News

WNCG professor Atlas Wang has received several grants for his work on artificial intelligence. 

WNCG alumnus Dr. Qi Lei has received the 2021 Oden Institute Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her winning dissertation, “Provably effective algorithms for min-max optimization," proposes optimization algorithms to find the equilibrium point of two-player zero-sum games. Read the dissertation abstract and find the link to the full text via the University of Texas Libraries. At WNCG, Lei was advised by Prof. Alex Dimakis; she was co-advised by Dr. Inderjit Dhillon from the University of Texas Department of Computer Science.

WNCG professor Aryan Mokhtari has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study Computationally Efficient Second-Order Optimization Algorithms for Large-Scale Learning. The project “lays out an agenda to develop a class of memory efficient, computationally affordable, and distributed friendly second-order methods for solving modern machine learning problems.”

There is a new app on the market that encourages users to go nuts over healthcare, complete with a squirrely mascot. Created by the founders of Accordion Health and dubbed the “health nuts,” the two new apps, Pistachio and Chestnut, bring medical care back under the control, and into the palms of, users and patients.

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, SXSW Interactive 2015 featured five days of presentations and panels from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Special programs showcased new websites, video games and startup ideas from the community.

WNCG Faculty and students met on Sunday with researchers from the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) and other UT Austin Cockrell School Engineers during the first-ever UT Village at SXSW Interactive 2015. This year's event featured panels and interactive research demonstrations and was open to all SXSW Interactive 2015 Badge Holders. Click the image below to view the complete slideshow from the day's events.  

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.