FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Herb Booth, (817) 272-7075, hbooth@uta.edu

ARLINGTON - The University of Texas at Arlington has received the most awards for Texas Ignition Fund projects of any UT System institution, a new report shows.

UT Arlington has received $475,000 for 10 projects, the latest being Haiying Huang's work on unpowered wireless ultrasound sensing systems. Haiying is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

The UT System Board of Regents approved the $2 million Texas Ignition Fund (TIF) grant program in December 2007. The initiative is designed to stimulate commercialization of research discoveries at the 15 UT System institutions by providing early-stage grants for the development and maturation of such discoveries into marketable intellectual property, particularly to help bridge the gap between discovery and invention.

"I extol the virtues of the program," said Ron Elsenbaumer, UT Arlington vice president for research. "It's extremely difficult to get money for proof of concepts work in today's economic environment. It's a huge leap forward for the UT System to do this. It shows tremendous forward thinking on the System's part."

Haiying's grant was awarded in the last of five rounds of TIF grants. A list of recipients, projects and grants is posted on the UT System Web site.

Other UT Arlington TIF-awarded projects and participating professors are:

• Universal and cost-effective surface texture on solar cells, Meng Tao.
• BEST^TM GERD Batteryless Endoluminal Sensing Telemeter for gastro refluxed detection, J.C. Chiao
• Liquefaction of Texas lignite to low-cost heavy crude oil, Richard Billo.
• Prosthetic skin, Zeynep Celik-Butler.
• Prototype sensor network with ultra energy efficiency for long-term monitoring applications, Yonghe Liu.
• Development of a nanoporous membrane blood oxygenator, Cheng-Jen Chuong.
• Label-free detection and quantification of biomolecules, Digant Davé and Richard Timmons
• Optically guided needle biopsy system, Hanli Liu
• Natural gas microreactor for synthetic fuel, Brian Dennis and John Priest

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