University of Colorado boosts Boulder campus enrollment past 38K

The University of Colorado has 38,428 graduate and undergraduate students enrolled at its flagship campus in Boulder for the fall 2024 semester, up 3.4% from last year.

CU’s acceptance rate for the new school years was 76%, which Amy Hutton, associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, said was “a 30-year low.”

Despite the overall enrollment increase, boosted retention caused CU to reduce its freshman-class size, she said, allowing the university to “to ensure (more) dedicated resources for retention and graduation.”

The population of CU students from “historically marginalized backgrounds” increased from 26.9% last fall to 27.7% for the start of this school year. First-year students from “minoritized backgrounds” increased one percentage point over the year. White student enrollment was down 4.2% in the freshman class, but that group still totaled 4,856 students, by far the largest racial group.

“Moving forward, CU Boulder will continue its efforts to reflect the diversity of Colorado, including efforts to diversify the student body and support all those who join our campus through to graduation,” CU chancellor Justin Schwartz said in a prepared statement. “While we still have work to do in addressing recruitment and retention gaps among minoritized populations, it’s evident that CU Boulder remains a destination of choice for thousands of students across Colorado and beyond.”

Medical-device firm Boulder iQ expands local ops

Medical-device firm Boulder iQ has nearly doubled its Boulder footprint with the purchase of a 10,000-square-foot facility at 5375 Western Ave.

That new space is close to the company’s roughly 11,000-square-foot headquarters at 5421 Western Ave.

“We have simply outgrown our space with the amount of work we are doing,” Boulder iQ CEO Jim Kasic said in a news release. “We often begin work with early-stage companies and then grow with them,” he explains. “When we succeed in helping them get their products to market, they succeed, grow and come back to us for further projects. It’s a cycle of success we work to cultivate.”

Boulder iQ, a trade name registered to Boulder BioMed LLC, is a medical and industrial device consulting and contract manufacturing firm.

The company “plans to use the additional space for assembly, packaging and labeling,” Boulder iQ said. “Product design, testing, rapid prototyping, cleanroom operations and sterilization will continue to take place at its current facility.”

Boulder iQ has hired 30 workers in the last 18 months and currently has an employee headcount of 50.

WishGarden Herbs hires first marketing exec

WishGarden Herbs Inc., a dietary supplement manufacturer based in Louisville, has hired Tracy Van Hoven as its first chief marketing officer.

She previously held leadership positions at supplement companies Emerson Ecologics LLC and MegaFood LLC.

“Van Hoven will focus on accelerating growth and optimizing marketing efforts aimed at capturing the abundant opportunity currently in the herbalism market,” WishGarden said in a news release.

In addition to Van Hoven, the company recently hired Erin Stokes as medical director and Victor Zesiger as quality manager.

Feds offer Solid Power up to $50M to expand manufacturing capacity

Solid Power Inc. (Nasdaq: SLDP), a Louisville-based developer of solid-state battery technology, was selected this month by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains to receive grant funding of up to $50 million that the company plans use for manufacturing expansion.

Specifically, Solid Power said it “intends to install the first globally known continuous manufacturing process of sulfide-based solid electrolyte materials for advanced all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) and expand its electrolyte production capabilities” at its Thornton plant.

The company can currently produce 30 metric tons of electrolyte per year. With the grant funding, provided to DOE through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Solid Power said it “plans to significantly increase its annual production capacity, first to 75 metric tons in 2026 and then to 140 metric tons in 2028, in order to meet anticipated demand.”

Alongside the new manufacturing capacity, Solid Power expects to hire about 40 new workers in Thornton.

Infleqtion secures $1M grant to advance quantum software

Infleqtion, a quantum information company, recently received a $1.15 million Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop software for quantum computing.

The funding “will help advance Infleqtion’s work on Superstaq, the company’s software platform purpose-built to optimize quantum computing performance,” the company said in a news release.

According to Infleqtion, the trade name used by ColdQuanta Inc., this is the first grant of its kind awarded for quantum software.

“One of the biggest opportunities to accelerate progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing lies not in the hardware, but in the software. This is a unique area of focus for Infleqtion, and we’ve already demonstrated how Superstaq can enable up to 10x performance gains by taking specific device characteristics into consideration,” Infleqtion CEO Matthew Kinsella said in the release. “The SBIR grant is a testament to the pioneering work we’ve already done and will be a catalyst for ongoing breakthroughs in quantum software.”

— BizWest reports