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From the College of Natural Sciences
Cason Hunwick is a senior Rhetoric and Writing major and Science Communication minor at UT Austin. His favorite scientists include Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie and Linus Pauling. He plays piano, plays soccer, rock climbs and enjoys working with researchers to communicate their discoveries in compelling and insightful ways.
Spring Insects to Spot on Neighborhood Walks

Spring Insects to Spot on Neighborhood Walks

A green sweat bee on a spiderwort flower. Photo by: Alex Wild, used with permission.

With much of the world practicing social distancing, walks and other opportunities to get outdoors are the highlight of many people's days right now. That includes scientists, some of whom say, with the spring season upon us, the outdoors just got a lot more interesting.

Model Predicts Which Coral Reefs Will Better Adapt to Global Warming

Model Predicts Which Coral Reefs Will Better Adapt to Global Warming

Various staghorn corals in the Great Barrier Reef. Image credit: The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey.

​Climate change is causing coral reefs around the world to decline. According to a new study in the journal Global Change Biology, reefs that receive more heat-tolerant coral larvae from warmer ocean regions will be more likely to adapt and survive than those that receive less. The discovery was made using a computer model created by University of Texas at Austin evolutionary biologist Mikhail Matz.

Social Support Aids Recovery from Drug Addiction, Study Suggests

Social Support Aids Recovery from Drug Addiction, Study Suggests

Having an option to receive social support rather than use drugs is better at reducing relapse than cutting out drugs completely, and this behavior has its own control circuit in the brain, according to research co-authored by University of Texas neuroscientist Robert Messing. The research, done in partnership with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides evidence supporting existing recovery offerings and has implications for developing new drug-addiction treatments.

Joydeep Biswas Builds Robots to Navigate the Real World

Joydeep Biswas Builds Robots to Navigate the Real World

The Biswas lab demos robotic cars at campus events like the college donor brunch and Explore UT.

Joydeep Biswas leads the Autonomous Mobile Robotics Laboratory (AMRL) at UT, where he and other researchers work on building mobile service robots that assist humans in everyday environments. The lab investigates programs and algorithms that enable these robots to better navigate changing conditions, incorporate human assistance and recover from failures intelligently.

Four Natural Sciences Faculty Receive President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Awards

Four Natural Sciences Faculty Receive President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Awards

2020 President's Associates Teaching Award winners Michael Drew, Janice Fischer, Marci Gleason and Vernita Gordon.

College of Natural Sciences faculty members Michael Drew, Janice Fischer, Marci Gleason and Vernita Gordon each received a 2020 President's Associate Teaching Excellence Award, among seven total recipients.

What Neuroscience Suggests to Better Your Study Habits

What Neuroscience Suggests to Better Your Study Habits

Every student has their own style of studying for exams. Some hold marathon study sessions, others endlessly review their notes. But scientists right here on campus say there are right ways and wrong ways to study, according to neuroscience.

Graduate Researcher Studies Cells that Fight Autoimmunity

Graduate Researcher Studies Cells that Fight Autoimmunity

T-cells are crucial to our immune systems, recognizing viruses, bacterial infections and even cancer cells and triggering immune responses that help kill off these and other dangerous invaders.

Melissa Kemp Combines Art and Science in Study of Lizards

Melissa Kemp Combines Art and Science in Study of Lizards

Melissa Kemp, an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, studies how extinction, biological diversification and colonization are shaped by environmental upheavals. She joined the faculty as a new hire in 2018, and this fall was announced as the winner of the Environmental Science Institute's Billy Carr Distinguished Teaching Fellowship.

Microbe Research Team Awarded Gold Medal at 2019 iGEM Competition

Microbe Research Team Awarded Gold Medal at 2019 iGEM Competition

​A team of undergraduate researchers involved with the Department of Molecular Biosciences received awards in two categories at the 2019 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Jamboree, the largest showcase of synthetic biology innovations in the world.

How Do Computers Learn? Sometimes by Driving Cars and Spinning Tunes

How Do Computers Learn? Sometimes by Driving Cars and Spinning Tunes

​Members of The University of Texas at Austin's Learning Agents Research Group have been a resource for members of the media about how to teach artificial intelligence systems to learn.