News & Events

DALLAS MORNING NEWS: UT professors offer perspective, predictions about the future

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

In his "Perspectives on the Future" at the Park City Club in Dallas, Wallace Fowler, aerospace engineering professor, gave his predictions on the future of the space industry.

Private enterprise, not the government, will fuel the next generation of space exploration.  "Once there's a chance to make money, stand back and watch," Fowler said.  Read more.

UT Engineer To Lead Team Mapping Haiti Destruction

Monday, January 25, 2010

To minimize personal injury and structural damage from future earthquakes, detailed mapping and surveying of Haiti’s damaged areas will begin Jan. 30 with a team of engineers and scientists led by Dr. Ellen Rathje, civil engineering professor at The University of Texas at Austin.

To develop safer, future engineering design procedures, the seven-person team will spend an intensive week documenting the effects of the Magnitude 7.0 earthquake.  Their efforts are sponsored by the Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association which is supported by the National Science Foundation,

“The Haiti earthquake represents a common earthquake scenario in the United States and throughout the world,” says Rathje.  “It will be important to understand how soil and other geologic conditions influenced the damage patterns across the city.”

This earthquake generated liquefaction and lateral spreading along the coastline and severely affected critical facilities, such as the port, she says.  Given the difficulty of laboratory replication of soil deposits built by nature over thousands of years, these field observations obtained immediately following the earthquake will preserve perishable data necessary for future models. 

Also participating in the investigation are Jeff Bachhuber of Fugro/William Lettis and Associates, Dr. Brady Cox of the University of Arkansas, Jim French of AMEC/Geomatrix, Dr. Russell Green of Virginia Technical Institute, Dr. Scott Olson of the University of Illinois, Dr. Glenn Rix of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Oscar Suncar of The University of Texas at Austin, and Donald Wells of AMEC/Geomatrix.  The GEER team focuses on documenting geotechnical effects of extreme events as part of the U.S. National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.

They will work with teams organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, U.S. Geological Survey, American Society of Civil Engineers Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, and others.

Rathje holds the J. Neils Thompson Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Civil Engineering which was established by the W.S. Bellows Construction Company.

University Named No. 3 Cleantech University by Industry Analyst

Monday, January 25, 2010

Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital recently ranked the best universities for driving cleantech energy initiatives. Cleantech is defined as new technology and related business models that offer competitive returns for investors and customers while providing solutions to global challenges.

Engineer Assesses Human Safety of Remaining Shelter in Haiti

Friday, January 22, 2010

Dr. Wassim Ghannoum, civil engineering assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin, arrived in Haiti Jan. 21 to begin a week-long safety assessment of structures in the disaster-ridden area.

Focusing chiefly on hospitals and ports, he is part of the team of 10 architects and engineers from U.S. educational institutions and private engineering firms seeking to identify structures that remain safe to enter.

Ghannoum was selected from 150 French-speaking engineers volunteering for the assignment with the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), a national organization that helps provide developing countries with affordable renewable energy, sanitation and clean water.

The humanitarian mission will provide recommendations for tagging buildings as either safe or unsafe, according to the tagging methodology developed by the U.S.-based Applied Technical Council.  Another sponsoring group, the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, has translated into French the signage that team members will use in Haiti to describe whether or not a building is safe to enter.

When earthquakes occur in the United States, these inspections are typically performed by government agencies, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“In Haiti the damage the country has sustained to its infrastructure and to its population is so extensive that it is largely up to the international community to conduct these inspections,” says team leader Andre Filiatrault, director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research.  “"Once we have assessed the safety of the most critical structures, then those facilities that are deemed safe can be fully utilized for relief efforts, in particular hospitals, food storage and distribution centers and ports."

"Our purpose is to provide the country with our expertise as efficiently as we can so that Haiti's recovery effort can proceed as rapidly as possible."

$3.3 Million in New Grants to Help Diagnose and Treat Cancer

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Three engineering research projects at The University of Texas at Austin—a protein therapy for liver cancer, an antibody therapy for cancer treatment and an immunity booster to respond to cancer—received $3.3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

George Georgiou, professor of biomedical engineering and chemical engineering, received $2 million to continue the preclinical development of his highly promising new proteins for treating liver cancer.  Liver cancer therapy using Georgiou’s newly developed proteins has shown promise in early laboratory experiments.  The grant will allow Georgiou’s research team to continue improving the laboratory results. 

Georgiou received an additional grant of $200,000 to increase the effectiveness of antibodies in cancer treatment.  Georgiou was the only researcher to receive two awards from the new institute. 

Krishnendu Roy, associate professor of biomedical engineering, received $1 million to develop a drug therapy that improves the body’s immune system for fighting cancer cells.

“Preventing and treating this tragic disease is a privilege for our faculty,” says Gregory L. Fenves, dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering.  “With their track records in using engineering science to develop new therapies, Drs. Georgiou and Roy will reward Texas’ investment with creative new options to fight cancer.”

Texas’ new cancer institute, created through a constitutional amendment and approved by Texas voters in 2007, announced the grants Jan. 20.  In a highly competitive selection process, the state funded 66 projects from 880 applications in its first round of research funding which invited “high impact/high risk” and “individual investigator” projects.