Faculty Research Enhancement Program Award Winners Announced

The Texas A&M University-Commerce Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) has announced the recipients of the 2016-2017 Faculty Research Enhancement Program Awards.  The competition was open to all Texas A&M University-Commerce tenure and tenure-track faculty members.  The awarded research funds can be used for hiring adjuncts, graduate assistants or students; purchasing equipment and supplies; gathering research data; and other legitimate research expenditures.

This year’s A&M-Commerce winners include Dr. Izhar Khan (assistant professor in the Biological & Environmental Sciences department), Dr. Frannie Miller (assistant professor in the Economics and Finance department), and Dr. Padmapani Seneviratne (assistant professor in the Mathematics department).

“The FREP award will help ongoing research by graduate students and undergraduate trainees working on reproductive physiology and endocrine toxicology using zebrafish as an experimental model. Results of this research will also be used as preliminary data in a grant proposal to be submitted to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,” stated Dr. Khan.

Recipient Dr. Frannie Miller said, “When I first went back to school to study economics, it was because I wanted to be better equipped to make a difference in the agricultural industry. We will be modeling how  cattle disease might spread in Texas and subsequent economic impacts.”

Dr. Miller will be working with Dr. Steve Shwiff and Dr. Lirong Liu (professor and assistant professor in economics, respectively) on this project. Additionally, the grant money will enable Dr. Miller and her team to hire highly qualified students to assist with the research.

“This grant will provide an opportunity to start working on a new project in algebraic coding theory. Further, this grant will be used as a seed grant for writing a proposal for external funding,” Dr. Seneviratne said.

The Faculty Research Enhancement Program award will allow Dr. Seneviratne to partially support two students while they work on an Algebraic coding theory research project during the 2016-2017 academic year.