News

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the National Medal of Science, Marye Anne Fox, former chemistry professor and Vice President for Research at The University of Texas at Austin, died at her home in Austin on Sunday, May 9 following a long illness.

Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which also falls during ​Black History Month. It's a great time to learn about women and Black leaders from The University of Texas at Austin and beyond who are making a difference and meet scientists and STEM leaders who are shaping science, computing and mathematics for years to come.

A generous estate gift to The University of Texas at Austin from alumna and former physician Lorraine "Casey" Stengl will have a dramatic impact on educational efforts and scientific research examining plants, animals and their interactions with the natural world.

Three College of Natural Sciences alumni were selected for induction into the college's 2019 Hall of Honor.

We in the College of Natural Sciences have launched World Changers, a new initiative that aims to celebrate a very special type of human in history: the scientist or mathematician who charted a path forward in which others could follow. 

Dr. Anitha Mitchell Logan, an alumna of the College of Natural Sciences, is one of six winners of this year's Distinguished Alumnus Awards from the Texas Exes, the alumni association of the University of Texas at Austin. The awards, currently celebrating their 60^th anniversary, are given annually to alumni who have distinguished themselves professionally and through service to the university.

James P. Allison, a world-renowned pioneer of cancer immunotherapy, has been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine jointly with Tasuku Honjo "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation."

Last year, University of Texas at Austin alumnus Michael Young won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the molecular mechanism behind circadian rhythms. Circadian clocks are critical for the health of all living things, acting as the internal timekeepers in plants and animals that help to synchronize functions like eating and sleeping with our planet's daily rhythm of light and dark.

Forty years ago, when James Allison had just gotten his PhD in biochemistry, he was intrigued by this far-out idea that was floating around about a new way to treat cancer. The idea—dubbed cancer immunotherapy—was to train the body's immune system to attack cancer cells—the same way this system already goes after bacteria and viruses. He was one of the few people who actually believed it could work.

André Nahmias (BA '50, MA '52) first encountered what he calls "the ecstasy of discovery" when he was a University of Texas at Austin student. In the intervening decades as an infectious disease research pediatrician, he made a number of discoveries that benefited people with various bacterial and viral infections.