundamentals of image making, audio engineering, graphic design, web development, fabrication and physical computing. This eclectic grouping of classes arms students with a broad set of technical skills and a fine-tuned creative practice.

Focus electives then allow students to pave a path to their passions, taking deeper dives into fields like neuroscience, augmented and virtual reality, computer programming, audio engineering, lighting design, game development, motion graphics and immersive installations.

An interdisciplinary program in practice

As a degree conferred by the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, CTD is a technically rigorous program that requires students to complete classical engineering courses alongside design-focused CTD classes. This blend creates an interdisciplinary experience that equips students with the tools they need to work across a variety of industries.

EXPO captures the many interests and skills that make CTD a dynamic degree.

Visitors can expect to see alternative arcade games with unique controllers, sensory-driven works, innovative re-designs of current products, problem-solving apps, creative storytelling and more. Some projects are existential, others rooted in real-world problems—and some are simply meant to bring joy.

“The golf putting green project (SmartSlope, ATLAS EXPO 2025, a collaboration by Tom Polaski, Eli Jordan and Jaskarn Kahlon) is a great example of playful, physical interaction design that brings people together in a really immediate way,” said Margaret. “Absurdly Alive by AJ Terio (2025) was an animated piece that leaned fully into artistic expression and emotional experience, and wasn’t trying to be anything other than what it was. Those are often the projects people remember.”

The range of work found at EXPO reflects CTD’s structure.

“This program is hard to define—and that is by design,” said Sheiva Rezvani, an ATLAS faculty member and director of undergraduate programs. “We want students to experiment and define what Creative Technology and Design means for this moment.”

ATLAS EXPO 2026

Friday, April 24, 3:30 PM - 6:00 PM

ATLAS Institute
1125 18th Street
Boulder, CO 80309

Register for FREE tickets

More than 100 engineering students will debut their games, sensory installations, interactive exhibitions, AR/VR experiences, physical fabrications and more.

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ATLAS Expo: 70+ creative technology and design projects to surprise and delight

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 23:51:10 +0000

ATLAS Expo: 70+ creative technology and design projects to surprise and delight Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2022 - 17:51

If you go

Who: Everyone and anyone

What: ATLAS Expo

When: Thursday, April 28, 2022, 4–6p.m.

Where: Roser ATLAS Center, 1125 18th St., Boulder

Cost: Free!

Holographic drumming partners, video projectors carried by drones, motion-activated video pinball, an app to help roommates manage household chores: These are just a few of the projects on display this Thursday during ATLAS Expo.

On hiatus for the last two years, this popular annual event is a richly varied showcase of projects by graduate and undergraduate College of Engineering students studying creative technology and design.

This year features more than 70 projects, variously designed to engage, delight, puzzle and inspire. Some are purely design-oriented; others incorporate virtual and augmented reality, wearable technologies, interaction design, robotics, information technology for development and more.

"Our classes are almost all project-based and we always push students to think outside the box," says Jill Dupré, associate director of ATLAS. "Expo features some of the best work from the past year. It's a blast! For anyone whose ever been curious about ATLAS, this is a great time to visit."

The two-hour event kicks off at 4 p.m. Thursday and is open to all.

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ATLAS club an innovation hub for AR/VR community

Anonymous — Fri, 18 May 2018 19:33:58 +0000

ATLAS club an innovation hub for AR/VR community Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/18/2018 - 13:33

Justin Chin (left) helps present Cade Haley's app, Tai Chi VR, at ATLAS Expo Spring 2018.

An ATLAS club has helped lead to prestigious internships, a national hackathon win and permanent employment for some of its members.

In less than a year, the ATLAS Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Club swelled to approximately 80 members, including graduate and undergraduate �鶹��Ƶ students, high school students and local developers and designers who test, build and collaborate on projects, says club organizer and computer science graduate student Justin Chin.

“Members are excited about the community and sharing their knowledge with others who are interested,” says Chin, who graduates this summer. “If you want to be a pioneer in this industry, there’s no better time than now to join in."

Winning national AR/VR hackathon

A popular project on display at ATLAS Expo Spring 2018 was Tai Chi VR, a virtual reality app for learning tai chi. The work of two members of the AR/VR Club as well as a California-based animator, the app won University of Southern California’s Creating Reality Hackathon earlier this spring, with club members Cade Haley and Roldan Melcon, as well as animator John Yoon, sharing the $5,000 grand prize.

Haley, a �鶹��Ƶ computer science and film production major who graduated in May, says that tai chi involves frequent shifts in direction, making it difficult for novices to watch and copy an instructor’s movements. Their VR application solves this problem by surrounding the student with eight animated instructors—no matter which direction the student looks, an instructor is plainly visible. The app also delivers soothing music to the student, who stands on a circular platform floating in the sky surrounded by clouds.

Competing against 400 participants who had been selected from 2,000 applicants nationwide, Haley and his team built their app from scratch in just 48 hours. Besides the prize money, the win also landed Haley a job with a tech start-up out of Purdue University, Explore Interactive, which uses augmented reality to support STEM education.

Club organizer and computer science graduate student Justin Chin’s team won second place in the hackathon’s Microsoft Mixed Reality track. Their project, Follow Me, is an AR emergency simulation training app designed to provide office personnel with emergency information, such as locations of exits, tornado shelters, fire extinguishers and first aid stations. Instead of organizing group trainings and fire drills, their app enables companies to program one AR headset that employees check out to complete the simulated training as part of a standard orientation.

AR/VR Club Thrives

An Expo visitor tries out Tai Chi VR.

Under Chin’s leadership, the ATLAS AR/VR Club has provided education and development of AR/VR related technologies and applications, introducing members to new technology platforms, such as Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE, Google Daydream and Microsoft Hololens.

It’s also a valuable bridge between campus and the local AR/VR development community, providing connections to meetups where members test, build and collaborate on projects. Over the course of the year, the club offered tutorials for beginners using Vuforia AR and Unity, inviting speakers from Occipital, Google News Lab, Viget, NIST and Design Workshop to share their knowledge and experience.

“The biggest barrier is learning the tools to build VR—learning Unity, and in some cases learning to program. Beginner workshops allow people to ease into it,” Chin says.

Harrison Bolin, a first-year TAM major, had no previous experience in Unity when he joined the club, but after completing several club-sponsored Unity workshops, he’s built VR apps and now hosts a weekly virtual reality web show for MediumLabs in Boulder.

“I'm in the AR/VR club because I love learning about emerging technologies,” Bolin says. “The club helps me practice my skills and gives me opportunities to talk to people with the same passion for innovation, as well as share VR projects and hear talks from industry leaders.”

Chin also points to the club’s value in connecting members to AR/VR opportunities, such as Bolin’s internship, the USC hackathon and University of Denver’s Global Game Jam, a hackathon focused on game development.

“Quite a few companies—Trimble, NIST, Ball Aerospace and a variety of startup companies are starting to dip their feet into AR and VR,” Chin says.

In addition, AR/VR is now used in architecture and medical fields. Home buyers “walk through” homes before they are built or view existing houses from the comfort of armchairs. The technology is also being used in nursing homes and hospices to keep residents and patients mentally engaged, which in turn supports pain control.

The AR/VR club was organized by Chin and other students after they completed Assistant Professor Dan Szafir’s Introduction to Virtual Reality course in fall 2016.

“When I was a member of the Makers Collective Club, I saw people working on creative and ambitious projects in the ATLAS BTU Lab,” says Chin. “Similar to BTU and the Makers Collective, I wanted to let students and the community know about the capabilities of AR/VR.”

Chin established the club in ATLAS because he thought it would thrive in an eclectic environment; also, the Mixed Reality Lab had opened in fall 2016, with 10 Oculus VR headsets donated by the manufacturer.

ATLAS Director Mark Gross says, “Thanks to Dan Szafir’s class, the AR/VR club and the Mixed Reality Lab, we have established a lively community of students and researchers building virtual worlds for design, art, entertainment, health and more. It’s great to see it take off.”

Chin graduates this summer, but he’s looking forward to seeing how the club progresses in the future.

"AR/VR is kind of a wild west," he says, "Companies are still discovering the capabilities, and it’s open season for people to explore."

Other AR/VR club member projects

Audio Visual Playground
Clean Getaway
Send Only Memories
Crossovr

Information and club membership

An ATLAS club has led to prestigious internships, a national hackathon win and permanent employment for some of its members.

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Expo Spring 2018: Showcase of innovative invention and design

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 20:22:40 +0000

Expo Spring 2018: Showcase of innovative invention and design Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:22

Celebrate the creative spirit, passion and technical wizardry of ATLAS on Wednesday, May 2, when more than one hundred students present their projects.

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Inventions to look for at ATLAS Expo May 3

Anonymous — Mon, 01 May 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Inventions to look for at ATLAS Expo May 3 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/01/2017 - 00:00

Come to the ATLAS Expo this Wednesday, May 3, to explore a colorful kaleidoscope of 100-plus student projects in virtual reality, physical computing, mobile apps, human-computer interaction, design and creative technologies of all kinds.

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Inventions to look for at ATLAS Expo Dec. 7

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Inventions to look for at ATLAS Expo Dec. 7 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/02/2016 - 00:00

Come visit ATLAS Expo, a showcase of more than 100 student projects in virtual reality, physical computing, mobile apps, human-computer interaction, design, information and communication technology for development and more.

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