News Archive

A public/private collaboration led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has resulted in a new mathematical modeling technique that can accurately predict the response of tumors in breast cancer patients to treatments such as chemotherapy soon after treatment initiation. This is a major improvement on current methods that can determine the efficacy of first-line therapies only after the patient has already received several treatment cycles.

Educational philanthropist Peter J. O’Donnell, Jr. passed away in his home in Dallas on Sunday, Oct. 10, surrounded by family and friends. He was 97 years old.

Every once in a while, a young person already so accomplished comes along and makes you wonder aloud “what am I doing with my life?” Siddharth Thakur is one of those young people.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and MD Anderson Cancer Center are working together to better detect, diagnose and cure some of the most common and fatal types of cancers.

Scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have created a hydrogel tablet that can rapidly purify contaminated water. One tablet can disinfect a liter of river water and make it suitable for drinking in an hour or less.

Medical sensing technology has taken great strides in recent years, with the development of wearable devices that can track pulse, brain function, biomarkers in sweat and more. However, there is one big problem with existing wearable pressure sensors: even the slightest amount of pressure, something as light as a tight long sleeve shirt over a sensor, can throw them off track.

When Hurricane Ida smashed through Louisiana in August, it left a million people without power. As they tended to fallen trees and destroyed homes, a new problem emerged — no more fuel to power vehicles and generators. That’s when alumnus Hamzah Moin (B.S. Petroleum Engineering 2020) and fellow volunteers with the nonprofit Fuel Relief Fund (FRF) deployed to the state.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are working with state and local agencies to create a mobile application that will improve the way emergency departments respond to flooding. The web-based app, called Pin2Flood, will allow first responders to track — and potentially in the future predict — flooded areas in real time. When firefighters arrive at a scene, they will be able to drop a digital “pin” in places where they see flooding. The app will then return an accurate flood map in minutes, showing other areas that are at risk. This will help emergency departments make life-saving decisions, such as where to order evacuations or send critical resources.

Pneumonia has emerged as a life-threatening complication of COVID-19, accounting for nearly half of all patients who have died from the novel coronavirus in the U.S. since the beginning of the pandemic. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, pneumonia was responsible for more than 43,000 deaths in 2019.

There's a global race to reduce the amount of harmful gases in our atmosphere to slow down the pace of climate change, and one way to do that is through carbon capture and sequestration — sucking carbon out of the air and burying it. At this point, however, we're capturing only a fraction of the carbon needed to make any kind of dent in climate change. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with ExxonMobil, have have found a way to supercharge the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures that could someday store billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor for centuries, if not forever.