ALT Science, but make it art.\n\nEvery year, the College of Natural Sciences invites faculty, staff and students to send in the most striking and fascinating images from their research for the college-wide Visualizing Science competition.

ALT Choanoflagellates are the closest relatives of animals, and these microscopic organisms (each cell is only 5 microns!) help illuminate how we first established symbiotic interactions \nwith bacteria.

ALT A one-second exposure of the Air-Breathing Deflagration Thruster operating in vacuum shows a bright, collimated plasma jet. Electric current flows through the plasma and interacts with its own magnetic field, generating Lorentz forces that accelerate the plasma outward and simultaneously pinch it inward.

ALT What starts here changes the world.

ALT Friday: For 20 years, the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) has given first-year STEM students hands-on experience in fields ranging from robotics and AI to biology and chemistry.

ALT In 2005, UT faculty and leaders were looking for ways to provide undergraduate students opportunities to conduct research early in their academic careers. Too many students were having to wait until their junior or senior years to start.\n\nTo give UT a stronger position for NSF funding, the dean of the College of Natural Sciences set aside funds to start a pilot program for first-year students. In the Spring of 2006, the new program had 43 students.

ALT Today, UT\u2019s FRI is the country\u2019s largest initiative hosting first-year students in labs with scientists to work on real-world problems. About 1,100 new students join the program each year, and another 700 students continue as peer mentors.

ALT What starts here changes the world.

ALT Thorsten Becker wearing a cap and buttoned shirt stands outdoors with a cityscape and hills in the background under a partly cloudy sky with headline "Jackson School Geodynamicist Joins German Academy of Sciences"