News

The Aviation Week Network recently announced the winners of this year’s 20 Twenties Award. WNCG student Hailey Nichols was among the students chosen for the class of 2022.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at The University of Texas at Austin hosted Celebrate ECE on Monday, May 9, 2022. The event honored students for valuable contributions to the Texas ECE community. Two WNCG students were among the award winners for the 2021-2022 academic year:  Marius Arvinte, a fifth-year doctoral student advised by Prof. Jon Tamir., won the Graduate Acheivement Award in Recognition of Outstanding Academic Acheivement.

WNCG student Hailey Nichols won first place in the Graduate/Postdoc category at last month’s Female Founder Pitch competition. The event was hosted by the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute and the Texas Innovation Center.

WNCG student Philip Tan was among the winners of the 2021 Catalyst Award, part of the first phase of the Healthy Longevity Global Competition. Winners were announced by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) last month at the inaugural Global Innovator Summit.

WNCG students Marius Facktor and Abhinau Venkataramanan and WNCG alumnus Praful Gupta from Prof. Al Bovik’s Laboratory for Image & Video Engineering (LIVE) have been named Phase 2 winners in the Enhancing Computer Vision for Public Safety Challenge. The challenge is hosted by the Public Safety Communications Research Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The competition aims to support public safety missions by advancing computer vision algorithms and no-reference (NR) metrics that assess image or video quality.

IBM recently announced the awardees of this year’s IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Program. WNCG student Tianlong Chen was among only 16 students selected worldwide for 2021. According to IBM, the Fellowship Awards Program is “intensely competitive.” Awardees are exceptional Ph.D. students conducting research in promising and disruptive technologies, particularly: Hybrid Cloud; Quantum Computing / Quantum Systems; Artificial Intelligence; Cloud / Open Source Technologies; Security / Cyber Security; Data Science; and Systems.

WNCG student Philip Tan has been selected as a Fellow of the National Science Foundation’s 2021 Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). GRFP recognizes outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or in STEM education. The program supports these students in pursuing full-time research-based degrees through a five-year fellowship. A full list of this year's recipients can be found on the GRFP website.

WNCG student Matthew Faw was one of two Texas ECE PhD students selected as 2020-2021 recipients of UT NXP Foundation Fellowship awards. The NXP Foundation Fellowship program provides one-year fellowships to support third or fourth year PhD students pursuing research in machine learning, artificial intelligence, millimeter wave radar and advanced microprocessing or microcomputing technology. The NXP Foundation aims "to develop strong youth STEM programs and encourage innovation that makes a difference in the world."

WNCG student Yun Chen won Best Paper in the Wireless Networks track at the 2020 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference. Chen received the award for her paper “Efficient Drone Mobility Support Using Reinforcement Learning.”

WNCG student Lakshay Narula received the Walter R. Fried Memorial Award for Best Paper at the 2020 IEEE/ION PLANSx Conference. The award recognizes “substantial contribution to the technology of navigation and positioning equipment, systems, or practices” judged on criteria including technical content, innovation, importance of topic, and writing quality. Narula’s winning paper, “Automotive-Radar-Based 50-cm Urban Positioning,” demonstrated how self-driving cars can use commercially-available, low-cost automotive radars to improve navigation.