Van Romero Appointed Research VP

As the newly appointed vice president for research at New Mexico Tech, Dr. Van D. Romero will focus his energies on financial support for Tech's numerous independent research projects and on strengthening the collaborative research efforts. [Dr. Alan Gutjahr, former vice president for research, has returned to being a full-time mathematics professor.]

Romero received both his bachelor and master of science degrees in physics from New Mexico Tech in the late-1970s. He later went on to earn a doctoral degree in physics from the State University of New York, and worked for over a decade at General Electric Corporation's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York.

Before he returned to New Mexico Tech in December of 1994 to serve as director of Tech's Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC), Romero worked on a defense conversion project at Sandia National Laboratories. He also served for over a year as deputy director of environmental safety and health oversight at the once-proposed Superconducting Super Collider project site.

[Before 1991, EMRTC was named TERA, the Terminal Effects Research and Analysis group. TERA historically relied on defense-related contracts, but these began to dry up with the end of the Cold War.]

Under Romero's leadership, EMRTC expanded its scope and branched out into newer high-tech areas, such as testing new technologies for detecting landmines, developing counter-terrorism measures, and improving aircraft safety and survivability.

"In recent years, EMRTC also developed some close relations with the academic programs here at Tech," Romero also notes. "One of the direct results was an increased number of graduate students working on the various EMRTC research projects.

"The main reason that we're all here at New Mexico Tech is to educate students," Romero adds. "Good, sound research programs go a long way to helping along that education process." Romero says that he intends to increase research efforts at Tech to benefit the university's academic process.

"One way to do that is to establish long-term research programs, perhaps by pooling the resources of various groups around campus and combining talents and strengths," Romero suggests. "With multi-year research programs, you can easily develop a steady flow of graduate students."

The main task facing Tech's new vice president for research is to help all of the university's researchers improve their chances of success as they pursue grants.

"The number one obstacle we face is overcoming the bureaucracy that comes with applying for grants," Romero says. "I think my primary responsibility will be to provide road maps to help researchers make their way through this very tangled mess."

Romero also says that much of his time will be spent "eliminating the frustration factors," making it easier for Tech researchers to do their work.

"One of the most important things that I've learned from my managerial experiences is that you've got to keep people motivated," Romero relates. "If you can keep people motivated, and at the same time keep the frustration level down, then you've just got to step out of their way most of the time."

Romero says that New Mexico Tech really is in an enviable position among universities when it comes to competing for financial support and finding new and different niches in both government-funded and industry-based research.

"Tech is a small school," he says, "and because of that we can turn things around quicker. We can respond to a request very rapidly, much more so than other, larger research universities.

Another of Romero's immediate concerns in his new position is developing greater name recognition for the "small college on the Rio Grande."

"New Mexico Tech has a very good reputation among those who do know about us," Romero states, "but not enough people know about us. So, we have to get the word out that we are a university that has outstanding researchers and outstanding students."

"We have some world-class individuals here at Tech, and we also have some world-class facilities," Romero asserts. "If we can manage to really pull together, then we can form teams which are virtually bullet-proof and which can attack some of the world's most pressing and challenging problems."