Each decade has its defining moments. The first months of 2020 have brought one of ours: the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re only beginning to fathom the physical, emotional, social, and economic pains that accompany this crisis. Such events can fracture communities, but they can also build them up. The…

We learn better when we experience something.

Fernanda Leite, associate professor in Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, leads a VR-based project as part of the Planet Texas 2050 grand challenge. The Texas Futures Virtual Reality Experience will allow users to see, in 3D, what an urban…

As an Industry Fellow for the UT Ethics Project, I am grateful that Good Systems, one of the university’s three research grand challenges, is addressing the ways that artificial intelligence could be used for beneficial and nefarious purposes. Critical to this is the role of ethics and truth,…

Planet Texas 2050 sponsored Seyi Odufuye, a UT studio art major, to join a 12-day ClimateForce expedition in the Arctic with environmentalist and explorer Robert Swan. His ClimateForce team is dedicated to significantly reducing carbon emissions in the next five years, and students from around the…

David Schnyer is the inaugural faculty chair of Whole Communities–Whole Health, a University of Texas at Austin grand challenge that is rethinking “research as usual.” The team is partnering with families, schools, and community organizations in Central Texas to build a more complete picture of…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) improves our everyday lives. AI could end civilization as we know it. AI will create new jobs. AI will cause job losses. AI is revolutionizing transportation. AI causes aviation disasters. AI can help level the playing field in society. AI can exacerbate existing…

When people hear the term artificial intelligence or AI, there may be a tendency to think of the latest “Terminator” movie or fall for the hype of menacing machines controlling our existence and destroying humanity.

Relationship building. Sometimes this phrase seems trite, or as my mom would say: “¿con qué se come eso?” (“What do you eat that with?”) That was her shorthand for asking how something was useful or how it would solve a problem. Seldom do we talk about what drives creating, nurturing, and being in…

I'm spending the night in the small town of Muleshoe, Texas, in the Llano Estacado, a region west of Lubbock and Amarillo. I’m interviewing farmers to hear how they talk about the environment where they live and work, the terms and phrases they use, the stories they tell.