January 2014

The Texas A&M University System and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced an agreement that is the beginning of a broad research collaboration supported by one of the largest computational sciences infrastructure dedicated to advances in agriculture, geosciences and engineering. As a premier engineering research agency of Texas, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), which conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs, will be heavily involved from the Texas A&M University System.

After successful piloting in four states—Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas—the Enhanced Passive Surveillance (EPS) system will be piloted in all major animal industries and at least 15 states over the next three years. The National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense (FAZD Center), a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence, hosted the official project kick-off meeting on November 19, 2013 in Fort Collins, Colorado, with officials from the DHS and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), animal health professionals, state animal health officials, and other stakeholders. Researchers from the Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT) were also on hand to present the customized suite of tools they developed for the EPS project. TCAT is part of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station and is working on this project in partnership with the FAZD Center.

In 2011 Texas experienced around 31,453 fires that burned more than 4 million acres. During that time, 2,947 homes were lost and more than 2,700 other structures were lost or damaged. The Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) Product Development Center coordinated the testing of a product, called TetraKO, in partnership with the Texas A&M Forest Service and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s (TEES) Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT).

The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and Tenaris S.A., which has its North American headquarters in Houston signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Jan. 7 to establish a framework for increasing collaboration among the researchers and engineers associated with the two entities.

Texas has been named a test site for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), based on a statewide proposal led by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. The university partnered with the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and is one of six entities throughout the nation that were selected as test sites.