News & Events

Photovoice seeks understanding through photography. It is an engaging approach to data collection that encourages children’s participation in research and seeks to understand their perspectives.

We need a more nimble and nuanced approach to urban water management, and not only because of climate change and growing urban populations, but because many communities urgently need to address failing infrastructure systems.

Researchers from nearly two dozen disciplines have been working for more than a year to build a grand challenge project that produces a new way to study human communities while, at the same time, responding to a critically underserved group in Central Texas: children and families living with adversity.

The 2019 Water for Texas conference will be held at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center in Austin, Texas. The conference will begin with a Welcome Reception, followed by a day and a half of educational sessions. All meals, daily coffee, and snack breaks on January 24 and 25 are included in the registration fee.

Not all past civilizations vanished died when the climate changed — they moved. But could we do the same, and where would we go?

Faculty members from across the university will work together to explore ways to foster the healthy development of children and families, struggling with adversity, by fundamentally rethinking how cohort studies are conducted on social, behavioral and health issues.

We’re collaborating with communities to figure out what questions they have and what answers they need, right now.

Planet Texas 2050 researcher Steven Richter, from the School of Architecture, joined graduate students from around campus in October for Sustainability Week. His work is part of the Texas Metro Observatory. “What does urbanization mean across Texas? We are looking at interdisciplinary questions, like how socio-economic patterns or changes in the built environment affect municipal water or energy use across the state.”

Scientists struggle with how to share research findings in ways that help people make changes quickly. Figuring out how to do this is our grand challenge.

Real hurricane preparedness — the kind that not only saves lives but also preserves livelihoods — is something that’s built into our cities, settlements, roads, and infrastructure.

We live in an energy intensive society. Quality of life and quality of our communities depend on access to energy.

The dominant languages of climate change have been scientific, technological and economic, but art and literature get to the root of the beliefs and values that shape human behavior.

“Demographers expect Texas’s population to double by 2050. To accommodate that growth, existing cities will be forced to increase density in their urban cores, spread out, or a combination of both.”

Texas’s changing future means the air we breathe in our homes could change as well.

June 17th is World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, but that could be most days in parts of Texas and the southwestern U.S.

Planet Texas 2050 lead researcher has been named the next dean of Portland State University’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. He will begin his appointment on Sept. 1, 2018.

“As Texas cities grow, natural watersheds will become urbanized. We can…. improve our understanding of the complex interactions among hydrologic systems, ecosystems, and human infrastructure systems.”

“I can tell you that real preparedness… is something that’s built into our cities, settlements, roads and infrastructure. And we are woefully unprepared for this year’s hurricane season…”

Today is the first day of hurricane season, which makes this the right time to launch six new projects that will tackle some of the biggest challenges facing Texas.

The invisible line that divides the arid western part of the country from the wetter eastern half is on the move, and that has important implications for the Texas capital. “[The 2011 drought], which was historic in terms of how intense it was, may just be a taste of things to come in the future.”

This summer, the country‘s largest indoor air quality and surface chemistry experiment brings leading experts to the university’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus to participate in an unprecedented initiative aimed at identifying the key causes of indoor air pollution.

“In our eyes, the only way to meet this challenge is an ‘all boots on the ground’ approach of integrating data and research questions from across the disciplines… Our goal is to get to 2050 with a Texas that is economically vibrant, safe, healthy, and has enough for all who live here.”

UT geoscientist Daniella Rempe has helped identify a new way trees get water during severe droughts: by sending roots deep down into the bedrock.

UT engineer Ben Hodges is finding ways to make roadways less likely to flood.

The Trump administration’s 2019 budget proposal reduces EPA funding by 23 percent. Lost in the noise was an even deeper gutting of several individual research and management programs at the EPA, which, if successful, will have great negative impacts on human health and productivity. Planet Texas 2050 researcher and indoor air quality expert Richard Corsi, Ph.D., explains.

Members of the Planet Texas 2050 research team kicked off the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2018 Annual Conference with their first Reddit AMA.

This past October, I wrote to tell you that UT’s first Bridging Barriers research grand challenge would be Planet Texas 2050.

Vice President for Research Dan Jaffe introduces Planet Texas 2050 and new projects in development that could one day become grand challenges at The University of Texas at Austin.

Extreme weather events, population growth and aging infrastructure are common challenges Texas shares with the nation and world.

The Bridging Barriers initiative is challenging researchers from different disciplines to find intersecting goals and work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

“We’re not trying to solve as many problems as we can. We’re trying to solve one very big problem very well.”