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Prof. Edison Thomaz of Texas ECE has received a Google Faculty Research Award for his proposed research work on "Identifying Acoustic Biomarkers of Mental Health and Well-Being in Voice-Based Interactions with Conversational Assistants in the Home". Google Faculty Research Awards is an annual open call for "proposals on computer science and related topics such as machine learning, machine perception, natural language processing, and quantum computing." This year, Google considered 1,033 proposals covering 46 countries and over 360 universities and funded 152 projects from those proposals.

In 2013, 32,719 fatalities resulted from traffic crashes, most of which were caused by driver error. Across the globe, people are facing longer commutes and five Texas communities are in the top 26 most congested cities in the United States. Traffic congestion creates about 4.8 billion hours of travel delay and affects the environment through increased carbon footprints and higher fuel consumption.