District Impact: 2nd congressional district
Stories That Impact Congressional District 2
Texas A&M Researchers Go Nuclear on Cancer
Hundreds of thousands of Americans pass away each year from cancer. Research at Texas A&M, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program, is saving lives by developing astatine-211 in medically relevant quantities and delivering it to nearby facilities for fundamental research and radiopharmaceutical development. These therapies cause large amounts of damage near a tumor cell while keeping the healthy surrounding tissue and organs intact. Texas A&M is one of only a handful of centers that do this.
Read More About Texas A&M Cancer ResearchAdvancing Tornado Recovery Timely Intelligence
Texas A&M researchers, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation, have developed a new method to create damage assessments and estimate recovery times following a tornado using artificial intelligence and restoration modeling. Once post-event images are available, the model can produce damage assessments and recovery forecasts in less than an hour. Researchers are working on using this model for other types of disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
Read More About Tornado RecoveryBreakthrough Smart Plastic: Self-Healing, Shape-Shifting and Stronger Than Steel
Aerospace engineering and materials science researchers at Texas A&M have uncovered new properties of an ultra-durable, recyclable, smart plastic— paving the way for transformative applications in the defense, aerospace and automotive industries. Sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and in collaboration with ATSP Innovations, this breakthrough represents an emerging class of valuable new materials.
Read More About Self-Healing PlasticTexas Impact by the Numbers
Rising to Meet National Needs
With nearly 150 years of excellence, Texas A&M values its partnership with federal agencies to make ground-breaking research discoveries that fuel our nation's dominance across a range of critical fields. Below are just a few areas of impact.
National Security
From building the nation’s biggest and most advanced enclosed testing range for laser and hypersonic weapons and developing materials that can manage heat and scrub CO2 in circulated breathing apparatuses for warfighters, to pioneering self-healing materials and leading discoveries in nuclear science, Texas A&M's leadership in artificial intelligence, biosecurity, cybersecurity, chemistry and military science positions it as the ideal institution to advance national defense solutions.
Improving Health
At Texas A&M, health innovation starts with service — to rural families, to frontline workers, to veterans. Our scientists are creating a nasal spray that may delay Alzheimer’s disease progression by years, deploying an advanced vessel-chip to replicate real-life blood vessels to cure vascular disease, developing new cell therapies for spinal cord injuries in veterans and producing “goldilocks” radioisotopes to treat cancer without harmful radiation effects.
Food, Energy and Water Security
Whether through eradicating hard-to-treat crop diseases, utilizing artificial intelligence to produce damage and recovery assessments after tornados, forecasting ecological needs for wetlands to protect the ocean food web and human infrastructure during hurricanes, or developing an innovative and domestically sourced battery, Texas A&M is dedicated to meeting the challenges raised by global shifts in the risks associated with food, energy and water securities.
Space Exploration
By leveraging Texas A&M’s expertise and resources while bringing together stakeholders from civilian, commercial and defense, we remain a leader in space exploration. On earth we’re building robots and virtual assistants, making spacecraft reusable, pioneering aerospace medicine and leading a national consortium on in-space operations. We will also be the first university with private access to a flight facility on the International Space Station, conducting real research in space year-round.