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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.

Prof. Andrea Alù was recently appointed as a Simons Investigator in Physics. This program aims to provide a stable base of support for outstanding scientists, and enables them to undertake long-term investigations of fundamental questions in their fields. Each year, the Simons Foundation invites nominations from universities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom for the Simons Investigators in Mathematics, Physics, Theoretical Computer Science and the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems (MMLS) programs.

The third annual Simons Conference will explore the mathematics of stochastic processes and graphs for large graphs. The four-day conference, which will take place from May 9-12, 2016 at the Blanton Museum of Art on the UT Austin campus, brings together top researchers from various communities to provide a global picture of this broad subject. Each year, the Simons program alternates between an emphasis on either mathematics or network applications.

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.

Hosted by the Department of Mathematics and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at the University of Texas at Austin, the Simons Conference on Networks and Stochastic Geometry is an annual event that brings together a diverse set of world-class researchers from various scientific communities to foster interdisciplinary engagement. The multi-day conference focuses on the intersection of mathematics and applications to drive the future of wireless, transportation, social and distribution networks. Simons Conference 2015 was chaired by WNCG Profs.

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.