Four interdisciplinary projects led by researchers in the Texas A&M University College of Engineering will share $7 million in funding from Round 3 of Texas A&M’s X-Grants program, an initiative of the 10-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Fund.
“These interdisciplinary projects have the potential for significant advances in areas such as cancer and COVID-19 therapies, natural disaster response and mitigation, novel space management, mental health, migration behaviors, water quality, and improvements to the efficiency of current technologies,” said Dr. Mark A. Barteau, vice president for research.
Titles and team leaders for each of the four engineering projects are:
- “Texas A&M Lunar Surface Experiments Program,” Dr. Jeffrey Bullard, professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- “Disaster City Digital Twin: Integrating Machine and Human Intelligence to Augment Flood Resilience,” Dr. Ali Mostafavi, assistant professor, Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- “Engineering Nanomedicine for Non-invasive Cancer Therapy,” Dr. Shiren Wang, associate professor, Wm Michael Barnes ’64 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
- “Integrated Nanophotonics for Next-Generation Internet of Things (IoT),” Dr. Zi Jing Wong, assistant professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering
The Round 3 funded projects represent 80 faculty members and other researchers from eight colleges — agriculture and life sciences, architecture, engineering, geosciences, medicine, pharmacy, science and veterinary medicine, the Texas A&M Health Science Center and the Qatar and Galveston campuses.
There were 142 one-page proposals submitted to the program, 43 of which were chosen for preliminary proposals. Twenty-two were selected to submit final proposals.