Dear colleagues, 

Greetings to everyone returning to campus, and welcome to those just joining us. President Garimella’s recent annual letter highlighted remarkable successes across the university. I would like to build on that message by recognizing several milestones that advanced our research mission this year. 

Every achievement reflected here is the result of your dedication and intellectual courage. Across disciplines, you are asking bold questions, developing new knowledge and building solutions to challenges that matter to Arizona, the nation and the world. 

That commitment includes investing in the next generation of researchers. At a time when many peer institutions are reducing doctoral admissions, the U of A increased doctoral admissions even as AAU institutions nationally saw a 15% decline, with particularly strong growth among domestic applicants and admits. Graduate researchers bring new ideas to our laboratories, strengthen our ability to compete for funding and help build the highly skilled workforce Arizona and the nation need. 

Celebrating excellence 

In April, we held the inaugural Convergence Awards: Excellence in Research and Creative Activity to honor faculty and staff and the outstanding research operations teams who support them. President Garimella opened the event and welcomed members of the Arizona Board of Regents. We look forward to celebrating your success again next year. 

Our faculty also earned national and international recognition. Nearly 40% of our faculty are in the top quadrant of their fields for citations and articles, and 60% are in the top quadrant in their disciplines for grants. 

Elaine Romero and Erika Hamden were named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows. Marvin Slepian, Valerie Trouet and Vicente Talanquer were elected AAAS Fellows. Regents Professor Marcia Rieke was recognized as the Big 12 Faculty of the Year for her contributions to infrared astronomy and the James Webb Space Telescope, and Dan Marrone was named an American Astronomical Society Fellow. Nicole Antebi received a MacDowell Fellowship. President Garimella was formally inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Regents Professor Mary Stiner was formally presented as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and I was honored to be named a National Academy of Inventors Fellow. 

Congratulations also to our early career and young investigator award recipients. Afrooz Jalilzadeh, Marat Latypov, Ananya Mallik, Xiaodong Yan, Chicheng Zhang, Narayanan Rengaswamy and Travis Sawyer received NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards. Melanie Kaelberer and Shang Song received NIH Director’s New Innovator awards, and Kyle M. Hanquist received an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award. Kate Alexander, Ladd Keith and Ufuoma Ovienmhada were selected by the National Academy of Sciences as Frontiers of Science Fellows. Ladd was also featured on CNN and other national media outlets this summer, sharing his expertise on heat resilience. 

Faculty members received major honors in chemistry and education, while Mark Frederickson, Geneva Foster Gluck, Christopher Impey, Scott Saleska, Travis Sawyer, Richard Simpson and Mihai Surdeanu received Fulbright appointments, helping the university tie for fourth nationally as a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholars. 

Advancing discovery 

The Office of Research and Partnerships supports research, scholarship and creative activity across every college. Foundational and disciplinary research is the wellspring of our research enterprise. Since 2024, we have also focused investments and partnerships around five university-wide strategic research priorities: space science and national security, fusion energy, AI and the future of health, sustainable mining and securing critical minerals supply chains, and water and the future of arid lands agriculture. 

This past year, faculty and staff helped us look farther ahead. After broader discussions, working groups totaling more than 120 faculty and staff developed strategic forecasts examining where the U of A has particular strengths and where greater focus could build long-term leadership. ORP convened and supported the process, but its intellectual foundation came from faculty and staff across the university. 

Five forecasts chart a path for our existing strategic research initiatives. Three others — water, environment and health and quantum research and technology — explore areas of potential growth. A particular priority is bringing biosciences, medicine and health sciences into closer connection with engineering, data science, the physical sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts. 

In space science, where the U of A ranks No. 3 in the world and No. 1 among U.S. public universities, our faculty, staff and students continue to shape some of the most important missions and observatories of this era. 

The university launched and later assumed lead operations of NASA’s Pandora satellite from ORP’s new Multi-Mission Operation Center, with Daniel Apai as U of A lead of the mission and its exoplanet science team. We shipped Aspera, the first NASA mission built and managed entirely by a university, with Carlos Vargas as PI, for launch in January 2027. 

U of A researchers also have major roles in NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – the agency’s newest astrophysics observatory – and the NSF- and Department of Energy-funded​​​​​​​ Vera C. Rubin Observatory. More than 10 U of A faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers are involved with Roman, pursuing research spanning cosmology and exoplanet science, including dark matter, dark energy and the atmospheres of other worlds. Once science operations begin, the U of A will also lead nine NASA-approved investigations using Roman data to study subjects including supermassive black holes, gravitational lenses and galaxy formation.
 
For Rubin, the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab fabricated the observatory’s mirror, which spans more than 27 feet in diameter and represents unprecedented engineering by combining both the telescope's primary and tertiary mirror in one piece of glass. Steward Observatory’s Imaging Technology Lab manufactured more than 120 sensors, including half of the imaging sensors on the main Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera, the largest digital camera in the world.

The U of A was also selected for other NASA missions and investigations, including the EMELIA-3D payload, led by Sarah Sutton, to help the U.S. better image and navigate the moon’s surface. In April, students and staff at the U of A’s Space4 Center tracked the Artemis mission to the moon and back — the only academic entity in the nation to do so. Our astronomers also revealed massive black holes in the early universe and confirmed that a mysterious red dot first identified by U of A researchers is a forming planet orbiting a young star. 

Researchers led by Ewan Douglas of Steward Observatory are providing two of the three instruments for Lazuli, the first privately funded satellite space telescope and part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. It is one of two Schmidt Sciences projects underway at the U of A. The other, the Large Fiber Array Spectroscopic Telescope, led by Roger Angel and Chad Bender, combines many small telescopes to achieve the light-gathering power of a much larger observatory. 

In January, we launched the Kyl Institute for National Security, named for former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl and led by retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Robin Rand. Building on the work of the U of A Applied Research Corporation, the institute connects expertise in space, optical sciences, hypersonics, cybersecurity and advanced materials with federal agencies, national laboratories and industry partners. It co-sponsored a School of Government and Public Policy-led event with retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and met with U.S. Space Forces Southern leaders to discuss training and technology needs. Separately, professor Christopher Walker secured a three-year, $8.6 million U.S. Space Force cooperative agreement to expand a radio telescope network and improve methods to detect and image satellites in Earth orbit. 

In health and medicine, a seven-year, $43.6 million NIH award with the University of New Mexico will support clinical and translational research across the Southwest, with Banner Health as our primary clinical partner. Cancer Center Director Dan Theodorescu is using AI and computational biology to understand why loss of the Y chromosome drives more aggressive cancers and to guide more precise therapies. Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy launched a nearly $14 million clinical trial comparing treatments for obstructive sleep apnea. A $12 million gift from alumnus R. Ken Coit is supporting Bonnie LaFleur’s Phase 3 clinical trial of rapamycin to improve physical resilience and immune function in older adults, the College of Pharmacy’s first investigator-led clinical trial. Public health doctoral student Reagan Conner and assistant professor Melissa Furlong led a study identifying occupational predictors of PFAS exposure among career firefighters. Neuroscientist Roberta Brinton made national headlines for research on the link between menopause and Alzheimer’s disease. 

A new U of A–Banner Health Big Idea Challenge Joint Translational Research Accelerator will fund up to four collaborative pilot projects, each up to $250,000, to move discoveries toward clinical implementation and improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention. NIH funding for the U of A health research enterprise grew to $186.4 million, moving the university seven places to No. 51 nationally. 

In quantum research, the U of A was selected as one of five academic participants in REPLIQA, a Google Quantum AI program exploring the intersection of quantum science and the life sciences, supported by a $10 million commitment from Google.org. Regents Professor Dante Lauretta leads the university’s participation. 

We also launched the Office of Responsible AI as a campus-wide resource for the responsible development, deployment and governance of AI across research, education and operations. U of A researchers earned five awards in the U.S. Department of Energy’s inaugural Genesis Mission competition, placing the university among the nation’s top-performing institutions in the program. These awards also reflect the exceptional work of proposal development specialists and research administrators who helped faculty navigate a fast-moving federal opportunity. 

In fusion energy, the U of A joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory-led STARFIRE Hub for inertial fusion energy, became an inaugural member of the Fusion Industry Association’s Education and Research Partnership Program and launched collaborations with Inertia Enterprises and Innoven Energy. We are also working with fusion startup and supply chain companies on engineering challenges and advancing plans for a fusion energy engineering facility where companies, national laboratories and university teams could test components and evaluate designs for future power plants. 

Creating impact 

A Stanford Graduate School of Business analysis ranked the U of A among the nation’s most effective universities at producing billion-dollar startup companies and founders relative to its size. An independent analysis found that Tech Launch Arizona generated $459.7 million in statewide economic output and supported more than 3,000 jobs in fiscal year 2025. In fiscal year 2026, campus innovators submitted a university-record 372 invention disclosures, nearly 15% more than the previous year. TLA also completed 87 licenses and options, had 96 patents issued and helped launch 11 startups based on U of A innovations. 

The six Big Idea Challenge teams reported progress on projects spanning AI-powered medical kiosks for rural and underserved communities, microbial approaches to reducing nitrogen fertilizer use, off-Earth data centers, digital twins to study how life transforms barren landscapes, heat-health protections and tree-ring methods to reconstruct earthquake patterns. The showcase also featured 32 students presenting 24 research posters. 

Our partnerships extend beyond Arizona. A partnership with the Confederation of Indian Private Universities expands research opportunities with more than 70 institutions in quantum computing, AI and semiconductors. The U of A also deepened partnerships in Taiwan, connecting strengths in optics, photonics and semiconductors with international research collaboration and workforce development. 

The newly renovated Nano Fabrication Core Facility added 6,800 square feet of clean space and $6 million in new equipment for semiconductor manufacturing and microelectronics. This summer, the U of A joined Regent Cecilia Mata, the Arizona Commerce Authority and industry partners in supporting Panama’s launch of its National Advanced Technologies Agenda while expanding collaborations with SENACYT and the Technological University of Panama in semiconductor talent development, silicon photonics, AI in health and graduate education. 

Closer to home, a new Arizona Hub for Agriculture Innovation, supported by a $3 million Arizona Board of Regents grant, brings together researchers from Arizona’s three public universities to advance water stewardship, precision agriculture and resilient food systems. In mining and critical minerals, a $3 million federal investment is launching the first phase of MiningWerx, including a pilot-scale mineral processing facility at the San Xavier Underground Mining Laboratory to strengthen domestic mineral processing, advance sustainable mining technologies and prepare the workforce needed to secure the nation’s critical mineral supply chain. 

On Aug. 7, the Department of Energy and Secretary of the Interior hosted all 14 U.S. universities with mining engineering programs, including the U of A, along with mining company CEOs. Later that day, at a White House roundtable, President Trump announced $180 million in new federal grants for mining programs, including a $100 million Department of Energy initiative to rebuild the critical minerals workforce. Kray Luxbacher, who leads the U of A School of Mining Engineering and Mineral Resources, was selected to speak at the event and discussed the technology and talent needed to secure American mineral dominance. 

This year we also welcomed new leaders. Dr. Linda Bixby, a two-time U of A graduate, joined as the inaugural Chief Research Partnerships Officer after a career in the U.S. government, industry and foundations. She leads a team supporting campus to build strategic research partnerships with companies, foundations and other stakeholders. Dr. Robert (Bob) Bodnar joined the U of A to advance strategic efforts in sustainable mining and critical minerals research and will lead the Mining and Earth Resources Innovation Accelerator, or MINERVA. Dr. Angela Person became Executive Director for Museums and Community Engagement, strengthening connections among research, culture and the communities we serve. Pete Froslie became the university’s first Associate Director for AI and the Arts, complementing his appointment in the College of Fine Arts and advancing AI across STEM, the humanities and creative arts.

Looking ahead 

What we accomplished together gives us a strong foundation for the year ahead. Research is a public trust, and the strength of this university lies in the people who pursue bold ideas, forge partnerships and translate knowledge into meaningful impact for Arizona, the nation and the world. 

Your creativity, perseverance and commitment to discovery made these accomplishments possible. Follow the ideas that excite you, keep sight of the issues that matter to society and seek out collaborators whose perspectives can take the work somewhere new. Thank you for everything you do to advance our shared mission. 

It is an honor to serve alongside you, and I look forward to all we will accomplish together in the year ahead. 

With gratitude,
Tomás Díaz de la Rubia
Senior Vice President for Research and Partnerships
University of Arizona