Texas Tech University on Wednesday (Jan. 30, 2019) received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will help financially disadvantaged, high-achieving undergraduate students.

The funding, which comes from the NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, will fund three-year scholarships over the next five years for two groups of 12 students who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in electrical and computer engineering in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering.

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The project will partner with Texas Tech's Innovation Hub at Research Park and I-Corps program, which enables scientists and engineers to develop methods to bring innovation to market.

The Solar Powered Digital Classroom in a Box was part of a First Friday Art Trail exhibit curated by artist Eric Simpson. Mr. Simpson is an artist in residence for Charles Adams Studio Gallery. The nature based theme for February 2019 was the Sun. On Saturday Feb. 2nd, Prof. Dallas was part of a panel discussion with the other artists featured in the exhibit.

In 2010, Texas Tech designed the world's smallest playable chess set with pieces of diameter 50 micrometers and a board one half millimeter on a side. The set was fabricated in polycrystalline silicon on a silicon chip by Sandia National Labs' SUMMiT V MEMS foundry process. The chess set is featured in the 2017 Guiness Book of World Records alongside other notable chess accomplishments.

TTU ECE grad Dr. Rosalynn Manor-Smith and husband, ex-NFL player Brad Smith, delivered a SPDCB system to the Africa New Life School in Kageyo, Rwanda. Nurse Rebecca will use the projector as she talks to families in the community about health care and combating diseases such as Malaria.

 

Texas Tech University's Innovation Hub (iHUB) was awarded an I-CORPS Site from the National Science Foundation. The 3-year grant provides support for new commercialization teams to conduct customer discovery and prototype their product idea. Kimberly Gramm, director of the iHUB, is the PI on the grant. Co-PI's are Kelli Frias, Mike Ryan, and Tim Dallas.

Learn about the Summer 2018 Perfect Storm Camp.

MEMS Lab students prepared and presented a scale model microgrid for junior high and high school students.

In May 2018, the MEMS Lab was awarded GLEAMM SPARK funding to develop modular, solar power systems. The project is aimed at efficiently and affordably supplying power to regions that suffer from no electricity or a grid that is prone to interruptions.

In January 2018, the TTU MEMS Lab received GLEAMM SPARK funding for electrical grid education, outreach, and research. The faculty team includes Professors Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, Kelli Frias, and Tim Dallas. Graduate students on the project include electrical engineering graduate students Shamsul Arefeen and Vishwanath Tadikonda and education student Karen Jansen.

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The team is developing hands-on educational modules for grade school students that teach fundamentals of electrical power generation and distribution, with a special focus on renewables such as solar and wind. The project includes international outreach using the Solar Powered Digital Classroom in a Box.

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Our 2014 IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering journal article, "Feature selection and activity recognition system using a single triaxial accelerometer," has already been cited more than 60 times, putting it in the top 1%  of engineering articles of the same age and document type.

TIer Randy Long’s solution to a first-world problem – using a simple solar-based rig to charge his cell phone on family camping trips – has evolved into an innovative solution that will help students in developing countries get a better education. Randy has joined forces with Tim Dallas, his former Texas Tech electrical and computer engineering professor, to develop a solar- and battery-powered “classroom in a box” that has at its core an ultra-mobile, ultra-low-power digital projector using TI Pico™ projection technology.

In July, more than 2,000 children and 40 teachers in northern Uganda experienced a classroom with a digital display for the first time, changing the education experience as they know it.

Texas Tech Researchers, Students, Create Solar Powered Classroom for Off-The-Grid Schools.

A dragonfly as small as a dust mote entered by a team from Texas Tech University and a highly sensitive microvalve entered by the Carnegie Mellon University team were the big winners in this year's student design contest for extraordinarily tiny devices at Sandia National Laboratories.

Students from Texas Tech University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department have won the 2005 MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) design competition sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories.