Research

WACO, Texas (Nov. 27, 2023) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a five-year, $3.37 million research grant to Baylor University, Blackfeet Community College (BFCC) in Browning, Montana, and Montana State University-Bozeman to explore how the resiliency of the Blackfeet American Indian community could mitigate the health effects related to historical and childhood trauma.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 7, 2023) – Baylor University is partnering with local schools on National STEM Day (Wednesday, Nov. 8) to provide engaging science presentations for area students and teachers and connect Baylor researchers in the community, all to encourage an affinity for science, technology, engineering and math in local students.

WACO, Texas (Oct. 16, 2023) – Baylor University announced today the launch of the Baylor Research in Growth and Human Thriving Science (BRIGHTS) Center, a multidisciplinary center designed to catalyze research related to the science of human flourishing.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 28, 2023) – Baylor University researchers along with City of Waco leaders in sustainable infrastructure are among the 19 teams advancing to stage 2 of the Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC), a national research and action competition focused on rapidly transitioning emerging technologies and concepts into a local community to address their long-standing challenges.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 25, 2023) – Baylor University is celebrating National Research Administrator Day to highlight top-tier research throughout the University and the teamwork required to advance significant research projects. After attaining Research 1 recognition in 2021 from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, researchers and research administrators throughout the University have continued to elevate Baylor’s research output and impact, addressing complex global challenges in the process.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 7, 2023) – Baylor University today officially launched the Central Texas Cyber Range (CTCR), a multi-million-dollar center to provide comprehensive research in cybersecurity and cyber resilience and training for the cybersecurity workforce to address critical  needs at the local, national and international levels. The CTCR, in partnership with McLennan Community College (MCC) in Waco, will specialize in applied research and education.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 28 , 2023) – Michael A. Trakselis, Ph.D., professor and director of graduate affairs for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, overcame two barriers to conduct his groundbreaking research on a novel DNA enzyme. 

WACO, Texas (Aug. 28, 2023) – Hot flashes are one of the most concerning and most reported symptoms among menopausal women and breast cancer survivors. In an article published this month in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers at Baylor University tested the efficacy of paroxetine by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of six clinical trials, finding that the benefits of paroxetine in the treatment of hot flashes to be comparable to that of the placebo response.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 16, 2023) –The first sample dataset from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) is now available through the Center for Open Science (COS). The project, a groundbreaking five-year, $43.4 million longitudinal study of approximately 200,000 individuals in 22 countries, represents the largest funded research project in Baylor history.  

WACO, Texas (Aug. 9, 2023) – Baylor University’s McNair Scholars Program, along with the Baylor Graduate School, hosted the fifth annual national McNair Research Conference on Aug. 3-4 on the Baylor campus. More than 200 undergraduate McNair Scholars and non-McNair students presented their faculty-mentored research, participated in professional development and engaged with some of the nation’s top graduate schools.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 3, 2023) – Benjamin Rose, Ph.D., who joined Baylor University Aug. 1 as an assistant professor of physics, will serve as one of four project leaders for a research team which recently earned $11 million in NASA funding to investigate infrastructure solutions for the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

WACO, Texas (July 27, 2023) – Daniel Romo, Ph.D., The Schotts Professor of Chemistry at Baylor University and co-director of the Baylor Synthesis and Drug-Lead Discovery Lab, is providing synthetic chemistry leadership on an international team of researchers in pursuit of a groundbreaking drug to treat hypoxic-ischemic brain injury (HIBI) in newborns.

WACO, Texas (July 13, 2023) – Baylor University researchers in the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work have earned a significant federal grant to bolster mental health services to school children by preparing licensed mental health providers for work in schools.

In 2018 and 2019, Sarah Kienle, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Baylor University, and her colleagues collected movement and dive behavior data and samples from leopard seals off the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Their goal was to compile crucial baseline data on the ecology and physiology of this enigmatic species.

Women represent the fastest-growing population in U.S. institutional corrections facilities. In the past four decades, the number of women incarcerated has increased by more than 475%, rising from 26,326 in 1980 to 152,854 in 2020. Because the majority of imprisoned women are mothers, a conservative estimate indicates that at least one million American children have experienced maternal incarceration, and a substantial portion of them are adolescents. 

WACO, Texas (June 15, 2023) – Baylor University is well-represented on a prestigious list compiling the top most-cited researchers in the world. In a database compiled by Stanford University, 36 current or retired Baylor faculty members appear among the top 2% of the most-cited researchers across 22 disciplines.

WACO, Texas (June 6, 2023) – Caleb Martin, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor, and a team of international researchers set out in 2022 to determine first-ever challenge of elemental analysis validity, which has sparked conversations among journal editors and chemists about reevaluating this current threshold.

WACO, Texas (May 17, 2023) – Baylor sleep researcher Michael K. Scullin, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and Blake Barley, doctoral candidate in psychology in Scullin’s sleep lab, examined how institutional factors, biological factors and behavioral choices play a role in sleep problems for college students and if these "chronotypes" may more flexible than current theories suggest.

WACO, Texas (May 16, 2023) – For most of U.S. history, tattoos have been associated with sailors and bikers, but not church-going people. As tattoos have become more popular, with nearly one-third of U.S. adults sporting at least one tattoo, religious-themed tattoos have also increased. A recent study examined the behaviors of college students with tattoos, including religious tattoos.

WACO, Texas (May 3, 2023) – Noted Baylor University smartphone researchers Meredith E. David, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing, and James A. Roberts, Ph.D., The Ben H. Williams Professor of Marketing in the Hankamer School of Business, have investigated the correlation between the “flow states” – or happiness experienced by individuals – while using Instagram and TikTok and psychological well-being.

WACO, Texas (May 2, 2023) – Results from the Waco COVID Survey have provided needed insights into how the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission, health behaviors and COVID-19-related attitudes changed across the first two years of the pandemic in the McLennan County, Texas.

WACO, Texas (April 13, 2023) – Something as simple as a grass can fundamentally change the understanding of life in the prehistoric world. A pair of studies funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the journal Science document the earliest evidence for locally abundant C4 grasses in eastern Africa and how C4 grasses and open habitats influenced early ape evolution.

WACO, Texas (March 30, 2023) – Baylor University announced today that its Dunn Center for Christian Music Studies (CCMS) in the School of Music has been awarded a four-year, $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. as part of its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative.

WACO, Texas (March 1, 2023) – Often when people hear the word literacy, they think about learning to read, but literacy involves much more than reading from the printed page. Literacy encompasses the everyday ways people use language to make meaning and communicate, said Kelly C. Johnston, B.S. ’04, Ed.D., assistant professor in the Baylor University School of Education.

WACO, Texas (Feb. 15, 2023) - Smartphone use has quickly become a fixture of everyday life, including during church services. Drawing from the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Technology Acceptance Model, Baylor researchers have developed a new model to identify key drivers of smartphone use during church services.

WACO, Texas (Jan. 24, 2023) – Faith organizations have traditionally served as first responders when crisis occurs in personal lives as well as in the community. Yet, for all the good they do, faith organizations can do so much more if their efforts and resources could be better recognized and leveraged, through public-private partnerships to sustain and grow their work, according to a case study by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.

WACO, Texas (Jan. 19, 2023) - Jessica Akers, Ph.D., assistant professor of educational psychology in the Baylor University School of Education, has received a $893,409 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop an innovative treatment model for children with autism and their siblings.

WACO, Texas (Jan. 9, 2023) Silicic volcanoes on the Moon, specifically the mysterious Gruithuisen Domes, are a lunar geologic mystery that still perplexes scientists more than half a century after they were discovered. Based on early telescopic and spacecraft observations, these extinct volcanoes have long been suspected to be silicic in composition, in some ways similar to terrestrial strato volcanoes like Mount St. Helens in Washington state.

WACO, Texas (Dec. 15, 2022) – Baylor University chemist Caleb D. Martin, Ph.D., and his team have developed a new state-of-art Lewis superacid – with applications in the production of most common plastics – that is more efficient to produce, safer for the environment, and could potentially save billions of dollars in manufacturing costs.

WACO, Texas (Dec. 7, 2022) – Baylor University data scientists along with colleagues from four other universities have been awarded one of the largest National Science Foundation grants to explore new approaches to engage and prepare the next generation of data scientists through sports analytics.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 30, 2022) - Athletics can occupy an ambiguous place within a university's greater mission, particularly at religious institutions. Yet, little research has been conducted - until now - to understand student-athletes connection with personal religious beliefs.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 28, 2022) – Baylor University is among the institutions participating in the inaugural Global Scientific Conference on Human Flourishing, an interdisciplinary conference organized by Templeton World Charity Foundation in partnership with leading academic and policy research centers around the world.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 16, 2022) - Remote work has its own distinct set of challenges, and businesses that help employees respond to these challenges will benefit with a more productive and healthier workforce, according to research led by remote/hybrid work expert Sara J. Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of management at Baylor.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 14, 2022) – While peer influence is the top factor that leads to Baylor University students to attain higher levels of vertical faith maturity and horizontal faith maturity, respectively, attending a local place of worship is a powerful predictor of both measures of faith maturity, according to research from Baylor’s ongoing Faith and Character Study, which tracks the long-term impact of a Baylor education on a person’s faith and character.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 7, 2022) – For National STEM Day, Baylor University is starting a new outreach project, which provides teachers, families and students with do-it-yourself projects designed to make science, technology, engineering and math come alive.

WACO, Texas (Nov. 3, 2022) – Ashley Barrett, Ph.D., BA ’07, MA ’09, associate professor in Baylor’s Department of Communication, has earned a highly coveted CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the impact of new information technologies on the communication they facilitate in healthcare settings and seek ways to promote compassionate communication and empathy in these ever-evolving patient-provider interactions.

WACO, Texas (Oct. 17, 2022) – An interdisciplinary team of Baylor University researchers in psychology, religion and bioethics will explore how to tackle the complex problems of human flourishing by training theologians to incorporate the methods and insights of the psychological sciences into their work through a $2.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

WACO, Texas (Oct. 13, 2022) – Pablo Rivas, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science in Baylor University's School of Engineering and Computer Science, is the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to use technology to identify and disrupt illicit transactions online. Baylor colleague Tomas Cerny, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, also serves on the five-person research team.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 26, 2022) – Baptist scholars recently gathered at Oxford University for the 2022 Baptist Scholars International Roundtable (BSIR), hosted by the Baylor University Graduate School, to promote Baptist scholarship among faculty around the world.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 26, 2022) –Smartphone users will be disappointed if they expect their devices and social media to fill their need for purpose and meaning. In fact, it will probably do the opposite, researchers at Baylor and Campbell Universities found in a recently published study.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 23, 2022) – Baylor University is celebrating National Research Administrator Day today by recognizing the team effort that supports researchers across campus and helped Baylor attain Research 1 designation – three years earlier than expected – among the nation’s top R1 universities.

WACO, Texas (Sept. 15, 2022) – Baylor University announced today the appointment of Aaron Wright, Ph.D., as the inaugural James R. Schofield Endowed Chair in Biomedical Studies. Wright comes to Baylor from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and will provide interdisciplinary research and leadership from within the Department of Biology.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 29, 2022) - Research led by Baylor University faculty and students will be explored on the national stage as they share their findings from the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project during a Season 10 episode of the popular primetime Discovery adventure series "Expedition Unknown," which premieres Aug. 31 at 7 p.m. CST on Discovery.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 25, 2022) – Baylor University announced today the appointment of Julia Chan, Ph.D., as the inaugural holder of The Tim and Sharalynn Fenn Family Endowed Chair in Materials Science. Chan, a 1993 Baylor graduate who built an international reputation as a leading scientist focused on the discovery of new families of quantum materials, will provide multi-disciplinary leadership for Baylor’s materials science efforts.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 24, 2022) – In a first-of-its-kind study published in Frontiers of Marine Science, Baylor University marine biologist Sarah Kienle, Ph.D., and her research colleagues gathered baseline data on the ecology and physiology of the leopard seal, the enigmatic apex predator of the Antarctic.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 22, 2022) – A new review article in Science Advances co-authored by materials science researchers with Baylor University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) connects several decades of research on a family of intermetallic crystalline materials to find practical ways to design strongly correlated electronic, magnetic and superconducting phenomena.

WACO, Texas (Aug. 17, 2022) – A research team led by Baylor University chemists has taken a groundbreaking step forward in eliminating the exclusion of individuals with blindness from chemistry education and experiences by using lithophane – an old-fashioned art form – and 3D printing to turn scientific data into tactile graphics that glow with video-like resolution, enabling both blind and sighted individuals to universally visualize the same piece of data.

WACO, Texas (July 27, 2022) – Drought may have led to an increase in civil conflict followed by political collapse in Mayapan, the ancient capital of the Maya in the Yucatán Peninsula, in the 13th and 14th centuries, according to a study published in Nature Communications that includes contributions by a Baylor University archaeologist.

WACO, Texas (July 28, 2022) – Baylor University announced today the hiring of J. Brian Jordon, Ph.D., to serve as the inaugural Kenneth and Celia Carlile Endowed Chair in Materials Science. Jordon brings a highly regarded research lab to Baylor from the University of Alabama, where he established a national reputation for advanced materials research.

WACO, Texas (July 15, 2022) – After a 2020 hiatus due to COVID and a 2021 program embedded in a local summer school, Baylor University’s Mathematics for Early Learners Academy (MELA), sponsored by the Baylor School of Education (SOE), has returned to the Baylor campus July 5-28 to host students ages 4 to 6 at the Mayborn Museum.