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Monday, February 15, 2016
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SYSTEM
Regents invest to attract top faculty By Caleb Wong @caleber96
The UT System Board of Regents voted Thursday to fund a program by an additional $30 million that attracts promising faculty members to UT System institutions. The Science and Technology Acquisition and Retention program, known as STAR, has been used to recruit hundreds of faculty members
from other institutions by giving them funds for their research. Dale Klein, UT System associate vice chancellor for research in academic affairs, said the program attracts faculty members from other research institutions who would otherwise be unlikely to join a UT System institution. While the money doesn’t go toward faculty salaries, each faculty member could be offered as much as a couple million dollars after
both the UT System and each individual campus contributes to the funding. “The faculty we recruit are already happy at [the universities] where they are [located],” Klein said. ”We have to basically win them over with incentives and reasons why they have to join.” Since the program’s launch in 2004, the UT System has invested $178 million in the program and has seen a $1.2 billion return on invest-
ment from the UT System, according to a UT System press release. Some of the faculty members recruited through the program include Bruce Beutler, a UT-Dallas faculty member who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and Richard Aldrich, a professor at UTAustin whose recognized work in neurobiology led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences.
The recent renewal of funding for the STAR program coincides with Chancellor William McRaven’s initiatives to improve the rankings of UT System institutions as part of his strategic plan for “winning the talent war.” Among other factors, the quality of research at universities plays a large role in their rankings. Drawing
TALENT page 3
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Alumnus led team to detect gravity waves By Eunice Ali @euniceali
UT alumnus David Reitze led the first direct detection of gravitational waves, 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted them in his general relativity theory. On Sept. 14 of last year, Reitze and his team recorded gravitational-wave signals emitted 1.3 billion years ago by the merging of two black holes, each about 30 times the mass of the sun. This discovery confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted in 1916. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on Feb. 11. “Last night [our team] toasted with champagne, but everybody was actually eager to come back to work to find more black holes,” Reitze said. Reitze is the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a research laboratory designed and operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation. He received his Ph.D. in physics at UT-Austin in 1990. Physics professor Michael Downer, who supervised
Illustration by Jason Cheon| Daily Texan Staff
Reitze’s dissertation, said Reitze’s team improved the sensitivity of the LIGO detectors until they could detect gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are tiny, rhythmic distortions in space and time that occur when objects move. They are generated all the time; for example, a
person generates a weak gravitational wave when they spin a chair, according to Downer. Humans can only observe and measure the gravitational waves of large, violent motions. Downer said even though the black holes were billions of light years away, scientists could
CAMPUS
detect their gravitational waves because of the magnitude of the collision. “Basically, what they have developed in the past three to four decades is a sort of optical microphone that is able to listen to very low level gravitational signals from across the universe
that Einstein predicted to exist, just over a hundred years ago,” Downer said. Richard Matzner, physics professor and faculty member of the UT Relativity Group, said every detail of this first
GRAVITY page 3
bit.ly/dtvid
CITY
Community responds to shooting of local teen By Mikaela Cannizzo @mikaelac16
The national conversation surrounding police brutality and racism continued last week when a black officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in North Austin. In response to the shooting, local activists from Black Lives Matter, Austin Justice Coalition and Measure Austin spoke about their battle for justice at a press conference Thursday afternoon following a peaceful protest at City Hall. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said the police department aims to avoid taking a life in all circumstances and suggested a collaborative approach between law enforcement and community members to progress toward this goal. “There’s a collective responsibility in this nation for the community and the police not to point fingers at each other, to scream at each other or to demonize each other,” Acevedo said. “There’s a collective responsibility to work with each other to make things better.” According to police reports, David Joseph, the victim of the shooting, charged at Officer Geoffrey Freeman when Joseph was found standing naked in the 1200 block of Nature’s Bend. As of now, Acevedo said there is a 30-day timeline to complete a thorough investigation of the incident, but the police department said they will be transparent about any delays in the process. Acevedo said the investigation is expected to serve as a way to assess training protocols and examine policies and procedures such as how
SHOOTING page 3
CITY
Student Government bill calls Austin Marathon maintains for umbrella checkout system pace for 25th year anniversary By Rachel Lew @rachelannlew
Unpredictable Texas showers can leave students without umbrellas stranded on campus, but Student Government wants to give students the opportunity to check out umbrellas and stay dry. SG is currently working on the implementation of Assembly Resolution 17, which would create a system of umbrella checkouts on campus for students on rainy days. According to the School of Architecture’s Center for Sustainable Development, annual rainfall in Austin ranges from 32 to 36 inches on average, and rain patterns can often be unpredictable. John Falke, co-author of AR 17 and supply chain management senior, said his idea
I thought that umbrella checkout would be a great idea for students and would be a Student Government initiative where we could actually have some follow-through.” —John Falke, Co-author of AR 17
for an umbrella checkout was inspired by the cell phone charger checkouts currently available around campus. Cell phone chargers have a 24-hour checkout period, and require a UT ID to borrow. “Kallen [Dimitroff] and I were actually stuck on campus in the [Student Activity Center] without an umbrella while it was raining and I saw someone check out a phone charger from the hospitality desk,” Falke said. “I thought that umbrella checkout would be a great idea for students and
would be a Student Government initiative where we could actually have some followthrough.” Kallen Dimitroff, co-author of AR 17 and government senior, said she hopes the umbrella checkout system will be similar to cell phone charger checkouts, with a few modifications. “Unlike cell phone chargers, we want students to have 48 hours to return the umbrellas. The thought is that the lost,
UMBRELLAS page 2
By Bharath Lavendra @burreth
Over 11,000 runners crossed the finish line yesterday at the 25th Austin Marathon and Half Marathon. John Conley, the race director for the past 20 years, said he has watched the race change in many ways over the past two decades. “The overall fitness level of your average Austinite is very high,” Conley said. “It’s remarkable when half of your field comes from your hometown.” Conley said that Austin’s sister cities were also well represented at the race. “The sister city program originally had two purposes, educational and cultural,” Conley said. “When I
became [the race director], the first thing that I did was say that we need to add an athletic component, so we immediately issued an invitation to our sister cities to get some athletes.”
Conley said that there were representatives from Ōita City, Japan, and Saltillo, Mexico, both sister cities of Austin. The winner of the
Zoe Fu | Daily Texan Staff
Texas 4000 members Khoi Truong, from left, Gilpreet Kooner, Mary Aviles and Alyssa Dawson run in the Austin Marathon on Sunday afternoon.
MARATHON page 2
NEWS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFE&ARTS
ONLINE
REASON TO PARTY
Students celebrate National Condom Day. PAGE 3 Candidates debate at Sheriff forum. PAGE 3
Mosquito-borne illnesses need proactive research. PAGE 4
Softball stays undefeated after walk-off win. PAGE 6
UT student recalls life in Iran. PAGE 8
Schools should invest in bilingual education. PAGE 4
Men’s basketball suffers second straight loss. PAGE 6
Kanye’s music takes new direction on 8th album. PAGE 8
Dell Medical School and the Wellness Network are training interns to help develop healthy living practices on campus. Read more at dailytexanonline.com
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