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WNCG Prof. Todd Humphreys and his group of researchers in the Radionavigation Laboratory made headlines in recent months with their major breakthroughs in centimeter-accurate positioning. A few of the students have already created a startup spin-off to push these breakthroughs in precise positioning to the mass market.

Four Texas ECE faculty were recognized in Thomson Reuters’ list of Highly Cited Researchers in 2015 for exceptional impact in their fields. They are Prof. Jeffrey Andrews, Prof. Al Bovik, Prof. Robert Heath, and Prof. Sriram Vishwanath. This is the second consecutive year on the list for all four researchers.

Imagine drawing a light painting using a phone’s antenna and GPS system. Imagine a world of virtual reality, where buildings are perfect replicas of their real-world counterparts, down to the exact height of a piece of gum stuck under a desk. Where a person cannot only see their location on the street but also the exact height and orientation of their mobile device in hand. This world of imagination and precise positioning is now becoming a reality, and through the efforts of WNCG students, even finding its way to market. 

Img: Two of the Cockrell School graduate students behind Radiosense, Ken Pesyna and Andrew Kerns. Cockrell School of Engineering, UT Austin Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device.

Six professors and one adjunct associate professor from the Cockrell School of Engineering have been included in the Thomson Reuters list of Highly Cited Researchers for 2014. This list recognizes many of the world’s leading scientific minds, and the strong Cockrell School representation illustrates UT Austin’s growing influence on the global research landscape. Four of these professors come from the Deprtment of Electrical and Computer Engineering (UT ECE) and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG).