Events

The University of Texas at Austin will reimagine its approach to training civil, architectural and environmental engineering students as society’s designers, with a renewed emphasis on leadership and service needed to solve global challenges. A transformational investment from a UT alumnus will galvanize this approach, which he calls “engineering the big.”

In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the global supply chain for chips that power everything from video games to cars to medical devices, semiconductors have been atop the national policy agenda. These shortages inspired a flurry of legislation, most notably the federal CHIPS Act, that aimed to "re-shore" semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.

Alumna and NASA Astronaut Stephanie Wilson will give the keynote address at the 2023 Cockrell School of Engineering Undergraduate Student Commencement Ceremony on May 5.

A career is a long, winding road that includes, failures, successes and unexpected turns along the way.

This was the advice to the next generation of students from the panelists at the Cockrell School of Engineering's third annual Black Alumni Panel. The conversation, titled Celebrating Black Excellence, between chemical engineering and aerospace engineering alumni who both ended up in Information Technology shows how different careers can turn out from the plans they made as students.

Lockheed Martin is supporting the Texas Rocket Engineering Lab (TREL) at the Cockrell School of Engineering in its years-long endeavor to become the first student-led university team to launch a single-stage, bipropellant rocket to the edge of space.

Earlier this month, the Cockrell School of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics and the Texas Innovation Center officially kicked off our new space tech entrepreneurial program, Launch Texas. Hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and members of the space tech industry came together in Mulva Auditorium in the Engineering Education and Research Center for the Go For Launch event, which featured alumnus and CEO of Blue Origin Bob Smith, a panel of experts on the future of the space economy and presentations by student founders of space tech startups.

Hundreds of students, faculty and staff members, alumni and friends gathered to celebrate a transformative gift resulting in the naming of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. The department will now be named the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

On May 6, 2022, the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Equal Opportunity in Engineering Program (EOE) held its 50th anniversary gala at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, culminating the ongoing celebrations commemorating five decades of excellence and opportunity in engineering at UT Austin.

On December 10, the Cockrell School of Engineering hosted a celebratory event to commemorate the naming of the Sam and Hema Kumar Construction Engineering and Project Management Program (CEPM) in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. The Kumar CEPM program is named in honor of alumnus Sam Kumar and his wife, Hema, for their transformative gift to the program.

In the inaugural Female Founder Pitch Competition, hosted by the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) and the Texas Innovation Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 25 finalist teams competed for cash prizes, in-kind resources and future mentorship opportunities in a virtual, livestreamed event held Oct. 20.

There's a global race to reduce the amount of harmful gases in our atmosphere to slow down the pace of climate change, and one way to do that is through carbon capture and sequestration — sucking carbon out of the air and burying it. At this point, however, we're capturing only a fraction of the carbon needed to make any kind of dent in climate change. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with ExxonMobil, have have found a way to supercharge the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures that could someday store billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor for centuries, if not forever.

The University of Texas at El Paso and The University of Texas at Austin have signed agreements with the U.S. Space Force to provide advanced research and workforce development for the newest branch of the U.S. armed services. The University of Texas System signed an umbrella memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Space Force as part of the comprehensive agreement.

In partnership with The University of Texas at Austin, Army Futures Command hosted the inaugural Advanced Technology Summit, July 21-22, on the UT Austin campus. The event brought together U.S. Army leaders, UT faculty and academic leaders, small businesses and non-traditional industry partners to discuss Army modernization priorities in areas such as energy storage and electrification with panels, keynotes from experts and the Army Innovation Combine pitch competition.

Despite one of the most challenging years of their academic careers, the Texas Engineering Class of 2021 persisted and persevered to finish their final year. On Friday, May 21, hundreds of Texas Engineering students crossed the stage with friends and families in tow for our Graduate Recognition Moments, held in the Engineering Education and Research Center. While not our conventional commencement ceremony, the atrium was filled with excitement and pride from all members of our community.

This week, students at The University of Texas at Austin will be able to talk with and learn from three Nobel Laureates, who are among the world’s top scientists, in a free virtual event April 21-22. The Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative is a global program that seeks to bring Nobel Prize winners in closer contact with the larger scientific community, particularly younger scientists. Students from neighboring universities and from public schools are also invited. This is the first time the event has been held at UT Austin. Since the initiative’s inception in 2010, events have been held at 30 universities on four continents.

In celebration of Black History Month, the Cockrell School of Engineering hosted a panel featuring some of Texas Engineering’s most accomplished and dedicated Black alumni leaders: Tejuana Edmond (B.S. ChE 1998), Milton Lee (B.S. ME 1971) and Dr. Chad Wilson (B.S. ChE 1997). The Feb. 2 event was moderated by Alexander Tekle, a senior in the Cockrell School and current president of UT Austin’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. Over a hundred people tuned in.

The unprecedented scientific mobilization that has produced several viable COVID-19 vaccinations in just a year since the virus’ emergence has been more than a decade in the making. And even after widespread COVID vaccination occurs, the train that created these treatments isn't slowing down anytime soon.

A historic collaboration between the U.S. Army, the State of Texas and The University of Texas at Austin has taken a major step forward with the unveiling of the newly finished Army Futures Command robotics laboratory in the renovated Anna Hiss Gymnasium on campus.

Students, faculty, staff and leadership from academic institutions across the U.S., including The University of Texas at Austin, came together this month in a virtual event to share experiences and barriers facing Black scholars in STEM fields. Hosted by the University of Washington, “Experiences of Black STEM in the Ivory: A Call to Disruptive Action” inspired and challenged participants to take action to address racial inequalities in STEM.

Nearly five years after Monochrome for Austin’s installation on campus — the sculpture of cantilevered, cascading canoes that suspends above Speedway in front of the Norman Hackerman Building — Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin, hosted a virtual event to explore the engineering behind its creation. The event streamed live on Facebook on June 24 and featured a panel of Monochrome artist Nancy Rubins, project engineer Jaime Garza (B.S. Architectural Engineering 2002), Cockrell School civil engineering professor Tricia Clayton and Cockrell School Dean Sharon Wood.