News

Three members of the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin have been inducted into the University's respected Academy of Distinguished Teachers for 2016.

Brent Waters of The University of Texas at Austin has been selected to receive the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This award recognizes the outstanding young computer professional of the year for a recent major technical or service contribution that was made at 35 years of age or less.

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.

You may have heard of serotonin, a chemical found throughout the brain that regulates a host of mental states such as mood, appetite and alertness. When we have enough of it, we have an overall sense of wellbeing and happiness. When we're running low on it, we can experience depression.

In honor of National DNA Day, we take a look at the myriad ways that researchers in the College of Natural Sciences use deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and genomic information to fight disease, improve agriculture and illuminate the wonders of the natural world.

The University of Texas at Austin ranked No. 25 in the world among academic institutions for publication of scientific research, according to the latest annual report from the Nature Index, and it ranked 7th among U.S. universities in chemistry. 

As the College of Natural Sciences' Freshman Research Initiative celebrates its 10th anniversary, we speak to students and scientists about how doing research as freshmen and sophomores impacted them.

An international team of researchers, including Brett Baker from The University of Texas Marine Science Institute, has made the most comprehensive tree of life based on genomes, greatly expanding our view of the diversity of life on the planet. Using genetic data collected in recent years, the researchers found a group of bacteria that are so diverse genetically that they represent half of all the diversity of bacteria on the planet.

​In honor of the Freshman Research Initiative's 10th Anniversary, we take a closer look at the innovative program in this article from the latest issue of The Texas Scientist.

Astronomer Brendan Bowler of The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded a competitive Hubble Fellowship from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), science center for the Hubble Space Telescope.