News

A seminal event in human history occurred 50 years ago this month when humans took their first steps on the Moon. This feat, the culmination of years of work by a multitude of people, happened with the involvement of many who started here in the University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences.

National Instruments co-founders James Truchard and Jeff Kodosky, who founded one the country's pioneering technology companies while working at The University of Texas at Austin, have been selected as 2019 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Together, the two software pioneers invented LabVIEW^TM (Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) — a programming language that revolutionized the way engineers and scientists measure, test and control applications.

Alma Solis (B.S. '78, M.S. Biology, '82) is a research entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and curator for the Smithsonian Institution.

Meet Eric Berger (B.S. Astronomy, '95), Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica and Editor at Space City Weather.

Dr. Anitha Mitchell Logan, an alumna of the College of Natural Sciences, is one of six winners of this year's Distinguished Alumnus Awards from the Texas Exes, the alumni association of the University of Texas at Austin. The awards, currently celebrating their 60^th anniversary, are given annually to alumni who have distinguished themselves professionally and through service to the university.

James P. Allison, a world-renowned pioneer of cancer immunotherapy, has been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine jointly with Tasuku Honjo "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation."

Last year, University of Texas at Austin alumnus Michael Young won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the molecular mechanism behind circadian rhythms. Circadian clocks are critical for the health of all living things, acting as the internal timekeepers in plants and animals that help to synchronize functions like eating and sleeping with our planet's daily rhythm of light and dark.

​Ryan Huizar, a recent UT Austin alum, is embarking on a new journey this fall at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine at one of the most competitive MD-PhD programs in the nation. The MD-PhD dual doctoral degree prepares students for careers as physician-scientists, balancing research and clinical care of patients.

Sydney Jones (BSA, '10) has studied cardiovascular health and diabetes on the Texas border, researched improvements for stroke care in North Carolina, and promoted community health, working with a nonprofit organization. Now the University of Texas alumna is taking on a new role: disease detective for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ewin Tang, a 2018 University of Texas at Austin graduate in computer science and mathematics, is receiving national attention for a feat accomplished at the age of 18 by disproving, as part of an honors thesis, a widely held assumption about the hottest next-thing in technology, quantum computing.