News

Eric Anslyn, Edward Marcotte and George Georgiou were honored at an event this month honoring the top innovations and inventions of the year to come out of The University of Texas at Austin.

A widely used class of chemotherapy drugs, called topoisomerase inhibitors, come with some serious downsides: bone marrow damage, reduced blood cell production, diarrhea and heart damage. And some cancers can quickly develop resistance. A new discovery about a second class of drugs might lead to combination therapies that are just as effective, but with fewer downsides.

Each year the College of Natural Sciences invites its faculty, staff and students to submit the most stunning and inspiring images from their scholarly research for our Visualizing Science competition. We ask for images that not only inform and educate, but also celebrate the beauty inherent within scientific discovery.

A tech startup that spun out of The University of Texas at Austin, Lantha Inc., has successfully completed its first round of venture capital investments, securing $2.6 million from the GOOSE Society of Texas and other investors. The company is commercializing a novel chemical sensor invented at UT Austin that holds promise to dramatically lower costs and return faster results compared with other analytical tools. The innovation could have applications as diverse as the detection of chemical isotopes, quality control testing of feedstocks in manufacturing computer chips and pharmaceuticals, and detecting contamination in drinking water.

Two graduate students from the University of Texas at Austin, Albina Khasanova and Emily Raulerson, received fellowships from the Department of Energy to carry out research in one of 12 DOE national laboratories.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new preoperative test for thyroid cancer that is faster and about two-thirds more accurate than the diagnostic tests doctors use today. Although more validation will be necessary before it can be used clinically, the new metabolic thyroid test shows promise for preventing thousands of unnecessary thyroid removals each year, such as the partial removal UT Austin grad student Amanda Helms had due to an inconclusive test.

Emily Que, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop tools to study metal- containing enzymes and proteins. The research has potential implications across a broad spectrum of human health areas including cancer, fertility, diabetes, and infectious disease research.

Michael Krische, professor of chemistry and the Robert A. Welch Chair in Science at The University of Texas at Austin, is the 2020 recipient of the American Chemical Society's Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin will head into September, childhood cancer awareness month, with nearly $5 million in new cancer prevention funding from the State of Texas.