Research Facts

Depth: The University of Texas at Austin has more than 100 research units. Some of them have been recently created to lead discovery in emerging areas of science. They include the Center for Nano- and Molecular Science and Technology, the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group.

Funding: Annual research funding reached $497 million in 2006-07 and more than 400 patents have been awarded to the university since its inception.

Faculty: Since 1984, more than 40 $1 million-endowed chairs have been created at The University of Texas Austin to recruit internationally recognized faculty to accelerate research programs in engineering and science.

Award Winners: The faculty at The University of Texas at Austin is composed of a Nobel laureate, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur fellows and hundreds of members of prestigious the academic and scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Engineering.

Scholars: The university has one of the largest graduate schools in the nation with more than 10,000 students and more than 170 graduate degree programs. It also is in the top three universities in the number of master’s and doctor’s degrees awarded annually.

Facilities: Several research units, including the Microelectronics Research Center, the Center for Electromechanics and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, are located at the 476-acre J.J. Pickle Research Campus in North Austin. Research facilities outside of Austin include the Marine Science Institute at Port Aransas and the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis.

Top 10: The university’s group of libraries has consistently ranked among the top 10 research libraries in the nation. The 17 libraries on The University of Texas at Austin campus house more than nine million volumes.

Treasures: Museum collections include Latin American, Renaissance and Baroque art, 40 million documents relating to the career of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 30 million literary manuscripts, five million photographs and five million natural sciences specimens. The Blanton Museum of Art, which opened in 2006, has more than 17,000 works of art, including European Old Master paintings, modern and contemporary American and Latin American art, and an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings.

Comprehensive: The university serves Texans by sharing its knowledge and resources through yearly campus-wide events. In fall 2003, the university began operating the University of Texas at Austin Elementary School.