The city of Austin approved a five-year interlocal agreement with UT in an effort to streamline their research partnership and make the approval process for joint projects more efficient.

The agreement was unanimously approved in August by Austin City Council and sets aside $7.5 million in funding. The agreement aims to remove administrative barriers to joint research efforts and allow the city to work more efficiently with UT researchers without having to approve each individual project, according to the city council minutes. 

Kathie Tovo, District 9 council member, whose district includes West Campus, said the projects and analyses of UT researchers help city legislators make informed decisions. Tovo said the interlocal agreement and earmark should support this process.

“This contract provides an umbrella for all of those analyses to come underneath in the future,” Tovo said. “When staff identify a need for which they might be able to research and expertise at the University of Texas, they won't have to come back and ask for city council approval each time.”

Jennifer Lyon Gardner, deputy vice president for research, said the joint projects encompass a variety of fields and nearly every college and school.

“The Center for Transportation Research and TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center) regularly work with Austin Transportation to analyze traffic patterns and bottlenecks,” Gardner said in an email. “For COVID-19 response, engineering researchers have been working with Austin Water Utility to detect COVID-19 in wastewater. These are just a few examples.”

Gardner said both graduate and undergraduate students at UT participate in joint initiatives with the city. The new agreement will give students the opportunity to engage in those projects more quickly, she said.

Elizabeth Mueller, associate professor and director of UT’s Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, led a joint research initiative with the city of Austin in 2018 called Uprooted. The project aimed to “support more equitable and inclusive development in Texas cities by increasing awareness of what’s gentrification,” according to the Uprooted project website.

Mueller said in an email she thinks the interlocal agreement will make it easier to get started on collaborative projects like these in a timely manner. 

“With The Uprooted Project, it took a frustratingly long amount of time to get the project approved by both bureaucracies,” Mueller said. “We still had a deadline to meet for completing the work, but it delayed our start.”