Jack Baldauf

Biography

As vice president for research, Jack Baldauf leads in the delivery of strategic support to further the University’s research mission, facilitate collaborations to increase federal funding, strengthen the research infrastructure, encourage commercialization partnerships, and ensure research compliance.

Before becoming vice president for research, he was named interim vice president for research in June 2021 and previously served as a senior associate vice president for research, providing leadership for strategic research planning, space and environmental initiatives, faculty development and recognition, and international programs.

Baldauf is a professor in the Department of Oceanography, College of Arts & Sciences. In his previous positions with the college, he served as executive associate dean and associate dean for research and deputy director and manager of science operations for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and the Ocean Drilling Program (now the International Ocean Discovery Program).

Baldauf has been the lead principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-sponsored project Network-to-Network for the Gulf of Mexico (N2N-GoM), an international network-to-network approach to assess and manage multi-sectorial states of risk for the Gulf of Mexico and to secure optimal resilience and adaptation strategies due to climate variability.

Along with scientific research and exploration, he has been actively engaged in leadership development and mentoring, including implementation of the Early Career Faculty Mentoring program in 2019. Most recently, enhancing research capacity by identifying potential gaps and opportunities to forge new interdisciplinary collaborations has been a key focus, particularly as it relates to Livable Texas initiatives and space exploration.

Baldauf completed his doctorate in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley.