Robert Heath, Jeff Andrews, and Alan C. Bovik have been recognized as Highly Cited Researchers. The Highly Cited Researchers from Clarivate Analytics is a list released annually that recognizes researchers from around the globe leading the way in the field of sciences and social sciences, and represents some of the “world’s most influential scientific minds.”

Deji Akinwande, Texas ECE associate professor, was selected as one of five inaugural Moore Inventor Fellows. This new fellowship program recognizes early-career innovators at U.S. universities with a high potential to accelerate progress in scientific research, environmental conservation and patient care. Akinwande is creating an atomically thin 2D-silicon structure known as silicene, which could provide a tenfold increase in energy efficiency for integrated circuits such as computer chips.

The award recognizes an individual serving as an active member of SIGMICRO who has contributed significantly to SIGMICRO and provided important service to the processor microarchitecture and microsystems community.

Prof. Tutuc was cited for contributions to the physics of 2-D electron systems.

Prof. Andrea Alù has been named the 2016 recipient of the Kavli Foundation Early Career Lectureship in Materials Science. The award is given to early career researchers who are within 10 years of having received a Ph.D, and have "already made a significant contribution to materials research and clearly have a promising future." This is the fourth time the award is given. Past recipients were affiliated with Stanford, Caltech and the Harvard MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Luca Tomescu, Texas ECE student, and his high school team won the 2016 National Merit Award for Innovation at The Real World Design Challenge. After winning the Texas State Governor’s Challenge, Tomescu and his teammates were flown to Washington, D.C. to attend the annual national level competition. The purpose of the RWDC is to provide high school students the opportunity to work within a team on real-world engineering challenges, with a current focus on the aerospace industry.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a four-year, $2 million grant to Andrea Alù of the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin to break the conventional ways in which light and acoustic waves propagate.

The app, which has over 1000 users already, has been rapidly gaining popularity amongst UT students.

The Wallenberg Scholarship program promotes scientific and technical research and education in the field of Telecommunications.

 Prof. Gerstlauer received the grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his research project titled, “Resilient hardware design using controlled fault acceptance."