2013 Edith and Peter O'Donnell Awards Call for Nominations and 2012 Recipients

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2013 Edith and Peter O'Donnell Awards. The O'Donnell Awards acknowledge outstanding achievements by Texas-based researchers in four categories: Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology Innovation. Nomination information

Mathematician Luis Caffarelli Wins Prestigious Wolf Prize

Texas Tech University Creates Research Development Team

Texas Tech has created a new resource to help faculty members win large research grants. The Research Development Team (RDT) is a three-person group working primarily with multi-disciplinary or multi-institutional teams applying for large awards.

“Texas Tech has made a serious commitment to expand our research enterprise,” said Guy Bailey, Texas Tech president. “To achieve our goal we must provide our researchers with the support such as the RDT that they need to successfully win large competitive grants.” Read more...

HP Partners with Texas A&M, UT for New Undergrad Scholar Program

Hewlett-Packard is partnering with Texas A&M University and The University of Texas at Austin to create a pilot scholarship program that opens doors to crucial career-development opportunities for students with an interest in technology.

Texas A&M and The University of Texas were selected as vanguards of the company's latest college recruitment effort, the HP IT Scholar Program, unveiled last fall. Under the two-year program headquartered at HP's Austin campus, each university will receive $15,000 per year to create five $3,000 scholarships to benefit junior-level students pursuing undergraduate degrees in computer science, management information systems, physics or mathematics. Recipients are selected by a panel of lead advisors from those respective disciplines at each university.

The pilot program, funded through the Texas A&M Foundation, is part of HP's broader nationwide campaign to scout the country's top potential college recruits. Ahmed M. Mahmoud, HP senior vice president of HP.com, e-Commerce and marketing, says the program is intended to provide a direct pipeline to align qualified candidates with job opportunities within HP. Read more...

Researchers Suggest a Proximate Cause of Cancer

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Chemical Engineering are the first to show that mechanical property changes in cells may be responsible for cancer progression—a discovery that could pave the way for new approaches to predict, treat and prevent cancer.

Postdoctoral student Parag Katira and his adviser, Roger T. Bonnecaze, department chair in the Cockrell School of Engineering and T. Brockett Hudson Professor, worked with Muhammad Zaman of Boston University to devise a 3-D cancer model that shows the softening of cells and changes in cell binding cause cancerous behavior in cells. These mechanical property changes cause cells to divide uncontrollably—making them less likely to die and resulting in malignant tumor growth. The findings present a unique physics-based perspective on understanding cancer progression and were published recently in the American Physical Society's journal Physical Review Letters. Read more…

UT Arlington Engineer Developing Biomask to Aid Soldiers Recovering from Facial Burns

UT Arlington engineers working with Army surgeons are developing a pliable, polymer mask embedded with electrical, mechanical and biological components that can speed healing from disfiguring facial burns and help rebuild the faces of injured soldiers.

The Biomask project is led by Eileen Moss, an electrical engineer and research scientist based at the UT Arlington Automation & Robotics Research Institute in Fort Worth. Project partners include the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and Northwestern University in Chicago. The work is funded through a $700,000 research grant from the U.S. Army Medical Research & Materiel Command. Read more…

Texas A&M's Nancy Dickey at Home in the Clinic, As Well As the Corner Office

The doctor wore a trendy leather blazer instead of a white coat, but that didn't matter to Merton Hurley. Nor was he cowed by her academic résumé.

"She's straight to the point," the 84-year-old Hurley said of Nancy Dickey, the primary-care doctor he and other members of his family have relied upon for years. "You can talk with her."

Dickey's day job as president of the Texas A&M Health Science Center keeps her busy, guiding an institution scattered across eight Texas cities as budget cuts bump up against demands for more health care workers.

But for the 20 minutes she spent with Hurley recently - a few precancerous spots on his balding dome, dry and cracked feet, a slow heart rate and problems with balance - Dickey traveled to her roots.

"It's who I am," she said of maintaining a primary-care practice throughout 15 years of high-profile administrative posts. "A physician." Read more...

Dr. Amelie Ramirez Named to Influential Board of Directors

New TAMEST Board of Directors' member Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday, has been elected to the board of directors for C-Change, a national organization that aims to leverage the expertise of leaders from government, business and nonprofit sectors of society to eliminate cancer as a major health problem as soon as possible.

Founded in 1998, C-Change’s approaches cancer as a societal burden that everyone bears the responsibility for addressing.

C-Change’s 150 members identify opportunities for collective action and apply the group’s unique strength—the collective expertise and resources of leaders from the three sectors of society—to accelerate action to end cancer.

The group’s 22-member board of directors is elected to staggered three-year terms by a vote of the entire C-Change membership, including former President George H.W. Bush, cyclist Lance Armstrong, TV personalities Larry King and Paula Zahn, former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and more. Read more...

NAS Honors 17 for Major Contributions to Science

TAMEST Member George Heilmeier is One of Four 2012 Charles Stark Draper Prize Recipients

The National Academy of Engineering's 2012 Charles Stark Draper Prize has been awarded to TAMEST Member Dr. George H. Heilmeier as well as Wolfgang Helfrich, Martin Schadt and T. Peter Brody “for the engineering development of the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) that is utilized in billions of consumer and professional devices.”

Dr. Heilmeier discovered the dynamic scattering mode (DSM), which resulted in the first operational LCD. Liquid crystals are materials that have properties of both liquids and crystals. DSM allows them to scatter light when a voltage is applied. Shortly after Heilmeier’s discovery, DSM LCDs could be widely found in watches and calculators. Read more…

George P. Mitchell Honored with Tribute Video at TAMEST's Ninth Annual Conference

Senator Hutchison & Nobel Prize Winner Professor Samuel Ting Spoke at the 9th Annual TAMEST Conference in Houston

On Friday, January 13th, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Nobel Prize winner Professor Samuel Ting delivered remarks at The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas (TAMEST) 9th annual conference in Houston. Click here to read Senator Hutchison’s op-ed in the Houston Chronicle about how TAMEST is helping Texas lead the way in innovation.

Read more...

TAMEST Helps Texas Lead Way in Innovation

Our state's world-class research institutions, combined with our state's pro-growth tax and regulatory policies, have made Texas an oasis for scientists, researchers and inventors. As incubators for groundbreaking new technologies and research, our university-based innovation hubs are also magnets for savvy entrepreneurs, new businesses and industries - and for the new jobs that they create.

This past year, our state's leadership in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) was underscored by the international recognition garnered by two of Texas' brightest stars, one a distinguished scientist with decades of experience and the other a high school student beginning her career. Read more...

2012 TAMEST Board Officer and Member Appointments

Fracking Fears Mostly Unfounded

by Dr. Stephen Holditch

As recently as 2001, the production of gas naturally occurring deep inside shale rock provided less than two percent of total U.S. natural gas production. Today, it is approaching 30 percent. As late as 2007, it was commonly assumed that the United States would be importing large amounts of liquefied natural gas from the Middle East and other areas.

Today, almost overnight in natural-resource years, we are not only self-sufficient in natural gas, we have enough natural gas for the rest of this century on the basis of current demand. This same horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology is now being used in liquids-rich shales to increase oil production. These resource plays are in their infancy and can clearly improve the energy security of the United States.

Nonetheless, the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of shale rock to release gas trapped deep beneath the earth’s surface has inspired public fear-mongering, mostly around presumed threats to air quality and water quality. Most of that fear is unfounded. Read more...

Other News:

BCM Cancer Genetics Laboratory Offers Cutting-Edge Testing

Rice, UCSD Scientists Probe Form, Function of Mysterious Protein

UT Cockrell School Scientists Create First Free-Standing 3-D Cloak

Self-Destruct Gene Could Cut Mosquito Population