discovery

Research, Scholarship and Creative Achievement at UTSA

Contents

Read Malawi

Read Malawi! Hailed a Triumph

The faces of 150 primary school children stare into a camera as they sit on a crumbling concrete floor, there are no desks or pencils in this classroom. Read how “Read Malawi!“ has changed these children’s lives.

Using Science to Save Endangered Primates in Tanzania

Using Science to Save Endangered Primates in Tanzania

Much of what the world knows about the Sanje mangabey—a rare, endangered monkey species dwelling in the dense mountain forests of Tanzania —we know because of the work of Dr. Carolyn Ehardt and her students.

IRES Facilitates Student Research in Brazil

IRES Facilitates Student Research in Brazil

Samir Bhakta, a chemistry doctoral student, spent a summer in a university research lab in Brazil learning how to make an inexpensive, fast test to diagnose periodontitis using a microchip printed on a postage-stamp sized piece of paper.

Sustaining the Advancement of Multisensing Devices

Sustaining the Advancement of Multisensing Devices

Biotechnology that incorporates miniaturized multisensing devices someday could help restore sight, hearing, taste or touch in people who have suffered injuries. New technology could make artificial limbs more useful for the fine-motor tasks and sensing done by the fingertips.

US-China Promulgation of Research on Diseases

U.S.-China Promulgation of Research on Diseases

Researchers in the U.S. and China are collaborating to find ways to reduce the spread of Lyme disease and other tick- and vector-borne diseases, which pose a threat to human health, livestock and agriculture.

Global Impacts

Global Impacts

From Spain to South Korea and from Mexico to Malawi, Roadrunners collaborate with researchers around the world to discover the unknown and the world becomes a little smaller with connections bridged between UTSA and other countries.

Mauli Agrawal and Ricardo Romo

Welcome to the sixth edition of UTSA Discovery. Researchers at UTSA continue to seek new insight and solutions for complex questions and problems in Energy, Health, Security, Sustainability, and Human and Social Development. Many of the research programs address two or more of these areas, and most require multidisciplinary collaborations. In this volume we present six feature articles on international research teams who are contributing to improve the quality of our lives now and in the future.

Our cover story (“Global Impacts”) focuses on the university’s efforts to collaborate with researchers from around the globe in order to ensure advancements in research, instruction and public services.

Malawian school children are offered books depicting their culture and experiences in a research project entitled “Read Malawi!”

The study of the endangered Sanje mangabey primates which may inform fuller understanding of human behavior is detailed in “Using Science to Save Endangered Primates in Tanzania.”

UTSA students and faculty work on the development of microanalytical chemistry and microfluidic devices in “IRES Facilitates Student Research in Brazil.”

“Sustaining the Advancement of Multisensing Devices” discusses multisensing devices and the future implications such technology can have on medicine, industry and consumer products.

In “U.S. – China Promulgation of Research on Diseases” focuses on a collaboration to enable research on vector-borne diseases and its impact on national security and health.

In addition to the above feature articles, the Abstracts give you an overview of the breadth of programs from basic to applied and translational research. The Commercialization Corner describes the growing recognition that universities have to help move research discoveries from the research lab to the market as part of their overall mission to develop and disseminate new knowledge.

We hope that you will enjoy this volume of UTSA Discovery. For additional information, please visit the UTSA Research Website at http://research.utsa.edu

Mauli Agrawal,
Interim Vice President for Research

Ricardo Romo,
President