News

The Community Driven Approaches to Research in Technology & Society visioning workshop organizers, Timnit Gebru (Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute), Ufuk Topcu (University of Texas at Austin), and Suresh Venkatasubramanian (Brown University), along with support from Haley Griffin (CCC), Nasim Sonboli (Brown University), and Leah Namisa Rosenbloom (Brown University), have written a workshop report that synthesizes the amazing ideas discussed throughout the visioning workshop. This report is a result of the ideas, experiences, recommendations, and visions of the incredible group of workshop participants.

NASA collaborates with George Washington University and the University of Texas at Austin to investigate measures that can be taken to safeguard autonomous aircraft flying in high-density urban airspace from cyberattacks that could disrupt safe operations.

Ufuk Topcu has been named a class of 2024 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity. Fellow is the highest distinction bestowed upon IEEE members who have contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology, bringing significant value to society. The number of IEEE Fellows elevated in a year is no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE voting membership.

Volunteers from the Center for Autonomy, in collaboration with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), provided support to two GenCyber events hosted at the University of Texas. By providing insights from their own undergraduate and graduate experiences, volunteers helped students envision a future in both cybersecurity and the broader selection of STEM fields.

Dr. Yue Yu, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Autonomy, received the 2023 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Best paper award as a co-author. In their paper, Dr. Yu and his co-authors developed a real-time trajectory optimization solver for NASA’s Safe and Precise Landing—Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project.

Members of the Autonomous Systems Lab, in collaboration with researchers from Iowa State University and Purdue University, have published a monograph on the effective use of formal methods for autonomous systems. This monograph offers a comprehensive exploration into the modeling, analysis, and synthesis of behaviors in autonomous systems that are inherently designed to be correct via mathematical methods and computational tools.

UT collaborates with the U.S. Air Force on space research, as discussed by Michael Hibbard, a graduate research assistant from the Center for Autonomy, in a conversation with FOX 7 Austin. They explored the challenges and potential of the underutilized Cislunar regime, addressing spacecraft astrodynamics, autonomous operations, and the implications for the future of space travel, including NASA's Artemis program.

The University of Texas at Austin is leading a research collaboration with a $4 million grant from the CFIRE program, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The project, named "Representations, Theory, and Algorithms for Autonomous Space Domain Awareness in the Cislunar Regime," aims to enhance the U.S. Air Force's ability to monitor and understand activities in the complex Cislunar space between Earth and the moon, which poses unique challenges due to gravitational forces.

Ufuk Topcu recently contributed to three government requests for information from PCAST and TIP.

The Center for Autonomy at the Oden Institute for Computational Sciences is proud to showcase our recent Spring and Summer graduates. These graduates are now equipped to make a meaningful and positive impact on the field as they embark on their new career paths.