A team of scientists from nine universities and research facilities hope to find out how to make switchgrass — a fast-growing perennial native to the U.S. — into a biofuel powerhouse.
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.
A group of trees that grow fast, live long lives and reproduce slowly account for the bulk of the biomass—and carbon storage—in some tropical rainforests, a team of scientists says in a paper published this week in the journal Science. The finding that these trees, called long-lived pioneers, play a much larger role in carbon storage than previously thought may have implications in efforts to preserve forests as a strategy to fight climate change.
Two faculty members from the University of Texas at Austin have received 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships, which honor outstanding early-career scientists in eight fields.
An international team of researchers that includes undergraduate chemistry student Annie Zhang from The University of Texas at Austin has found that aromatic compounds from auto emissions play a key role in the creation of tiny airborne particles that pose a significant health problem in many urban areas of the world.
Two graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin, Albina Khasanova and Emily Raulerson, received fellowships from the Department of Energy to carry out research in one of 12 DOE national laboratories.
From combatting an invasive species to tracking pollinators' patterns, undergraduate students get a taste of what real research is like over the summer when they team up with faculty members and graduate students on projects with the award-winning Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) program at UT Austin. UT News featured three different summer projects in their coverage, including the study of insects, zebra mussels and water sampling, and experts at other universities are abuzz about how this program and others like it are allowing "students to delve deeply into real problems."
New faculty in Natural Sciences conduct compelling research and inspire new generations, right out of the gate. As the 2019-20 academic year begins, we are introducing faculty members whose compelling work is worth learning about. Here meet Kami Hull. Within months of joining the faculty, she won a prestigious Novartis Early Career Award in Chemistry in recognition of her research, which involves developing more efficient processes for synthetic organic chemistry.
The U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA) has awarded a $5 million grant to The University of Texas at Austin to repair a large laboratory building on the UT Marine Science Institute campus in Port Aransas and help establish a new Center for Coastal Ocean Science.
As a new academic year approaches, we aim to introduce you to some of the scientists and mathematicians in our community, especially faculty who joined our UT community recently. First up: Corwin Zigler, associate professor in UT Austin's Department of Statistics and Data Sciences and in the Dell Medical School's Department of Women's Health.
Read our publication, The Texas Scientist, a digest covering the people and groundbreaking discoveries that make the College of Natural Sciences one of the most amazing and significant places on Earth.
