TI employees Stephanie Johnson and Trisha Cunningham look over the model for the new Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall. The 5500-square-foot gallery will include a robotics area and interactive exhibits exploring the art and science of problem solving using engineering and technology. Click here to watch the video.

The Texas Instruments Foundation recently announced a multi-million-dollar gift to the Museum of Nature & Science, resulting in the naming of a Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall, which will be part of the new Perot Museum of Nature & Science.

The Hall naming recognizes a $4.4-million early leadership gift, as well as the decades-long volunteer and financial support provided by the TI Foundation, TI and its employees.

To celebrate the announcement, the museum, TI Foundation and community leaders unveiled plans and provided a preview of exhibit prototypes in an office building adjacent to the Perot Museum site.

"We're especially excited about the fun and educational experiences that the Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall will bring to students," said Sam Self, chairman of the TI Foundation.

"We envision that this museum will become a tremendous resource for those who teach science, technology, engineering and math in North Texas schools. Businesses in our city, state and nation need a well-educated technical workforce more than ever. The future depends on it."

Interactive exhibits
The 5,500-square-foot gallery, designed by the acclaimed Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), will feature experiences and interactive exhibits exploring the art and science of problem solving using engineering and technology.

Construction workers hung a large red-and-white banner from the second floor of the museum's east side to mark the hall location.

The Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall will give visitors an opportunity to construct mock buildings, place the structures on an earthquake simulator that uses data from actual earthquakes, and see the impacts of their design.

They will also be able to create their own digital music compositions and test paper object designs in one of three different wind tunnels. Other highlights include building and testing their own bridge design, constructing electric circuits, and over a dozen more hands-on activities that explore engineering.

At the center of this Hall, visitors will have an opportunity to design, build, program, and run robots through games or challenges created by Museum staff.

'Light-bulb moments'
The Hall will also highlight the many exciting careers in engineering and showcase local companies and universities that innovate and inspire.

Throughout the event, speakers incorporated the idea of "light-bulb moments" to illustrate the power of innovation and to drive the message that learning about science is fun and relevant.

Students from Uplift Education's Peak Preparatory engaged guests with five exhibit prototypes that represent the various interactive centers in the new TI Hall. Also showing off impressive skills of innovation was The Robot Fighting Cancer Cell team, a group of 10-year-old winners of the Museum's FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) competition, and their sophisticated robotics creation.

Venu Menon, TI vice president of analog technology development, visits with students from Uplift's Peak Preparatory school as they demonstrate prototype exhibits for the Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall.

Resource for the future
Museum staff also educated and entertained the students and other attendees with electrifying demonstrations.

"Texas Instruments has been a longtime partner of the Museum of Nature & Science, donating thousands of volunteer hours and millions of dollars over past decades," said Forrest Hoglund, chair of Perot Museum of Nature & Science expansion campaign.

"I think it's only appropriate that our new Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall be named in honor of this legendary Texas company whose discovery of the integrated circuit, among other things, has changed modern life as we know it today."

In Self’s remarks, he cited the needs of educators who teach the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math).

"Our STEM educators need resources to teach, and students need resources to learn, especially when school budgets are stretched as thin as they are today," he said.

He also referenced a recent report by Change The Equation, a national coalition of 110 chief executive officers including TI’s Rich Templeton, that compiled statistics on STEM learning in America. The report said that the U.S. ranks behind 16 other developed nations in science and behind 24 other developed nations in math.

Self noted that “to change these disappointing rankings, one recommendation is to make science education more interesting, more appealing, more engaging.”

“That’s what the TI Engineering & Innovation Hall will be — an engaging experience — one that we hope will light the way for students to learn,” he said. “Our goal is to introduce more children to engineering and to inspire innovation. We want them to become engineers, scientists, inventors…or any one of a thousand other careers that need science in today’s tech-savvy world. We want to create “light bulb moments” — a solid understanding of how things work. And possibly generate a new idea that the next generation’s Jack Kilby will develop to change the world.”

About the Perot Museum of Nature & Science
The $185-million Perot Museum of Nature & Science, designed by Pritzker Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his firm Morphosis, is under construction on a 4.7-acre site at in Victory Park adjacent to downtown Dallas. The structure will be 170 feet tall, equivalent to approximately 14 stories high, and is expected to open in spring 2013.

View a slideshow of photos from the event.

An artist rendering shows what the new Texas Instruments Engineering and Innovation Hall at the Perot Museum of Nature & Science will look like.

Watch the video.