2023-2024 Issue


Message from the Dean

I’m excited to kick off another edition of Texas Engineer Magazine. As always, the Cockrell School is buzzing with activity, and we’re here to celebrate it. In this year’s issue, learn about our work in AI and geothermal energy, catch up on all the…

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Guiding AI

Artificial intelligence could be the defining technology of our time. Texas Engineers are hard at work refining and improving the technology, imagining new ways to deploy AI to solve important problems and putting up guardrails to protect users –…

McKinlaye Harkavy portrait

5 Questions with an Academic Advisor

For parents and students alike, going to college is one of the more stressful, and also exciting, parts of life. So much to navigate. So many opportunities. The Cockrell School’s Engineering Student Services group is an important tool to help…

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Captain Cockrell

At the Pentagon, three women stand on stage, their faces lit by the burst of flash bulbs. Then Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Merrill McPeak has gathered them to make an historic announcement: effective immediately, women pilots and…

Day in the Life

The activity never stops at the Cockrell School of Engineering from dawn to dusk – and beyond. Here’s a slice of what an average day looks like on the engineering campus on the Forty Acres.

Revolutionizing Civil Engineering

It's been 40 years since I walked into my first civil engineering class at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The curriculum I studied back then is largely the same as what our students at The University of Texas at Austin experience…

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To the Center of the Earth

Nearly 3,000 kilometers below Earth’s surface, unstable isotopes fling stray neutrons into a primordial soup of molten iron and nickel. As they transform into more stable versions of themselves, the isotopes emit tremendous amounts of heat, helping…

This Year So Far

Another year is off and running and the Cockrell School is buzzing. 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…

Robot SZN

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a … couch? A red cloth couch propelling itself forward on an impressive amount of circuitry, shopping cart wheels and willpower, no less. This was the last robot in the robot parade that took over Speedway on Oct.12,…

Viewpoint: Global Graduate

It’s been a whirlwind couple years for Siva Saket Sripada. He pulled off one of the biggest things someone can possibly do – moving across the world to pursue higher education. But just as he was getting started, he like many of us, had his life…

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The Ekerdt Effect

In 15 years as an associate dean, John Ekerdt helped build a collaborative research culture and served as a catalyst for the transforming skyline of the engineering campus

Top 5 Research Breakthroughs

It’s been a busy year of research innovation in our Texas Engineering community. In the Cockrell School, researchers identify the biggest problems facing our society and take unique approaches to solve them. A common theme among innovations so far…

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Engineering of the Big

It’s another hot, “fall” day with the semester in full swing, and hundreds of students, faculty and staff pack the stairs and floor of the Engineering Education and Research Center. Burnt orange fans with THANK YOU plastered on them in white text…

Edith Clarke, a Woman of Many Firsts

By the time Edith Clarke joined The University of Texas, becoming the first female electrical engineering professor in the U.S., she had already achieved legendary status among her peers: a master’s degree from MIT, the first female electrical…

Texas Engineer Monogram