Congrats for the newly procured USDA NIFA program!

Funded by a USDA grant, Mao is serving as the PI with $500k/yr for 4 years on a brand-new program - Integrating Food Science/Engineering & Education Network (IFSEEN). 

The IFSEEN consortium comprised of the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, the University of Texas at San Antonio, New Mexico State University, and the University of New Mexico is to create an educational linkage to collaboratively enhance the presentation of underrepresented Hispanics in the food/agricultural science area by generating future Hispanic food safety/science professionals and leaders through collaboration among the four major HSIs in Texas and New Mexico. To accomplish the goal, IFSEEN team will outreach to local high schools, develop new course materials, target incoming students, train them as cohorts as they matriculate through their undergraduate education, conduct cross-disciplinary food science research, and partner with USDA agencies and Tier 1 agricultural institutions nationwide. Collectively, the IFSEEN program will increase the number of Hispanics that pursue careers in the food/agricultural science fields.

Congrats for successful renewal of the NSF PREM program!

Led by Dr. Lozano, now Mao is serving as a co-PI of the $3M funded "PREM-UTRGV/UMN-Science and Engineering of Polymeric and Nanoparticle-based Materials for Electronic and Structural Applications" for the next five years!

New semester, new university!

After early tenured and promoted to Associate Professor, Mao enjoys the evening breeze with his group members for the new semester and new UTRGV!

Bye, Dr. Tian!

Dr. Tian, after spent one year as a visiting professor at the MAO group, returned to her home institute on August 9th, 2015.

Great job, summer high school interns!

Great research experience for three summer high school interns in the MAO research group! Corbin is attending TAMU at College Station, Hector is going to TAMU Corpus Christi, and Marie is continuing on the 12th grade!