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From the College of Natural Sciences
Open House Opens Oceans
Standing in front of a crowd of about 50 visitors from across the state at The University of Texas Marine Science Institute’s summer Open House, oceanographer and turtle-rescuer Tony Amos' cell phone rang. He answered the call. After a brief conversation, Amos relayed to the expectant crowd that two green sea turtles had been found on the Padre Isl...Statistically Significant
When Drs. Sheldon Ekland-Olson and Cathy Stacy were putting the finishing touches on the program for the first UT Summer Statistics Institute (SSI), they worried that there wouldn’t be enough students to fill the 18 different classes on topics like multiple regression, hierarchical linear modeling and Bayesian statistics. “We expected 250 people, b...
Gleeson Honored for Teaching Excellence
Austin Gleeson, professor of physics, has been selected to receive the 2008 Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence. The Holloway Award began in 1970, when Jean and Sterling Holloway endowed one of The University of Texas at Austin's first teaching awards to formally establish that students should play a role in the selection of teaching awards...
Hillis, Aldrich Earn Top Honor
Dr. Rick Aldrich Dr. David Hillis AUSTIN, Texas—Two natural sciences faculty were elected members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Richard Aldrich and David Hillis were among 72 others for their excellence in original scientific research. “They are ...
2008 College Faculty and Staff Awards
The College of Natural Sciences is filled to capacity with intelligent, creative and incredibly devoted people. Each spring, we have the opportunity to honor some of the individuals that make the College of Natural Sciences so wonderful. This year's 2008 honorees are: OFFICE OF THE DEAN Ricardo Gonzalez Dean’s Office Staff Excellence Award DEPA...Award-winning, Solar-powered House Built by University of Texas Students Comes to McDonald Observatory
FORT DAVIS — It’s Earth Day, and McDonald Observatory is preparing to add a new eco-friendly facility: the award-winning, solar-powered “BLOOMhouse.” Students in The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture designed and built the BLOOMhouse to compete in last year’s Solar Decathlon, a biennial event sponsored by the Department of Ener...
John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911 – April 13, 2008)
John Archibald Wheeler passed away yesterday after contracting pneumonia. He is survived by two daughters, Alison Wheeler Lahnston and Letitia Wheeler Ufford, and a son, James English Wheeler. Read more about his life here.Graduate Program Rankings '08
Several college Ph.D. programs rank among the nation’s top ten in this year’s U.S. News & World Report survey. Rankings are based on opinions of deans, department heads and other senior faculty. College programs and rankings: Biological Sciences - 23rd Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior - 8th Chemistry - 12th Analytical Chemistr...Sen. Cornyn Recognizes UTeach Efforts
AUSTIN—United States Senator John Cornyn cited the partnership between UTeach—The University of Texas at Austin’s innovative science and math teacher preparation program—and the Austin Independent School District (AISD) as exemplary in meeting the nation’s need for highly trained science, math and computer science secondary school teachers. Cornyn,...
Five Faculty Win Sloan Fellowships
AUSTIN, Texas—Five faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships for 2008. Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded every year by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. The 118 winners for this year were chosen fr...Bill Gates Unplugged
Founder and chairman of Microsoft Bill Gates spoke at The University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday, Feb. 20. Gates’ visit was part of a five-campus university tour in which he emphasized the importance of digital innovation in driving the global economy and addressing societal issues and the benefits afforded careers based in math and science. A...
Blast from the Past: Computing the Hard Way
Steve Ernst, Marc Hackert and Jon Robertus modeling proteins in 1978. Image courtesy Center for American History. When biochemists Marv Hackert, Jon Robertus and Steve Ernst began using the Vector General computer graphics system (pictured here) in 1978 to assist with modeling protein structures, it was at best a very limited and very expensive too...
The Sound of Science
It’s taken a while for Josh Russell, a 37-year-old undergraduate in the College of Natural Sciences, to unify his interests in art, music, computers and science. A native of Galveston, Texas, Russell did his first stint as an undergraduate in the ’90s, earning a B.A. in photography from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. After graduati...
Life on the Outside: Shelley Payne
Shelley Payne, a member of the university’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers, started weaving not long after she arrived in Austin as an assistant professor. “I wanted something that I could easily do as a way to relax,” she says, “and I was fascinated with weaving and cloth and how you use a single material and yet get these intricate patterns to...
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