Daniel Jaffe

Daniel Jaffe, Ph.D., is UT’s Vice President for Research. He and his office support President Hartzell’s priorities of expanding the university’s research capabilities and creating new opportunities for collaboration around campus. The Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors aims to make it easier for faculty and staff to design, pursue, and find funding for projects that advance our understanding of the world and improve our place in it. Dr. Jaffe has supervised the creation of three cross-campus interdisciplinary initiatives, including a grand challenge program, Bridging Barriers, that brings together more than 150 researchers from 52 specialties and departments.

Dr. Jaffe also oversees nearly a dozen core research facilities, such as the Texas Advanced Computing Center and Applied Research Laboratories, as well as the Energy and IC2 institutes.

Dr. Jaffe’s own research focuses on the formation of stars and planetary systems, and he is principal investigator for a high-resolution near-infrared spectrometer at McDonald Observatory, as well as for a high-resolution spectrometer for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Jennifer Lyon Gardner

Jennifer Lyon Gardner, Ph.D., is UT’s Deputy Vice President for Research and has led research capacity-building efforts at the university since 2008. She designs and implements programming that promotes collaborative research, such as UT’s campus-wide research grand challenge program, Bridging Barriers, and Associate Professor Experimental (APX), a three-day networking and proposal-writing retreat for newly tenured faculty. She also leads the Research Development group, which provides competitive intelligence and proposal development guidance to research teams pursuing major external funding.

Dr. Gardner received her undergraduate degree from Penn State University in chemistry with a minor in English, and she received her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin. She was a research-track faculty member at the UT Health Science Center in Houston before returning to UT Austin in 2008 to work in research development.

Before joining the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors, Dr. Gardner founded the College of Natural Sciences’ Strategic Research Initiatives team and served as its director. She also has served on the Board of Directors for the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP) and was an inaugural recipient of the organization’s Rising Star Award.