Research

02/10/2022 - In his recent paper, “Faster Coherent Quantum Algorithms for Faster Phase, Energy, and Amplitude Estimation”, UTCS PhD graduate Patrick Rall puts forth novel quantum algorithms for estimating important fundamental qualities of our complex world. Patrick’s approach simplifies the necessary computations compared to the current standard method. Estimation of these properties has applications in condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry as well as machine learning and finance.

01/20/2022 - The Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional organization in the field of computer science, has named Brent Waters as an ACM Fellow. The award goes only to highly distinguished computer scientists representing the top 1% of ACM members.

11/17/2021 - Any fan of jazz music can attest to the beauty of musical improvisation. However, many famous improvisational piano pieces aren't recorded in sheet music. “There's a lot of music that exists in the world that doesn't have musical transcriptions because it was played improvisationally—virtuosos that never decided to write anything down,” explained Varun Rajaram. This is because transcribing the notes of a piece (especially polyphonic pieces where multiple notes play at a time) is a difficult task even for skilled musicians.

10/11/2021 - Bilingual aphasia is a language impairment to multilingual people acquired through some sort of injury, usually a stroke. Patterns of language impairment in multilingual stroke patients are very diverse. Sometimes language impairment affects all languages the person speaks equally, while other times it affects one language more than the other. The way in which a stroke affects a multilingual patient depends on many different variables such as when each language was learned, how frequently each one is used etc.

09/16/2021 - Artificial intelligence has reached a critical turning point in its evolution, according to a new report by an international panel of experts assessing the state of the field for the second time in five years.

09/14/2021 - For decades, computer chips have gotten denser, faster and more energy efficient. But in recent years, those improvements have slowed to a crawl.Yet some of the most exciting new applications engineers are exploring — self-driving cars, microscopic robots to diagnose and treat diseases inside the human body, and systems collecting environmental data for battlefield awareness or public health forecasting — need fast, compact, energy-efficient computer chips that can be integrated directly into these systems, rather than relying on connecting to supercomputers far away.

07/22/2021 - Floorplans are used in many industries to help people visualize what the inside of a building looks like without actually seeing it. Traditionally, floorplans have been created by actually observing a 3D environment either manually or with the aid of 3D sensors. But what happens when the luxury of observing the 3D environment isn’t available—for example, when a robot is introduced to a new environment? Would it be able to quickly create floor maps without actually seeing the entire environment being mapped in detail?

04/05/2021 - Yaskawa, a global manufacturer of servos, motion controllers, AC motor drives, switches, and industrial robots, is establishing a partnership with The University of Texas at Austin. This partnership is marked with a gift of a dual-arm, SDA10F robot that will be available for the use of the Texas Robotics faculty. The partnership aims to facilitate interdisciplinary research and innovation within the robotics community in the university.

03/03/2021 - When was the last time you changed out a battery in your house? Studies show that battery-powered devices are used substantially in modern times, Americans use nearly 3 billion batteries every year. Batteries are currently popular because they are able to make electric devices, such as flashlights and watches, portable. However, our usage of batteries extends further from just portable electronic devices.

01/14/2021 - UT Austin collaborates with Bosch to drive automated research Texas Computer Science has recently launched a collaborative research partnership sponsored by Bosch to explore new frontiers of research on reinforcement learning for automated driving. The partnership was envisioned by Professor Peter Stone of the UTCS faculty and Dr. Kay Stepper, the Senior VP who oversees Bosch’s automated driving efforts in North America.