News

Forty years ago, when James Allison had just gotten his PhD in biochemistry, he was intrigued by this far-out idea that was floating around about a new way to treat cancer. The idea—dubbed cancer immunotherapy—was to train the body's immune system to attack cancer cells—the same way this system already goes after bacteria and viruses. He was one of the few people who actually believed it could work.

​This is the time of year when we in the College of Natural Sciences congratulate and recognize our new graduates. Making it to this point is not an easy feat. As alumni will tell you, it requires years of hard work, meeting aggressive deadlines and learning to thrive in an environment where many different things are coming your way.

André Nahmias (BA '50, MA '52) first encountered what he calls "the ecstasy of discovery" when he was a University of Texas at Austin student. In the intervening decades as an infectious disease research pediatrician, he made a number of discoveries that benefited people with various bacterial and viral infections.

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.

Leticia Nogueira, Director of Health Services at the American Cancer Society, received her PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010.

Chip McElroy came to the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 and left in 1988 with a PhD in biochemistry. After a career in biotech and drug design, he left behind molecular biology and co-founded Live Oak Brewing Company 22 years ago. That was back before anyone knew what craft brewing was in Austin. McElroy is putting that chemistry knowledge to good use now at Austin's oldest brewery.

When Roice Nelson (BS, '97) was a student at The University of Texas at Austin, he received a scholarship that covered his books, tuition and other expenses. The funds allowed him to focus on receiving a world-class education with minimal financial burden. Roice and his wife, Sarah, recently decided to honor the gift he was given with one of their own. 

UT Austin alumna Lynne Chantranupong —currently a postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School—was named as one of the inaugural Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) 2017 Hanna H. Gray Fellows. HHMI is an early-career science award providing up to $1.4 million in financial support, mentoring, and active involvement within the HHMI community during early postdoctoral training through several years of a tenure-track faculty position.

In the same week that the scientific community celebrated news that University of Texas at Austin alumnus Michael Young was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on circadian rhythms, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of gravitational waves, work that also was heavily influenced by UT Austin scientists and alumni.

After research at The University of Texas at Austin first had him studying genetics using fruit flies over 40 years ago, Michael W. Young has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His pioneering research in the same insects led to the identification of a gene that determines living things' circadian rhythms.