The College of Engineering Reconfigurable Computing Lab is a finalist for a prestigious Tech Titans award. 

The awards were created to recognize the North Texas technology elite and are given annually by Tech Titans, a technology trade association. The UNT lab was nominated for the Tech Titans of the Future – University Level Award, which spotlights educational institutions that encourage and support students in choosing engineering- and technology-related disciplines as a preferred academic and career path.

Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Gayatri Mehta is the director of the lab and explains that the Tech Titians recognition comes from their work on innovative ways to solve placement and architecture design challenges for energy efficient circuit designs.

“The keys to next generation chip design and layout are flexibility, creativity and adaptability,” said Mehta. “We have created Untangled, a series of online puzzle games that task players with solving design problems of increasing difficulty. These games don’t just attract engineers, we get players from all walks of life, and they have generated some unique solutions.

Untangled is accessible to anyone online. Mehta has conducted several world-wide gaming competitions and her team has hosted approximately 2,000 players, who in turn have found more than 25,000 solutions to difficult design problems. She has recorded millions of player moves that allow her to utilize varied human strategies to create new algorithms for circuit design.

“Gayatri’s work in the Reconfigurable Computing Lab is at the leading edge of custom reconfigurable architectures,” said Hanchen Huang, dean of the College of Engineering. “We’re proud to have her as part of our faculty at UNT’s College of Engineering.”

Tech Titans, Texas’ largest technology trade association, represents a quarter million employees throughout its 300 member companies. Its mission is to support the pursuit of technology at all levels, from innovation to legislation. Tech Titans winners will be announced at the awards gala on Aug. 23, 2019