THE TEXAS SCIENTIST

SUPERCOMPUTING: BIOLOGY’S NEW FRONTIER

COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES • THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

THE GRADUATE STUDENT ISSUE • FALL 2015

S P E C I A L D I G I TA L E D I T I O N !

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UP CLOSE

The oldest stars in the universe date back roughly 200 million years after the Big Bang to 13.6 billion years ago. Here orangish red bubbles show hot gas from the first stars as they ignited. The green streaks show cold cosmic gas that has begun to collapse into dark matter but has not yet formed stars. The structure in the center is destined to become one of the first galaxies within the next hundred million years or so. This image was submitted to the College’s Visualizing Science competition in 2014 by Chalence Safranek-Shrader, who received a PhD from UT Austin’s astronomy graduate program that year.

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CONTENTSA digest of the people and groundbreaking discoveries that make the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin

one of the most amazing and significant places on Earth. #discoverystartshere

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GRADUATE STUDENT VIDEO

FRI LAB GALLERY

A SIMPLE VIRUS TEST

BIRDS’ PERCH IN EVOLUTIONARY TREE

SUPERCOMPUTING THE LIFE SCIENCES

HOW PHYSICS COULD PROTECT YOUR DATA

BEYOND SKIN DEEP

BETH BURNSIDE A CENTURYOF LONGORNSCIENTISTS

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LETTER FROMTHE DEAN

interactions. Here in UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences, these interactions span the sciences, happening among hundreds of brilliant faculty, thousands of bright and curious students, and a range of individuals making independent discoveries.

This special digital edition of The Texas Scientist celebrates a group at the heart of

these interactions—our graduate students. Graduate students inspire our faculty and act as teachers and mentors for undergraduates. They lead public outreach programs that help translate the beauty and wonder of science to the outside world. As muses, guides, and ambassadors, graduate students make possible many of the breakthroughs our UT Austin community is known for.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first doctoral degree awarded at this University. The scientist who earned that degree, Carl G. Hartman, conducted groundbreaking research into the endocrine system, laying the foundation for the discovery of modern birth control. Almost 75 years after him, another PhD was awarded to a young physicist named Mark Raizen. Today, Dr. Raizen is a professor in our Department of Physics and an innovator whose cutting-edge atom-cooling technology holds promise for sectors ranging from medical devices to nuclear energy.

As you’ll read in these pages, what starts here—with our College of Natural Sciences graduate students—changes the world. This magazine’s digital format provides opportunities for you, too, to interact with the content in new ways. Whether you were a graduate student yourself, or simply value discovery at UT and want a closer look at how it works, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring the stories, research, and experiences of this important part of our College community.

Linda Hicke

Editor: Christine SinatraContributing Writers: Carla Avolio, Marc Airhart, Steve Franklin, Kim WillisDesign: Jenna Luecke, David SteadmanIllustrations: Jenna LueckeAudio: Marc Airhart

Photography Credits: PP. 10–11: Marsha Miller. P. 14: [top] Texas Advanced Computing Center, [bottom] Blue Paper Filmworks. PP. 18–19: Hartman: 1904 Cactus Yearbook, and 1922 Embryo Project Encyclopedia. Horton: 1908 Cactus Yearbook. Rogers: 1979 Cactus Yearbook. Wilson: UT Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. Tinsley: ‘My Daughter Beatrice’ by Edward Hill. LaMontagne: National Institutes of Health. Faulkner: Marsha Miller, UT Office of Public Affairs. Kunii: Hideko Kunii. Rabalais: Nancy Rabalais. Raizen: College of Natural Sciences. Clarke: Jennifer Kotler Clarke.

Image Credits: P. 2: Chalence Safranek-Shrader. P. 7: Julie McMahon, University of Illinois. P. 8: Patrick Ponath. PP. 14–15: Waggoner Center.

Video Credits: P. 5: Texas Crew Productions

Email: cnsnews@austin.utexas.edu

Phone: 512-471-4641

Address correspondence to: The Texas Scientist 120 Inner Campus Dr. G2500 Austin, Texas 78712

The Texas Scientist is a publication of the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

Dear Friends,

We scientists take note of webs of

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Graduate Student Edition

“Some of our biggest breakthroughs—our most important contributions, come through collaborations, with some of the best ideas coming from those out-of-the-box, really inspired graduate students in our group.”

—Dr. Lauren Meyers Professor in Integrative Biology and Statistics and Data Sciences

VIEW THE VIDEO ABOUT COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES GRADUATE STUDENT INNOVATION

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DISCOVERYZONE

Electrochemistry and virology

come together.

Detecting pathogens in our bodies can be tricky. Currently available tools each come with challenges; some require arduous procedures, while others vary in sensitivity. But in the laboratory of chemist Allen Bard, graduate student Jeffrey Dick and colleagues have developed a quick and simple laboratory technique that can detect single viruses floating in a solution of water. The method combines electrochemistry and virology, Dick says, adding, “It’s amazing that two very different disciplines can merge to solve these problems.” The technique Dick and colleagues used involves small particles colliding with tiny electrodes. Electrochemical collisions had proven a sensitive way of detecting metals and inorganic compounds, so the research team sought to find out whether the technique could be used with a virus. Using a virus from the same family as herpes, the chemists refined the procedure. The technique works by placing an electrode thinner than a human cell in a solution with viruses. When the particles bump into the electrode and stick, a special instrument detects a change in the electric current passing through the solution. By adding microscopic polystyrene beads designed to stick to specific viruses, they can confirm the presence of viruses. The technique isn’t quite ready to be rolled out into the field to detect Ebola or HIV. But Dick says this proof-of-concept study has already opened the door to new and exciting questions. “Can we improve it so that we can determine the size and structure of a virus? Can we push the technique down to detect individual molecules?”

Read more at: links.utexas.edu/cregwcc

A SIMPLE VIRUS TEST

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DISCOVERYZONE

BIRDS’ PERCH IN EVOLUTIONARY TREE

Are flamingos more closely related to pigeons or pelicans? For years, scientists didn’t know: the relationships between modern birds proved too tough to disentangle along the tree of life’s complex branches. But in December, an international consortium of scientists announced they had produced the most accurate picture yet of the origins and relationships between birds. A University of Texas at Austin computer science graduate student was instrumental in cracking the code of the avian family tree. In the past, beliefs about bird evolution were based on just a few dozen genes. By contrast, the new four-year effort from the consortium involved analyzing the complete genomes of 48 living species, with about 14,000 genomic regions analyzed per species. This vast increase in data, while providing richer detail, creates a new set of problems.

“Simply having more data doesn’t make you more accurate,” says grad student Siavash Mirarab. “You have to come up with more intelligent ways to analyze your data.”

The new computational technique Mirarab and colleagues developed was key to the consortium’s breakthrough. Mirarab helped devise a new method called statistical binning that better illuminated evolutionary relationships. The technique has allowed researchers to redraw the bird family tree and gain new insights about bird evolution, such as the origins of song pattern recognition, relationships between species, and the timing of a “an evolutionary big bang.” It’s how scientists learned that, in fact, flamingos are closer cousins with pigeons than with their fellow waterfowl, the pelicans.

Read more at: links.utexas.edu/ctftqzr

Computer scientists’ technique allowed

researchers to redraw the bird family tree.

An interactive infographic of the Bird Family Tree is available online at: tinyurl.com/birdtreeinfograph

Credit: Julie McMahon, University of Illinois

HOW PHYSICS COULD PROTECT YOUR DATA

Your computer’s working memory has to be fast to process your typing or your Skype call, but speed can bring instability. Computers have a longstanding tension between speed and stability that UT Austin researchers are working to address. First, some background: Computers’ two basic ways of storing information are RAM, which can be written and read quickly but is volatile, and disc storage, which is slow to read and write but is not volatile. That’s why, when you turn the computer on, it takes two minutes to boot up and why, when the power goes out or another glitch happens, you lose information. For decades, scientists and engineers have sought to build a new type of electronic component that has the best properties of RAM and disc storage: fast and non-volatile. Now Patrick Ponath, a physics PhD candidate in the lab of Alexander Demkov,

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DISCOVERYZONE

and a research team have created part of the sought-after storage solution, called a ferroelectric field effect transistor. The transistor requires a component called a gate, which must be either open or closed, corresponding to the 0s and 1s in a computer’s binary language. Unlike a gate in the kinds of transistors currently used in RAM, this gate retains its state even when no power is applied. Computer memory built on the sought-after technology will need a couple of other components before it’s ready for your desktop and smart phone, but that day when data isn’t lost—and when switching on your computer instantly boots it up—may be around the corner.

Read more at: links.utexas.edu/bzknhkr

Computers have a longstanding

tension between speed

and stability that UT Austin

researchers are working

to address.

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DISCOVERYZONE

BEYOND SKIN DEEP

If doctors could prescribe a healthy romantic relationship for every patient, they just might try, given how strong a link there is between success in love and benefits to physical and mental health. Studies show that people in happy relationships encounter lower levels of depression, have improved immune functioning and enjoy better (you guessed it) heart health, compared to their lonely or unhappy counterparts. What to do, though, if the person you’ve fallen for is objectively more attractive than you—some might even say, out of your league? According to new research from The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, you might try waiting it out. Being friends first improves the odds of a match between more attractive and less attractive individuals, the researchers found. Graduate student Lucy Hunt, conducting a study in the lab of assistant professor Paul Eastwick, discovered that couples who knew each other for a while before becoming romantically involved were more likely to differ in their level of attractiveness. By contrast, couples where both people were similarly attractive were more likely to have become romantically involved soon after getting to know each other. “Getting to know someone better over time can change one’s initial impressions, for better or for worse,” Hunt explains. “Our results indicate that perceptions of beauty in a romantic partner change with time.”

Read more at:links.utexas.edu/cwpjxrw

Being friends first improves

the odds of a match between

more attractive and less

attractive individuals.

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GALLERY Mentoring and the Freshman Research Initiative

A signature program of the College of Natural Sciences, the Freshman Research Initiative brings 800 first-year students into a real-world research environment. New undergraduates contribute to making cutting-edge discoveries in faculty labs under the guidance of their graduate student mentors.

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GALLERY

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FEATURE

by Carla Avolio

of the most exciting advances of our time, from precision cancer medicines to a deeper understanding of how the bacteria in our gut keep us healthy. But before any of that can happen, trillions upon trillions of data points must be processed into meaningful information by powerful supercomputers, like the ones available at UT Austin.

Meet the SupercomputersSupercomputing (also known as High Performance Computing) is the process of aggregating computing power to generate performance that far exceeds that of your average desktop computer. “In the life sciences, none of the recent technological advances would have been possible without it,” says Hans Hofmann, Director of the Center for Computational

The natural sciences are having a Big Data moment. From environmental science to neuroscience to molecular biology, the ability to generate quantities of data on a scale that was previously unimaginable has enabled new discoveries. Making sense of this unprecedented torrent of information is now the focus of many researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. A decade ago, sequencing the human genome took eight years, thousands of researchers and about $1 billion. Now, we can do it in a few days at a cost approaching $1,000: Three billion base pairs—the entire genetic code each human harbors—delivered in the same time, and even the same cost, as some packages from Amazon Prime. The ease with which we can acquire biological information is enabling some

SUPERCOMPUTING THE LIFE SCIENCES

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FEATURE

Biology and Bioinformatics. “These are calculations that can’t be done on your laptop or a piece of paper. At least not in a human’s lifetime.” One of the world’s most powerful high-performance computers is located in Austin at UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Called Stampede, it’s ranked 8th in the global list of supercomputers. TACC offers around 12 petaflops of computing power and visualization server performance, which, in recent years, has powered discoveries by numerous scientists at the University.

Nervous System EvolutionHigh performance computers’ ability to store data can enable new breakthroughs. “When people think about super-computers they usually think about CPU time,” says Ben Liebeskind, a graduate student in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior program. “But storage is a huge deal, especially for all that data being produced, and you need supercomputers for that. Otherwise, all that knowledge is wasted.” Liebeskind’s graduate research relied predominantly on genetic information

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FEATURE

created by other people and made publicly available on GenBank, a giant world repository of DNA sequence data. Taking open-access genomics data from 40 animal species, Liebeskind used high-performance computing to fit complex evolutionary models. His aim was to shed light on the mystery of how animals evolved nervous systems. “It was always assumed that nervous systems had evolved once,” he says. “They’re complex, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t happen lots of times.” But with the dawn of the genomics revolution, evidence began to emerge, suggesting that might not be the case: Instead, the nervous system may have evolved independently, multiple times. Liebeskind’s has helped get closer to a definitive answer. His graduate work revealed that while the nervous systems of a fly, a human, and a jellyfish may look different, they are remarkably similar on a molecular level. “What we were able to show is that these lineages arrived at these similar solutions

independently of one another,” he says. “And there’s no way that discovery would have been possible without whole genome data and the supercomputers that can store and analyze it.”

Race Against EbolaFor many, the fundamental benefit of high-performance computing comes down to speed. An analysis that takes months on a laptop can be run in a day on a supercomputer, and in some situations, like developing a safe and effective vaccine for Ebola, this can make all the difference. In early 2015, mathematical biologists at UT Austin began helping the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) develop trials for an Ebola vaccine in Sierra Leone. Using statistical tests, they aimed to determine which trial design, out of two possible options, would give the best chance of finding a vaccine that would prevent another devastating outbreak.

With the combined power of 6400 desktop com-puters, TACC’s Stampede supercomputer is enabling researchers to solve much larger problems at much greater speed than ever before.

In TACC’s Visualization Laboratory, 80 monitors create a 328 megapixel tiled display (one of the highest reso-lution in the world) that allows for visual exploration at extreme detail and quality.

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FEATURE

“At the time, Ebola cases in West

Africa were starting to decline, which was obviously very good,” says Spencer Fox, a graduate student working on the project.

“But in terms of a vaccine trial, this is an issue because there needs to be enough cases to really test if a vaccine is going to work. That’s why we had to deliver results to the CDC before it was too late in the epidemic.” To see how effective a trial design was at detecting whether a vaccine did or did not work, the scientists fit about 500 million models. This took the equivalent of 250 days of computing time on one node on TACC. But by running these on hundreds of nodes simultaneously—known as parallelization—the analyses were done overnight. Within two weeks, the team delivered results to the CDC and a recommendation about which method to use in conducting the vaccine trials. High-performance computing, says Fox, was key in allowing them to respond to the rapidly changing conditions and ultimately make a difference to human health. “Otherwise, the epidemic would have been over before we were finished.”

Mapping Addiction Networks As our ability to sequence genomes and analyze them improves, some researchers are able to fill in missing pieces of older puzzles, like figuring out how our genes influence whether we become addicted to alcohol. To understand the genetic changes that happen in an alcoholic’s brain, and how those

This is a gene expression network using RNA-Sequencing, demonstrating the correlation among genes expressed within postmortem brain tissue.

in turn influence addiction, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin’s Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research sequenced brain tissue from hundreds of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. This made it possible to detect important changes in genetic code occurring anywhere in the brain: not just for the 20,000 genes in the human genome, some of which are known to be involved in addiction, but also, more importantly, for the 60,000 non-coding regions that are only now beginning to surface as playing a role. “The work represents the culmination of collaborative and integrative efforts across campus involving a team of highly skilled and devoted researchers and state-of-the-art resources,” said Dayne Mayfield, a Waggoner Center research scientist and PhD alum of the University. “The findings advance the study of genomic profiling in human alcoholics and demonstrate how unique approaches and applications can break down the complexities of alcohol dependence into relevant biological networks.” Mayfield’s colleagues agree that the research highlights the promise of supercomputers: today, scientists get to delve deeper and ask bigger questions, with tools that make it possible.

Carla Avolio is a science communicator and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from Australian Geographic to Austin Monthly.

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Q&A The Alumna

BETH BURNSIDE (PhD ’68)Vice Chancellor for Research, Emerita, University of California. Interviewed by Christine Sinatra

“It’s the great age of bioscience, analogous to the great age of physics in the mid-20th century.”

things, innovation is what America has to try to stay in the game. Not all companies are investing in real, blue-sky, far-out-there research, but that is part of what makes America unique in the innovation environment. Universities are where high-tech and biotech research are happening now. Look at what’s happening in Austin with high tech. That is not independent of the existence of this university in this town. If you don’t have a vital research enterprise, it’s going to endanger the competitiveness of the United States.

What would you tell students today pursuing a future in your field, molecular biosciences?What a flux of change their careers are going to be in! It’s unprecedented, especially in bioscience. Things are exploding. It’s the great age of bioscience, analogous to the great age of physics in the mid-20th century. Things are going to be changing at just a breathtaking rate, so they’re going to have to be nimble. I compare it to my ancestors who came to Texas in 1850. Like the physicists in the ’40s, people also are going to have to make careful decisions about technology. Technology now allows you to rewrite the genome in a living organism. This is a huge responsibility. It’s scary and amazing, too. That’s a big challenge in biosciences, but it’s also an unprecedented opportunity for making people’s lives better.

You attended UT from your undergraduate years through getting a PhD and managed to get a bachelor’s, master’s and PhD, all in six and a half years. Can you walk down memory lane about something you remember from your time here? The first memory I was hit by when I drove on campus was from when I was in graduate school writing my thesis. I have wonderful memories of walking across the campus at night and seeing, “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free,” there on the Main Building. It spoke to me and it’s become a mantra.

Can you talk a little bit more about what it was like to be a graduate student in particular?I really, really enjoyed my graduate program. I never regretted it. It became apparent to me at the subsequent places that I was that I also got a really good training here. I went to Harvard to be a post-doc in a superstar’s lab. There were people from all over the country in that lab. As one of eight postdocs, I wondered before going, would I be competitive?  But it turns out I was as well prepared as anyone in the lab—made me proud of Texas!

Do you find it difficult to make the case for university research with people you meet?Given the challenges of manufacturing and costs of labor and offshoring and all of those

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Q&A

What was your message for graduates at the spring 2015 commencement? It’s hard to predict where you’re going to go because the technologies will probably dictate where exciting new discoveries are possible. So find something you really love and care about. Then you’re likely to be creative and come up with something we haven’t even fantasized. In my career, I started out in electron microscopy when it was really new and exciting—no one had ever been able to see things at that level of resolution before. I went to the best lab in the country to do that. But after a while, people had seen enough that that wasn’t so exciting anymore. I became a molecular biologist, because that’s where the field went. That kind of thing is happening now at an even faster pace. People have to be constantly learning: a whole lot of advance-ment in most fields of science occurs as new technologies let you go to another level of resolution.

You were invited to give a pair of speeches recently in Paris about research you had done many years prior. What was that like?It was fun. I researched the movement of photoreceptors in fish, and the Institut De La Vision invited me for a talk as they’re in the process of developing optical imaging techniques to look at photoreceptors in the living eye. They want to see if the kind of movements I studied in fish may happen

in living human photoreceptors. To prepare for the talk, I had to go back and read up on what had happened in the field since 2001. When I became vice chancellor, I really hadn’t had time to stay on top of the literature, not since 2001. One thing that had happened—oh my, has searching the literature gotten so much easier! Google and PubMed are just fabulous.

“Find something you really love and care about. Then you’re likely to be creative and come up with something we haven’t even fantasized.”

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TIMELINE A Century of Longhorn Scientists

1910

UT Graduate School established, with options for students to work toward PhDs in botany, chemistry, mathematics, and zoology.

1915

First PhD awarded. Carl Gottfried Hartman (PhD, ’15, Zoology) became a renowned researcher into mammalian embryology and reproduction, making discoveries about human ovula-tion influential to the science behind birth control.

1916

First woman awarded a doctoral degree. Goldie Printis Horton (PhD, ’16, Mathematics) spent the next 50 years active in academia, includ-ing as a UT Austin mathematician.

1948

A PhD for Lorene Rogers (PhD, ’48, Biochemistry) set the stage for her, in 1975, to become the country’s first female president of a major research university, UT Austin.

1953

Ray Floyd Wilson (PhD, ’53, Chem-istry), the first African-American awarded a UT Austin doctoral degree, became a professor, scientist, entrepre-neur and even a lawyer, serving in the office of Congress-woman Barbara Jordan.

1955

Samih Yusuf Alami (MA, ’55, Bacteriol-ogy) later became a founder of the Pales-tine Red Crescent Society, an extension of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

1966

Robert O’Rear (MA, ’66, Mathematics) went on to help program the Apollo moon missions and later became the seventh employee hired at Microsoft. He co-authored the first version of MS-DOS.

1966

Beatrice Hill Tinsley (PhD, ’66, Astron-omy), who earned her PhD in less than three years, did pioneering work into the evolution of galaxies.

In this centennial year of when UT Austin awarded its first doctoral degree, we look back at former graduate students and their impact. Where you see the symbol, click to learn more about the featured alumni. Find more compelling stories at: links.utexas.edu/vsfggq 

by Steve Franklin

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TIMELINE

1967

John LaMontagne (MA, ’67, Microbi-ology) became a leader in the field of emerging infectious disease, including as a top official in the National Institute of Allergy and Infec-tious Diseases.

1969

Larry Faulkner (PhD, ’69, Chemistry) would be the second Natural Sciences doctoral alum who would later be named president of UT Austin. He served from 1998 to 2006.

1982

Maria Alma Solis (MA, ’82, Botany), a research entomol-ogist with the U.S. Department of Agri-culture at the Smith-sonian Institution, would become a leading world expert on economically important moths.

1983

Hideko Kunii (PhD, ’83, Computer Sciences) went on to become one of the highest ranked women in Japan’s tech industry. She spent over 20 years helping to run the Ricoh Company, Ltd. and was Honda’s first female board member.

1983

Nancy Rabalais (PhD, ’83, Zoology) later won a MacAr-thur “Genius Grant” for her studies of oceanic dead zones, including the world’s largest off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

1989

Mark Raizen (PhD, ’89, Physics), today a UT faculty member, would develop innovative methods to cool nearly any atom in the periodic table. His breakthroughs have groundbreak-ing implications for many fields, ranging from medical thera-pies to nanoscience.

1999

Jennifer Kotler Clarke (PhD, ’99, Child Development & Family Relation-ships) later became Vice President of Research & Eval-uation at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organiza-tion behind a public television show that educates children around the globe.

Handwritten pages from Goldie Printis Horton’s thesis in 1916

On the front lines of scientific research and innovation in classrooms, our graduate students solve problems and nurture emerging leaders in science. Graduate students also act as mentors to thousands of our under-graduates and often bridge between faculty and students, helping to communicate scientific principles clearly. They are Freshman Research Initiative mentors, teaching assistants and graduate research assistants. The College has launched a fundraising effort, Discovery Fellows, in order to increase the quality and

quantity of our fellowship awards. Your investment in our graduate students helps College of Natural Sciences leaders recruit top students, keeping our University of Texas at Austin offerings competitive for the best and the brightest. Graduate Student Fellowships, which allow grad students to pursue their education and research objectives on a full-time basis, make a lasting difference for the students and for  the faculty members who mentor them.

Make a Gift to SupportGraduate Students

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GRADUATE STUDENTS

SHERRON SNEADAlumna and Donor, School of Human Ecology by Kim Willis

Soon after receiving her bachelor’s of science degree in 1958, Sherron Snead’s life changed—she was divorced and a single mom of two young children. She had a dream of getting her master’s degree from UT, yet working and raising two young children alone made it nearly impossible.

In 1963, she received the gift of a lifetime—the Ima Hogg Scholarship which supports graduate student education—and in 1965, Sherron graduated with a master’s degree in nutrition. She went on to become a dietary consultant and the first female nutritionist on the State Board of Health. When looking back on that time, she says this scholarship was the key to her dream and the starting block for much of her success later in life. “The Ima Hogg Scholarship meant the world to me. It meant I could be independent, support my kids and do what I really loved in nutrition. Plus, I just really love the University of Texas and wanted to get my master’s degree from this great institution.” Sherron continues to give back to graduate students and says she wants to give because she was given to. “Sometimes we need help. I am forever grateful for my scholarship, my professors and the University for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Contact our College External Relations TeamAssistant Dean for External RelationsKELSEY EVANSkelsey.evans@mail.utexas.edu512-471-6151

Associate Directors of DevelopmentMARIE CLOUTIER School of Human Ecologymarie.cloutier@austin.utexas.edu 512-475-9229

SARAH HEIERChemistry and Computer Sciencesarah.heier@austin.utexas.edu 512-232-9103

JJ MACKPhysics, Math, Statistics and Data Sciencesjjmack@austin.utexas.edu 512-232-1870

LEIGHTON WILSONIntegrative Biology, Molecular Biosciences, Neuroscienceleighton.wilson@austin.utexas.edu 512-232-1788

Pay it ForwardLEAD OUTREA

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Click here to learn more about Discovery Fellows or to find out how you can support the College.

Point of Discovery takes you on a behind-the-scenes journey to the front lines of science where you’ll meet brilliant, world changing scientists and mathematicians. Our stories are driven by curiosity. How much of our DNA do we share with yeast? How do our brains block out noise at a party

so that we can focus on just one person speaking? How do you inspire children, especially girls, to pursue careers in science? Come discover the answers with us in the first three episodes which feature current and former graduate students of the University of Texas at Austin.See more at: pointofdiscovery.org

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