News

When Betty Wilson Key (Math, '67) graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, NASA, the place she went on to work, wasn't known especially as a place for women.

"We did it!" announced physics alumnus David Reitze to the world on February 11, 2016 – breaking the news of perhaps the biggest scientific discovery of our time.

​The New Horizons spacecraft brought humanity face to face with the last unexplored planet in our solar system: Pluto. What we're learning is amazing. But, time and again, the mission almost didn't happen. University of Texas at Austin alumnus Alan Stern describes the challenges, and the joys, of the last first mission to a planet.

James P. Allison (B.A. '69, Ph.D. '73) was a key source for a groundbreaking series of stories in the New York Times about immunotherapy cancer treatment.

Nancy Lee, M.D., (Math, '71) is a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Director of the Office on Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In honor of National Women's Health Week, we talked to her about her journey from math student to national advocate for women's health.

Dan Goldman (Ph.D. Physics '02), a physicist at Georgia Tech, is exploring how animals move on tricky surfaces like sand, bark, leaves and grass. The New York Times produced two videos on his research, which revealed how sidewinder snakes climb up sand dunes and how the sandfish lizard "swims" through sand. Tomorrow, he's delivering a talk to undergraduates at UT Austin titled "Robophysics: Physics Meets Robotics." We recently chatted about his work.

Dr. John Doran (Microbiology, Chemistry, 1969) has established an endowment with the intention of advancing science in neurodegenerative diseases.

The recent detection of gravitational waves at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which is partially led by executive director and University of Texas at Austin alumnus David Reitze, has even deeper roots at UT Austin.