Greetings,

The new year will bring fresh competition and reintroduce old rivalries for the student-athletes who represent all Mavericks as members of our 15 varsity sports teams at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Last week, we announced a significant change on the athletics front. UTA will join the Western Athletic Conference, effective July 1, 2022. The move helps extend our brand to some of the biggest markets in the country, including Phoenix and Los Angeles, while allowing us to compete athletically with seven universities located in Texas who already are WAC members. Go Mavs!

A constant as we move into 2022 is the innovation and collaborative spirit of our faculty, and their determination to make Texas a better, safer place to live. We have projects in the works to help our infrastructure cope with storms that grow more unpredictable due to climate change and to refine and improve compact, portable nuclear reactors that can be deployed across the state during energy shortages.

We continue to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, most recently through a joint project with Tarrant County Public Health. A multi-disciplinary group of UTA experts in communications and health informatics will work with the county on strategies and messaging to reduce health disparities around vaccinations in the area’s predominantly Hispanic communities.

A UTA computer scientist is working to compress every publicly available cancer dataset into an accessible database that physicians can use at a patient’s bedside. Meanwhile, a pair of mechanical and aerospace engineers have teamed up with industry partners to develop autonomous aerial vehicles that could be used to move cargo or passengers in urban settings.

Thanks to the efforts of Mavericks in classrooms, on the playing fields and in research labs, we’re moving ever closer to a better tomorrow. Thank you for your support of our world-class university.

Sincerely,

Teik C. Lim, Ph.D. UTA President ad interim