Dec. 10 Research Bulletin (Texas A&M University)

How to Submit an Item to Research Bulletin

Send: Research-related news about Texas A&M faculty, staff or students at our colleges, schools or member agencies, including honors, publications, presentations and appearances in news media
Include: a URL that links directly to your news coverage, research story or professional achievement
Email: rcomm@tamu.edu
Next issue: Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026

Announcements

The Research Bulletin will pause for the holidays following this issue. Have a happy new year!
Allan Marshall was named chief development officer for the Bush School of Government and Public Service.
Catharine Ross was appointed associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Darrek Ferrell was appointed as director of the Bush School of Government and Public Service's City and County Governance Program.
Emily Heger was appointed director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the School of Law.
Erica Teixeira was appointed head of the Department of Comprehensive Dentistry in the College of Dentistry.
Fabricio Teixeira was named head of the Department of Endodontics in the College of Dentistry.
Jeffrey Cirillo was named interim head of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology at the Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine.
John A. Adams Jr. was appointed to the dean’s advisory board at the Bush School of Government and Public Service.
Jonathan Meer was appointed head of the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Laura Picariello was named director of the Texas Sea Grant College Program.
Sanjay Mathew was named head of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine.
Simon North was named interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Texas A&M University will invest $25 million in hiring new faculty over the next two years to meet growing instructional needs and research demands.
Tiffany Radcliff named executive associate dean for research and innovation at the School of Public Health.

News-Media Coverage

Bloomberg Law, Milan Markovic (Law), about how Certum Group bought a managed-services company to help mass-tort and personal injury law firms handle back-office work, which is a new grey area way for outside investors to get involved with law firms without owning them directly.

Brownfield Ag News, Bart Fischer (Agriculture and Life Sciences), about how a new farm aid package is expected soon, though ongoing trade uncertainty is making loss estimates difficult.

Business Wire, Anka Vujanovic (Arts and Sciences), about a $3.37 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to support a collaboration between Texas A&M, Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and Stony Brook University that aims to improve the mental health of first responders.

Fast Company, Mansoor Khan and Ziyaur Rahman (Pharmacy), about how 3D printed medicine could revolutionize medication delivery.

Insol International, Chris Odinet (Law), about digital assets and how they fit into property and insolvency law.

Los Angeles Times, Ivis García (Architecture), about how many people are deciding to move to climate-disaster zones because of the decreased cost of home ownership in those areas.

MSN, Newsweek, Yahoo! and others, Akhilesh Gaharwar and John Soukar (Engineering), about how scientists discovered a way to rejuvenate aging cells by transferring fresh, energy-boosting mitochondria into them.

The Conversation, Kobi Ajayi (Public Health), about Texas cities’ exceptionally high preterm birth rates that reveal widespread maternal-health disparities.

The Texas Tribune, Michelle Meyer (Architecture), about how only a handful of the 315 actions in Travis County's Hazard Mitigation Action Plan directly addressed the rural, unincorporated area of Sandy Creek's flood risk.

The Western Producer, Jeffrey Tomberlin and Luis Tedeschi (Agriculture and Life Sciences), about how humans should eat a mix of animal and plant proteins, but animal proteins are critical for optimal health.

Articles From Colleges and Schools

Ian Hughes (Arts and Sciences) and a colleague found new data on what drives financial stress, including how small changes in income or expenses can have big effects. Money Comes, Money Goes — Does Stress Follow Suit?

Jungjoo Lee and Junhyoung Kim (Public Health) determined that physical activity twice a week can help lower the risk of dementia in older adults. Just 20 Minutes of Activity Twice Weekly May Help Halt Dementia

Jun Wang and Lee Shapiro (Medicine) studied how brain injury-driven inflammation disrupts neural signals and increases alcohol use. Inflamed Minds: How Traumatic Brain Injury Rewires the Brain for Addiction

Leonard Berry (Business) and a colleague found that cancer treatment decision-making should be shared between doctors, patients and family caregivers. Expert Calls for Greater Role of Family Caregivers in Cancer Care Decisions

Matthew Smith and Marcia Ory (Public Health) identified the growing needs for resource awareness and easier access to services for those caring for people with dementia. Dementia Caregivers and Organizations List Awareness, Access and Lack of Providers as Top Concerns

Meri Davlasheridze (Galveston) explained the correlation between natural disasters, poor mental health and economic outcomes, emphasizing the importance of community during disaster recovery. From Storms to Solutions: Texas A&M Galveston Researcher Reveals How Mental Health and Economics Intersect in Disaster Recovery

Mirjam Fürth (Engineering) and team developed SMART-SEA, a system that provides seafarers with real-time maneuvering advice to avoid collisions. Avoiding Marine Collisions With SMART-SEA

Pete Teel, Taylor Donaldson, Rose Wang and William Grant (Agriculture and Life Sciences) paired mapping cattle movement with advanced computer modeling to guide ongoing cattle fever tick eradication strategies in South Texas. Data Modeling Drives Texas A&M War on Cattle Ticks

Stephen Courtright (Business) found that physical attractiveness has a measurable effect on a person being viewed as leadership material. “Beauty Bias” Strongly Shapes Who We View as Leaders

X. Ben Wu (Agriculture and Life Sciences) and undergraduate student Carrie Reisdorf found that an artificial intelligence-assisted, crowdsourced online project can use volunteer-classified bird calls to help researchers study how land-management practices affect wildlife. Listening to Nature, One Bird Call at a Time

Funding

Andrea Ogilvie, Michael Johnson, Bimal Nepal, Rainer Fink (Engineering) and Karen Rambo-Hernandez (Education and Human Development) received a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support a project titled, “Pathways for Low-Income Community College Students To Earn Engineering Degrees Based on a Co-Enrollment Model.”
Barbara Kirkpatrick, Christina Simoniello, Jorge Brenner Guillermo, Robert Currier and Uchenna Nwankwo (Arts and Sciences) received a $4.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to support a project titled, “Continuing the Development of the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System.”
Luke Albert (Transportation Institute) received a $4.2 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation to support a project titled, “Mobility Monitoring Support.”
The College of Nursing received a $3.9 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to support the Connecting Nurse Education to Rural Communities in Texas project.
Alex Keene (Arts and Sciences) received a $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to support a project titled, “The Role of GPI-Anchor Biosynthesis in Sleep Regulation.”
Jett McFalls (Transportation Institute) received a $2.1 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation to support a project titled, “Erosion Control Materials Testing Program.”
Ayman Hawari (Engineering) received a $1.6 million grant from Fluor Marine Propulsion, LLC to support a project titled, “Development of Thermal Neutron Scattering Law Evaluations.”
Yossef “Joe” Elabd (Engineering) received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to support a project titled, “Task 1: CAAT Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Cooperative Separation Evaluation (CSE) project.”
Chenglin Wu, M.M. Faruque Hasan and Micah Green (Engineering) received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support a project titled, “Graphite from Petroleum Coke.”
Nandita Chaudhuri (Public Policy Research Institute) received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support a project titled, “Chronic Disease Self-Management Education CDSME State Grants.”
Matthew Powell Palm (Engineering) received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to support a project titled, “High Entropy Aqueous Solutions for Cryopreservation and Beyond.”
Angela Knapp (Arts and Sciences), in collaboration with French scientists, received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support a project titled, “Geochemical Constraints on the Rates and Fates of Nitrogen Fixation in the Southwest Pacific.”

Professional Development

Research Development Services offers faculty development programs and research funding workshops to assist in the process of applying for grants.

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) offers virtual workshops that meet the face-to-face requirements of University SAP 15.99.99.M0.04. Please note that it is the responsibility of each college or school (with support or information from individual principal investigators) to ensure that all student and postdoctoral researchers associated with them are compliant with the RCR training requirements.

High Performance Research Computing offers an ongoing series of short training courses for beginning, intermediate and advanced researchers.

University Libraries presents a series of online workshops in research-related subjects, such as managing citations, managing research data, searching databases and publishing and copyrighting.