Month: November 2011

TxACE has a new logo thanks to the creative talents of Sankalp Modi.

A PhD student in electrical engineering, Modi won the contest held to design a TxACE logo.

Of the dozens of submissions from faculty, students and staff, Modi’s stood out from the rest in the eyes of the four-judge panel assembled to sort through the submissions.

Containing visual references to both digital and analog technology, the logo is also simple and distinctive enough to be quickly recognizable, the judges decided.

Modi received a $50 gift certificate for his efforts.

Dr. Eric Vogel has been named associate director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence, or TxACE.

An associate professor of materials science and engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas, Vogel will help administer TxACE’s quickly expanding activities.

TxACE was created in 2008, funded by $16 million in support from Semiconductor Research Corp.(SRC), the state of Texas through its Texas Emerging Technology Fund, Texas Instruments, the UT System and UT Dallas. 

Based at UT Dallas, TxACE is dedicated to helping shape the landscape for research in analog electronics, a fundamental technology that plays a key enabling role in today’s ubiquitous digital electronics.

TxACE is particularly focused on developing circuits and techniques that improve public safety and security, enhance medical care and help the U.S. become more energy-independent. In its first year it has awarded more than $5 million in research funding.

Vogel leads a wide range of research programs concerning nanoelectronic materials and devices. He heads the University’s portion of the Southwest Academy for Nanoelectronics (SWAN), funded by SRC through The University of Texas at Austin, which involves six UT Dallas faculty. The program focuses on the materials science, processes, characterization techniques and associated understanding necessary to implement graphene-based devices.

SWAN also funds two of Vogel’s graduate students in the area of nanoscale devices for neuromorphic computing, an area that uses the human brain as a model for future low-power computation.

He is also part of a research program funded by numerous agencies involving the use of compound semiconductors for future transistors, and he is involved in several programs funded by TI, one related to nanoscale silicon for biosensors and another related to metal gate electrodes.

Before joining UT Dallas in 2006, Vogel led the CMOS and Novel Devices Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and was founding director of the institute’s Nanofabrication Facility.