News

This Spring, WNCG welcomes Intel, NEC, and Western Digital as the newest WNCG Industrial Affiliates Program members. All three companies enter as Level 2 members. Since WNCG’s founding, the Industrial Affiliates Program has played a vital role in the group’s success. It facilitates “cooperation and mutual assistance” between WNCG and Affiliate companies. This collaboration between academia and industry embodies the group’s mission to “support research, provide highly relevant education and opportunities, [and] promote technical innovation, imagination and entrepreneurship.”

Fujitsu Laboratories of America recently joined the WNCG Industrial Affiliate Program as a Level Two Member.

Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking it in the other, as described in a paper published on Feb. 13 in Nature. The material can be thought of as a mechanical one-way shield that blocks energy from coming in but easily transmits it going out the other side.

Toyota InfoTechnology Center, U.S.A. (Toyota ITC), recently joined the WNCG Industrial Affiliate Program as a level one member, and as a founding member of the UT SAVES research initiative.

Governmental regulations and privacy concerns restrict access to data sets for individuals and only provide researchers with data in aggregated form. However, current machine learning and data mining techniques are restricted in their ability to effectively use such data. These limitations create roadblocks for companies looking for ways to better respond to their consumers’ needs while also providing safety and security for individual users.