Faculty, staff, and students at UT are engaged in research, scholarship, and creative activities that advance the frontiers of human knowledge and enrich our shared human experience. The institution’s Strategic Vision describes our commitment to advance world-class research and transfer the benefits of the results we create to local and global communities. We all have a role to play in realizing this vision.
The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development (ORIED) provides resources that help faculty realize their individual research goals, while also bringing groups of faculty together to explore solutions to complex challenges—solutions that require the insights, methods, and tools of multidisciplinary teams.
The university has defined five multidisciplinary research initiatives that build upon the strengths of our faculty and are enriched or informed by assets, opportunities, and challenges in Tennessee and in the world around us: materials and manufacturing, artificial intelligence, global energy ecosystems, mobility, and human health and wellness. In addition, we are supporting centers of excellence that faculty, staff, and students can tap to expand the reach and impact of their work, such as the UT Humanities Center and the Community-University Research Collaborative Initiative (CURCI).
In research at the knowledge frontier, the only constant is change. By design, our research priorities must evolve and change over time. The university is constantly exploring ways to make sure that faculty voices are heard and that emerging opportunities are identified and resourced appropriately. In the recent cluster hiring initiative, UT invited the faculty community to identify areas ripe for investments through faculty hiring. The response was overwhelming—we received over 50 high-quality concepts, and after a very competitive review process, seven clusters were chosen for investments totaling around $50 million.
In the coming months, Catalyst will explore the riches of UT’s research enterprise in greater detail, including our multidisciplinary research and cluster hire initiatives, along with the tools and strategies ORIED uses to forge connections between faculty within and across disciplines, to enhance the quality and amplify the impact that UT Research has on the world we share.
UT Research is shaping a more just, prosperous, and sustainable future for the citizens of Tennessee and communities the world over. In that, we can all delight.
Go Vols!