{"id":439774,"date":"2026-09-18T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439774\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:08","slug":"ut-professors-receive-fulbright-scholar-award-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439774\/","title":{"rendered":"UT professors receive Fulbright Scholar Award \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar program awarded two UT professors Fulbright scholar awards for the 2026-2027 academic year, according to a news release<\/a> from Texas Global. The award provides grant money to scholars to expand their research at affiliate institutions around the world.<\/p>\n

The Fulbright U.S. Scholars program, separate from the student program, offers awards in more than 120 countries for awardees to conduct research and teach, according to the Fulbright Scholar Program website. Associate professor Srinkanta Mishra and professor Timothy Keitt will use the awards to continue their research abroad.<\/p>\n

Keitt, a professor of integrative biology, has been working in Ecuador for five years. He said he wanted to use the award to continue to build his work and network in Ecuador.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have built up some nice relationships with colleagues there, and developed some familiarity with different sites, field stations,\u201d Keitt said. \u201cSo that was really the motivation to continue this collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keitt said his research monitors birds and organisms to study how species respond to climate change and the different mechanisms of adaptation. From a young age, he was interested in animals and birds, and though his initial background was in biology, he got into computational theory in graduate school. His research and profession now combine the two, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve kind of put those together,\u201d Keitt said. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked on many kinds of organisms, but birds seem to keep coming back to the topic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keitt will be traveling to Ecuador this fall and next summer to continue his research, according to his lab website.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope everyone will get a chance to travel and see other parts of the world,\u201d Keitt said. \u201cEcuador is a really amazing country, culturally and physically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mishra will use his award to travel to India for his project focused on aspects of dementia and hearing loss. Mishra said he felt motivated to apply for the Fulbright award by the socioeconomic disadvantages he saw within aspects of his field.<\/p>\n

\u201cFulbright provides a really good mechanism to do this kind of work cross country, cross disciplinary and you can time it during your breaks,\u201d Mishra said.<\/p>\n

Mishra said he looks forward to understanding the academic and local culture in addition to seeing how the country views hearing loss and dementia as a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cData tells a story,\u201d Mishra said. \u201cSo I think that is something I\u2019m also looking forward to, and maybe we will discover something that will be really meaningful for the preventative approach for dementia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fulbright program advisor Dr. Sonia Seeman said the program is a valuable exchange during a time of grant cutbacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all living on this planet, and we benefit from sharing with each other,\u201d Seeman said. \u201cFulbright\u2019s a wonderful medium to support that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fulbright U.S. Scholar program awarded two UT professors Fulbright scholar awards for the 2026-2027 academic year, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-439774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}