Skip to content. Skip to main navigation.
Found in everything from space shuttles to dental fillings, composite materials have thoroughly infiltrated modern society. But their potential is still greatly untapped, offering researchers ample opportunity for discovery.
Within the particle showers created at the Large Hadron Collider, answers to some of the universe’s mysteries are waiting.
Model systems like pigeons can help illuminate our own evolutionary and genomic history.
UT Arlington's tiny windmills are bringing renewable energy to a whole new scale.
The stability of our highways, pipelines, and even manholes is reaching a breaking point.
Scientists believe they have discovered a subatomic particle that is crucial to understanding the universe.
UT Arlington researchers unlock clues to the human body’s most mysterious and complex organ.
UT Arlington researchers probe the hidden world of microbes in search of renewable energy sources.
Wounded soldiers are benefiting from Robert Gatchel’s program that combines physical rehabilitation with treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Tiny sensors implanted in the body show promise in combating acid reflux disease, pain and other health problems.
Nanotechnology researchers pursue hybrid silicon chips with life-saving potential.
Biomedical engineers combat diseases with procedures that are painless to patients.
Dan Popa
Imagine human-like robots that collect information through their skin and clothes to better assist their human owners.
Sound too futuristic? Dan Popa and his collaborators don’t think so.
The electrical engineer received a $1.35 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to make better robots and robotic devices, improve prosthetics, and enable those devices to perform tasks that people can no longer do themselves.
“Our goal is to make robots and robotic technology more human-like and more human-friendly,” says Dr. Popa, who leads UT Arlington’s Next Gen Systems group within the College of Engineering. “Robotic devices need to be safe and better able to detect human intent. When someone is wearing a prosthetic, we want that prosthetic to be able to determine when a baseball is being thrown at it, then catch the ball.”
The four-year project is part of the NSF’s National Robotics Initiative, which is aimed at accelerating the development and use of robots that work beside or cooperatively with people. The UT Arlington grant was the largest among the initiative’s 37 awards last fall.
The NSF says its robotics initiative can address a broad range of national needs such as advanced manufacturing, logistics, transportation, homeland security, defense, medicine, health care, space exploration, and agriculture. NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture also are participating in the initiative.
Landscape architecture students’ design for dealing with stormwater runoff recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency
Researcher creating system to help homeowners track their power usage, potentially lower their energy bills
