Our Work Is Local, but Our Impact Is Global

Pioneering new methods to explain and predict changes in ecosystems by monitoring wildlife, weather, soil, disease-carrying pathogens, and more to better understand the effects of climate change and human activity on nature and human health.

The record of human attempts to deal with environmental and demographic challenges is like a library of completed experiments. We can see which ones were successful and which ones weren’t, and we can trace the consequences of societal choices over hundreds of years. 

Externalizing disorders, including behaviors such as tantrums, defiance, and aggression, are among the most common and costly disorders of childhood. Behavioral indicators of these disorders often emerge by the third year of life, but current methods of identifying them are often time-intensive and expensive.

Reexamining the past to inspire a new vision of human resilience and effective response to the climate crisis.

This research project developed an evacuation scheduling algorithm that can determine optimal planning for large-scale, complex settings to minimize delays, with particular attention paid to the benefits of autonomous vehicles in terms of cost and efficiency.

The Texas Metro Observatory (TMO) is a communication and data platform dedicated to sharing information and ideas about Texas’s communities, understanding common problems related to urbanization processes in these communities, and developing solutions across the state’s metropolitan areas. 

The Texas Futures VR Experience project transformed results from several Planet Texas 2050-funded research projects into an immersive, entertaining, and educational VR experience. 

Texas Water Stories studied and produced narratives about water in Texas’ past, present, and future. The project illustrated the diverse symbolic ties between water, environmental perception, and environmental change due to the climate crisis and shows how water is a central element of human and other-than-human environmental relations.

We don’t all breathe the same air. Urban air pollution varies sharply owing to unevenly distributed pollution sources. While fine-scale spatial variation in air quality has profound implications for public health and environmental equity, air pollution measurements are routinely collected at only a few locations in every city.

Incidents of discrimination are a part of everyday life for young people of color, and although many studies document the negative effects of discrimination, we know almost nothing about how it influences health over time. How do experiences of bias and mistreatment play a part in creating racial and ethnic health disparities?