Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M University Engineering and director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), and representatives from TEES and Texas A&M visited Yucatán last week. During the visit, the delegation toured the state’s research facilities and attended a formal ceremony where TEES was inducted into the Mexican state’s research consortium, SIIDETEY, by Governor Rolando Zapata Bello.
Members of the TEES and Texas A&M delegation also attended its first SIIDETEY meeting to discuss current and future research collaborations. Currently, there are about 20 faculty in College Station and 20 in the Yucatán working on projects in the areas of sustainable energy, aquifers, coastal dynamics, early warning systems and logistics/supply chain management. TEES is also in the process of expanding the collaboration opportunities among other Texas A&M System members, and invited representatives from Texas A&M AgriLife and Texas A&M to Yucatán.
The visit was a result of Governor Zapata Bello’s visit to College Station last September when he invited TEES to become the first international academic partner in SIIDETEY. TEES was the first university research organization outside of Mexico to be asked to join the high-level research consortium and will have a physical presence in the SIIDETEY research park in Yucatán.
SIIDETEY is comprised of national and regional institutions such as the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de Mexico, CINVESTAV, the Mexican Aerospace Agency, the Mexican National Institute of Mathematics and Yucatan State University, among others.
“We are honored to become the first international member of SIIDETEY, a collaboration that will generate significant benefits for the academic and research communities of both Yucatán and Texas,” said Banks. “The caliber of research is impressive and includes representation from agriculture, engineering, geoscience and architecture. This relationship may be new, but it is growing quickly and generating significant interest across Texas A&M and the other universities and agencies under The Texas A&M University System.”