News

The University of Texas at Austin has named Paul Goldbart the next dean of the College of Natural Sciences. His appointment will begin Aug. 1, and he will hold the Robert E. Boyer Chair in Natural Sciences.

Three College of Natural Sciences undergraduates have been selected as 2018 Goldwater Scholars. Griffin Glenn, Logan Pearce and Jenna McGuffey are among 208 college students nationwide who received the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship given in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.

​Each April, the College of Natural Sciences celebrates undergraduate researchers, and this year is no exception. This week, on Wednesday and Thursday during the 40 Hours for the Forty Acres campaign, the College is raising funds to support student researchers in the award-winning Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). 

The University of Texas at Austin is one of the public universities with the most top-ranked schools and academic programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2019 edition of "Best Graduate Schools," released this morning. The university has five programs across campus ranked No. 1 and 49 schools and specialties ranked among the nation's top 10.

One of the world's leading pediatric heart surgeons, Charles Fraser, Jr., M.D., will join the faculty of the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin as professor in the Departments of Surgery and Perioperative Care and Pediatrics. He will also serve as chief of pediatric and congenital cardiothoracic surgery at Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas.

Each year, the American Junior Academy of Science invites the nation's top pre-college researchers to tour a premiere university's campus and meet with the people there who are doing cutting-edge research in scientific labs every day. This year, dozens of high-school scientists-in-training took their tours at The University of Texas at Austin, where they met researchers different from whom they might have expected.

Here, many of the pioneering researchers are only a year or two out of high school themselves. 

It's been six months since Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Texas coast and the students, faculty and staff of the University of Texas Marine Science Institute (UTMSI) in Port Aransas are still working to pick up the pieces of their lives and get their work back on track.

​Four faculty members from the University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences have received 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships, which honor outstanding early-career scientists in eight fields.

Researchers from across the world are coming to Austin this week for one of the most important scientific gatherings of the year — the 2018 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Annual Meeting. Among them are some remarkable undergraduate students from The University of Texas at Austin who will be presenting original research at the conference.

Two UT Austin College of Natural Sciences faculty members have been named 2018 Cottrell Scholars by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). This marks only the third time that a university has received two awards in the same year since they were first given in 1994.

When Samantha Pliego started her freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin in the College of Natural Sciences, things went well. Mostly.

"I did struggle in that first biology class," said Pliego, who is now a sophomore. 

It wasn't just the super blue blood moon. From a major science event downtown to a STEM festival for girls to Explore UT, this year brings a rare alignment of science-centric events to Austin. The College of Natural Sciences is encouraging everyone to get out and enjoy some science in the weeks ahead.

The STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – have real work to do in terms of diversity. Right now, women make up only about 30 percent of the STEM workforce – and people identifying as black or Hispanic make up just 11 percent.

There's good news for anyone in our College of Natural Sciences community who has put "communicate better about my work" on their list of New Year's resolutions for 2018. UT Austin and others here in Central Texas have several resources and upcoming opportunities to hone your science communication skills. And with the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting coming February 15-19 to Austin for the first time, it's the perfect excuse to brush up.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science—the organization that publishes the journal Science and holds the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific conference—is coming to Austin. The 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting offers many ways for the Texas Science community to get involved.