THIS YEAR SO FAR
By Nat Levy
Another year is off and running, and the Cockrell School is buzzing with activity once again. Faculty and student researchers have been hard at work confronting big problems, alumni are making a difference and the world is taking notice. Read on for just some of the many highlights so far this year.
We kicked off another great school year — see some of the sights and sounds.
Bob Metcalfe, winner of the ACM A.M. Turing Award for his work on developing Ethernet technology, was part of a Distinguished Lecture Series put on by the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Change the world
Members of the Portuguese government visited the Forty Acres as part of the UT Austin Portugal program, a joint venture between UT and Portugal to support global research and education activities. Check out one of the program’s recent collaborations, SENTINEL.
In September, the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering was established.
Learn more about the man behind this historic investment and the department’s plan to reimagine the discipline.
Amidst a record heatwave, media from NPR, KXAN, The New York Times and more turned to Cockrell School experts to talk about the power grid.
The Cockrell School is once again among the top undergraduate engineering programs in the latest edition of the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Our faculty continued to rack up honors this year:
- Chemical engineer Brian Belardi won the prestigious David and Lucile Packard Foundation Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, a high honor that spurs the nation’s top young scientists and engineers to take on risky, impactful projects.
- The 2023 Johannes Kepler Award from the Institute of Navigation — the highest honor in the positioning, navigation and timing field — goes to aerospace engineer Todd Humphreys.
- Biomedical engineer Nicholas Peppas was one of nine global luminaries to receive an honorary degree from Tel Aviv University.
- Guihua Yu was one of 28 U.S. researchers under the age of 42 to be named as finalist honorees for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.
- Four faculty members received NSF CAREER Awards.
The Cockrell School is joining the Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center, a collaborative organization that focuses on energy issues at the intersection of business, law, policy, and now engineering.
As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, we sat down with catalysis expert and winner of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers' Young Investigator Award Joaquin Resasco.
Our talented and courageous engineering students made waves this year. Some highlights:
- Senior biomedical student Maanas Gupta was named to the 2023 Astronaut Scholar Class by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
- Natalie Simonian, a third-year biomedical engineering graduate student, received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on a highly prevalent and fatal cardiovascular disease.
- Electrical and computer engineering undergrad Siddharth Thakur and his robotics startup Paradigm Robotics took part in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield.
- Two aerospace engineering teams won NASA design competitions.
Texas Engineers will play a critical role in the new HyVelocity Hydrogen Hub.
– a PBS show based on mechanical engineer Michael Webber’s 2019 book of the same name – premiered this fall. Fellow Texas Engineer Moriba Jah joined Webber at a screening and discussion about the show at the Paramount Theater.
The Cockrell School is gaining momentum as a leader in semiconductor education, innovation and research after a summer that saw an important new partnership with Samsung, a series of exciting semiconductor research grants, a major Semiconductor Day event and the establishment of a quantum manufacturing center of excellence.
2023 Leadership Changes
Fernanda Leite, a civil engineering faculty member and expert in construction engineering, succeeded John Ekerdt as associate dean for research. Read more about Ekerdt’s legacy and what’s next for Leite.
Amy Henson joined the Cockrell School as the new executive director of marketing and communications, a.k.a. our new boss.
Aerospace engineering alumnus Andreas Mogensen embarked on his second trip to the International Space Station where he is serving as the mission pilot and space station crew commander for the Huginn Mission.
→ Read more of our Cockrell news
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