Texas Instruments

Connected since UT Dallas’ inception, this corporation remains committed to driving research and innovation.

Before The University of Texas at Dallas existed, three of Texas Instruments’ founders — Eugene McDermott, Erik Jonsson and Cecil Green — established the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest in 1961. This center for higher education evolved into UT Dallas in 1969, and the ties between Texas Instruments and UT Dallas have remained strong ever since.

Throughout UT Dallas’ history, Texas Instruments has served as a crucial partner in establishing UT Dallas as an institution with innovative research. Their efforts to advance UT Dallas’ reputation include a $332,400 grant in 2008 from the TI Foundation to create a TI Science and Technology Innovation Fund, a nearly $1.15 million gift to support semiconductor research in 2009, a $250,000 gift to support the Texas Biomedical Device Center in 2014 from the Texas Instruments Alumni Association, as well as the creation of the Texas Instruments Innovation Lab in 2015.

Thanks to a $2.1 million grant from the TI Foundation in 2018, UT Dallas students are able to participate in the Texas Instruments Founders Leadership Fellows program, a yearlong internship designed to help grow the pipeline of nonprofit professionals in the Dallas area.

This October, Texas Instruments announced a $5 million gift to create an endowment to support early career faculty members in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, the corporation’s largest gift to UT Dallas to date.

It’s our hope that … all we do to collaborate with UTD reflects TI’s desire to see the University maintain engineering as central to its mission and to produce students who are equipped with both technical and entrepreneurial skills and to be a source of great local talent.

Rich Templeton, Chairman, President and CEO of Texas Instruments