Congratulations

u The Department of Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biology (NDRB) received a $1 million gift from the Semmes Foundation to establish the Semmes Foundation Graduate Student Fund. The gift will expand and sustain the department’s doctoral programs and also position the university to better compete for external funding through agencies such as the

National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

u Astrid Cardona (MMI) was named a fellow in the third cohort of the

IAspire Leadership Academy. The program aims to help STEM faculty from underrepresented backgrounds ascend to leadership roles at institutions of higher learning.

u The Brain Health Consortium was awarded $12.5 million from the National

Institutes of Health through the NIH BRAIN Initiative to advance new methods for studying genetic brain disorders. The results of the study could have a significant impact toward one day treating or eliminating neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and more.

u Retired UTSA faculty members Kay and Steve Robbins (Computer Science) established the Kay and Steve Robbins Faculty Teaching Fellowship Award in Computer Science. The gift will propel teaching innovations in course and program development as well as in career skills development.

u Doctoral students Vanessa Cerda and Tara Flaugher (NDRB) were recently selected to receive highly competitive fellowships that will support their graduate studies. Cerda received an award from the National Institutes of

Health, and Flaugher secured two awards, one from the U.S. Department of Defense and the other from the Pat Tillman Foundation.

u Tyler Sutherland (Physics and Astronomy) helped make a breakthrough achievement in quantum computing. Sutherland and his team set the world record for the most accurate entangling gate ever demonstrated without lasers.

u Lindsey Macpherson (NDRB) received a three-year, $450,000 Young

Investigator Award from the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund to better understand why taste is often lost during chemotherapy.

u Saugata Datta (Earth and Planetary Sciences) is the faculty lead for UTSA’s new South Texas Interdisciplinary Research for Undergraduate Programs (STIR-UP), a 10-week residential program that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for success in graduate programs by providing research opportunities.

u The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy tapped Elizabeth

Sooby (Physics and Astronomy) to conduct two advanced nuclear energy technology research projects to make nuclear energy safer and more cost-effective. u Oleg Larionov (Chemistry) was named the Robert A. Welch Distinguished

University Chair. This prestigious appointment will provide resources and funding for Larionov to pioneer bold new ideas within the field of synthetic organic chemistry.

u Inspired by a close call with a campus scooter, Murtuza Jadliwala (Computer Science) created UTSA’s ScooterLab. Funded by a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the one-year pilot program will develop Jadliwala’s goal of obtaining data from campus scooters to study their impact on pedestrian safety.

u Led by Sumit Jha (Computer Science), researchers from UTSA, the University of Central Florida, the Air Force Research Laboratory and SRI International have developed a new method to improve how artificial intelligence learns to see. The team showed that adding noise—also known as pixilation— along multiple layers of a network provides a more complete representation of an image that’s more easily recognized by the AI to create more robust explanations for AI decisions.

u Alan Whittington (Earth and Planetary Sciences) is part of UTSA research that could help develop the first construction site on the moon. Astroport

Space Technologies has partnered with UTSA to receive a Phase 1 grant from NASA’s Small Business Innovative Research/Small Business

Technology Transfer program (SBIR/STTR) to develop machinery and materials to build a reusable launching pad on the moon.

u Anna Arroyo (Computer Science) ’21, an inspiring Latina looking to build up her community by closing the gender gap in software engineering, landed a job as a software engineer with Twitter’s Media Foundation Client Team.

Her work will help accelerate and drive the media-related features that get rolled out to Twitter’s users.

u Amanda Fernandez (Computer Science) and Thomas Forsthuber (MMI) were elected senior members of the National Academy of Inventors.

u Chiung-Yu Hung and Jose L. Lopez-Ribot (MMI) received $6.8 million in

National Institute of Health funding to establish a San Antonio-based

Coccidioidomycosis Collaborative Research Center focused on developing therapeutics and vaccines against coccidioidomycosis, also known as valley fever.

u James Chambers (MMI), Aimin Liu (Chemistry), and Angela Speck (Physics and Astronomy) were elected as 2021 Fellows for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

u NASA awarded a select group of astronomers time on the James Webb

Space Telescope for research. This cohort includes Chris Packham (Physics and Astronomy), who is co-leading a team of international scientists conducting research on black holes.