Texas A&M University’s Gulf Coast Regional Center of Excellence was awarded $3.75 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the Industrial Assessment Centers (IAC) Program. Texas A&M is one of five higher education institutions to serve as a Center of Excellence.
The funding is part of $54 million from the bipartisan infrastructure legislation to expand the IAC Program to community colleges, trade schools and union training programs and create new Building, Training and Assessment Centers at higher education institutions.
Texas A&M’s Industrial Assessment Center of Excellence will serve the Texas Gulf Coast region and surrounding states. As a leader in remote and hybrid assessments, Texas A&M will accelerate the IAC network’s growing emphasis on industrial decarbonization, electrification and resiliency planning.
The Gulf Coast Regional Center of Excellence will focus on the development and deployment of smart assessment technologies, including sensing devices, intelligent diagnostic software and virtual tools to enhance energy assessments. The creation of curriculum and training materials will include a variety of formats, be disseminated broadly and be accessible to underserved or disadvantaged groups.
For over four decades, the IAC Program has provided more than 20,000 assessments at small- and medium-sized manufacturers, which comprise more than 90% of the nation’s manufacturing base. IACs typically identify more than $130,000 in potential annual savings opportunities for every manufacturer assessed. Today, DOE-supported IACs exist at 37 universities in 28 states.
Dr. Bryan Rasmussen, a professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, is director of the IAC at Texas A&M and will serve as the leader of the new Gulf Coast Regional Center of Excellence. “For 37 years, the IAC at Texas A&M has trained students and helped regional manufacturers reduce energy costs and enhance productivity. This Center of Excellence grant will expand our ability to create the next generation of energy engineers and strengthen manufacturing in the Gulf Coast region,” he said.
Rasmussen said that the current IAC at Texas A&M has served over 870 industrial clients, trained more than 400 students and provided verified savings of over $413 million for regional manufacturers.
The new Regional Centers of Excellence will enhance and expand the IAC Program by serving as regional hubs for the program that collaborate and coordinate with government, nonprofits, labor and industry to train clean energy workers and support small- and medium-sized manufacturers in each respective region.
The four other centers are the Great Plains Center of Excellence at Oklahoma State University, the Southeastern Center of Excellence at Georgia Tech University, the Mid-Atlantic Center of Excellence at Lehigh University and the Western Center of Excellence at San Francisco State University.