What They Build in the Shadows

Texas Inventionworks (TIW) is a space for all UT students, regardless of discipline, to imagine, design and build projects of all kinds. A staff of 65 students helps and guides fellow peers in support of this mission.

But when they’re not helping others, these TIW staffers are dreaming up projects of their own and bringing them to life.

Andrew Jones, Seth Friend and Adarsh Pulasseri are all staff members at TIW, each representing different engineering fields. Yet they share the same ambition—innovation. 

“TIW is a place where people can go and make things without needing any equipment or materials,” Friend said. “So, I think it’s a great place to meet people, to make things and to learn.”   

A towering idea

One TIW staff member recently got a chance to work on a project inspired by the University’s most recognizable building, the Tower.  

Jones is a third-year electrical and computer engineering major from Frisco, and he serves as the electrical design lead at TIW. His interest in engineering started early, with a childhood love of big projects and his involvement in his high school robotics club.  

“I’ve always been really interested in making things,” Jones said. “So, it was natural that I wanted to become an engineer when I got into college.”  

It was through TIW, Jones became involved in a key project for early investors in the UT Tower restoration, working alongside J.E. Johnson, senior academic program coordinator at TIW. Together, they’re designing light-up interconnected miniature towers that mirror the real towers’ lighting, in real time.

The project is the brainchild of Brien P. Smith, a Texas Exes board member and past president. The goal of the project, expected to be completed this fall, is to give those investors a lasting connection to the signature building on the Forty Acres that they helped upgrade.

Jones has made significant contributions to the tower, focusing primarily on the electronics, including the microcontroller, power supply and the controlled lights. Though the project has been a long process, Jones saw the opportunity and took advantage of it.

“I felt like it aligned with my skills, and I thought it would be a really fun thing to work on to develop my electronic skills,” Jones said.  

Robotics, a Friend-ly pursuit

Friend is a third-year electrical and computer engineering major from San Antonio. He serves as the design lead at TIW, overseeing and mentoring students on designing and digital fabrication projects.   

Alongside his leadership role at TIW, Friend has been working on his own project—a humanoid robot. Standing between 1.5 and 2 feet tall, the black-and-silver robot has fully attached arms and legs, with black, red and yellow wires hanging out of every opening. Friend is training this robot to navigate all types of terrain, including climbing stairs and maybe even operating vehicles.

Before beginning his project, he had to learn what he was passionate about.   

Friend switched majors in his second year from mechanical to electrical and computer engineering his second year at Cockrell. Although he was drawn to the components of mechanical engineering, Friend took a freshman research initiative (FRI) course and wanted to learn more about software development and machine learning in robotics.  

“From this experience, I realized a lot of the cool and new stuff that excited me about robotics has been more on the software side,” Friend said.  

Since then, Friend has been building the humanoid robot with mechanical engineer partner, Chris Medellin-Martinez, relying on TIW as their home base. Not only has TIW provided a space for the project, but Scott Evans, TIW’s director, has helped along the way by mentoring and guiding Friend throughout.  

“They’ve all done a really good job at being there for us as students and supporting us if you need things,” Friend said of TIW leadership. “When I was doing the mechanical design, (Evans) helped me walk through the problems I was trying to figure out for sourcing the motors.”  

The robot is nearly complete. Friend is focusing on software simulation and configuring the robot to be controlled with a video-game-like controller.

Once completed, Friend plans to pass the humanoid robot down to TIW members, hoping that future students will continue to add to and build upon it.  

Launching new projects

Just across the hall, innovation takes another form.   

Pulasseri is a fourth-year aerospace engineering student from Dallas currently building an amateur liquid-propellant rocket. Pulasseri was in his first year at UT when he stumbled across TIW through a class and was intrigued by all the available machinery, like the laser cutters and 3D printers. He quickly became hooked.  

Pulasseri has been on staff at TIW for the past three years, helping guide students along their own projects.  

Pulasseri works on the rocket every week alongside fellow aerospace students. Once completed, Pulasseri hopes to pass it down to future students, in hopes they will build their own rocket.  

“Our goal is to figure out how to build it here at TIW, and then to try and design new components and swap them out and go test and launch,” Pulasseri said.

If all goes well, they plan to launch it at Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR) in the Mojave Desert. 

Pulasseri’s mission behind the project is to gain experience in machining, to learn and conquer the challenge of building a rocket from scratch with fellow classmates, testing their abilities at TIW. Since then, the team has continued to build on what they have and machined more parts of the rocket this school year.   

Though Friend, Pulasseri and Jones come from different engineering backgrounds, they were all brought together by TIW. Through invention, collaboration and passion, TIW continues to inspire students to make a change- one project at a time.  

“We want them to know about us and how awesome an organization we are,” Jones said. “And what the students who work here and who do stuff here can do.”