Personal Background

I was born in Aurora, Colorado and adopted at 2 weeks by J. and Marcia Bruns, who named me Carson J. My full middle name is J. but the period is silent! I grew up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Loveland, Colorado. I spent a lot of my time playing, climbing trees, running, and drawing. I joined my first track team at the age of 6 and I’ve been a long-distance runner ever since. In my youth I only drew cartoons; it wasn’t until adulthood that I began exploring new media. I started playing the trumpet at age 11. I got really interested in science when I fell in love with chemistry in Mr. Nigro’s class in high school, at which point music and art took a back seat to science and athletics. I moved around the country for my education and training (see below). I came back home to Colorado in 2017 to start my dream job as a professor at CU Boulder. I’m currently living in a magical treehouse in the mountains outside of Boulder alongside the bubbling waters of Fourmile Creek with my partner, Shantelle Dreamer (that’s her real name!) and our daughter Aya.

Education / Career

My primary education was at Van Buren Elementary School (which no longer exists), Lucille Irwin Middle School, and Loveland High School – all in Loveland, CO. I did my undergraduate studies at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where I majored in both Chemistry and Religion, with a minor in Mathematics. After receiving a BA in 2008, I attended graduate school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and got my PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2013 under the supervision of Professors J. Fraser Stoddart and Samuel I. Stupp. There I specialized in molecular machines and self-assembly. I spent three years as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where I was hosted by Matt Francis in the College of Chemistry and learned to work with biomolecules. I am lucky and honored to have worked with these excellent mentors. I had the opportunity to join Fraser Stoddart in Stockholm to see him receive the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. My chemistry “family line” can be traced through almost 50 scientists (including more than a dozen Nobel Laureates) all the way back to August Kekulé and Friedrich Wöhler, the grandfathers of organic chemistry. The interconnnectness of mentors and collaborators in science mirrors that of biological diversification and evolution; I really love that, and I draw a lot of meaning from being a link in this great chain. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering with the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and I direct the Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials.

Interests

I’ve always really loved being outdoors, especially hiking and camping in the mountains. As a teenager I spent a few summers living in a tent in Roosevelt National Forest and working part-time in a camera shop in Estes Park, Colorado, which afforded me a lot of self-isolation time in Nature, which I really liked as an introvert. I caught the travel bug on my first trip overseas to study Buddhism in Japan at the age of 19, and since then I’ve managed to visit a whole lot of countries, but I especially love Japan and Thailand, having had opportunities to live and work there as a researcher for 3-6 months each. Exploring the nooks and crannies of this great Earth continues to be a lifelong passion.

I had the occasional opportunity to grow and develop as an artist during school, where I managed to take a few classes on digital art, but I didn’t really get back into art until I finished grad school and started painting. I got addicted to collecting body art immediately after my first tattoo at the age of 19, which commemorated that transformational meditation trip to Japan. I love tattoos because they live and die with their owner, and that makes them immune to the commodification we see in the art world; you can’t buy and sell tattoos, so their value is deeply personal. That makes body art very special and unique to me. I’m still waiting for the right moment to pick music back up more seriously, but in the meantime I play the gong and handpan because they sound good even when a novice plays them. I used some of my extra time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic to focus on making art. The formats I use for my artwork embrace digital / computer art, illustration, painting, flow art, and tattoo. 

Other things I really enjoy and value include dancing (deep house is my favorite music genre), gongs & handpans & chimes, meditation, sugar, home improvement projects, Burning Man, and writing. Some of my all-time heroes include Richard Feynman, Jim Carrey, Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin, Jimmy Nelson, Marie Curie, Carl Sagan, and my parents. Of course, I love interdisciplinary science and engineering; my research interests encompass organic, inorganic, polymer, and biochemistry, as well as materials science and engineering, but that’s what most of this website is about.