Draft:Carson J. Bruns

Carson J. Bruns (Born October 3, 1985) is an American scientist, nanotechnologist, and inventor. He is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado. Bruns is known for his work on molecular machinery and smart tattoos. He is the director of the Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials.

Early life and education
Bruns was born in Aurora, Colorado. He grew up in Loveland and attended Loveland High School. Bruns studied chemistry and mathematics at the Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2008. In 2013, he got his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Bruns worked for three years as a fellow at UC Berkley's Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.

Career
Bruns began his career as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 2014 to 2017, where he worked with Matthew Francis. In 2017, he began his current position as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the ATLAS Institute at University of Colorado Boulder.

Molecular nanomachines
Bruns is a co-author on the 2016 textbook The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines with Fraser Stoddart, who won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. His PhD work with Stoddart involved the development of molecular muscles based on rotaxanes as molecular machines. Since joining the faculty in Boulder, Bruns has investigated molecular machinery based on polyrotaxanes and carbon nanorings.

Smart tattoos
Bruns claims the first demonstrated example of an intradermal smart tattoo ink of his own invention. In addition to UV-sensing smart tattoos, Bruns and co-workers have demonstrated a proof of concept for intradermal smart tattoos capable of gamma dosimetry. Bruns and his team at the University of Colorado, Boulder have developed a new type of tattoo ink that reacts to UV light. Bruns co-founded HYPRSKN, a startup commercializing Magic Ink, the first re-writable tattoo pigment. He is also the company's chief science officer.

Awards and research grants
In April 2023, Bruns won the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award for his research on "smart tattoos", a new type of tattoos that uses nanotechnology to improve health, and specifically make it easier for people to spot and prevent emerging skin problems.

Books

 * Bruns, Carson J., and J. Fraser Stoddart. "The nature of the mechanical bond: from molecules to machines." (2016). ISBN 978-1119044000

Papers

 * Bruns, Carson J. "Moving forward in the semantic soup of artificial molecular machine taxonomy." Nature Nanotechnology (2022): 1-4.
 * H Kwon, CJ Bruns. "All-Conjugated Cycloparaphenylene-Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Host-Guest Complexes Stabilized by CH–π Interactions." Nano Research 2022, 15, 5545–5555.
 * Dikshit, K. V.; Bruns, C. J. "Post-Synthesis Modification of Slide-Ring Gels for Thermal and Mechanical Reconfiguration." Soft Matter 2021, 17, 5248–5257.
 * Bruns, C. J. Exploring and Exploiting the Symmetry-Breaking Effect of Cyclodextrins in Mechanomolecules. Symmetry 2019, 11, 1249.
 * Bruns, C. J.; Stoddart, J. F. Rotaxane-Based Molecular Muscles. Acc. Chem. Res. 2014, 47, 2186–2199.
 * Bruns, C. J.; Frasconi, M.; Iehl, J.; Hartlieb, K. J.; Schneebeli, S. T.; Cheng, C.; Stupp, S. I.; Stoddart, J. F. Redox Switchable Daisy Chains Driven by Radical-Radical Interactions. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 4714–4723.