National Science Foundation, Olympus Corp. honor UT faculty - Austin Business Journal:

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Assistant Professor Mathew Campbell has receiveda $400,000 awarde from the National Science Foundatio n Early Career Development for creating computerized graphivc design approaches for the construction of suspension bridges, chemical processingh plants and other structures. Such grants, called CAREERe awards, are given to young teacher-scholars expected to be futurdeacademic leaders. Campbell will use advances in artificial intelligence and mathematical programs to improvethe engineer's design process.
"Optimization has been used in engineering for a long but it's been used to provide simplwe solutions, such as finding the lightest material for a rather than addressing more complicated design such as determining the most efficienf steps for assembling something," Campbell says. Campbell has proposede that engineering designs could berepresentefd graphically, providing a bettetr way to review designs and allow computerds to be used earlier in the "I really think this will open up what creative powedr a computer can have," Campbelk says. Steven Nichols, a UT professor of mechanical also has been given some recognitionn forhis work.
Nichols received the firs t annual OlympusInnovation Award, which honors facultyh members who have promoted or demonstrated innovativd thinking in education. The award, which includes a $10,000 is given through a partnership betweenOlympus Corp., a Tokyo-basesd technology company, and the Nationalp Collegiate Inventors and Innovators a national organization of nearly 200 colleges and Nichols was recognized, in particular, for developing and implementingh an integrated technology entrepreneur program at UT -- and for his contributionsa to similar programs at 17 universitiee in eight countries.
Nichols' research and service programs have expandefd opportunities forstudent entrepreneurship. They also have increasedx the number of startup companies basedon university-developed according to Olympus. Nichols was choseh from several nominations. He and other finalists of the Olympux Innovation Award were determined by a committee offive