Category: Research

Three years into its quest to reveal the nature of dark energy, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) led by The University of Texas at Austin and involving Texas A&M University is on track to complete the largest map of the cosmos ever — a three-dimensional map of 2.5 million galaxies that will help astronomers understand how and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up over time.

To help ensure the success of future space missions and the safety of spacecraft and both the astronauts and scientists who rely on them, Texas A&M is teaming up with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a first-of-its-kind partnership through the Cyclotron Institute and Texas A&M Physics and Astronomy aimed at training the next-generation workforce in the rapidly growing field of space radiation effects testing.

Physicist Alexei Safonov and biologist Joseph Sorg are among the 19 campus-wide faculty announced October 8 as Texas A&M University's 2020 class of Chancellor Enhancing Development and Generating Excellence in Scholarship (EDGES) Fellows — mid-career faculty who are making significant marks in their disciplines as promising researchers and educators.

Four of the 10 Hagler Institute for Advanced Study Fellows for 2020-21 will be affiliated with Texas A&M Science, including an expert in mass spectrometry and related phenomena, instrumentation and analysis; a pioneer in fruit physiology and ripening and signal transduction systems; a science, technology and policy advocate for low-carbon and negative-emissions science; and a theoretical chemical physicist who studies molecules using short pulses of light.

Texas A&M scientists, led by chemist Wenshe Ray Liu and biochemist Pingwei Li, are providing new insight into the molecular mechanisms behind a key cellular signaling pathway involved in antiviral immune responses they believe can be exploited in the fight against diseases from coronaviruses to cancer.

Ever wonder what it's like to work on the world's largest digital camera? Wonder no more, thanks to 2009 Texas A&M physics graduate and KAVLI Postdoctoral Fellow Andrew Bradshaw, who shares first-person perspective and photographs from inside the LSST camera clean room at Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

A major National Science Foundation grant accelerating the prototyping and testing of some of the most powerful optical and infrared technologies ever engineered as the underpinning of the Giant Magellan Telescope includes hundreds of Texas A&M-built actuators that will support the GMT’s massive primary mirror and keep it precisely aligned.

Three Texas A&M projects are among 64 university research awards announced earlier this summer by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a $132 million high energy physics-focused funding package aimed at advancing knowledge of how the universe works at its most fundamental levels.

Congratulations to Texas A&M chemistry Ph.D. candidate Rachel Davidson '19, one of 13 recipients of the Cottrell Fellowship, funded by Research Corporation for Science Advancement in partnership with the National Science Foundation to support the work of postdoctoral students affected by institutional hiring freezes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Texas A&M astronomer and 2019-20 Council of Principal Investigators chair Darren DePoy will work closely with individual faculty and across the college's five departments to enhance research throughout Texas A&M Science in his new administrative role as associate dean for research.

A multi-institution team of scientists led by Texas A&M chemist James Batteas has been awarded a $1.8 million grant to establish the NSF Center for the Mechanical Control of Chemistry (CMCC), one of three new Phase I Centers for Chemical Innovation funded through the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry for 2020 and the first-ever in Texas.

During the past three years, nearly 100 electronic components of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule were tested at the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute in preparation for its historic trip as the first crewed spacecraft launched from American soil since 2011 and a major milestone in SpaceX’s ultimate quest for commercial space tourism.

Texas A&M chemist Michael Nippe has been named a Scialog Fellow for a new initiative on negative emissions science in which more than 50 promising early-career scientists will take up the pressing challenge of greenhouse gases accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

Congratulations to Texas A&M chemistry graduate students Anuvab Das and Liang Feng, who have been selected as finalists for Elsevier’s 2020 Reaxys® PhD Prize recognizing innovative and original research in chemistry and the associated sciences.

Twelve research projects — including four led by Texas A&M Science faculty — have been chosen for funding as part of The Texas A&M University System National Laboratories Office’s multi-element program to increase engagement between researchers from the A&M System and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.