Happy New Year! I hope 2015 has started well for all of you.

I am pleased to share the good news that we have appointed Dr. Duane Dimos, a renowned materials scientist and executive at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., as UT Arlington’s new Vice President for Research. Dr. Dimos was selected after an extensive national search that attracted an extremely deep pool of highly qualified candidates.

During his 25 years at Sandia, Dr. Dimos served in a wide variety of leadership and management positions, including as acting Vice President of the Science and Technology Division. He has extensive experience in building teams and has seen tremendous success in cultivating partnerships among government, industry, and educational institutions. An internationally recognized materials scientist in his own right, Dr. Dimos is a fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Ceramic Society. He has published more than 140 technical papers, edited four proceedings volumes, and holds 11 patents.

He will be joining us on April 1 but will travel between Albuquerque and Arlington numerous times in the interim so as to ensure both a smooth transition and to accelerate our research enterprise. He is keen to meet each of you and to strengthen partnerships between UT Arlington and the community. We will be organizing events to introduce you to Dr. Dimos and to Dr. Mickey McCabe, who joined us in mid-October as the new Executive Director of the UT Arlington Research Institute.

I am confident that under their leadership we will grow by leaps and bounds in our journey to be one of the nation’s premier research universities.

I am excited about the progress being made at UT Arlington and hope you feel as excited and confident about our trajectory and future as I do.