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From the College of Natural Sciences
Commencement Speaker Helps Shape Young Minds Through Sesame Street

Commencement Speaker Helps Shape Young Minds Through Sesame Street

Before Elmo and Cookie Monster come alive on the small screen, childhood experts like Jennifer Kotler Clarke, Vice President of Content Research & Evaluation at Sesame Workshop, conduct experiments and review data to ensure these and other Sesame Street Muppets have the intended impact on children, parents and educators all over the world.

Alumnus Helped Usher in Age of Personal Computing and Guide Lunar Astronauts Home

Alumnus Helped Usher in Age of Personal Computing and Guide Lunar Astronauts Home

Bob O'Rear (M.S. '66) wrote computer code that helped guide Apollo astronauts safely home and led the team that developed software for the first IBM PC. Photo credit: Vivian Abagiu.

In the summer of 1980, Microsoft was a scrappy little company with about 40 employees known mostly for producing computer languages like BASIC and FORTRAN. Annual revenues were just a few million dollars a year. That was all about to change when they got a call from global computer giant IBM. Could they help with a top-secret project to build, in less than a year, an affordable personal computer for ordinary people?

Alum Speaking at Commencement Leads in Social Entrepreneurship

Alum Speaking at Commencement Leads in Social Entrepreneurship

Kreiner talking with members of NUCAFE, a coffee farmer collective that has invested in processing equipment to capture more of the value for the smallholder farmers

With less than a month to go before spring commencement, we're launching "CNS Alumni Change the World," a series about some of the outstanding people who got their start in UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences and went on to transform the world. Follow the series online with the hashtag #CNSworldchangers. First up is a speaker at two CNS commencement ceremonies on May 20.

NSF Awards 21 CNS Students and Alumni Graduate Research Fellowships

NSF Awards 21 CNS Students and Alumni Graduate Research Fellowships

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is awarding 30 prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships to University of Texas at Austin students, including eight College of Natural Sciences (CNS) graduate students and five current undergraduates, as well as eight CNS alumni.

Francis Su: "Mathematics Is for Human Flourishing"

Francis Su: "Mathematics Is for Human Flourishing"

Francis Su, a University of Texas at Austin alumnus and the outgoing President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), recently gave his retiring presidential address in which he discussed why and how to bring about a more inclusive mathematical community. He also talked about how math can help us live the good life.

Discoveries with Ties to UT Austin Rank Among Top Scientific Findings of the Year

Discoveries with Ties to UT Austin Rank Among Top Scientific Findings of the Year

Simulation of black holes colliding. Credit: SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes

Two amazing scientific discoveries, both with ties to the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, were named the top 2 science stories of 2016 by Discover Magazine. Other major media outlets also included them in their year-end "best of" lists, including National Geographic, Science News, Science and the New York Times. A third story from the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson School of Geosciences, which solved the mystery of how the most famous human ancestor died, appears in Discover's top ten as well.

Charles Fraser Mends Little Hearts

Charles Fraser Mends Little Hearts

Charles Fraser is the former Surgeon-in-Chief at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. [Update: He is now at UT Austin's Dell Medical School.] He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UT Austin in 1980.

Insights from a Software Architect at Fall Commencement

Insights from a Software Architect at Fall Commencement

Students graduating this December will hear from an accomplished and world-changing software architect who walked across a similar UT stage—twice. 

Remembering Denton Cooley, a Heart Surgery Pioneer

Remembering Denton Cooley, a Heart Surgery Pioneer

The University of Texas at Austin mourns the loss of alumnus, supporter and world-renowned medical pioneer in heart surgery Dr. Denton Cooley (BA, 1941), who died at age 96.

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Cancer-Fighting Alum and Faculty Make Key Strides for Patients

Cancer-Fighting Alum and Faculty Make Key Strides for Patients

Department of Molecular Biosciences Chair Dan Leahy recounted recently the scientific back-story behind one game-changing discovery – and the role that alumna Gail Dianne Lewis (BS, Microbiology, '78) played in it. Leahy, himself a cancer researcher, was speaking about the aggressive form of breast cancer known as "HER2-positive" cance...