Faculty awarded funding for interdisciplinary projects

Texas A&M University recently awarded grants to more than 20 faculty members at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center for its T3, or Triads for Transformation, program. T3 provides funding to groups of three faculty members (the triads in T3’s name) to stimulate and support innovative interdisciplinary research. The faculty members must be from at least two different colleges or institutes within the university.

In the first round of grants, awarded in March, more than 30 Health Science Center faculty members’ projects were funded. This is now the second time these grants are awarded.

T3 grants foster new research and scholarship by moving the best ideas from vision to proof-of-concept. This program enables interdisciplinary teams to develop long-term research and scholarship collaborations.

This round’s projects with Health Science Center faculty members include:

• Antihistamines cause mesenteric lymphatic vessel dysfunction and development of metabolic syndrome
  • Anatoliy Gashev, MD, PhD, associate professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine
  • Shannon Glaser, PhD, associate professor at the College of Medicine
  • Mansoor A. Khan, RPh, PhD, professor and vice dean at Texas A&M Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy at the College Station campus
• Assessing and remediating health and safety issues in children’s play spaces in resort settings
  • Jay Maddock, PhD, FAAHB, dean of the Texas A&M School of Public Health
  • John Spengler, JD, PhD, department head and professor at the School of Public Health
• Commercially viable software for the automated whole-brain mapping of fluorescently-labeled cells
  • Lee Shapiro, PhD, associate professor at the College of Medicine
  • Jun Wang, MD, PhD, assistant professor at the College of Medicine
• Delivery of CRISPR/Cas-9 using cationic liposome
  • Mohammad Nutan, PhD, associate professor at the Texas A&M Rangel College of Pharmacy
  • Pooneh Bagher, PhD, assistant professor and associate department head at the College of Medicine
• Framing gun control as a suicide prevention measure: influencing health education, public perception
  • Timothy Callaghan, PhD, assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health
• Interplay between gut microbiome and innate immunity in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis
  • Deqiang Sun, PhD, assistant professor at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology
• Miniaturized photonic crystal bio-sensors for sensitive and label-free detection of bio-markers
  • Genny Carrillo, MD, MPH, associate professor at the School of Public Health
• Novel regulation in assembly of the NADPH oxidase-2 (Nox2) complex during spaceflight in muscle
  • Thomas Kent, MD, professor and associate dean for Engineering Medicine at the College of Medicine
• p53-SIRT1 cross-talk in CrVI-induced reproductive toxicity
  • Ke Zhang, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Biosciences and Technology
• Striatal cholinergic dysfunction in neurogenetic disorders
  • Laura N. Smith, PhD, assistant professor at the College of Medicine
  • William Griffith, PhD, Regents Professor and department head at the College of Medicine
• The burden of crop and livestock disease-associated production losses
  • Gregory Colwell, PhD, professor at the School of Public Health
  • Rebecca Susann Bryson Fischer, PhD, MPH, DTMH, assistant professor at the School of Public Health
• The role of MALAT1 and Nrf2 in regulating diabetogenic effects of early life air pollution exposure
  • Natalie Johnson, PhD, assistant professor at the School of Public Health
  • Alva Ferdinand, DrPH, JD, assistant professor at the School of Public Health
• The sexually dimorphic control of local androgens on white adipose tissue lipid metabolism
  • Mahua Choudhury, PhD, associate professor at the College of Pharmacy