UTA In The News — Friday, September 18, 2020
Social injustice
Frederick Engram Jr., a UT Arlington assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Center for African American Studies, appeared on a KXAS NBC 5 Community Conversations segment titled Social Injustice in Sports. Engram said professional athletes have a platform to express their views that lets them reach many people.
Accessing ancient material secrets
Warda Ashraf, a UT Arlington assistant professor of civil engineering, will access ancient European worlds to unlock the secrets of materials used in long-lasting buildings, Scienmag and Mirage News reported. Ashraf will use a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency grant to try to recreate those enduring ancient materials in a lab.
COBOL making a comeback
Brian A. Dalio, UT Arlington assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, sees an increased demand among government agencies for people who know COBOL or Common Business-Oriented Language, a computer programming language that has been around for 60 years, Dice Insights and Greece’s DevsDay reported. “Those applications have run fine for years, maybe decades, but recent pressures on agencies because of COVID have revealed deficiencies in data processing systems that need attention,” Dalio said.
STEM graduate teaching assistant receives scholarship
Sheida Khademi, a STEM graduate teaching assistant in the UT Arlington Department of Civil Engineering, was named the winner of the Lydia I. Pickup Memorial Scholarship, a Society of Women Engineers scholarship award, the SWE’s All Together blog reported. The scholarship was part of more than $1 million awarded by SWE.
Men’s basketball team test for COVID
The University of Texas at Arlington’s athletics department has paused all men’s basketball activity after three players tested positive for COVID-19, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Student Support Services receive grant
The University of Texas at Arlington will receive more than $2 million from a federal Student Support Services grant to help students succeed in and graduate from college, Mirage News reported.
Using recycled plastic pins
Sahadat Hossain, a UT Arlington civil engineering professor, has received a two-year, $987,140 contract from the Texas Department of Transportation to investigate the use of recycled plastic pins to repair deep-seated failures on embankments and the areas around highway bridges, Science X reported.