Education

 

 

 

Seeds 2 STEM Wins 2022 Pegasus Prize from The Dallas Foundation

by | Nov 16, 2022
Led by CEO Branden Williams, a former ninth-grade biology teacher, Seeds 2 STEM provides workshops and after-school programs in STEM education to underserved communities in Dallas-Fort Worth. "With the prize winnings, we're launching a workplace readiness app for high school kids," Williams told WFAA. "We want kids to have access to quality jobs and be prepared to take on livable wage jobs in the STEM space."
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The Last Word: Dallas College’s Ben Magill on Sustainable Cities and Communities
Magill spoke last week at the annual summit of the Regional Center of Expertise of North Texas—a network of multidisciplinary stakeholders, including higher education institutions, businesses, non-governmental organizations, community associations, and local, regional, state and federal government agencies. His panel addressed Sustainable Development Goal #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
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SMU professor Harsha Gangammanavar is leading a multidisciplinary team to develop algorithms that improve complex energy systems—like the management of the energy grid under intermittent renewable power.
DOE Awards SMU-Led Research Team $2M Grant for Algorithms Improving Complex Energy Systems
by | Nov 14, 2022
SMU researchers aim to help address problems in the broad area of computational mathematics for sustainability—such as the management of the energy grid under intermittent renewable power. The research is aimed at developing new algorithms for materials design, bioengineering, and power grid applications.

Researchers will use SMU's high-performance computing system—enhanced with an NVIDIA DGX SuperPODTM—as well as the supercomputing resources at Argonne National Laboratory.
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Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas Name STEM Center Executive Director
by | Nov 12, 2022

Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas announced Jennifer Makins has been appointed as executive director of the STEM Center of Excellence at Camp Whispering Cedars, a year-round, hands-on learning environment that provides students from kindergarten through 12th grade with an opportunity to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through family events, girl-focused programs, and field trips....

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The Last Word: UTA’s Maria Konsta-Gdoutos on Getting a $1.5M NSF Grant to Turn Concrete Into a Clean Source of Energy

Konsta-Gdoutos is exploring a way to turn one of the world's biggest polluters—concrete, which accounts for at least 8% of global energy-related CO2 emissions—into a source of clean, renewable energy. “We will pioneer TE-CO2NCRETE, a thermoelectric carbon-neutral concrete, that will exhibit a high carbon dioxide uptake potential and storage capacity,” Konsta-Gdoutos said in a statement. “Engineering the nanostructure of concrete also will allow the material to capture thermal energy from the surroundings and convert it into usable electrical energy, leading to the development of a novel technology for renewable electricity and higher efficiency power source.”
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Perot Family’s $50M Gift Boosts UT Southwestern’s Medical Scientist Training Program
by | Nov 9, 2022
The Perot family’s support will expand the number of students admitted to UT Southwestern's dual-degree program as well as research disciplines in which they study, to include biomedical engineering, computational biology, bioinformatics, and data science. The funding will enhance the curriculum and experiences of Medical Scientist Training Program students and increase efforts to recruit students from elite U.S. colleges, including top international students who want to stay in the U.S. for their careers.
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DI People: Dynata, AMN Healthcare, Mary Kay Announce Moves at the Top
by | Nov 4, 2022
In this week’s roundup of hires, promotions, and accolades in North Texas, you’ll also find news from Allied Electronics & Automation, Cooksey Communications, Stream Data Centers, NexBank, McKissack & McKissack, Zirtue, and more.
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The Last Word: UNT’s Calvin Henard on Engineering a Bacteria that ‘Eats’ Greenhouse Gases
In his lab at the BioDiscovery Institute, Henard engineers methanotrophic bacteria to convert methane gas into bioplastics, biofuels, and other products. While they're at it, the methanotrophs also consume carbon dioxide, another key ingredient causing climate change. With a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the Agile BioFoundry, a national labs consortium, Henard has begun a three-year study into the beneficial bacteria, which can lead to a more sustainable way to produce fuels, plastics, and chemicals than by using petroleum.
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The Dallas 100: SMU Cox Unveils Its Ranking of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in DFW

by | Nov 3, 2022
Collectively, the 100 privately held companies contributed $9 billion to the Dallas-Fort Worth economy from 2019 to 2021—creating over 12,000 jobs with average sales growth of 141%. Irving-based ShiftKey, which connects healthcare professionals with healthcare facilities that have immediate shift vacancies, took the top spot in the annual rankings. Here's the complete list.
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With New Center, UT Dallas Researchers Are Looking into the Molecular Causes of Pain
With a five-year, $11.3 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, researchers at UT Dallas' new Human Nociceptor and Spinal Cord Molecular Signature Center are digging into the causes of chronic pain and new ways to treat it. The center's leader, Dr. Ted Price, says the data generated "will fundamentally change the way that we think about pain and how we develop therapeutics."
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The Last Word: UT Dallas’ Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn on Creating a New Cancer-Fighting Molecule
Dr. Ahn is working on something very small that may have a profound, lifesaving impact on something hugely dangerous. In collaboration with UTSW Medical Center professor Dr. Ganesh Raj and UTHSC San Antonio's Ratna Vadlamudi, Ahn has created a molecule that can kill an array of cancers, including an aggressive form of breast cancer. The goal of the molecules is to prevent molecular “handshakes” between proteins that can cause out-of-control cell growth that spreads cancer further.
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UT Dallas to Host Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers’ 2023 Conference
by | Oct 31, 2022
The GCEC has over 200 university members from across the U.S. and around the world. At its annual conference, the centers work together to share best practices, develop programs and initiatives, and collaborate and assist each other to advance, strengthen, and celebrate the role of universities in teaching tomorrow's entrepreneurs. "We look forward to our peers from entrepreneurship centers all over the world joining us to learn, connect, grow, and better our efforts in the entrepreneurship space," says UTD's Dresden Goldberg.
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THE LAST WORD on Dallas Innovates. Find "who said what" in our collection of quotes on Dallas-Fort Worth Innovation.

Every Last Word: Quotes About All Things North Texas

Read “who said what” in our roundup of quotes about all things North Texas, including ENO8's Jeff Francis; MyndVR's Chris Brickler and Ted Werth; Axxess' John Olajide; the Urban Land Institute's Ron Pressman; Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson; the Mavs Foundation's Katie Edwards; UT Arlington's Yi Hong; HomeUSA.com's Ben Caballero; ParkHub's George Baker Sr.; and more.
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New Workshops Help Plano ISD Parents Learn to Save for Success
by | Oct 25, 2022
Plano ISD partners with Capital One for the Savings Success program to take some of the myths out of money and turn them into financial facts.
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UNT Geographers Get $1.5M NSF Grant to Explore Tech’s Impact on Urban Forests

University of North Texas faculty members Alexandra Ponette-González and Matthew Fry will soon launch a a five-year study—backed by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation—to explore how digital tools like i-Tree influence urban forest sustainability and equity....

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SMU Is Bringing Its ‘Innovative Biotech Research’ to Pegasus Park
by | Oct 24, 2022
The Biotech+ Hub at Pegasus Park in Dallas has been attracting more and more life science startups and university teams. Now a whole herd of Mustangs are about to stampede there. The SMU Institute for Computational Biosciences at Pegasus Park will have space at the 23-acre development. SMU researchers from a variety of disciplines will be focusing on bio-scientific discoveries, leveraging advanced computational algorithms and technologies.

"We're excited to give SMU faculty this new opportunity to pursue world-changing research for good and to do so in close proximity to a broad range of academic, medical, corporate, and non-profit collaborators," says SMU Provost Elizabeth Loboa. "We're excited to give SMU faculty this new opportunity to pursue world-changing research for good and to do so in close proximity to a broad range of academic, medical, corporate, and non-profit collaborators," says SMU Provost Elizabeth Loboa.
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