Prof. Walter E. Voit, tenured associate professor at UT Dallas built and manages both the Center for Engineering Innovation and the Advanced Polymer Research Lab which together boast a comprehensive grant portfolio (NSF, NIH, DARPA, FDA, corporate sponsorship), mentor graduate students and post docs and explore the thermomechanics of shape memory polymers, flexible bioelectronics, next-generation neural interfaces, 3-D printing, degradable polymers and the effects of ionizing radiation on polymers.
Prof. Voit is a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of startup company Syzygy Memory Plastics, which has licensed intellectual property from both Georgia Tech and UT Dallas in pursuit of next-generation acoustics and electronics products based on shape memory polymers. Voit also co-founded Adaptive 3D Technologies and Ares Materials in 2014 and co-founded Pascalor, Qualia and Polycraft World in 2015. In 2016 Qualia nucleated several new subsidiaries including the Qualia Foundation, Qualia Labs, Myelife Solutions, and Skin Aware. Dr. Voit is on the Executive Committee and the Science and Technology Chair of the Council on Ionizing Radiation Measurements and Standards through the National Institute of Standards and Technology and an International Atomic Energy Agency consultant in the field of radiation crosslinked shape memory polymers. Voit is a DARPA Young Faculty Awardee and DARPA Director’s Fellow and works closely with industry including Texas Instruments, GlaxoSmithKline, Halliburton and Honeywell. Voit graduated high school valedictorian and was recruited to UT Dallas through the Eugene McDermott Scholars Program. As a McDermott Scholar, Voit worked at Los Alamos National Labs and at Dallas nanotechnology startup company Zyvex. Voit received a B.S. in Computer Science in May 2005 and a Masters in Artificial Intelligence from UT Dallas in August 2006. Voit’s Master’s thesis work was conducted under the mentorship of Prof. I. Hal Sudborough where their team helped improve the upper bound of the pancake problem which has not been beaten since (Bill) Gates and Papadimitriou published on the subject in 1979. Dr. Voit was named a Presidential Scholar at Georgia Tech and was selected to the prestigious TI:GER program, a partnership with the College of Management and Emory Law School. Voit performed doctoral work under the guidance of Prof. Ken Gall. Voit has authored more than 100 manuscripts and book chapters, is inventor on multiple patents and enjoys basketball, soccer, snowboarding, rafting, hiking, reading, parenting and travelling.