Every Last Word

Dallas Innovates’ signature series capturing what leaders across North Texas are saying — in their own words — about innovation, impact, and what’s next.

The Last Word: UT Dallas’ Dr. Aria Nosratinia on Tackling ‘Hardware Trojans’ With $1M NSF Grant

by | Oct 13, 2022
UT Dallas says that black-hat modifications to integrated circuits—known as "hardware trojans"—can disrupt wireless networks and leak sensitive data. And as wireless phones and other devices evolve, the threat is only expected to grow. But two UT Dallas engineers are on the case—and they've got a three-year, $1 million National Science Foundation grant to help solve it. 
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The Last Word: Waymo’s Charlie Jatt on Beer Driving Itself Across Texas With No Human at the Wheel
Waymo, the self-driving truck unit from Google parent Alphabet Inc., has hauled over 1 million pounds of Modelo and Corona beer from Dallas to Houston in autonomously driven trucks, reports David Welch of Bloomberg News.
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The Last Word: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ Lorie K. Logan on ‘the Importance of Innovation’
by | Oct 5, 2022
Last May, Logan was named the 14th president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In a virtual town hall, she answered questions about her background and her priorities for the district she oversees—which consists of Texas, northern Louisiana, and southern New Mexico. A post by the Dallas Fed captured some of Logan's comments, including her work for the Federal Reserve during 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
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The Last Word: UT Dallas’ Dr. Joshua Summers on Tech That Harvests Water From the Air
With mega-droughts drying up lakes out west and "water wars" predicted in the world's future, having reliable access to water is becoming more and more vital. A team at UT Dallas led by Dr. Xianming “Simon” Dai is doing something about it. They're working on a tech platform that could enable anyone to have "an affordable, portable device that could access water anywhere, anytime conceivably using no external energy," according to the university.
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EVERY LAST WORD 2022: The Q3 Archive

These quotable North Texans inspire, inform, motivate, or simply make us laugh.
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The Last Word: Arlington Mayor Jim Ross on How the City Is Creating a Skyline
Ross was elected mayor of Arlington in June 2021, and one of his goals for the city is to have something Dallas and Fort Worth are both known for: a signature skyline. He's a business owner (of the Mercury Chophouse on the city's Lamar Boulevard) and the principal attorney of the Jim Ross Law Group since 2008. But after reading Spencer Brewer's story about him in the Dallas Business Journal, you might add another job to his list: Skyline booster.
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The Last Word: Tri Global Energy’s John Billingsley on Selling His Company for $270M to Canada’s Enbridge
by | Sep 29, 2022
Tri Global Energy, Texas' leading developer of wind energy products, has been sold for $270 million to Enbridge, the largest energy company in Canada, the Dallas Morning News reported today. Since Billingsley founded the company in 2009, Tri Global has helped Texas become the nation's leader in wind energy capacity by developing and monetizing over 6 GW of utility scale renewable projects, the companies said. Tri Global is now among America's top utility-scale renewable energy developers.
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The Last Word: John Howard on How SMU’s New Lab Is Working to Reduce Bias in AI
by | Sep 28, 2022
The goal of SMU's Intelligent Systems and Bias Examination Lab (ISaBEL) is to quantify and minimize bias in artificial intelligence systems. It will explore how AI systems—like facial recognition algorithms—perform on a wide range of diverse people. The Lab will investigate ways that bias can be reduced in these systems through cutting-edge research, standards, and other peer-reviewed studies.
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