COnvergence REsearch Incubator (CORE)

The grand challenges our world faces today are complex and tightly interconnected. Addressing them requires convergence across disciplines to develop innovative, multifaceted solutions that respond to the social, economic, technological, and policy dimensions of those challenges. Such solutions will be the outcomes of a process of co-creation among and between the diverse researcher and stakeholder groups connected with these challenges.

Vision

Sustain and expand Texas A&M University’s national and global leadership in the area of convergence research toward addressing complex grand challenges.

Mission

To create a platform for convergence research among Texas A&M researchers with proven records of cross-disciplinary collaborations that supports the assembling and empowerment of research teams that successfully compete for external grants.

The CORE Goals

• Help foster a convergence research environment across Texas A&M departments, centers and institutes, and colleges.
• Provide seed funding for interdisciplinary teams addressing complex research challenges.
• Lead and support convergence research activities that strengthen new and existing collaborations at campus, national and global levels.
• Participate in creating convergence products that address any complex societal challenges, especially as related to water-energy-food nexus, circular economy and sustainable development.
• Bolster Texas A&M’s competitiveness for grants that demand proven records of success in cross- disciplinary collaboration.

One of the National Science Foundation’s 10 Big Ideas is Growing Convergence Research that integrates knowledge, tools and methodologies from the physical and social science disciplines to create a network of partnerships that stimulate innovation, discovery and translational application.to addresses complex societal grand challenges. The need for convergence research and its products is essential to “protecting human health; understanding the food, energy, water nexus; exploring the universe at all scales.”

The Texas A&M Energy Institute is well positioned to provide an enabling platform for catalyzing convergence research to address complex grand challenges. It will do so by building on its past and current experiences, which have included support of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Initiative (WEFNI), Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID), Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), and the Energy Workforce for Future Initiative. Through its internal seed grants program, the Energy Institute continues to support projects focused on energy-related challenges, including their public policy, law and social science dimensions.

The Institute will leverage its approximately 300 faculty affiliates from nine colleges and schools and more than 30 departments, and continue to engage stakeholders from public, private and civil society organizations at state, national and global levels. 

For more information, contact:

Bassel Daher, Ph.D.
Texas A&M Energy Institute CORE Incubator
Assistant Research Scientist | Texas A&M Energy Institute
Adjunct Assistant Professor | Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Research Fellow | Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy
bdaher@tamu.edu

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