News

In a New York Times article and on the Bay Area airwaves, University of Texas at Austin computer scientists are speaking out about the increasing demand for classes – and how the department, which is top-ten ranked, is coping with the challenge.

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin's Marine Science Institute have discovered nearly two dozen new types of microbes, many of which use hydrocarbons such as methane and butane as energy sources to survive and grow—meaning the newly identified bacteria might be helping to limit the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and might one day be useful for cleaning up oil spills.

Human development and family sciences professor Elizabeth Gershoff, an internationally renowned expert on the effects of corporal punishment on children, helped inform a new policy statement from The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) with her extensive body of research on the topic.

Last year, Texas saw a particularly deadly flu season. Now, there is a new Federal Drug Administration-approved treatment, Xofluza, designed to catch the flu in its early stages and stop it from spreading. The drug is thanks in large part to professor emeritus Robert Krug's basic research, undertaken almost 40 years ago.

The Texas Student Research Showdown, a competition open to undergraduate researchers at UT Austin across all disciplines and majors, featured a number of winning entries from College of Natural Sciences and Freshman Research Initiative students this year. For this contest, students submit a two minute YouTube video to effectively communicate their research projects while competing for recognition and cash prizes worth up to $2,500.

Four UT Austin faculty members have won major awards for 2019 from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the International Conference on Calixarenes for their contributions to an array of research areas.

At a conference of the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Taipei, Taiwan in July, Matthew Rosenzweig was awarded second place and Ioakeim Ampatzoglou received an honorable mention in the Student Paper Competition, which named ten finalists. Both are graduate students of UT Austin mathematics professor Nataša Pavlović.

Molecular Biosciences professor Kenneth Johnson has been named a 2019 Society Fellow of The Biophysical Society for his influential research and support of biophysics.

Equations may seem set in stone, but the shapes they describe rely on the space they occupy. This is a concept explored by tropical geometry, a relatively new field of mathematics which reduces complex shapes into simple stick drawings. Quanta Magazine featured a pair of joint papers with connections to the University of Texas at Austin that add new insights to the field.