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Each year, the College of Natural Sciences bestows its highest honors for graduating seniors on a select group of students during graduation week. Students across the college are singled out for College of Natural Sciences Distinctions and celebrated at a special Graduates of Distinction event. Among the distinction winners is an even smaller group of students, known as Dean's Honored Graduates. 

During the past 50 years, clinical advances have substantially reduced the mortality rate for people with cancer, but new breakthroughs often require years of trial and error in the lab. An innovative partnership between The University of Texas at Austin's Machine Learning Lab, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences and Dell Medical School aims to speed up those discoveries, saving lives in the process.

Since her time as a freshman, biochemistry graduating senior Tanvi Ingle was focused on two activities that, at first, seemed unrelated: doing research and helping community members who were experiencing homelessness. When the pandemic caused the clinic where she was volunteering to close temporarily in 2020, she soon found a chance to do both at once.

Marissa Marquez and Samantha Jackson met in a neuroscience lab during their junior year, where they studied the neurophysiology of epilepsy and autism. Along the way, they also discovered friendship and passion for getting more students from underrepresented groups involved in STEM research.

Tony Gonzalez, an associate professor of practice with the College of Natural Sciences' Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), has received a President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award.

A first-generation undergraduate student from Mexia, Texas, David Sarabia is among the seniors graduating this month. On his way to receiving his bachelor of science degree in chemistry, Sarabia participated in the Supra Sensors Research stream of the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) and as an undergraduate researcher in Eric Anslyn's laboratory in the Department of Chemistry.

When she first arrived at The University of Texas at Austin, biology senior Tien Nguyen found herself taken aback by the size of the school. As a first-generation college student, she was uncertain about how best to navigate college life and find an outlet for her passions and energy.

​The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards a Graduate Research Fellowship to students who plan on pursuing a research-based master's or Ph.D. program in a STEM-related field. The fellowship is awarded to exceptional individuals and will support them in elevating their research with the goal of furthering advancements that will transform the future.

Seeking to ignite a love of discovery and technology in learners right from the start, a team at The University of Texas at Austin has launched a new resource to help families, schools and youth connect to the university's offerings in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that are especially for children, teens and their teachers.

Three undergraduate students from the College of Natural Sciences have been awarded the 2022 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, a prestigious national scholarship given to students pursuing careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering fields. Olivia Conway, Aniket Sanghi, and Kevin Zhou are among 475 college students from across the country to receive the scholarship for the 2022 competition.

The University of Texas at Austin continues to be among the public universities with the most top-ranked schools and academic programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report's latest edition of "Best Graduate Schools," released this morning. The university has five specialty programs ranked No. 1 and 55 graduate programs and specialties ranked among the nation's top 10. UT Austin is one of only four public universities with 50 or more specialties ranked so highly.

On March 3, 2022, Dean David Vanden Bout presented to members of the college community his vision and reflections on core college values and the strategic impact the College of Natural Sciences can make.

The University of Texas at Austin has joined the Age-Friendly University (AFU) Global Network, which consists of institutions of higher education around the world who have committed themselves to including adults of all ages in their programs and policies.

Marilyn Fogel, an alumna of The University of Texas at Austin, was selected for the Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Award, the highest honor in geochemistry given annually to one scientist by the Geochemical Society.

A new Graduate Portfolio in Computational Medicine combines novel and existing courses from across the University of Texas at Austin to create a unique program in a rapidly expanding medical field.