News

Allen Bard, a professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, was announced as the winner of the 2019 King Faisal International Prize in Science. The major international award, which comes with $200,000 and a gold medal from the King Faisal Foundation, is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, biology or mathematics through original scientific research that brings "major benefits to humanity."

A nearly $7 million grant from NASA is supporting research to develop approaches to detecting extraterrestrial life, and two University of Texas at Austin faculty are part of the interdisciplinary scientific team.

It's been a big year for Texas Science, with news about research, new discoveries, technological advancements and awards making headlines around the world. Here are a few UT Austin science stories that made the news in 2018.

Whether you're looking for a gift for a science enthusiast or proud Longhorn in your life, or you're just seeking your next relaxing read, this roundup of recent books by or featuring members of the Texas Science community will come in handy.

Orhi Esarte Palomero, a chemistry graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a prestigious "la Caixa" postgraduate fellowship. Sponsored by the "la Caixa" Banking Foundation, these fellowships are granted each year to Spanish graduate students studying abroad.

A foundation that has set a goal this decade of identifying 50 inventors who will shape the next 50 years has added its second University of Texas at Austin faculty member to the list. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced Livia Eberlin, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, is one of this year's five Moore Inventor fellows.

A chemist at the University of Texas at Austin has been awarded the top prize for chemical physics, given biennially by the American Physical Society. Davarajan Thirumalai received the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics for his groundbreaking work in developing "analytical and computational approaches to soft-matter systems" and applying these approaches to "the transitional behavior of supercooled fluids and glasses, folding dynamics of protein and RNA biopolymers, and functioning of molecular motors."

A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated a new way to sequence proteins that is much more sensitive than existing technology, identifying individual protein molecules rather than requiring millions of molecules at a time. The advance could have a major impact in biomedical research, making it easier to reveal new biomarkers for the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases, as well as enhance our understanding of how healthy cells function.

Over the last six years, faculty, staff and students from across the College of Natural Sciences have submitted hundreds of images from their scholarly research for our annual Visualizing Science competition, and these images have been viewed by tens of thousands of people. The submitted images, often beautiful and stunning, are the ones that spoke to their creators, inspiring and informing them as they followed their scientific passions.