Texas Tech Announces TRIP Funds

Texas Tech University has received private gifts totaling $24.3 million that are eligible for the Texas Research Incentive Program (TRIP). The fully matched potential of these gifts is $21.5 million. The 28 gifts are from 20 individuals and eight corporations and foundations.

TRIP provides $25 million each year for the next two years to match private gifts raised by the universities. Any gifts not matched in 2010 will roll over to 2011 for matching. The gifts may go toward endowed chairs, professorships, facilities, equipment, program costs, or graduate student stipends or fellowships. Read more.

Texas Tech Sets Record Enrollment

Texas Tech University shattered enrollment records with more than 30,000 students enrolled this fall.

Texas Tech’s previous record enrollment was 28,549 set in the fall 2003 semester. The university also set a record for freshmen enrollment with 4,579, surpassing the previous record of 4,515 set in fall 2007. Read more.

College of Engineering Receives Endowment to Recruit Researchers

J.F Maddox Foundation donates $7.5 million; creates Donovan Maddox Distinguished Engineering Chair.

The new chair, in tribute and memory of Donovan Maddox, honors his life-long connection and commitment to Texas Tech University. The endowment, along with the existing Jack Maddox Distinguished Engineering Chair, will be used to recruit two nationally recognized researchers, initially in energy-related fields. Read more.

Texas Tech Paleontologist Says Meteorite Strike Near Mumbai May Have Wiped Out Dinosaurs

Imagine a meteorite more than 25 miles wide hurtling toward Earth at 36,000 miles per hour. The impact would create mass extinctions, perpetual night for more than a year, tsunamis and massive volcanic activity.

It’s not a fictional plot to some Hollywood disaster movie, says Sankar Chatterjee, curator of paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University. In fact, the exact scenario played out 65 million years ago near present-day Mumbai, India, and could be the smoking gun that ended the dinosaurs’ reign on Earth. Read more.

Texas Tech Receives Patent for Decontamination Wipe Creation Process

The Fibertect wipe was invented by Seshadri Ramkumar, an associate professor of environmental toxicology at TIEHH at Texas Tech.

The wipe that researchers tested features an activated carbon core sandwiched between an absorbent polyester layer on one side and absorbent cellulose on the other. After testing with mustard gas and other toxic chemicals, the results showed that the Texas Tech-created dry fabric out-performed 30 different decontamination products, including materials currently used in military decontamination kits. Read more.

Texas Tech Earns Environmental Excellence Award

The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) was selected to receive the 2009 Texas Environmental Excellence Award in the area of education by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

Recommended by a Blue Ribbon Committee of environmental experts from public and private industry, the awards honor individuals, businesses and organizations that have created successful programs that conserve natural resources, reduce waste and prevent pollution. Created by the Texas Legislature in 1993, the awards program reflects the goals of the TCEQ itself: to protect Texas human and natural resources and ensure clean air, clean water and the safe management of waste. Read more.

Texas Tech Introduces New Doctoral Fellowship Program

Texas Tech University is dedicating $2 million to a new Doctoral Fellowship Initiative intended to increase the number of doctoral students enrolling at the university.

The fellowships are focused on areas where the students could help produce new external research funding, especially funding from federal sources such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Fellowships also have been awarded in areas such as creative and technical writing where an extraordinary level of academic excellence has been recognized for several years. Read more.

Wind Researchers to Participate in Historic Tornado Project

Researchers from Texas Tech's Atmospheric Science group participated in a field project to uncover the secrets of tornadoes.

The collaboration, Verification of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2 or V2), is the largest and most ambitious attempt to study tornadoes in history and involved nearly 100 scientists and 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars. Read more.

Image credit: patrick dacquel http://www.vortex2.org/photos/

The Big Dig: Rawls College Groundbreaking

Texas Tech University broke ground on the new Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Building at Flint Avenue near Ninth Street, just west of Dan Law Baseball Field.

The new business administration building will serve as an anchor for a new North Campus Gateway that will be an entrance to the campus from the Marsha Sharp Freeway. Read more.