Texas Instruments hosted an awards ceremony for the inaugural 2010 Beagle Board Open Source Design Challenge. The challenge was to create the best design around TI’s Beagle Board using open source embedded Linux. Teams of up to four students competed, posting their design on the TI wiki and submitting a team video introducing their project. UT Engineering undergraduates Jackie Leverett (BME) and Zach Wasson (ECE) won first place.

Several UT ECE and CS undergrads from The University of Texas at Austin chapter of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE RAS) broke into show business recently. They were brought on to build controllable bases and lights for four robots in the local production of Heddatron, the 2006 comedy by Elizabeth Meriwether currently running at the Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin. IEEE RAS started working on the project with director Dustin Wills in early November 2010 to create a remote controlled drivable and lighted system. Wills designed the top part of the robot.

UT ECE professor Ross Baldick recently addressed the historic failure of electric generators and recent rolling blackouts associated with ERCOT.

As posted on Statesman.com.

Janet Preuss, Senior Administrative Associate for the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) in UT ECE has been named a recipient of the 2011 University of Texas at Austin Outstanding Staff Award. Janet is one of only thirty staff member across all of UT Austin to be recognized for 2011.

UT ECE Professor Constantine Caramanis Receives NSF CAREER Award

UT ECE Professor Emeritus Dr. Elmer Hixson Passes Away

On Wednesday, February 2, 2011, ERCOT found it necessary to initiate rolling blackouts to cope with increased demand due to extremely cold temperatures and numerous unexpected power plant trips. Here on the UT campus the blackouts went unnoticed, as the UT Austin campus is powered by its own power station, but UT ECE Professor Mack Grady was hard at work analyzing real time grid data. On February 7th, Prof.

UT ECE Professor Deji Akinwande and Stanford Professor Wong have co-authored a new book called Carbon Nanotube and Graphene Device Physics. This is the first introductory textbook covering the properties and performance of practical nanotube devices and related applications. All the fundamental concepts are introduced, so that readers without an advanced scientific background can follow all the major ideas and results. Additional topics covered include nanotube transistors and interconnects, and the basic physics of graphene.

UT ECE undergraduates Jackie Leverett and Zach Wasson recently received attention from Popular Science Online for their entry in the Texas Instruments Beagle Board Open Source Design Challenge. Their project, called Project Smart Pill Box, is a visual verification system that utilizes face detection and primitive hand tracking to ensure that patients with memory pathologies, such as Alzheimer’s, successfully take their medications.

The Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG), a research center within the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Collaborative Research Center.