EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AT THE JONSSON SCHOOL
“At Intel, I was able to work on state-of- the-art devices,” Dutta said. “Academia has always been my passion, but I wanted to have a background in what is most current in industry. UT Dallas happens to be a good place to do semiconductor research.”
Dutta, who conducts experimental research, was particularly interested in utilizing UT Dallas’ cleanroom facilities to test prototypes. Through the TI Early Career Fellowship, he was also able to support a PhD student.
“The funding was not restricted, which gave me a huge advantage,” Dutta said. “I was essentially able to support a PhD student and could focus more of my time on working toward larger projects and grants.”
Dutta continued, “I am grateful to receive this award. The TI Early Career Fellowship essentially allows you to keep a PhD student, fund your research and focus on bringing in grants. TI also offers other supports for new faculty, including seed grants and a research initiative.”
“Learning in the future is flexible. It is inclusive, humanized and multipath. … Moreover, we need to understand that abilities can be improved and are not static.”
– Dr. Sheryl Sorby
Past president of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
“At Intel, I was able to work on state-of- the-art devices,” Dutta said. “Academia has always been my passion, but I wanted to have a background in what is most current in industry. UT Dallas happens to be a good place to do semiconductor research.”
Dutta, who conducts experimental research, was particularly interested in utilizing UT Dallas’ cleanroom facilities to test prototypes. Through the TI Early Career Fellowship, he was also able to support a PhD student.
“The funding was not restricted, which gave me a huge advantage,” Dutta said. “I was essentially able to support a PhD student and could focus more of my time on working toward larger projects and grants.”
Dutta continued, “I am grateful to receive this award. The TI Early Career Fellowship essentially allows you to keep a PhD student, fund your research and focus on bringing in grants. TI also offers other supports for new faculty, including seed grants and a research initiative.”
The future is flexible
“Our curriculum was originally based on the Grinter Report from the 1950s,” said Dr. Sheryl Sorby from the University of Cincinnati and past president of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) who served as a guest speaker at a Jonsson School executive council meeting held in the fall of 2024.
Sorby described to the audience of Jonsson School department heads, associate, assistant and vice deans, distinguished alumni and corporate advisors how the Cold War Era curriculum in the United States was devised out of fear of falling behind other nations, with an emphasis on strict entry requirements for science, technology, engineering and math study. As a result, calculus completion was seen as a proxy for talent in engineering education, and mathematical ability was often viewed as a “weed out” factor.
“Learning in the future is flexible,” Sorby said. “It is inclusive, humanized and multipath. Our students need to replace a fixed mindset with a growth mindset, which will prepare them for an unpredictable future. Moreover, we need to understand that abilities can be improved and are not static.”
Building prototypes that required up-front funding for materials
The fellowship has helped him to secure national grants as he builds his research program focused on electric powertrains.
“An electric powertrain converts between electrical and mechanical energy,” Gardner said. “For example, with a wind turbine, the wind transfers mechanical energy to the spinning blades, then you have potentially a gearbox. The generator converts the mechanical energy to electrical energy, then power electronics condition the energy so that it can be transferred to the grid. On the other hand, in an electric vehicle you have electric energy coming from the battery that passes through power electronics and then is converted by the motor to mechanical energy to drive the car forward.” Gardner continued, “This fellowship has allowed me to work on a high gear ratio magnetic gear. Based on my preliminary work, I was able to get funding from both NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop it further.”
Gardner utilized the fellowship funding in three primary ways: supporting research in his lab, filling in gaps at the ends of budget cycles and building prototypes that required up-front funding for materials.
“My first doctoral student recently passed his defense,” Gardner said. “His prototype of a more fault-tolerant motor was supported by this fellowship.”
“UT Dallas is one of the fastest-growing universities in the nation, located in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions,” Ghassemi said. “It’s on the rise, with increasing size, rankings and impact.”
Ghassemi previously served as an assistant professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. She was also named both a Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow and a College of Engineering Faculty Fellow.
At UT Dallas, Ghassemi said she has appreciated having the discretion to spend the TI Early Career Fellowship funding as she saw fit.
“Our research area is close, and we have been working on some proposals and serving as committee members for our PhD students,” Ghassemi said.
She also advises new faculty to adopt Thomas Edison’s words: “Passion, patience and perseverance.”
TI Early Career Fellowship.
“The work I’m doing is surrounding wireless communication and wireless power transfer,” Mahbub said. “We have a project with brain implants. How can we enable wireless powering those implants? Then recently, we received two grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to power unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones.”
Mahbub’s area of research covers a broad range, which leads to interdisciplinary collaboration.
“It’s very small scale to very large scale,” she said. “We cover various ranges of frequencies as well, with applications from sea to sky. There are many colleagues in the department who are working on various complementary areas, and it helps in bringing brainstorming proposals from various angles.”
Mahbub has used her funding primarily to support a PhD student, as well as to advance new research. She has also used some of her funding toward travel for conferences.
“My PhD student is working on a new concept of meta surface for waveform manipulation,” Mahbub said. “We need some preliminary results to get a successful grant.”
“It’s a sustainable way to grow your research and try different ideas for future grants,” she said. “It’s a very good opportunity, and I’m thankful to have received the TI Early Career Fellowship.”
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