UT-Arlington announces funding for Structural Research Center and other news

By SALLY CLAUNCH
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

UT SYSTEM BOARD OF REGENTS APPROVE $25 MILLION FOR STRUCTURAL RESEARCH CENTER
The University of Texas System Board of Regents approved $25 million in funding to construct the Center for Structural Engineering Research for the University of Texas at Arlington. The center will be one of the largest, if not the largest, structural testing facilities in the U.S. The 80,000 square-foot Center for Structural Engineering Research (CSER) will be located at the northeast corner of I-30 and MacArthur, about eleven miles east of the UT Arlington campus. It will contain the largest reaction floor in the nation and feature state-of-the art equipment and instrumentation. Because of its large research area, the center will be capable of studying full-scale bridge and building components. The Dallas/Fort Worth area should see an economic benefit with additional jobs created by the center and an increased opportunity for UT Arlington to compete for state and federal research funding. Read more.

PRESIDENT SPANIOLO NAMES NEW VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS
President James D. Spaniolo today announced the appointment of Jerry Lewis as vice president for communications. Lewis has more than two decades of experience in higher education communications and marketing and for the past five years was vice president for communications at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. During his 18 years at the University of Miami he also held the positions of assistant vice president for communications at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and executive director of communications for the university. "We are delighted that Jerry is joining us here at UT Arlington," said President Spaniolo. "He is a nationally recognized expert in communications and marketing in higher education, and he will be an invaluable asset to our university. I look forward to working with him." During his tenure at the University of Miami, Lewis managed all aspects of communications and marketing. He developed and managed communications plans for the university’s $1.25 billion Momentum Campaign and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Debate and helped host visits by dignitaries such as Bill Clinton, The Dalai Lama, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, and Chief Justice John Roberts. He managed crisis communications as numerous major hurricanes impacted South Florida and the university’s campuses. Additionally, for the past three years, he managed the university’s United Way campaign, which raised $1 million annually. Lewis is a native of Virginia and earned his B.S. in mass communications in 1981 from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. His partner, Mike Fuller, is vice president and global alliance solutions leader for IBM Asia Pacific. Lewis will be on campus September 17.

UT ARLINGTON COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCHERS AWARDED $450,000 NSF GRANT; DEVELOPMENT WILL UNLEASH APPLICATIONS LIKE PLANETARY MONITORING
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $450,000 grant to computer science and engineering researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington to support investigations into asynchronous wireless sensor network architecture for ultra energy efficiency and extended network life time. The project, titled "ARCADIA: An Asynchronous Communication Architecture toward Novel Networking and Computation Paradigms in Wireless Sensor Networks," is under the direction of Assistant Professor Yonghe Liu, who is being assisted by Professors Sajal K. Das and Mohan Kumar. The innovative design of ARCADIA will enable unprecedented energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks and unleash various potential applications that demand long-term operation, such as habitat, oceanic and planetary monitoring. Read more.

PROFESSORS AWARDED NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANT
University of Texas at Arlington Assistant Professor of Physics Wei Chen is the principal investigator and Associate Professor Andrew Brandt is the co-principal investigator for a $300,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation/Department of Homeland Security Academic Research Initiative. Alan Joly of Pacific Northwestern National Lab is a collaborator. The investigators will use nano-particles to detect uranium to aid in homeland security. Detecting uranium is a critical concern due to its potential for use in nuclear terrorism. Although there have recently been significant improvements in the development of scintillator materials, no current scintillator has the ideal combination of properties. The researchers plan to develop a novel kind of nanostructure phosphor for radiation detection. They will pursue two avenues for scintillation luminescence enhancement: coating scintillation Nan particles with silver and gold and using periodic surface patterning as in LED enhancement. Read more.

NOTED COMPUTER SCIENTIST JOINS UT ARLINGTON COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Dr. Chris H. W. Ding, formerly of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has joined the Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Department at The University of Texas at Arlington. He is an expert in bioinformatics, computational biology, machine learning, data mining and high-performance computing. Dr. Ding received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1987 and became a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 1993, he became a member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and then joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff computer scientist. A noted researcher, Dr. Ding has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on funded projects valued in excess of $15 million. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and seminars and has presented tutorials at these and other venues. Dr. Ding has authored or co-authored 94 published papers, served as a referee for more than 10 professional journals, and is an associate editor of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics. He has also served as a grant review panel member of the National Science Foundation.

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