eCAT 2026 Annual Fall Meeting

eCAT 2026 Fall Meeting Agenda (Tentative)

Nov 4-5, 2026, Co-hosted by University of North Texas and University of Texas at Dallas

Location: Richardson, TX

Nov. 4, 2026 (Wednesday)

8:00 - 8:30 am             Registration, breakfast, and networking

8:30 - 9:00 am             Opening remarks

Paul Krueger Dean, 

                                                                                                 College of Engineering, University of North Texas

Jay Misra                  Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Success, 

    Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, UT Dallas

Natalie Bettger Senior Program Manager, 

   Congestion Management and System Operation, North Central Texas Council of Governments

9:00 - 9:30 am             Introduction of IAB members & prospective members

9:30 - 10:00 am          Introduction and Update to the eCAT Center

Mission of the center

Vision and value proposition including a brief description of Thrust Areas Capabilities of academic sites

Update of the Center

10:00 - 10:30 am      NSF IUCRC program, Hang Liu, Program Director,  NSF/CNS

(Schedule Update: Due to scheduling conflicts, Dr. Liu's talk has been rescheduled to 3:00–3:30 PM on November 4.)

10:30 - 10:45 am       Break

11:00 - 12:00 pm      eCAT Ongoing Project Update (Part I)

1. AI/LLM-Assisted White-Box Combinatorial Testing – UT-Dallas

2. New Modeling Tools for Emerging EV and Data Center Loads: Challenges and Opportunities for Electricity Markets - WSU

3. Ad-hoc Route Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles - Clarkson

4. AI-Enabled Digital Twin for Connected and Autonomous Manufacturing Systems – UNT

12:00 - 1:30 pm          Lunch & Posters

1:30 - 2:30 pm             eCAT Ongoing Project Update (Part II)

5. pDAL: Protected Data Access Layer for Vehicles – UD

6. MHz Isolated Power Supply for Gate Drivers Using a Quarter and Half Turn Planar Transformer - WSU

7. Dynamic Scheduling of Mobile Chargers for Electric Vehicles - UH

2:30 - 3:00 pm             Introduction and update to the center bylaws

3:00 - 3:30 pm             Break

3:30 - 4:30 pm             IAB and eCAT leadership meeting

                                                     Discussions on the ongoing projects

                                   IAB feedback

4:30 - 5:30 pm             Posters

Nov. 5, 2026 (Thursday)

8:30 - 9:00 am             Registration, breakfast, and networking

9:00 - 9:15 am             AirTable Introduction

9:15 - 10:15 am          Project proposal presentations (Part I)

(10min per proposal)

1.  Power and Energy Management of Microgrids with Multiple Energy Resources

2.  Compact AR-HUDs via Holographic Combiners

3.  Pre-Upload Data Quality Checker for Autonomous Vehicle Fleets

4. Zero-Overhead Integrity Monitoring of Vehicle Electronics Using Electromagnetic Side-Channels

5. Efficient Fleet Data Upload over Network

10:15 - 10:30 am       Break

10:30 - 11:30 am       Project proposal presentations (Part II)

(10min per proposal)

6.  Uncertainty-Aware Terrain-Conditioned BEV Perception for Camera-Only Off-Road Autonomy

7.  A Unified Learning Framework for Humanoid Mobility and Manipulation: From Human Priors to Real-World Adaptation

8.  Closed-Loop Evaluation and Learning of Temporally Grounded Cooperative Warnings for Autonomous Driving

9. Cost-Effective, High-Performance 150-A Discrete MOSFET-Based eFuse for 48-V Data Center and Electric Vehicle Power Distribution

11:30 - 12:15 pm   IAB meeting (IAB members only)

                                 Discussions on new project proposals

  IAB voting for the projects to be funded

12:15  – 12:45 pm     Discussions

                                                   IAB feedback, report-out, center's research roadmap, etc.

12:45 - 2:30 pm    Lunch & Posters

2:30 pm                 Adjourn

Recommended Hotel

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Dallas - Richardson, 1981 North Central Expressway, Richardson, Texas, 75080, USA

Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel, 900 E. Lookout Drive Richardson, Texas, USA, 75082