From the Founding Director
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Welcome to Issue 6 of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study newsletter. As we enter the summer months, the Institute staff is busy helping deans, department heads, and prospective hosts of Faculty Fellows finalize recruitment of the 2019-2020 class of outstanding scholars. These scholars, as those who have come before, will be collaborating with faculty and students at Texas A&M University at the frontiers of knowledge.
I am pleased to report that our momentum remains strong. I express my sincere appreciation to all who are helping us advance Texas A&M.
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Harold Adams, 2014-2015 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute in the College of Architecture, joined the College as a faculty member in 2019. The honors for Harold continue to proliferate, even after he has already been awarded the highest honors one can achieve in Architecture. Among many other activities, Harold Adams was the founding Chairman of the World Trade Center Institute located in Baltimore, Maryland, and for 30 years remained in that position. On April 11, 2019 he was honored for this outstanding leadership by 300 of the region’s top business leaders.
During the May 2019 graduation ceremony, Harold received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters for his strategic contributions to the College of Architecture and to Texas A&M University. This is a rare honor at Texas A&M, which does not commonly award honorary doctorate degrees. Thank you, Dr. Adams, for representing excellence in business and architecture and for bringing your talents to the Hagler Institute.
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Hagler Institute
Spring Eminent Scholar Lecture
One of the most unusual uses of mathematics is in the restoration of great works of art, and that was exactly the topic of a recent presentation by mathematician
Ingrid Daubechies
. Dr. Daubechies, one of the most cited mathematicians in the world,
is a 2016-2017 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute and the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke University. She presented the Hagler Institute’s 2019 Spring Eminent Scholar Lecture entitled “Mathematicians Helping Art Conservators & Art Historians." Dr. Daubechies explained how she used mathematics to recently help restore a fresco reduced to thousands of pieces of rubble in World War II, as portrayed in the accompanying slides from her presentation.
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In a ceremony on May 8, 2019, Dr. Roger Howe was awarded the title of
Texas A&M University Distinguished Professor
, recognizing the highest level of achievement in teaching, research, and service. Roger Howe, 2014-2015 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute, is one of the nine of 61 Faculty Fellows who are permanent members of the Hagler Institute, meaning those who have joined Texas A&M’s faculty after completing their time in-residence at the Hagler Institute. Professor Howe has one of the more unusual backgrounds. He is working in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture in the College of Education and Human Development. He is also the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Yale University, and he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the frontiers of mathematics. His current passion is to improve the teaching of mathematics to America’s children. He has joined Texas A&M to design a program aimed at advancing knowledge of mathematics in America’s early K-12 classes.
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We are pleased to share the news that
Yonggang Huang
,
2018-2019 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute, has been chosen as the recipient of the prestigious Theodore von Karman Medal. The award, presented by the American Society of Civil Engineers, recognizes distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics in the field of civil engineering. He has received official notice of the award, which mentions his affiliation with the Hagler Institute at Texas A&M as one of his honors and achievements. Due to schedule conflicts regarding his son’s 2019 graduation from college he will not receive the award in person until May 2020 at Columbia University at the conference of the Engineering Mechanics Institute. Professor Huang has been in-residence at Texas A&M for multiple times throughout the academic year 2018-2019, collaborating with faculty and students in the Department of Civil Engineering. He will complete his scheduled in-residence research during summer 2019. Dr. Huang is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University.
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For those who wonder if Faculty Fellows have much interaction with undergraduates, look no further than Robert Skelton, 2014-2015 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute, and now University Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. On April 9, 2019, Dr. Skelton made a presentation to a standing room only crowd of engineering honors students. Bob has almost single handedly introduced a new field to engineering – that of “tensegrity” – the mathematics and engineering of building strong structures with light materials. His work has applications to many situations, including reducing the cost and difficulty of sending materials to the International Space Station, as well as designing new architectural structures.
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Standing room only at Dr. Skelton's lecture.
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Tom Ginsburg is Professor of International Law and Political Science at the University of Chicago and a 2017-2018 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute. Professor Ginsburg received the high honor of being invited to present the 2019 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture at the University of Cambridge. The Lecture is an annual three-part series given by a person of eminence in the field of international law. Professor Ginsburg’s three presentations were on March 12 through March 14 on “Democracies and International Law: The Trials of Liberalism.” Professor Ginsburg has scheduled his visits to A&M’s School of Law in Fort Worth and to the College Station campus over multiple years, having arrived again in May 2019.
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Stefan H.E. Kaufmann, Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Germany and 2018-2019 Faculty Fellow of the Hagler Institute, arrived in Texas in April to begin his collaborative work at Texas A&M’s College of Medicine and College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. His presence in the U.S. immediately got the attention of the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Kaufmann presented the keynote plenary lecture in an all-day symposium held in Houston on April 22, 2019, titled “Tools and Vaccines for the Control of Tuberculosis and Other Neglected Tropical Diseases.” Dr. Kaufmann lectured on “How To Tackle the Most Successful Pathogen on Earth”. The Hagler Institute for Advanced Study co-sponsored the event with Baylor College of Medicine.
Dr. Kaufmann also co-authored additional papers that recognized the Hagler Institute. In the April 3, 2019 issue of
Frontiers in Immunology
Dr. Kaufmann’s paper titled “Immunology’s Coming of Age” provides a history of immunology. In his article in the May 2019 issue of
Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics,
titled “Highly Affordable Vaccines are Critical for Our Continued Efforts to Reduce Global Childhood Mortality”, Dr. Kaufmann provides a strategy to supply vaccines to poor countries and discusses the potential impact of these vaccines. An additional article, titled “Mycofactocin Is Associated with Ethanol Metabolism in Mycobacteria," appeared in the May 2019 issue of the journal of the
American Society for Microbiology
.
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Jess C. “Rick” Rickman III ‘70, an enthusiastic advocate for the Hagler Institute and a regular guest at the Institute’s annual External Advisory Board meeting, was the recipient of the
Jimmy Williams ’18 Distinguished Service Award
on March 20, 2019. The award is not presented every year, but when it is presented the award goes to an Aggie from the Dallas area who epitomizes commitment to family, the local community, and to Texas A&M University. Rick is the third official advocate for the Hagler Institute to receive the award, joining Bill Carter ’69 and Ronald Skaggs ’65 in this distinguished group of Texas A&M alumni. Sue and Rick Rickman are shown in the picture entering the 2019 Hagler Institute gala.
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Director Junkins Receives Highest Honor
John L. Junkins,
Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering, holder of the Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair in Innovation, and Founding Director of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University is this year’s recipient of the Goddard Astronautics Award, which is the highest honor one can receive in Aerospace Engineering. The award was presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) at a black-tie event on May 15, 2019 at the AIAA Aerospace Spotlight Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. The AIAA is the world’s largest aerospace technical society with 30,000 members from 85 countries as well as 95 corporate members. As the AIAA citation indicates, Professor Junkins, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, won
“for advances in aerospace research and education,
for creating an institute for promoting scientific
excellence, and for enabling contributions in spacecraft navigation, dynamics, and control.”
Along with his leadership of the Hagler Institute, Dr. Junkins continues to add to an impressive array of research accomplishments and graduate student mentorship.
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Dr. Junkins provides remarks during the AIAA gala.
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If you have news to share, please send articles, suggestions, or other information to
Dr. Clifford L. Fry, Associate Director, Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University,
cfry@tamu.edu
.
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