Texas Tech University's Office of Research and Innovation announced today (Mar. 8) that David Weindorf has been appointed an Associate Vice President. Weindorf also serves as a professor and BL Allen Endowed Chair of Pedology in Tech's Department of Plant and Soil Science.

Weindorf will oversee centers and institutes across campus, research metrics/analytics, the coordination of research for the STEM disciplines, and liaise on international relations and engagements as it relates to research. He began serving as research faculty fellow in Office of Research and Innovation last March.

"Dr. Weindorf is a very accomplished scholar who has a passion for supporting research, scholarship and creative activity at Texas Tech, and I'm confident that the university will benefit from his leadership in the future," said Joseph Heppert, Tech's Vice President for Research & Innovation.

Prior to being named Associate Vice President, Weindorf served as Associate Dean of Research in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources for four years. Recent honors for Weindorf include being named to the U.S. Composting Council Research & Education Foundation's Board of Trustees (2018); and Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (2017). He went to the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in West Bengal, India, where he shared his soil science expertise and conducted collaborative research and provided training to IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) scientists on advanced soil spectroscopy analysis.

Last October, Weindorf was recognized as a fellow by the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) at a ceremony in Tampa. It is the highest honor the SSSA bestows. He also received the SSSA's Presidential Award for influencing soil science so greatly that the impact of his efforts will be enduring on the future of soil science. As a member of the SSSA, Weindorf has served as the 2016 Pedology section chair and as a past editor of Soil Horizons.

Weindorf, who earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Texas Tech, is an expert on the use of proximal sensors for pedological and environmental quality assessment, working overseas and particularly in Eastern Europe. His research focuses on the development and application of new technologies in field soil survey, land use management and planning, remote sensing, environmental quality assessment, compost science and international translational soil taxonomy.

He has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications and most recently served as the executive producer of the nationally-acclaimed documentary film, Between Earth and Sky – Climate Change on the Last Frontier, which explores global climate change through soil science, using footage of the Alaskan wilderness and coastline to illustrate the growing effects of climate change on the arctic soils and ecosystems of Alaska.

CONTACT: William Brown, dean, College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Texas Tech University, (806) 742-2808 or william.f.brown@ttu.edu

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