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The Teaching Excellence Award in the College of Natural Sciences seeks to promote and recognize excellent teaching in the College of Natural Sciences by honoring faculty members who have had a positive influence on the educational experience of our students. Read on to meet this year's winners.

Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, an assistant professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, has been chosen to receive the 2020 Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award in Analytical Chemistry. Given by Eli Lilly's Analytical Chemistry Academic Contacts Committee, the award recognizes her exceptional research and publication record, as well as her impact on the field of analytical chemistry.

A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe. The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

With COVID-19 cases hitting new highs across the country, a new online tool can help families and school leaders estimate how many infected people are likely to show up at a school on a given day anywhere in the United States. The free, interactive dashboard was produced by The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.

Philip 'Uri' Treisman, founder and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, has dedicated his career to improving mathematics and science education on a national scale, leading to measurable gains in student performance in these subjects and improvements in course success for elementary school children through university undergraduates. Now he is the recipient of one of the most prestigious awards in American education, the 2020 James Bryant Conant Award from the Education Commission of the States.

Industry analysts say that more data has been collected in the past two years than in all of human history combined. Data about what we buy, what we watch, where we go and who our friends are is constantly being collected and stored. Analyzing all that data and gaining insights from it is the hard part.

Several College of Natural Sciences faculty members have been newly appointed to special professorships and endowed chairs at The University of Texas at Austin. These world-class researchers and excellent teachers are helping to shape the future of their fields in a variety of ways.

​When the COVID-19 pandemic brought many couples into the close quarters of quarantine and lockdown, many researchers wondered whether the effect would be more arguments, more divorces or perhaps closer relationships. Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have found that relationships have mostly continued much as they were before, with the happiest couples seeing a small boost. In a new study out today in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers found people's overall satisfaction levels with their relationships changed little during the pandemic, even amid significant stressors, from job losses to health concerns.

A methodical voice tells the watching crowd, "I am going to remove the lid." Everyone is quiet as a robot using artificial intelligence (AI) opens a trash can and lifts out a bag. Students and researchers hold their breath as it navigates across the floor of a mock house, avoiding obstacles to its destination. "Mission accomplished," it says. The trash has been taken out and the audience applauds. This is a huge achievement for the robot designed by a Texas Robotics team for the 2019 RoboCup competition.

A study involving more than 5,000 COVID-19 patients in Houston finds that the virus that causes the disease is accumulating genetic mutations, one of which may have made it more contagious. According to the paper published in the peer-reviewed journal mBIO, that mutation, called D614G, is located in the spike protein that pries open our cells for viral entry. It's the largest peer-reviewed study of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences in one metropolitan region of the U.S. to date.