Vice President and Chief of Staff

Rafael Martin

Dr. Rafael Martín

Dr. Rafael Martín is the vice president and chief of staff of The University of Texas at Dallas. Born and raised in Dallas, Martín attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a John Motley Morehead Scholar and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Upon graduation, he joined the Dallas office of McKinsey & Company and served clients in the information systems, retail and energy industries. After three years as a consultant, he switched careers and became a paramedic, relocating to North Carolina and eventually becoming a field training officer with Durham County Emergency Medical Services. While working as a paramedic, Martín received a master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a graduate student, he worked for The Home Depot at its Atlanta headquarters and for Ford Motor Company in Chennai, India.

Martín joined UT Dallas in 2003 to manage the Office of Technology Transfer, becoming the director of research administration in 2004 and the associate vice president for research in 2006. He served as the interim vice president for research from January 2017 to June 2018, resuming his role as associate vice president in July 2018. In this role, he was responsible for financial management of the Office of Research and for leading several administrative functions, including pre- and post-award management, research information systems, core laboratory and research facility operations, and technology commercialization. In 2020, Martín earned a PhD in public policy and political economy from UT Dallas.

As the vice president and chief of staff, Martín serves as a liaison with campus leadership, makes policy recommendations to the president, assists in outreach to the University’s community partners and supporters and provides oversight of campus-wide administrative functions.

The vice president and chief of staff’s responsibilities include oversight of:

View the organization chart (pdf).

*To provide for the independence of the internal auditing activity, the chief audit executive (CAE) reports functionally to the institutional audit committee. The CAE reports administratively to the president and the vice president and chief of staff. The CAE also has an indirect reporting relationship to the UT System chief audit executive.