T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation Selected Projects

March 9, 2018

Sent on behalf of Dr. Carol Fierke, provost and executive vice president

Colleagues,

The first initiative in our ten-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Fund—T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation—has closed and 100 innovative interdisciplinary projects have been randomly selected for funding in the inaugural year of this program. As announced in the fall 2017 State of the University Address, there will be approximately $3 million invested annually in T3 projects.

Of faculty members eligible for the program, approximately one-third participated in the 251 triads submitted projects for funding. Of the 300 faculty members funded by this program, ninety-seven are assistant professors. Funded triads included all sixteen colleges/schools, the branch campuses in Galveston and Qatar, and the University Libraries. For funded triads, the number of tuition supplements for graduate students amounts to eighty-one, while undergraduate salary supplements total seventy-five.

Of course this is only the beginning. With funding announced, we look forward to following with interest the discovery and innovation that ensues. A President’s Excellence Fund Symposium will take place in the fall to provide an opportunity for faculty and others to present their work to date on these projects as well as on the larger X-Grants initiative also underway.

With T3 projects ranging from developing new genome engineering tools to exploring transformational learning to the influence of early life stress on the memory, Texas A&M researchers working together have the imagination, vision, and creativity to contribute significantly to solving many of the world’s most pressing challenges. We believe that this unique seed-grant program will prove to be a valuable resource by transcending academic boundaries and propelling our research initiatives in powerful new directions.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s T3 program. Selected projects, along with the abstracts and project members, can be viewed on the T3 website. President Young and I look forward to your increased interactions with colleagues on campus, and to learning more about the exciting discoveries and impact that this research will undoubtedly bring forth.