By Prairie View A&M University
Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University are continuing their mission of increasing research collaborations between the two institutions. PVAMU and Texas A&M are awarding $400,000 in grants to support ten PVAMU-Texas A&M teams of faculty investigators to support research projects under the 2022 Panther Research and Innovation for Scholarly Excellence grant program.
The universities initiated the PRISE grant program in October 2020 to boost the submission of multidisciplinary, collaborative proposals from the two institutions in response to federal requests for proposals to address complex problems.
“The PRISE initiative is an example of how inter-institutional scholarly research projects build relationships to discover ongoing professional and research opportunities,” said Magesh Rajan, PVAMU vice president for Research & Innovation. “There is an emergent acknowledgment of the essential value of inter-institutional collaboration, which is made increasingly more attainable by the evolution of current technologies.”
The 2022 PRISE program application procedure was modified to double the grant amount for each awardee. Thus, the application process required one PVAMU faculty member to partner with one A&M faculty member on a proposal. The program received an overwhelming number of 37 proposals, many of which were outstanding. Each submission was reviewed by a three-member panel of PVAMU and Texas A&M faculty. Ten proposals were selected for funding.
Each selected proposal is funded at a level of $40,000 for one year. It is expected that the investigator-teams will make substantial progress and submit strong proposals to external funding agencies in the next year to continue their work.
“Collaborations like these are the drivers of outstanding research,” said Jack G. Baldauf, Texas A&M interim vice president for research. “The PRISE program is designed to encourage our combined faculties to explore opportunities to address some of society’s greatest challenges. We look forward to the results of these partnerships.”
The following investigator-teams and projects were selected for the Panther-RISE Grant Awards:
Peter Ampim, PVAMU College of Agriculture & Human Sciences, and Sakiko Okumoto, Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Smart agriculture: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through plant root secretion
Javad Barouei, PVAMU College of Agriculture & Human Sciences, and Anil Somenahally, Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Mitigation of food safety risks from agriculture fields through soil microbiome management
Suxia Cui, PVAMU College of Engineering, and Dilma Da Silva, Texas A&M College of Engineering. Serverless computing risks analysis and mitigation
Vahid Faghihi, PVAMU School of Architecture, and Ivan Damnjanovic, Texas A&M College of Engineering. Investigating the effectiveness of prediction markets in teaching project risks
Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, PVAMU College of Business, and Lei Zou, Texas A&M College of Geosciences. Leveraging geospatial big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve disaster resilience in vulnerable communities
Kristan Russell, PVAMU College of Juvenile Justice, and Xinyue Ye, Texas A&M College of Architecture. Integrating crime pattern theory and spatial analytic techniques to examine youth crime
Temilola Salami, PVAMU College of Arts & Sciences, and Noni Gaylord-Harden, Texas A&M College of Liberal Arts. Developing an adaptive toolkit for the prevention of IPV and IPV-Related mental health sequelae among Black college students
Beverly Sande, PVAMU College of Education, and Gwendolyn Webb, Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. Assessing teachers’ and leaders’ perceptions and applications of culturally responsive teaching and culturally sustaining pedagogy
Shahin Shafiee, PVAMU College of Engineering, and Debjyoti Banerjee, Texas A&M College of Engineering. Leveraging machine learning for fundamental investigation of anomalous transport phenomena of nano-fluids under the effect of external fields for energy storage applications
Beverly A Spears, PVAMU College of Arts & Sciences, and Muna Bhattarai, Texas A&M College of Nursing. Examining posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, resilience and posttraumatic growth in college students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic
Both PVAMU and Texas A&M are members of The Texas A&M University System.
