The University of Texas at Arlington has once again earned the prestigious R1 designation from the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education, signifying the highest level of research activity. UTA is among just 187 institutions—4.7% nationwide—earning the R1 designation in 2025. First earning R1 status in 2015, UTA has maintained this classification through reaffirmations in 2018, 2021 and 2024, as part of Carnegie’s three-year review cycle. With research expenditures reaching $155 million in FY 2024—a 5% increase over FY23—UTA continues to demonstrate its commitment to innovation and academic excellence.

An international research team led by the University of Zurich has published a review of more than 200 academic studies, revealing that success isn’t just about talent, hard work, or luck – it’s deeply shaped by hidden social forces. The study shows that our intuition about how these social forces shape success is often misleading, and it maps how recent research has challenged long-held assumptions. The collected findings have implications for policy, education, and careers. The authors explained that future efforts to better understand success could pave the way toward social systems where success better reflects quality, talent, and societal values – and where everyone has equal opportunities to flourish, regardless of their backgrounds.

E. (Sarah) Du, Ph.D., an associate professor in College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University, focuses her research on pioneering engineering solutions, developing single-cell assays and creating advanced in vitro disease models. These efforts span both basic research in cellular biomechanics and biophysics and applied biomedical applications, such as point-of-care diagnostic tools and monitoring systems for diseases such as sickle cell disease and malaria.

A study explores whether merging schools could help integrate schools. One school could offer kindergarten through second grade for the current catchment areas of two elementary schools, while the remaining school could serve third through fifth graders for the same two catchment areas.

Some of the world’s leading scientific infrastructures, institutions and experts relating to biodiversity information are uniting around a new 10-year roadmap to ‘liberate’ data presently trapped in research publications. The initiative aims to enable the creation of a ‘libroscope’ - a mechanism for unlocking and linking data from scientific literature to support understanding of biodiversity, as the microscope and telescope previously revolutionized science.

Scientists developed a process that can be used to recover nickel from spent nickel-metal hydride batteries. From this battery waste and used aluminium foil, it was possible to produce a nanocatalyst that converts CO₂ into valuable methane. In this way, one can reduce the waste problem on the one hand and at the same time obtain a climate-neutral fuel.