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From the College of Natural Sciences
Natural Sciences Researchers Win President’s Award for Global Learning

Natural Sciences Researchers Win President’s Award for Global Learning

Two teams with College of Natural Sciences faculty members and students – and three additional teams with undergraduates from the college – were recently honored with the President’s Award for Global Learning, which aims to highlight innovative solutions to global problems and give interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students the opportunity to take those projects to international sites.

UT Austin Launches Institute to Harness the Data Revolution

UT Austin Launches Institute to Harness the Data Revolution

Research from UT Austin professors and TRIPODS members Alex Dimakis and Eric Price shows that it is possible to learn a deep generative model that dreams images of human faces (right panel), trained by observing only occluded images (left panel). The middle panel shows a previous approach for solving this problem, that fails. [Figure from: AmbientGAN: Generative models from lossy measurements, by A. Bora, E. Price and A.G. Dimakis, ICLR 2018.]

Advances in machine learning are announced every day, but efforts to fundamentally rethink the core algorithms of AI are rare.

How Do Computers Learn? Sometimes by Driving Cars and Spinning Tunes

How Do Computers Learn? Sometimes by Driving Cars and Spinning Tunes

​Members of The University of Texas at Austin's Learning Agents Research Group have been a resource for members of the media about how to teach artificial intelligence systems to learn.

Computer Scientist Weighs in on Quantum Supremacy

Computer Scientist Weighs in on Quantum Supremacy

Google’s quantum computer. Credit: Google

Google announced earlier this week that a team of researchers made a milestone achievement: "quantum supremacy," or the creation of a quantum computer capable of calculations beyond the capacity of a traditional supercomputer. To put this in perspective, a number of media outlets, including New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Quanta Magazine, BBC and NPR, relied on the expertise of Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin.

Artificial Intelligence System Gives Fashion Advice

Artificial Intelligence System Gives Fashion Advice

People turn to many different sources for clothing style advice, from magazines to best friends to Instagram. Soon, though, you may be able to ask your smartphone.

A UT Austin Spin-Out Beats the Odds, Turning Data into Knowledge

A UT Austin Spin-Out Beats the Odds, Turning Data into Knowledge

Juan Sequeda and Daniel Miranker launched Capsenta, a start-up based on their research at the University of Texas at Austin which was recently acquired by data.world. Photo credit: Vivian Abagiu.

It was 2006 when Juan Sequeda (BS '08, PhD '15), then a new UT Austin computer science transfer student, saw a fellow undergraduate drop a bunch of papers on the floor. When he bent over to help pick up the papers, he was surprised to see that they were research articles about an obscure subfield in computer science that Sequeda himself had recently become obsessed with: the Semantic Web.

Computer Security Expert Named Simons Foundation Investigator

Computer Security Expert Named Simons Foundation Investigator

Brent Waters has been selected as a 2019 Simons Investigator in Theoretical Computer Science.

Computer scientist Brent Waters of The University of Texas at Austin has been selected as a 2019 Simons Investigator in Theoretical Computer Science by the Simons Foundation, for his work in cryptography and computer security.

New AI Sees Like a Human, Filling in the Blanks (Updated)

New AI Sees Like a Human, Filling in the Blanks (Updated)

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions.

Computer Scientist Honored for Teaching Excellence

Computer Scientist Honored for Teaching Excellence

Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the Minnie Stevens Piper Teaching Award, which celebrates outstanding postsecondary teaching.

Computer Scientist Elected Fellow of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

Computer Scientist Elected Fellow of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

University of Texas at Austin computer science professor Kristen Grauman was elected a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a lifetime honor.

Award-winning Student Aims to Harness Technology to Help Others

Award-winning Student Aims to Harness Technology to Help Others

Chineye Emeghara received the Windows Insider Women in Computing Award. Photo credit: Microsoft.

Before she was winning awards at UT Austin, computer science sophomore Chineye Emeghara was teaching herself to code in high school with resources she discovered online. Later, on a trip to Nigeria, where her mother lived before immigrating to the U.S., she realized that she could apply her interest in technology to improve the lives of others.

Top-Ranked Computer Science at UT Has a Message for the Tech Industry

Top-Ranked Computer Science at UT Has a Message for the Tech Industry

Computer science is so sought-after on certain college campuses that students like Aafia Ahmad, a sophomore computer science major at UT Austin, say they have to compete just to get into popular courses. Photo credit: Joanna Kulesza for The New York Times.

In a New York Times article and on the Bay Area airwaves, University of Texas at Austin computer scientists are speaking out about the increasing demand for classes – and how the department, which is top-ten ranked, is coping with the challenge.

World's Largest General Scientific Society Selects Computer Scientist as Fellow

World's Largest General Scientific Society Selects Computer Scientist as Fellow

Computer scientist Peter Stone has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Credit: Vivian Abagiu.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society, has named computer scientist Peter Stone and two other University of Texas at Austin faculty members as fellows. This year's AAAS fellows – members of the College of Natural Sciences, the Cockrell School of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts – will be inducted at a February ceremony during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Computer Scientist Recognized as Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Computer Scientist Recognized as Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Professor Lili Qiu in the Department of Computer Science has been named an ACM Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery.

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Voting App “BeVote” Programmed by UT Students

Voting App “BeVote” Programmed by UT Students

Students at The University of Texas at Austin have a new tool to help them become better informed as voters. BeVote is a free cellphone app designed exclusively for UT students that provides accurate, nonpartisan information and was programmed by UT students.