2024–25 Priorities for Research
We are tackling boundary-breaking research.
- New initiatives & advances: New funding from the legislature, along with our recent expansion of the Texas Field Station Network, have necessitated new efforts in coordinating activities across multiple sites and disciplines in environmental education, research and outreach. The college and its units are spearheading these initiatives, which stand to benefit communities around Texas, including on the Texas Gulf Coast Research Center, where $10 million in new legislative funding was targeted, and in the Hill Country, where a new UT field station is being planned. Other cross-cutting new directions in research relate to supporting our understanding of the fundamentals of machine learning and generative AI applications. The college and others at UT invested in hundreds of NVIDIA GPU computing resources and added researchers to help establish a new, multidisciplinary Center for Generative AI that will work on problems ranging from computer vision to protein folding. Finally, with the Cockrell School of Engineering, we launched the new Texas Quantum Institute, bringing together researchers in physics, electrical and computer engineering and computer science whose focus lies with harnessing quantum phenomena for new technologies.
- AI & life science innovation: In our technology-driven city of Austin, extensive expertise in artificial intelligence meets a growing biomedical research apparatus. In this context, UT stands to be a bridge as a research powerhouse. The college, in collaboration with other schools across campus and the central administration, is actively planning around a life science innovation strategy to benefit the University and the city.
We are supporting the success of our researchers.
- Research connections & investments: The college hosts series of research symposia, collaboration retreats and other events, bringing hundreds of researchers together for collaboration around specific priority areas. These included an NSF Build-A-Cell workshop, a Texas Biologics Showcase, a Center for Planetary Systems Inhabitability research retreat, a Texas Quantum Institute kick-off, a two-day symposium that brought Department of Marine Science researchers from Port Aransas to Austin to connect with colleagues. Investments and expenditures in research increased 18% over the last year. The college also directly invested in faculty members’ interdisciplinary and high-risk, high-reward research efforts, through dedicated research grant programs.
- Infrastructure focus: Cutting-edge research often demands updated, modern or new facilities. The college completed comprehensive studies about what might be involved next with planning for space for the work currently housed in two aging buildings: the Physics, Math and Astronomy building and Patterson Labs. As building costs in Austin rise, adequately planning for, addressing and finding pathways to finance infrastructure needs are top priorities, with implications for both research and education on campus.
Further Context
The original language for the College of Natural Sciences plan related to research was developed in 2022. Find details and past progress in the sections below.
Plans for Boundary-Breaking Research
We will work to address challenges in energy and the environment, health and wellbeing and technology and society.
Understanding and Preserving Unique Biodiversity
- Researchers are seeking to create knowledge that leads to healthier lives through more sustainable and resilient sources of food, water and energy and world-changing scientific breakthroughs that promote the vibrancy of Texas and our planet.
Propelling Research Advances with the Machine Learning Lab
- Machine learning harnesses technology-driven systems for artificial intelligence able to learn from real-world experience and make predictions in complex environments, relevant to many research areas. UT Austin is a world leader in related research and home to the National Science Foundation-funded Institute for the Foundations of Machine Learning based within the MLL.
Exploring the Universe and its Beginnings
- UT Austin is a founding partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will be the largest land-based telescope ever created, enabling a new era of discovery. Researchers at UT Austin are likewise involved in international research consortia and efforts pertaining to gravitation and exploration of the cosmos in areas such as dark matter and dark energy, including through the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HET-DEX).
Investigating Opportunities for New Materials
- With support from the National Science Foundation and in partnership with the Cockrell School of Engineering, chemists, physicists and molecular bioscientists are conducting cutting-edge research relevant for the development of new materials that can play a role in new technologies and the clean energy revolution ahead.
Pursuing Insights in Computational Health and Medicine
- Big data, artificial intelligence and computational science are transforming health and medicine, changing the way diseases are understood, diagnosed and treated. Faculty in Texas computer science, statistics and data sciences and the Oden Institute partner with life sciences researchers in Dell Medical School and across Natural Sciences to develop new tools and techniques to improve health outcomes for patients and communities.
Working towards New Therapeutics and Vaccines through Texas Biologics
- Texas Biologics builds on UT Austin’s long history of success in protein therapeutics, by bringing together researchers in the College of Natural Sciences and Cockrell School of Engineering with cross-disciplinary strengths related to the discovery, development and clinical translation of related medicines and treatments. This effort will leverage the structural biology capabilities of the Sauer Lab, the college's cryo-electron microscopy facility.
Plans for Researcher Support
The College of Natural Sciences is providing strategic support for our researchers.
Advance Higher-Risk/Higher-Reward Research with Spark Grants
- CNS Spark Grants is a new internal funding mechanism open to associate professors who seek to explore new research questions or experimental approaches. The goal is to support new ideas that are typically too early-stage in their development to be appropriate for routine funding opportunities, encouraging high-risk/high-reward projects of many stripes, from developing new methods to gathering preliminary data for new vanguards in research.
Continue Interdisciplinary Research Projects Supported by CNS Catalyst Grants
- The CNS Catalyst Grant program is a College of Natural Sciences (CNS) internal funding mechanism meant to inspire interdisciplinary research collaborations that will seed efforts to secure external funding.
Introduce New Proto Center Competitions
- CNS is exploring the idea of creating a college-wide annual competition for new centers to support innovative interdisciplinary research. Proto Centers will be launched with college funding for a finite amount of time. This program would create regenerating support structures at the intersection of multiple disciplines and foster cutting-edge discovery.
Earlier Progress Related to Research
Updates Prior to 2024
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Texas Biologics, GMT and materials research: With $5.7 million in initial seed funding, Texas Biologics establishes UT Austin in one of the fastest-growing pharmaceutical sectors, representing over 26% of the new drugs approved in 2020. In other research developments, The University of Texas at Austin announced an additional $45 million to be invested in the Giant Magellan Telescope, the world’s most powerful telescope, bringing the university’s total commitment to the project to $110.3 million. Finally, the NSF selected UT Austin’s Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials, an NSF MRSEC, for an additional six years of operation, with faculty from physics and chemistry holding leadership positions. The college planned a major quantum materials initiative to complement in part the research happening within the MRSEC.
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Strategic Research Initiatives (SRI): The college’s new director of SRI oversaw the first two cohorts of pilot grants and the first interdisciplinary projects linked to Texas Biologics. Spark Grants, another program overseen by SRI, attracted dozens of proposals, of which 11 were funded from multiple disciplines. Catalyst Grants have resulted in interdisciplinary projects being funded. SRI also continued to provide oversight of the Stengl-Wyer Endowment distribution, supporting biodiversity research at field stations, with postdoctoral scholars, by faculty and with graduate and undergraduate researchers. The office acted as a key college liaison for the new UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub, and it supported faculty across disciplines in developing proposals, such as in physics and astronomy where the new Weinberg Institute is the focal point for theoretical physics at UT with an emphasis on cosmology and gravitational physics.
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Building and space planning: Lord Aeck Sargent architectural firm was engaged to develop potential preliminary plans and cost estimates for two buildings in the college: Physics, Math and Astronomy (PMA) and Patterson Laboratories. Leaders in the college partnered closely with the University on plans for a Sweatt v. Painter exhibit and entrance that would transform Painter Hall.
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Machine learning and insights in computational health and medicine: The Machine Learning Laboratory (MLL) and its NSF-funded counterpart, the Institute for the Foundations of Machine Learning, continued work to improve medical imaging and also embarked on a “Deep Proteins” research project with groups across UT Austin and from Houston Methodist, aiming to identify and optimize therapeutic proteins for the treatment of a host of diseases. MLL continued also to advance the fundamentals of machine learning and to support machine learning applications in a variety of fields across campus. More than 200 students and more than three dozen faculty members representing 10 departments attended an MLL-sponsored matching event to work together on research projects while employing machine learning.