Prospecting for fossils in a flight (Mustang) suit during a brief reconn stopover adds to the feeling of being on another planet.
Research at the Jackson School occurs across themes (described below) that encompass the entire Earth system and other planetary bodies in our solar system. The six broad themes explore the linkages between earth processes and systems, and bring the fundamental geoscience disciplines together in a way that encourages collaboration and interdisciplinary research.
We encourage students to get involved with research at every academic stage, including undergraduate students. There are ample opportunities to work with experts at each of our three world-class research units. The researchers across these units are leaders in their field, and often work on the frontiers between disciplines where major developments are taking place. Ongoing work includes:
NASA collaborations to explore Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa and help forecast dangerous floods and droughts here on Earth;
The most comprehensive public study of the nation’s largest shale plays;
Research of natural disasters soon after they occur through the school’s Rapid Response Program;
Research on potential fuel source methane hydrate in the Gulf of Mexico, funded by an $80 million DOE grant;
Creating and operating a seismic monitoring network (TexNet) across Texas to track earthquake activity;
Sampling the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico, the impact site left by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs;
By the time non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, plant-eating sauropods like the Brontosaurus had grown to gargantuan proportions. Weighing in as much as 100 tons, the…
Birds tote around two vocal organs inside their bodies, but only one works. New interdisciplinary research suggests that this distinctly avian anatomy arose because birds,…
Compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, mammals have the biggest brains and produce some of the smallest litters of offspring. A newly described…
Dinosaurs are often depicted as fierce creatures, baring their teeth, with tongues wildly stretching from their mouths like giant, deranged lizards. But new research reveals…
Researchers from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) have helped discover the first subglacial lakes ever found in the Canadian High Arctic. The two…
Research conducted by The University of Texas at Austin and University of California, Berkeley has found that a little-studied, underground layer of rock can hold…
Research led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that calculations of water storage in many river basins from commonly used global computer…
Geologists use zircon mineral grains to reconstruct what the Earth and its landscapes looked like in ancient times. These microscopic grains, commonly the width of…
