Dear PI Colleagues:
These past several weeks have brought waves of unexpected news — from stay-at-home orders and a laboratory research pause to hearing that both President Fenves and Provost McInnis would be leaving UT. I know how difficult this has been for so many of you, personally and professionally. I write to tell you, first and foremost, how much I admire your work and dedication. As VPR, I’ve had a unique overview of the research that takes place on campus. And during this health crisis, I’ve witnessed with pride the creative ways you’ve adjusted and adapted.
While these weeks have been challenging and stressful, they’ve also underscored to the world just how vital your work is as researchers. There are close to 100 UT PIs studying COVID-19 right now. Some of these researchers are active in the international fight to understand this virus and develop a vaccine. Even more are reimagining their research to address the monumental societal shift that has occurred as a result of the novel coronavirus.
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Integrative Biology Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers is leading the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Their projections are informing state- and nationwide social distancing guidelines aimed at keeping hospitalizations below capacity.
Molecular Biosciences Associate Professors Jason McLellan and Ilya Finkelstein, together with Chemical Engineering Professor Jennifer Maynard, have been designing and testing more than 100 variants of the coronavirus spike protein. Their work could be critical to optimizing vaccine design. Also, Jason and graduate student fellow Daniel Wrapp have helped produce a new antibody that, in initial tests, blocks the virus’ spike protein from infecting cells.
Also in Molecular Biosciences, Professors Andy Ellington and Edward Marcotte, Research Assistant Professor Greg Ippolito, Research Associate Jason Lavinder, and Visiting Researcher Jimmy Gollihar have developed a serological assay to test blood for the presence of an antibody that recognizes the SARS-CoV-2 virus using blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors in Austin and Houston. The goal is to help Clinical Pathology Laboratories complete up to 200,000 COVID-19 tests per day.
In Mechanical Engineering, Professor Matthew Hall and Associate Professors Chris and Nichole Rylander are working with the Austin Fire Department to evaluate the use of ozone to sterilize N95 masks. The goal is to find a way to enable first responders to safely reuse masks during critical PPE shortages. Other Engineering faculty, including Lea Hildebrandt Ruiz, Navid Saleh, Manish Kumar, and Arumugam Manthiram, are developing innovative methods to make masks more effective at capturing and deactivating coronavirus.
Architecture Associate Professor Junfeng Jiao and researchers in the Urban Information Lab are studying train and highway traffic data across New York state to detect and predict coronavirus outbreaks. They’ve also been modeling vehicle miles traveled at the county level nationwide during the pandemic and have found a 39% decrease in vehicle travel connected to stay-at-home orders throughout the country.
And Professors Bill Williams and Hugh Smyth in Pharmacy’s Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery are leading a team of researchers to solve drug delivery problems associated with niclosamide, which was recently confirmed to exhibit antiviral efficacy in COVID-19-infected cells.
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I’m immensely encouraged by this work and the countless other projects on campus that are responding directly to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next week, I officially move into my role as interim executive vice president and provost. The date of the transition was moved up so that I can quickly focus on issues surrounding our fall semester and how we might be ready to welcome students back to campus safely.
During my time as interim provost, please know that the VPR office will continue to function at the high level you’ve come to expect, now under the leadership of Professor Alison Preston as interim vice president and Dr. Jennifer Lyon Gardner, serving as deputy VP. Ali and I have been meeting regularly, and she is up to speed on nearly all aspects of the VPR portfolio. Just as important, she understands and supports our mission, which is to enable your research endeavors.
For those of you who haven’t met her yet, Dr. Preston is the director of the Biomedical Imaging Center, and she runs a vibrant research program in the neuroscience of memory. She has done a great job administering her center, and those skills will serve her — and you, as campus researchers — well over the course of the next year as she leads the VPR portfolio.
Many of you already work with Jennifer, either because you’ve interacted with her as the head of research development or because you’ve had a chance to join her at one of the many interdisciplinary events, workshops, and faculty retreats she’s hosted on campus. If you’ve met her, you know as well as I do how indispensable she is as part of our office’s executive team.
I will miss being in our FAC suite each day, fully entrenched in UT’s research mission and your stories of success and ingenuity, but Ali, Jennifer, and the entire OVPR team will ensure that the services and support you rely on won’t stop.
And I know you won’t stop either. As Ali announced this week, we are developing a plan to reopen our campus labs safely through a multi-phased approach, beginning in May. I’m glad that this will give you the opportunity to resume your projects and, I hope, pick up where you left off. But, as with all things, do proceed with health and safety as your top priorities. Our university and the discoveries it makes aren’t abstractions. They’re real because they are you: your years of education and training, countless hours of study and effort, failure and triumph in small and large doses, over and over. Take care of yourself, your research teams, your friends, and your families. It’s never been truer that What Starts Here Changes the World, but we don’t change much without you. Be well.
Sincerely,
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Daniel Jaffe
Vice President for Research
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