Every Spring, the College of Natural Sciences celebrates its student-scientists at the one-day Undergraduate Research Forum, held this year on Friday, April 17. More than 200 students present posters describing their research. The best and most innovative posters and presentations are recognized with awards judged and sponsored by the university, faculty, alumni and industry.
Exposing first-year college students to real research experiences alongside faculty scientists is something The University of Texas at Austin has been doing for a decade now through the Freshman Research Initiative.
An undergraduate biochemistry major and Dean's Scholar Honors Program participant, Brendan Chou from Houston, has been awarded a Goldwater scholarship, the premier undergraduate award of its type in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering.
Students at The University of Texas at Austin are learning ways to fight cyber crime where these threats increasingly take place: phones, cars and other devices in the "Internet of Things."
In 2015, the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) celebrates its 10th anniversary. In honor of that milestone, we are checking in with some of the alumni of the FRI program who use what they learn in interesting ways. Olivia Biehle, an undergraduate double-majoring in Mathematics and Radio-TV-Film, combines her two very different passions through 3D filmmaking. She also used movie-making skills in her involvement with the Cosmic Dawn FRI research stream, as she explains in an interview.
As classes start back for the spring semester, hundreds of first-year students are embarking on hands-on research projects as part of the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). Later this year, FRI will celebrate its 10th anniversary academic year. In honor of that milestone, we visit with some of the alumni of the FRI program, like Human Development and Family Sciences senior Elvira Marquez.
Students from The University of Texas at Austin won $100,000 in seed funding for developing an idea for a smart phone app that would use artificial intelligence to help Texas residents get information about health care, food assistance and other social services in partnership with the United Way for Greater Austin’s 2-1-1 Navigation Center.
Experiential learning in the College of Natural Sciences includes the nation's largest effort to involve first-year students in meaningful research, the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). In the spring, hundreds of first-year students join one of over 27 unique research streams for real, hands-on encounters with meaningful research questions that need answering.
The groundbreaking Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) program at The University of Texas at Austin helped a pair of students put a coveted feather in their cap quite early in their academic careers: the chance to say they’ve been published in a top-tier scientific journal from the prestigious Nature Publishing Group.
Jacob Heiling (BS '13) was already interested in biology when he started working as a greenhouse assistant at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory (BFL) as an undergraduate. The time he spent watching butterflies interact in the greenhouse sparked his interest in studying species interactions, and that led to an independent research project on the chemical ecology of bird-dispersed fruits.
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.
