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Research Prizes and Honors
[Have you or a colleague won a research-related prize or honor? Let the Research Alert know.]
Biologist Named 2012 Distinguished Texas Scientist by Texas Academy of Science
 Lawrence Gilbert, professor of integrative biology and director of the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, has been named the 2012 Distinguished Texas Scientist by the Texas Academy of Science.
He received the recognition at the academy's annual meeting in early March.
Gilbert has studied the co-evolution of insects and plants, population dynamics, chemical and behavioral ecology, and evolution of novel wing patterns in mimetic butterflies. He is widely known for his research involving tropical Heliconius butterflies and their host plants, passion vines (genus Passiflora), and rainforest cucumber vines, Psiguria, a system he maintains in greenhouses at the university.
Engineering Professor Receives Group's Early Career Achievement Award
 Andrea Alù, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the 2012 recipient of the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to optical metamaterials and plasmonic phenomena.
Alù is also affiliated with the Applied Research Laboratories, where he is involved in research projects on electromagnetics and acoustics. SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics.
News and Information
Newly Cataloged Collection of Science Materials Now Open for Research
 A collection of science materials from the family of Sir John F. W. Herschel (1792–1871) is now open for research after a $10,000 grant enabled staffers to rehouse the collection and to create an online inventory.
The Herschel family papers, acquired in 1960 with subsequent smaller accessions of additional materials, largely represent the life and work of Herschel, the English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and experimental photographer/inventor. John Herschel has been called Britain's first modern physical scientist, and his correspondence has been noted as one of the most valuable archives for 19th-century science.
Quoted-UT Researchers in the News
 (In an article about the New York Mets' financial problems, Michael Cramer, director of the Texas Program in Sports and Media in the College of Communication, takes the long view. And that is that the team will be OK.)
Michael Cramer, director of the Texas Program in Sports and Media at the University of Texas, said the team has positive long-term financial viability, despite its current struggles.
"They could get lucky and catch lightning in a bottle [this season] with 10 good players that are young, but that will be lucky," said Cramer, a former minority owner and president of the Texas Rangers. "But [long term], they're going to be fine. That's the crazy thing. The Mets are going to be fine."
Research Opportunities
Important University Research Deadlines
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The University of Texas at Austin Stimulus Package Web page is online.
Funding Sources
Department of Agriculture
2012 Hazardous Fuels Woody Biomass Utilization Grant
Deadline: April 2, 2012
Department of Defense
Breast Cancer Research Program
Idea Award (PDF)
Deadlines: Pre-Application, April 26, 2012; Application (by invitation), Aug. 15, 2012
Impact Award (PDF)
Deadlines: Pre-Application, May 3, 2012; Application (by invitation), Aug. 15, 2012
NASA
Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction
Deadlines: NOI/Step 1, March 23, 2012; Proposal, May 25, 2012
Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry
Deadlines: NOI/Step 1, March 30, 2012; Proposal, May 30, 2012
Heliophysics Research: Geospace Science
Deadlines: NOI/Step 1, April 13, 2012; Proposal, June 15, 2012
National Institutes of Health
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research – Dissemination by Health Professionals Associations
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, April 2, 2012; Application, April 25, 2012
Research on Alcohol and HIV/AIDS
Deadline: June 5, 2012
National Science Foundation
Linguistics
Deadline: July 15, 2012
Science of Learning Centers
Deadline: Aug. 6, 2012
Cultural Anthropology
Deadlines: Aug. 15 and 16, 2012
Antarctic Research
Deadline: May 31, 2012
Tectonics
Deadline: July 6, 2012
Petrology and Geochemistry
Deadline: July 6, 2012
Arts, Humanities and Culture
National Endowment for the Humanities
Challenge Grants
Deadline: May 2, 2012
Other Funding Opportunities
National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense
Open Call for Proposals
Deadline: See link for details
Retirement Research Foundation
Grants
Deadline: May 1, 2012
Grand Challenges in Global Health
Grand Challenges Explorations Round
Deadline: May 15, 2012
Research Project
 RESEARCHER: Miryung Kim, assistant professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, principal investigator
AGENCY: National Science Foundation
AMOUNT: $146,556
Software systems evolve. Developers must add features, fix bugs, and rewrite software systems to provide better functionality and higher performance. Existing systems also need to migrate to new hardware, computing environments, programming models, and libraries. There exist redundancies, inefficiencies, and error-proneness in the way that we evolve software systems today. In particular, recent empirical studies indicate that developers often apply similar but not identical changes to similar contexts. Making such systematic, repetitive program modifications is a tedious, manual, error-prone process.
This project will investigate the extent and nature of repetitive program modifications and will design, build, and evaluate a novel approach, called SYDIT, which improves developer productivity in applying systematic changes. In this approach, developers no longer apply similar changes manually. Instead, developers provide the old and new version of selected code as an example change, and SYDIT will generalize a reusable, abstract, context-aware program transformation from it.
The impact of this research will be substantially improved developer productivity in evolving large software systems. By helping developers apply changes to similar contexts exhaustively and inspect the effect of suggested changes, SYDIT will reduce errors of omission and relieve developers from tedious, error-prone hand editing. The empirical studies will expand our understanding of repetitive program changes during software evolution.
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