News Highlights

Read the latest news from the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin

Features

Turbocharging Protein Engineering with AI

Biotech advances from UT’s new Deep Proteins group are changing the game with help from artificial intelligence.

Three people stand silhouetted  in front of a wall-sized video display that shows several large colorful illustrations of molecules

Announcements

New AI Institute Led by UT Researchers Will Accelerate Cosmic Discovery

Stella Offner and Arya Farahi are among the leads of a new multi-institution institute focused on AI and astronomy.

Four quadrants of scientific-images come together, with webs showing bright spots for star formation, galaxy clustering, identifications of galaxies that are labeled and a futuristic network.

Research

Early Galaxies Weren’t Too Big for Their Britches After All

It got called the crisis in cosmology. But now astronomers can explain some surprising recent discoveries.

In the blackness of space, a bright object in the center of view is surrounded and partly obscured by a dark cloud

Research

AI Opens Door to Safe, Effective New Antibiotics to Combat Resistant Bacteria

Protein large language models identify ways to make antibiotics better at targeting dangerous bacteria, without being toxic to humans.

A green bacteria-shaped object with a red arrow piercing through its center. The bacteria is surrounded by concentric circles and smaller, blue, bacteria-like shapes. The background is a light blue grid with a pattern of binary code.

Research

Paving the Way to Extremely Fast, Compact Computer Memory

Materials with high magnetoelectric coupling could be useful in novel devices such as magnetic computer memories, chemical sensors and quantum computers.

Illustration showing two corkscrew-shaped lines twisting in opposite directions, rising up out of a layer of small spheres that represent atoms, each with an arrow pointing in the direction of a feature called its magnetic moment

Podcast

“AI for the Rest of Us” Brings Expert Conversations on Artificial Intelligence to UT Community

For the Year of AI, University experts and guests offer up key lessons about AI across disciplines.

Two people look at a wall emblazoned with the words "AI for the rest of us"

Research

Otters, Especially Females, Use Tools To Survive a Changing World

A new study has found that individual sea otters that use tools — most of whom are female — are able to eat larger prey...

A sea otter feeds on a marine animal

Accolades

Faculty Members Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Neuroscientist Kristen Harris and molecular bioscientist Keiko Torii have received one of the highest honors a scientist can receive.

Portrait of two scientists

Features

Top Prize Image in Visualizing Science Contest Captures Research Tied to the Sun

Ph.D. student Maile Marriott’s submission illustrates the complexities of the “space weather” generated by our sun.

Top Prize Editor’s Choice

Features

Undergraduate Researchers Help Unlock Lessons of Machine Learning and AI

From large language models to brain-machine interfaces, students work with faculty on cutting-edge research.

Four students post on a staircase near a limestone building at UT.