2022: A Year of Stellar Innovations, Impactful Moments at UTD

From transformative gifts and innovative research to expanded educational opportunities and new traditions, here are the News Center stories that defined The University of Texas at Dallas in 2022.

January

• The chess team earned a spot in the President’s Cup for the 18th time in 22 years. Later in the year, the Comets teamed up with the chess club to win the Kasparov Chess Foundation University Cup, and they captured the seventh annual Texas Collegiate Super Finals in the fall.
• The School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics’ actuarial program was named a Center of Actuarial Excellence, joining a group of 19 elite programs in the U.S.

February

• UT Dallas added two new bachelor’s degrees in education in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, and later in the year, the UTeach Dallas program received a $500,000 grant from the Communities Foundation of Texas’ W.W. Caruth, Jr. Fund to help recruit and retain science and math majors for teaching careers.
• Researchers in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science developed a terahertz imager microchip that can enable devices to detect objects and create images through obstacles that include fog, smoke, dust and snow.

March

• Dr. Vito D’Orazio, associate professor of political science in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, and his team used automated machine learning in a new way to forecast state violence in Africa.
• Grammy Award-winning jazz musician and recipient of the Richard Brettell Award in the Arts esperanza spalding shared her philosophies about music and life during a campus visit.
• UT System and UTD leaders unveiled the Promise Plus program, which allows more Comets to qualify for free tuition.

April

• The Naveen Jindal School of Management climbed into the top 30 full-time graduate business schools nationwide in rankings from U.S. News & World Report. Earlier in the year, the school’s online programs were ranked among the nation’s best.
• Dr. Shalini Prasad, Cecil H. and Ida Green Professor in Systems Biology Science, and fellow bioengineers designed a wearable sensor that can detect two key biomarkers of infection in human sweat, a significant step toward making it possible for users to receive early warnings of infections such as COVID-19 and influenza. Another Jonsson School team, led by Dr. Zhenpeng Qin, Fellow, Eugene McDermott Professor, developed a rapid test for viruses that can deliver results as accurate as lab tests within 30 minutes.
• Four undergraduates earned prestigious Goldwater Scholarships.

May

• Ground was broken for the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum, a new cultural district located on 12 acres at the southeastern edge of campus and supported by a $32 million gift from the O’Donnell Foundation.
• UTD held its inaugural University Commencement ceremony, which brought new graduating students and recent alumni together to celebrate their achievements.

June

• Angela Marin was named the new director of athletics after serving as interim director. Comet sports teams won American Southwest Conference titles in baseball, volleyball and women’s tennis this year.
• A new molecule synthesized by Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, was shown to kill a broad spectrum of hard-to-treat cancers.
• UTD was recognized as the 14th-best college in the U.S. for LGBTQ+ students.

July

• Isaiah Swann BS’20 was selected as one of 16 members on the NCAA Board of Governors.
• Geospatial information sciences senior Paulina Hruskoci was named a Udall Scholar. Other Comets earned Schwarzman, Gates Cambridge and Phi Kappa Phi awards this year.
• Student engineers won a first-place award at the 2022 Capstone Design Conference.

August

• The School of Arts and Humanities and the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication merged to form the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology. Dr. Nils Roemer was appointed the inaugural dean of the school.
• The University welcomed its newest class of Eugene McDermott Scholars.

September

• The Military and Veteran Center celebrated its 10^th anniversary and received the Veteran Education Excellence Recognition Gold Award for the second straight year.
• UTD received a $5 million National Science Foundation grant to advance quantum physics research and education.

October

• The University held its first UTD Research Day.
• Dr. Ted Price BS’97, Ashbel Smith Professor of neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, received an $11.3 million grant to launch a national project focused on elucidating the origins of pain.
• UTD honored its donors after a record year of gifts during Celebration of Support. Gifts that have helped advance the $750 million goal of New Dimensions: The Campaign for UT Dallas this year include more than $1 million to increase accessibility and enhance diversity, equity and inclusion programs; $1.1 million from the Edward and Wilhelmina Ackerman Foundation to support Holocaust studies; $1 million from Drs. Basheer and Shakila Ahmed to establish a new distinguished chair in natural sciences and mathematics; the largest single corporate gift for the Center for BrainHealth from Sammons Enterprises Inc.; and funds from the Education Changes Lives and Times Foundation that completed a $1 million endowment for the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
• A new initiative was launched to help support transfer students from low-income backgrounds who want to become engineers and computer scientists.
  

November

• Dr. Michael Burton, assistant professor of neuroscience, and his colleagues found that a high-fat diet may be linked to pain sensations even in the absence of a prior injury or a preexisting condition like obesity or diabetes.
• Mathematics researchers devised a computer-based platform for drug discovery that could make the process more effective, more efficient and less costly.
• Psychology professor Dr. Amy Pinkham was chosen to convene a worldwide team of researchers to determine ways of measuring social cognition in schizophrenia that can be used cross-culturally.

December

• UT Dallas celebrated the opening of its newest space in the Headquarters for the Richardson Innovation Quarter, which includes six resident research centers that represent a range of disciplines from multiple UTD schools.