Jennifer Lyon Gardner

UT’s Deputy Vice President for Research

Jennifer Lyon Gardner, Ph.D., is UT’s Deputy Vice President for Research and has led research capacity-building efforts at the university since 2008. She designs and implements programming that promotes collaborative research, such as UT’s campus-wide research grand challenge program, Bridging Barriers, and Associate Professor Experimental (APX), a three-day networking and proposal-writing retreat for newly tenured faculty. She also leads the Research Development group, which provides competitive intelligence and proposal development guidance to research teams pursuing major external funding.

Dr. Gardner received her undergraduate degree from Penn State University in chemistry with a minor in English, and she received her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin. She was a research-track faculty member at the UT Health Science Center in Houston before returning to UT Austin in 2008 to work in research development.

Before joining the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors, Dr. Gardner founded the College of Natural Sciences’ Strategic Research Initiatives team and served as its director. She also has served on the Board of Directors for the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP) and was an inaugural recipient of the organization’s Rising Star Award.