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Two Texas A&M Faculty-Members Receive Innovation Awards

May 5, 2017

Dr. Joshua Yuan (left) and Dr. Greg Sword (right) received an Innovation Award from Texas A&M Technology Commercialization (TTC) during an awards luncheon Thursday.
Dr. Joshua Yuan (left) and Dr. Greg Sword (right) received an Innovation Award from Texas A&M Technology Commercialization (TTC) during an awards luncheon Thursday.
By Research Communications and Public Relations

Two Texas A&M University faculty members each received an Innovation Award from Texas A&M Technology Commercialization (TTC) during an awards luncheon Thursday. The annual award recognizes researchers whose work exemplifies the spirit of innovation within The Texas A&M University System.

TTC presented the awards during its 2017 Patent and Innovation Awards Luncheon, held Thursday, May 4, at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center in the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M. The event also recognized 88 faculty members and other researchers from across the A&M System who secured U.S. patents or plant variety protection certificates for their innovations during the 2016 calendar year.

Texas A&M Provost and Executive Vice President Karan L Watson said, “Texas A&M faculty strive for excellence as comprehensive scholars, including excellent teaching, research, discovery and impact. These awards acknowledge their success in applying new knowledge to the issues of our day, through partnership with industry, commercialization of new ideas and transfer of knowledge to the people of our state, nation and world.”

TTC presented Innovation Awards to:

  • Gregory A. Sword, a professor and holder of the Charles R. Parencia Chair in Cotton Entomology, Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Sword’s research led to collaboration with an industry partner, which has subsequently produced a commercially available seed treatment that allows cottonseed plagued by dwindling irrigation water and drought to produce more fiber.
  • Shuhua “Joshua” Yuan, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has employed integrated and multidisciplinary approaches to address important issues in bioenergy and plant biology. He has led more than $9.8 million in major research initiatives from the U.S. Department of Energy, and his lab has pioneered lignin conversion and photosynthetic hydrocarbon production.

In addition, TTC presented 45 Patent Awards to 64 faculty members and other researchers from Texas A&M, the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Texas A&M AgriLife Research, plus a faculty member from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and another from West Texas A&M University, whose inventions were granted patent protection by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during 2016.

TTC also gave six Plant Variety Protection Certificate Awards to 23 researchers from Texas A&M and Texas A&M AgriLife whose plant varieties were granted certificates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Variety Protection Office during 2016.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $892.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (2015), based on expenditures of more than $866.6 million in fiscal year 2015. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit http://research.tamu.edu.

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