Vice President Dean O. Smith

Texas Tech University’s Vice President for Research, Dean O. Smith, Ph.D., oversees a program of initiatives supported by a combined total of $48.7 million in external funding for the institution. Since coming to Texas Tech in September 2005, Smith has grown the research enterprise and the application of research discoveries and has helped to increase federal, state and private source funding by $7.7 million in fiscal year 2006. Texas Tech is showing a 19 percent increase in grants coming into the university to support faculty research and instruction.

Smith, a neuroscientist and a former Fullbright Scholar, previously was senior vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Hawaii. His other previous positions include being the associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1984-1991, professor in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii and senior vice president and executive vice chancellor at the University of Hawaii from 1997-2001.

He earned an honors bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard University and master’s and doctoral degrees in biological sciences from Stanford University. Smith has been the principal investigator for numerous National Institutes of Health grants, with the most recent totaling $18.5 million for research into the cellular basis of immunological and neurological diseases.