Congressman Chet Edwards has been extremely supportive of our efforts in TEES in many ways. This includes advocating increases in funding for key peer reviewed programs at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies that support research in engineering here at A&M. Cong. Edwards also supports many federal initiatives put forward by TEES. He takes a strong interest in our programs and visits often. Through Cathy Reiley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Engineering for Government Affairs, and the A&M System Washington, DC office, we work closely with the Congressman and his staff. Congressman Edwards is also represented here locally by Phil Shackelford, Director of the Regional Office in College Station. Mr. Shackelford moved into that position in August. He serves as an important point of contact on TEES programs and capabilities. We are working closely with Mr. Shackelford to inform him of TEES activities, especially those linked to federal programs. To date visits with Mr. Shackelford have taken place at the Energy Systems Laboratory, the Food Protein Research and Development Center, Nuclear Heat Transfer Systems Lab, the Offshore Technology Research Center, and the Reta and Bill Haynes ‘46 Coastal Engineering Laboratory. These have been invaluable in informing him of things going on in TEES.
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On November 12, the Director (equivalent to our president) of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras visited A&M. His visit was arranged by Distinguished Prof. Kumbakonam Rajagopal from Mechanical Engineering, and it was a follow up to a visit to IIT-Madras made by Drs. Rajagopol and Maldonado in March 2007. Professor Ananth was in the United States visiting with several universities. IIT Madras is one of seven Indian Institutes of Technology. These are federally supported universities focusing on science and technology. They are among the top schools in India and in fact the world. Dr. Ananth is particularly interested in four areas of potential collaboration with A&M: petroleum engineering, nuclear engineering, ocean engineering, and transportation. These are, of course, four fields of significant strength at A&M. The interaction could open up exciting potential for our faculty and students. We look forward to pursuing further discussions with IIT-M.
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On October 22-25, the third George Bush China-U.S. Relations Conference took place in Washington, DC. This was the third in the series of biennial meetings held under the leadership of the 41st President. Former President Bush was an active participant and hosted the main banquet on Wednesday evening featuring Li Zhaoxing, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China.

Engineering was well represented. Mladen Kzeunovic from Electrical Engineering organized the Roundtable on “Electrical Energy for the 21st Century: The China-U.S. Research and Development Needs.” A paper by Warren F. Miller, Jr. from Nuclear Engineering on “The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership–The Long-Term Nuclear Research and Development Program” was featured in the joint session on “BioEnergy Development, Climate Change Mitigation, and Energy Security”. A paper from Zixiang Xiong from Electrical Engineering covered “Data Compression and Feature Extraction Research.” John Niedzwecki from Civil Engineering and the Dean’s office organized and led the “Deepwater Technology Roundtable.” Dick Ewing, TEES Research Professor, was the moderator of the forum on “The Global Transition to a Secure Energy Future” which included a paper by Christine Economides on energy sustainability and another presentation from A&M on potential joint collaboration between China and the U.S. on advanced nuclear technology. Lindsay McMullen, a senior in Biomedical Engineering, represented the Dwight Look College of Engineering as part of the group of A&M students who had an opportunity to interact with their colleagues from China who came to the conference. More information on the conference is available on the website http://china-us-conference.org/.
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As mentioned previously, representatives from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renwable Energy at the Department of Energy visited campus recently. The main focus was on bioenergy. The visitors included Tobin Harvey, Senior Advisor in Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Jacques Beaudry-Losique, Program Manager of the Biomass Program of the Office of Science, and John Ferrell, also of the Biomass Program. Joint discussions were held with both agriculture and engineering. These efforts have grown out of the A&M Bio-Energy Alliance that was signed last year between Vice Chancellor for Agriculture and Life Sciences Elsa Murano and Vice Chancellor for Engineering Kem Bennett. The agreement makes possible collaborative research in biofuels to address the broad spectrum of issues ranging from the design and development of crops as high-energy feedstock all the way to the end user (biomass conversion to conventional fuels and engine design). A focus of the visit on the engineering side was the work on the Mixalco conversion process being done by Mark Holtzapple and Cesar Granda in Chemical Engineering.
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For some time there has been a notice on the website that we will be establishing a blog in TEES. This is part of an effort to create more avenues of communication about activities in the agency. The goal is to touch on many topics such as interesting things going on in TEES, notice of upcoming events, additional information, and acknowledgments of people making key contributions to our mission.

I should begin with a disclaimer. I am a first-time blogger and, coming from the “slide rule” generation, it may take some time for me to get up to speed. So please be patient, plus this may provide some entertainment value as well.
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