A Message from the Founding Director
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The Hagler Institute is devoted to bringing the world’s top scholars to Texas A&M University. In this issue, you will see new evidence that we are handsomely succeeding. In addition, we are excited to report the first recipients of the Thomas W. Powell ’62-Heep Foundation Hagler Institute Chair for Science and the Bradley L. “Brad” Worsham ’88-Heep-Hagler Institute Fellowship for a student in engineering. Welcome to newsletter number nine.
Best wishes to all,
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Faculty Fellow Cameron Jones
Awarded the Powell Chair
Thomas W. Powell ‘62, a successful entrepreneur and prominent supporter of Texas A&M University, established a Hagler Institute Chair for the College of Science with a $1.5 million donation matched by the Hagler Institute. The chair can only be filled by Faculty Fellows during their active terms in the Institute. Since Faculty Fellows often schedule their in-residence visits to Texas A&M over multiple years, the Chair can be awarded to more than one Faculty Fellow at a time. The chair’s endowment is intended to generate earnings to pay the compensation and expenses of a Faculty Fellow.
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We are honored to announce that the first recipient of the Chair is 2018-19 Faculty Fellow,
Dr. Cameron Jones
, pictured here. Jones, a world-renown chemist, is collaborating on research with faculty and students in the Department of Chemistry. He comes to Texas A&M University from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
Jones seeks to refine existing views on structure, bonding, and stability of hydrido, low-coordination-number, or low-oxidation-state metal complexes. The new complexes were often believed to not exist. Jones’ applies highly reactive, low-oxidation-state systems to areas as diverse as synthesis, catalysis, materials chemistry, and hydrogen storage.
In addition to many earlier honors, Jones holds the Return Senior Research Award (2017) and the Senior Research Award (2008) of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2017), and held the 2016 Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.) Australasian Lectureship (2016). Jones is an honorary member of Magdalen College in Oxford (2014–2020) and has won both the Frankland Award of the U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry (2014) and the H.G. Smith Memorial Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (2013).
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The Hagler Institute's World Class Scholars
The Hagler Institute for Advanced Study brings some of the world's finest scholars to Texas A&M University. A recent study conducted by Stanford University
[1]
, determined the most cited scholars between January 1, 1996 and December 31, 2018. The study evaluated nearly 7,000,000 published scholars and generated a list of the 100,000 most cited scholars in the world,
from any field
. The study excluded all references by an author to his or her own articles, so the remaining citations provide a measure of the importance of each author’s scholarly contributions.
All of the seventy Faculty Fellows who have come to Texas A&M through the Hagler Institute are leaders in their fields. Of these, fifty-one are included in Stanford’s list of the top 100,000 scholars. Director of the Hagler Institute,
John Junkins
, is also on this prestigious list.
Please examine
Faculty Fellow Citation Rankings
, accessible through the provided link, where we make available the list of Faculty Fellows included in the top 100,000 scholars. We also specify their field of study and percentage ranking, which demonstrates how few scholars in the world have more citations.
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[1]
Ioannidis JPA, Baas J, Klavans R, Boyack KW (2019)
A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field.
PLOS Biology
17(8):e3000384
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Professor Robert Skelton was featured in the Summer 2019 edition of
SPIRIT
, the magazine of the Texas A&M Foundation. Faculty Fellow in 2014-15, and now on the faculty at Texas A&M University as a member of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Skelton was featured for establishing an excellence endowment for the Hagler Institute to support engineering initiatives. His assessment is that universities that lead the way in engineering promote a multidisciplinary education to students. Skelton is quoted in
SPIRIT
:
“The Hagler Institute does just that by addressing
multidisciplinary problems through research in
interdisciplinary theories. This type of institute
doesn’t exist at other universities,
and that’s why I decided to donate –
to promote and expand the work being done here."
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Kaufmann Tackles Tuberculosis in India
Stefan H.E. Kaufmann
, 2018-2019 Faculty Fellow, is on the forefront of eradicating tuberculosis (TB). The Serum Institute India, the largest vaccine producer in world, has licensed the TB vaccine that Professor Kaufmann developed, labeled VPM1002, for clinical trials in India aimed at stopping the spread of TB in households. India has the highest number of TB cases in the world, and the hope is to eliminate TB from India by 2025. Dr. Kaufmann will be in-residence at Texas A&M from mid-November, 2019 through mid-March, 2020, collaborating with faculty and students in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the College of Medicine.
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Worsham's First Fellowship Recipient
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In late August,
Liz and Bradley L. Worsham, ‘88
, members of the
Hagler Institute Legacy Society
,
met the first recipient of the graduate student fellowship they endowed. They are pictured below with Sakina Mota, a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering. Sakina is working with
Dr. Maryellen Giger
, 2016-2017 Faculty Fellow from the University of Chicago. Sakina and Dr. Giger have been collaborating on stem cell research.
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Mr. and Mrs. Worsham pictured with graduate student Sakina Mota.
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Brad, who graduated from A&M in 1988, is a successful entrepreneur with a fascinating career that includes work for the CIA, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, and his own firm, BIT Systems, Inc., where he designed satellite mission management systems. He is a former Chairman of the Aerospace Engineering Advisory Board in the College of Engineering. He is now a Professor of Practice in the Department of Aerospace Engineering teaching several undergraduate courses.
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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,
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