technology

An award-winning solar light device developed at the Texas A&M Department of Architecture that can significantly reduce electric bills by delivering a bounty of natural sunlight deep into the interior of a building, will soon enter a new phase of development at the College of Architecture’s Digital Fabrication Facility.

Master of Science in Visualization students at Texas A&M and their counterparts at San Jose State University in California are collaborating in a virtual classroom this spring to create three dimensional, animated characters.

Texas A&M University President R. Bowen Loftin had a chance to see how former students are redefining the entertainment industry during a Nov. 16 visit to the Bay Area campuses of Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation SKG.

As a semifinalist in a national solar power design competition, a student team from the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s Design Process class is building a portable solar-powered umbrella capable of powering portable electronic devices.

The American Bureau of Shipping’s latest quarterly publication includes an article about a centuries-old Portuguese shipwreck brought back to life in an immersive, 3-D model created by former Texas A&M Master of Visualization Sciences student Audrey Wells ’08.

Artist, theorist, educator and curator Simon Penny talked about aesthetic, theoretical and technical issues relating to electronic and interactive art during a Texas A&M Artist in Residence lecture held Oct. 31 at the Wright Gallery.

Anesthesiologists were shown to have greater awareness of a patient’s condition using tactile feedback systems developed by Texas A&M Center for Health Systems & Design faculty fellow Thomas Ferris, an assistant professor of industrial systems and engineering.

The Department of Construction Science recently unveiled its newest facility, the “BIM-CAVE,” which provides a unique high-tech vantage point for viewing details of an imagined building and its infrastructure, including heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, plumbing, electrical and other systems.

Master of Architecture students at Texas A&M are teaming with graduate students in industrial engineering to improve the psychosocial and engineering aspects of the incubator, the central piece of equipment used in neonatal intensive care units.

Students who use Rhino, a software program for 3-D modeling, are invited to register for a Sept. 29–Oct. 1 workshop at Texas A&M’s Langford Architecture Center led by Gabriel Esquivel, assistant professor of architecture, and hosted by SEED International.

Two faculty members from the College of Architecture were among researchers presenting their National Science Foundation-funded projects to U.S. senators Sept. 6, 2011 at an NSF expo in Washington DC.

Last summer undergraduate visualization students in a graphic design class led by Donna Hajash, a senior visualization lecturer, integrated color, texture and typography to create revealing biographical self portraits.

When the British metal band Tesseract was looking for a director to make a video of a song called “Eden,” bassist Amos Williams knew he wanted Ganesh Rao and Jonny Greenwald, Master of Visualization students at Texas A&M, whose talent he had spotted in their earlier work, “Empyrean.”

Robert Riggs, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, blogged about students’ portrayals of their experiences with social media in “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg,” a video project he assigned as a guest lecturer in the college’s summer 2011 Design Process class.

Charles Culp and Jeff Haberl, professors of architecture at Texas A&M and associate directors of the Energy Systems Laboratory, welcomed visitors at the lab’s June 2001 open house in at is new facility in Valley Park Center II, 402 Harvey Mitchell Parkway.