(Press-News.org) EL PASO, Texas (Sept. 20, 2024) – The University of Texas at El Paso today announced new collaborations with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Security Agency (NSA) that support research and training to strengthen the nation’s leadership in semiconductor, or microchips, technology.
NSA, the signals intelligence and cybersecurity agency for the United States, also recently named UTEP as an NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Research, making UTEP one of only 11 universities nationwide to hold all three NSA Center of Excellence designations in Cybersecurity Defense, Cybersecurity Operations and Cybersecurity Research.
“We are deepening our relationship with the nation’s premier cybersecurity agency,” said UTEP President Heather Wilson. “In both computer science and electrical and computer engineering, UTEP conducts exceptional research and develops talented students. We will build on this.”
Under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) Trusted and Assured Microelectronics (T&AM) program’s Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement (SCALE) initiative, UTEP students and faculty are undertaking DoD-relevant microelectronics research in the fields of physics, engineering, materials science and cybersecurity. The University’s SCALE participation seeks to enhance the education and experience of students and equip them upon graduation to meet the needs of the defense industry’s microelectronics workforce.
“The DoD and NSA require a semiconductor-savvy workforce who can pair expertise in microelectronics design and manufacturing with right-sized cybersecurity protections,” said Meredith Dyck, Ph.D., chief strategist for microelectronics at NSA. “By collaborating with UTEP, we aim to create a pipeline of exceptional graduates who are poised to tackle the most challenging national security problems. Today’s event is a significant step in the right direction.”
UTEP semiconductor research will begin with a focus on making 3D printed microchips capable of higher performance at a reduced cost.
“A big trend in the industry is, how do we pack more and more capabilities onto one chip? Can we combine more complicated parts into a single package to make things faster, better, and cheaper?” said Robert C. Roberts, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UTEP. “This is a pivotal research area in the semiconductor technology industry.”
Salamah Salamah, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UTEP Computer Science Department explained that the new NSA cybersecurity research designation recognizes the quality of the University’s doctoral program in computer science, which has existed since 2005. The cyber defense and cyber operations designations recognize the rigor of undergraduate programs in computer science, which prepare students with the skills needed to protect networks against cyberattacks and to gain a decisive advantage for the nation through cyber operations in support of national security.
“This new designation solidifies UTEP’s standing as a leader in cybersecurity education and research throughout the nation,” he added. “We are preparing graduates who contribute to the workforce in areas of great significance to the nation’s defense and global economic standing and creating new knowledge that can make our cyber infrastructure more secure.”
About the Department of Defense SCALE Program
The Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement (SCALE) is a semiconductor workforce development program with U.S. academic institutions, focused on developing a skilled semiconductor workforce for the defense sector. Funded by the Department of Defense, SCALE adopts an innovative approach to training highly skilled U.S. microelectronics engineers, hardware designers, and manufacturing experts, ensuring U.S. leadership in the field.
About The University of Texas at El Paso
The University of Texas at El Paso is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. Located at the westernmost tip of Texas, where three states and two countries converge along the Rio Grande, 84% of our 25,000 students are Hispanic, and more than half are the first in their families to go to college. UTEP offers 170 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs at the only open-access, top-tier research university in America.
END
UTEP establishes collaboration with DoD, NSA to help enhance U.S. semiconductor workforce
2024-09-20
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Study finds family members are most common perpetrators of infant and child homicides in the U.S.
2024-09-20
Homicide is a leading cause of death among people 19 and younger in the United States, and firearms are used in a large proportion of these crimes. Although the homicide rate for this population declined in the 1990s and 2000s, it has increased every year since 2013, with a large spike during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, new research by Hannah Rochford, PhD, an assistant professor with the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, and two colleagues from the University of Iowa, provides insight into the characteristics of ...
Researchers secure funds to create a digital mental health tool for Spanish-speaking Latino families
2024-09-20
Cory Cobb, PhD, an assistant professor of health behavior at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, is leading a research team that has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to create an online platform for the intervention program they developed for United States-based Spanish-speaking Latino parents and their children.
The Latino Youth and Family Empowerment (LYFE) program focused on Nuestras Familias: Andando Entre Culturas (Our Families: Walking between Cultures), an intervention designed to enhance the parenting ...
UAB startup Endomimetics receives $2.8 million Small Business Innovation Research grant
2024-09-20
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The University of Alabama at Birmingham startup company Endomimetics, LLC, has received a $2.8 million Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Under the grant, Endomimetics co-founders Ho-Wook Jun, Ph.D., a professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Brigitta Brott, M.D., a professor in the UAB Department of Medicine Division of Cardiovascular Disease, will collaborate with Ramanathan Kadirvel, Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery and radiology at Mayo Clinic, and David Kallmes, M.D., a professor of radiology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, to develop a BionanomatrixTM ...
Scientists turn to human skeletons to explore origins of horseback riding
2024-09-20
As anyone who’s spent time in the saddle knows, riding a horse can be hard on your body. But can it change the way your skeleton looks?
The answer, according to archaeologists from the University of Colorado Boulder: It’s complicated. In a new study, the team drew on a wide range of evidence—from medical studies of modern equestrians to records of human remains across thousands of years.
The researchers concluded that horseback riding can, in fact, leave a mark on human skeletons, such as by subtly altering the shape of the hip joint. But those sorts of changes on their own can’t definitively reveal whether people have ridden ...
UCF receives prestigious Keck Foundation Award to advance spintronics technology
2024-09-20
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
UCF Receives Prestigious Keck Foundation Award to Advance Spintronics Technology
The work could change the future of electronics, making them faster and more energy efficient.
ORLANDO, Sept. 20, 2024 – A team of researchers led by University of Central Florida Pegasus Professor of Physics Enrique Del Barco is working on a new project that could change the future of electronics, making them faster and more energy efficient.
The work is funded by a new $1.3 million award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation’s ...
Cleveland Clinic study shows bariatric surgery outperforms GLP-1 diabetes drugs for kidney protection
2024-09-20
Cleveland Clinic Study Shows Bariatric Surgery Outperforms GLP-1 Diabetes Drugs for Kidney Protection
Bariatric surgery was shown to protect kidney function and reduce the risk of kidney failure in study participants when compared to GLP-1 medications
Friday, September 20, 2024, CLEVELAND: A Cleveland Clinic study showed that in patients with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and chronic kidney disease, bariatric surgery was associated with a significant decrease in the progression of chronic kidney disease compared to those who received GLP-1 diabetes medications. The paper was published in Annals ...
Study reveals large ocean heat storage efficiency during the last deglaciation
2024-09-20
As one of the largest heat reservoirs in the climate system, the global ocean absorbs more than 90% of the excess energy from ongoing anthropogenic warming. In the last century, the greatest warming in the ocean has occurred in the upper 500 m, with relatively weak warming in the deep ocean, corresponding to a small ocean heat storage efficiency of ~0.1.
Paleoceanographic observations, however, suggest that on long time scales, the deep ocean warming can be comparable to or larger than the surface ocean warming, with ocean heat storage efficiency during the last ...
Fever drives enhanced activity, mitochondrial damage in immune cells
2024-09-20
Fever temperatures rev up immune cell metabolism, proliferation and activity, but they also — in a particular subset of T cells — cause mitochondrial stress, DNA damage and cell death, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered.
The findings, published Sept. 20 in the journal Science Immunology, offer a mechanistic understanding for how cells respond to heat and could explain how chronic inflammation contributes to the development of cancer.
The impact of ...
A two-dose schedule could make HIV vaccines more effective
2024-09-20
One major reason why it has been difficult to develop an effective HIV vaccine is that the virus mutates very rapidly, allowing it to evade the antibody response generated by vaccines.
Several years ago, MIT researchers showed that administering a series of escalating doses of an HIV vaccine over a two-week period could help overcome a part of that challenge by generating larger quantities of neutralizing antibodies. However, a multidose vaccine regimen administered over a short time is not practical for mass vaccination campaigns.
In a new study, the researchers have now found that they ...
Wastewater monitoring can detect foodborne illness, researchers find
2024-09-20
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — First used in the 1940s to monitor for polio, wastewater surveillance proved such a powerful disease monitoring tool that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the National Wastewater Surveillance System to support SARS-CoV-2 monitoring in September of 2020. Now, a team of scientists from Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Health have shown that domestic sewage monitoring is useful for a foodborne pathogen as well.
In findings published today (Sept. 19) in the Journal of Clinical ...