PRISE: PANTHER RISE

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

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

Pvamu

AND TAMU PURSUE

Joint Projects Through Research Partnership Grant Initiative

The Vice Presidents of Research at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and Texas A&M University (TAMU) initiated the Panther Research and Innovation for Scholarly Excellence (PRISE) grant program in October 2020 to boost faculty research collaboration between the two institutions and increase the submission of multidisciplinary, collaborative federal proposals to address complex problems.

The first cohort of the 2021 PRISE grant program funded $300,000 to support 30 faculty members teamed up from both institutions. The new initiative was competitive, and the faculty interest in the program grew significantly in 2022.

Throughout 2022, PVAMU Vice President of Research & Innovation, Dr. Magesh Rajan, his team, and Interim TAMU Vice President of Research, Dr. Jack Baldauf, increased faculty research collaborations between the two institutions. PVAMU and Texas A&M awarded $400,000 in grants to support 10 PVAMUTexas A&M teams of faculty investigators conducting research projects under the 2022 Panther Research and Innovation for Scholarly Excellence (PRISE) grant program.

“The PRISE initiative is an example of how interinstitutional scholarly research projects build relationships to discover ongoing professional and research opportunities,” said VP Rajan.

“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. The program received an overwhelming number of 37 proposals, many of which were outstanding. Following an extensive review process, ten proposals were selected each for funding of $40,000 per 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 TAMU’s Dr. Baldauf. “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.”

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 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