T3: Announcing Round 3

Sent on behalf of Dr. Mark A. Barteau, Vice President for Research

I am pleased to announce Round 3 of the Texas A&M Triads for Transformation (T3) program, aimed at fostering interdisciplinary collaborations among faculty teams of three (Triads), is open and faculty profiles are available to post. T3 is one component of the ten-year $100 million President’s Excellence Fund to support faculty in fostering the creation of interdisciplinary teams to develop long-term research and scholarship collaborations. Rounds 1 and 2 of the T3 program provided funding for 200 projects of $30,000 each, as well as $2,000 to each project requesting to support the participation of undergraduate students and partial tuition support for graduate students engaged in the project.

Round 3 will follow the same guidelines and process as previous T3 programs, except that we will not be able to provide additional tuition funds as in the previous rounds. Project ideas will be entered through a web-based interface at t3.tamu.edu/. Tenured or tenure-track faculty from at least two different Texas A&M colleges/campuses are invited to form interdisciplinary research groups of three members each (Triads). These Triads will have 12-24 months to accomplish their proposed project. The three members of each Triad must come from at least two separate Texas A&M colleges or campuses. Faculty who were funded under Round 2 will not be eligible for funding under Round 3. All Round 2 projects that were not chosen for funding will be archived and their corresponding Triads will be considered dissolved. However, faculty can unarchive their projects and re-form their previous Round 2 Triads following the normal process (re-posting the project and inviting participants).

T3 is not intended to provide faculty salaries, nor is it intended for research and scholarship collaborations that are currently or previously funded. As in Rounds 1 and 2, each faculty member may sign on to only one Triad in Round 3. The project posting period will take place from September 16, 2019 to November 1, 2019. Faculty members will have from November 2, 2019, to December 6, 2019, to identify and invite other faculty members to form a Triad for their proposed project. As in previous rounds, a semi-random approach which guarantees each college/campus has at least one funded Triad will be followed. Funded projects will be announced the week of December 9, and funds provided in January 2020. Also, Triads which include at least one assistant professor will have a higher chance of being funded as the first 50 randomly funded projects will be from the subset of projects including an assistant professor; the other 50 will be chosen randomly from the entire remaining pool. After the funded Triads have been identified, project owners will need to provide a short description of their project for public posting, the role of each investigator, and a preliminary budget. Funded Triads will report annually on outcomes such as extramural funding, recognition and dissemination and will agree to present their project at an upcoming President’s Excellence Fund Symposium.

As a University with a mission to engage in discovery, Texas A&M is pleased to make these funds available to support your research. We look forward to the formation of your Triads and to the results they produce. For additional information, please go to t3.tamu.edu.