Nominees were asked to confirm their nomination by providing a brief statement on why they want to serve if elected. These statements, with links (if available) to the PI’s home page, are posted below. See the full College/Unit CPI seat allocations for 2025-2026.
2025-2026 CPI election results are noted below.
Vice Chair
- (Still TBD)
AgriLife Research
- Tarpley, Lee (Soil and Crop Sciences) – “The CPI improves the research environment of the greater Texas A&M community by working with administration to address specific items. Lee Tarpley would be honored to again represent AgriLife Research. During his previous tenure on CPI, Lee Tarpley was twice re-appointed to the CPI Executive Committee for a total of three years before CPI term limits kicked in. Lee also served as CPI representative on three external committees. For example, Lee Tarpley helped (a) interface between Maestro administration and PIs, (b) promote the visibility and status of Export Controls offices; (c) push definitions of critical IT infrastructure that satisfied both the research community and IT security needs; and (d) emphasized the need for AgriLife Research to be at the table for campus-wide coordination of core facilities. Within the research community, AgriLife Research provides the most intense multi-disciplinary interactions, widest range of basic to applied research and diverse funding sources, including commodity groups, industry, regional entities, and federal agencies. Lee Tarpley values the multiple interests in AgriLife Research and the Research Community. As a Professor of Plant Physiology located at a Center, his research is supported through a variety of sources, and graduate students under his research direction have been from both the US and other countries. Lee Tarpley will continue to work hard to serve AgriLife Research PIs; he will promote the greater good of, and efficiency of, the research endeavor, and ensure knowledge of, and access to, the broader research support infrastructure.”
AgriLife Extension
- Scheiner, Justin (Horticultural Sciences) – “Most professionals in the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service are involved in research, directly or indirectly. However, there are a number of internal and external barriers and challenges to carry out research efficiently. My goal on the Council of Principal Investigators will be to represent those involved in applied research to the best of my abilities to increase resources, eliminate unnecessary rules and processes, and increase transparency. I serve as an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Horticultural Sciences, and I am an active researcher. My program has been funded by over forty federal, state, and internal grants as well as several public and private contracts. I serve as chair/co-chair of eleven graduate student committees and teach the largest class at TAMU. Since 2014, I have published over fifty refereed journal articles, Extension publications and books. I currently serve in leadership positions with several national and state scientific and industry organizations. If elected I look forward to the opportunity to represent those involved in research at the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.”
Agriculture and Life Sciences
- Athrey, Giri (Poultry Science) – “I am honored to stand for a second term as the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences representative to the CPI. I am an Associate Professor and Associate Department Head in the Department of Poultry Science, and I lead a program focusing on multi-omics approaches in animal, environmental, and human health contexts. My research has been funded by the USDA, DoD, NSF, State of Texas, and private foundations. I currently teach both undergraduate genetics and graduate genomics and bioinformatics courses. As a member of the graduate faculty in POSC, ENTO, EEBL, I feel well connected to faculty needs and concerns, especially those that require an interdisciplinary perspective on research, infrastructure, and training priorities. During my first term, I have functioned as liaison to the COALS/AgriLife leadership team, advocating for the interests of our faculty, and I hope to continue representing early- and mid-career colleagues in shaping university-wide research and training capabilities. I believe that maintaining this liaison role will further strengthen collaborative structures and foster innovation across our university.”
Arts and Sciences
- Brooker, Rebecca (Psychological & Brain Sciences) – “I am a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and am the director of the Development of Mind and Emotions Laboratory at Texas A&M University. I am also a faculty affiliate of the Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience and hold a courtesy appointment in the Department of Educational Psychology. My research is in the field of Developmental Affective Neuroscience, with a focus on how behavioral and biological factors interact to predict risk for anxiety problems in infants and toddlers and their mothers. This work largely leverages community samples and uses longitudinal mixed-method designs to answer questions about complex human behaviors and risk for mental illness. In addition to internal awards, my work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIMH, NICHD, NIGMS), the Society for Research in Child Development, the State of Montana Commissioner of Higher Education, the Mental Research Institute, and the John Templeton Foundation. I am currently a Co-PI on a multi-site award that tracks mothers and their infants across the first three years of life, leveraging survey, neuroimaging, and laboratory observations to understand anxiety risk across the dyad. I am also a standing member of the Psychosocial Development, Risk, and Prevention study section at NIH. I am interested in serving with CPI to continue to address critical issues confronted by faculty and trainee PIs and to identify additional ways to support faculty conducting cutting-edge, high impact research. I am motivated to remove obstacles to faculty and student grant applications and administration, to help faculty find expert collaborators for top-quality proposals, and to address current obstacles to the recruitment of and work with community samples in human subjects research. I would look forward to representing the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, with attention to supporting a faculty with diverse research interests in their efforts to continue to conduct top-quality work.”
- Powers, David (Chemistry) – “I am a Professor and Associate Department Head in Chemistry. I began my independent career at Texas A&M in 2015. I manage a research program at the intersection of organic, inorganic, and materials chemistry that develops new tools and strategies for sustainable chemical synthesis. My program has been supported by a diverse funding streams, including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Welch Foundation, and the Petroleum Research Fund. My research program is highly collaborative and relies on shared instrument facilities both inside the University and around the country. These collaborative initiatives have simultaneously enriched my research program and highlighted the shared challenges that many of us confront. One common challenge is the quality and accessibility of research infrastructure. As a CPI representative, I will advocate the investment on the state-of-the-art research infrastructure and strongly encourage the University to re-launch the Research Development Fund. In addition, many of us are currently facing considerable uncertainties with respect to research support. I will strongly advocate clearly communicated, accessible mechanisms to bridge research activities so we can all continue to plan for the future. I am looking forward to the opportunity to contribute to the elevation of research excellence at Texas A&M.”
- Safonov, Alexei (Physics & Astronomy) – “Thank you to everyone who nominated me for CPI membership—I’m truly honored by your trust. I accepted the nomination because I believe my experience can help strengthen and protect the TAMU research enterprise, which is vital to our students, community, and broader society. These are extraordinarily challenging times, and it is more important than ever that we support one another. We must act efficiently to ensure the administration is promptly informed of the issues researchers face, the voices of PIs are heard clearly, and we engage constructively with leadership to find the best possible solutions. I am fully prepared to serve on the council and am committed to working with and for you. I am a Professor at the Department of Physics & Astronomy working in the area of experimental particle physics. I joined TAMU in 2006 as a junior faculty and built my research program, which is now a large enterprise that includes researchers, engineers, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students. It is funded by grants from the DOE, NSF and national labs. I am very familiar with many of the challenges facing a PI at TAMU since we hire several people a year, constantly apply for grants and have multiple funding accounts, and a sizable contingent of our team is stationed in Geneva, where our experiment is located. If elected, some of the areas I would like to focus on include the ever changing and overly complicated hiring rules, and the overhead from various in-house additions to already overwhelming reporting and compliance requirements on the PIs from federal agencies. Not all of these local inventions are thoroughly thought through before being implemented and unnecessarily add to the already high load on PIs. For the College of Arts and Sciences, we still feel the negative impact of centralization that took away resources from the departments is another area that needs improvement. The recent turmoil with the potential IDC changes by feds and plans for drastic reduction in research funding is very troublesome and threatens U.S. leadership in science and technology. One of the immediate impacts will be on recruiting and support of the graduate students, which requires quick action at the level of the university to avoid debilitating consequences that will last for decades. We need to work with the administration and the State to find solutions that would preserve this university’s status and strength, which are not possible without a strong research enterprise that is a sum of research programs of all of us.”
Dentistry
- Liu, Sufang (Biomedical Science) – “I currently serve as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, where I lead a NIH-funded research program focused on the neural mechanisms underlying trigeminal neuropathic pain and its related comorbidities. I am honored to be nominated as a representative to the Council of Principal Investigators (CPI) for the Texas A&M College of Dentistry. If elected, I will be dedicated to effectively representing the interests of our research community within the broader CPI framework. I will advocate for transparent and consistent communication between faculty and administration, support the development of interdisciplinary research collaborations across the Texas A&M University System, and work to ensure that the unique needs of faculty engaged in both clinical and basic science research are recognized and supported. It would be a privilege to serve as a voice for my colleagues and to help strengthen and connect the research environment within the College of Dentistry and the wider university community.”
Engineering
- Raghavan, Shreya (Biomedical Engineering) – “I am honored to be nominated for the Council of Principal Investigators, representing College of Engineering PIs. I view this as a critical responsibility: to ensure PI voices are effectively integrated into our institutional strategy to maximize research excellence at Texas A&M. I joined the Aggie faculty family in January 2020, in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. My research program applies engineering principles to address significant health challenges, fostering discovery for human well-being. My research program’s strong support from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas provides me with a comprehensive understanding of the research lifecycle. As co-lead of the Texas Regional Center for Excellence in Cancer at Texas A&M, I bridge engineering, life, and health sciences within TAMU and across the Texas Medical Center, cultivating crucial interdisciplinary collaborations. My leadership in national scientific societies, including the Society for Biomaterials and the Biomedical Engineering Society, have allowed me to develop and implement effective administrative practices in scientific organizations. I am excited to bring this understanding and my demonstrated commitment to service to the CPI. I aim to be a critical and reciprocal link between administration and faculty, advancing our shared vision of delivering societal impact through groundbreaking research.”
- Ware, Taylor (Biomedical Engineering) – “I am honored to be nominated for CPI, and I want to serve our research community. Research at our university faces acute and long-term threats. CPI has a critical role in helping the university protect the research mission. Towards advancing that shared goal, I will advocate for the value of research to be communicated broadly and loudly. Furthermore, I will advocate for the university not to “over comply” with increasing restrictions on people and ideas. I also hope to contribute to solutions for the quotidian bottlenecks that slow research, such as those found in award and contract management. My experience as a PI is summarized below. I joined Texas A&M as an associate professor in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering in August 2020. My research group focuses on designing polymeric materials that undergo planned changes in properties. We leverage these responsive materials to make new medical devices. This work has been supported by NIH, NSF, various DoD funding agencies, and private industry. Over my 10-year faculty career, I have been PI or Co-PI on grants that have totaled over $56M, with ~$6M directed to my lab. I am a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.”
Libraries
- Foster, Margaret (Medical Sciences Library) – “It would be an honor for me to serve on the CPI and represent the University Libraries. I have been in a variety of roles on campus, as a student, a student worker, a staff member, and a faculty member. Currently, I am the Evidence Synthesis and Scholarly Dissemination Librarian and the Head of the Center for Systematic Reviews and Research Syntheses at the Medical Sciences Library. For the past 20 years, I have collaborated on hundreds of synthesis projects across many disciplines such as medicine, veterinary medicine, education, agriculture, engineering, and others. I have worked on grants in a variety of capacities, from PI to contractor. Serving on the CPI, I would like to expand the outreach of the libraries by providing insight for the council on research services and identifying how those services could be enhanced to best meet researchers’ needs.”
School of Medicine
- Gregory, Carl (Medical Physiology) – “It is an honor to be nominated as a candidate for the Council of Principal Investigators (CPI), and to represent the College of Medicine in this capacity. My background is in molecular biology and biochemistry with training from the University of York (United Kingdom), the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and at Tulane University (Louisiana). I am currently a tenured associate professor in the Department of Medical Physiology with an active research program specializing in stem cell biology, musculoskeletal regeneration and bone malignancy. Our research has been funded by several extramural funding bodies and it is currently funded by two NIH grants. I have had the privilege of mentoring many graduates, undergraduates and postdoctoral fellows in my laboratory during 17 years at Texas A&M and I participate in graduate and medical education. I also currently serve on the Graduate Instruction Committee, the College of Medicine Tenure and Promotion Committee, the MD/PhD Advisory Committee and the Vivarium User Group. I have also served two past terms on the CPI including the CPI-Executive Committee. My group’s funded projects are critically dependent on collaboration with investigators in the College of Medicine, the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Departments within the College of Engineering. As such, I have a strong appreciation for the intellectual diversity of our university, and I will work with CPI officers to maintain and grow multi-disciplinary collaborative initiatives throughout Texas A&M. While strong collaborations and our committed faculty play the major role in securing funds from an ever-more competitive extramural landscape, administrative and infrastructural support for research and scholastic activities is critical for sustained success. With continuous and welcome feedback, I will work to be an effective representative for the hardworking community of principal investigators at Texas A&M University and the College of Medicine.”
School of Public Health
- Johnson, Natalie (Environmental and Occupational Health) – “As a Principal Investigator in the Texas A&M School of Public Health since 2013, I am honored to serve as a CPI representative to advocate for the needs and interests of our research community. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Faculty of Toxicology. My research focuses on inhalation toxicology, with an emphasis on health effects of air pollution, particularly in susceptible populations like pregnant women and children. I have sustained external funding from NIH and foundations. I believe in the importance of collective leadership to advance research policies, infrastructure, and support systems. Representing my colleagues’ voices and perspectives—especially those of early-career investigators and interdisciplinary researchers—is a responsibility I value. I am committed to fostering an environment where innovation thrives and faculty are empowered to navigate and advance their research.”
Texas A&M Non-Academic Units
- Kotinek, Jonathan (Division of Academic Affairs) – “I am honored to be considered for the new CPI seat representing non-academic units at Texas A&M. I serve as Director for Honors Academy in Academic Affairs and have been working in Honors at Texas A&M for over 20 years. I am currently a co-PI on a USDA Higher Education Challenge grant that is a collaboration with Honors colleagues at 14 different institutions and have previous experience as a co-PI on Larry’s Johnson’s NSF GK-12 Partnership for Environmental Education and Rural Health grant. I am excited to help increase visibility and access to these kinds of projects for my TAMU colleagues as well as support and enhance opportunities for the hundreds of undergraduates we have working on sponsored research projects. If elected, I look forward to working with PIs in administrative roles or other non-academic units to better understand and advocate for your needs and concerns.”
Texas Transportation Institute
- Bahar Dadashova (Roadside Safety) – “I am a Research Scientist and Assistant Program Manager at Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a graduate faculty member of the Texas A&M University (TAMU) Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and one of the founding members of the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science Laboratory for Urban Artificial Intelligence. My research focuses on developing and implementing interdisciplinary methods and study designs focusing on performance evaluation of human-centered transportation infrastructure. I have been a PI and co-PI on 27 research projects and grants funded by the National Academy of Sciences, US Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Texas and other state DOTs, and a key investigator in over 30 research projects. I conduct multidisciplinary research and frequently collaborate with faculty members across multiple colleges and departments, including but not limited to the College of Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering, and School of Public Health. I have supervised and served as Master and PhD committee member for graduate students across multiple departments and colleges most of whom have built and/or started their career in transportation field. I am also an active member of professional organizations including the Transportation Research Board and American Statistical Association. If elected, I will continue facilitating and building cross-collaborative research initiatives between TTI and TAMU Colleges and Schools. I will also continue actively engaging and mentoring young researchers and students from various backgrounds and help them build careers in transportation engineering and planning. I appreciate your support.”
Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
- Iyer, Srividhya (Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology) – “I am honored to be nominated to represent the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on the CPI. I joined the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology as an Assistant Professor in Oct 2024. My lab focusses on how protein misfolding impacts musculoskeletal health and repair. My research spans multiple disciplines, is collaborative by design and funded by the NIH. Having spent my early career in two institutions (University of Arkansas Medical Sciences 2010-2019; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical campus 2019-2024), I bring a different perspective that might be useful in addressing the challenges faced by our research-intensive faculty. As a CPI member I would be committed to (i) fostering opportunities for interdisciplinary research that can be leveraged for extramural funding, (ii) represent and advocate interests of research-intensive faculty (iii) serve as a conduit between stakeholders, administration and research faculty to advance the mission of TAMU and (iv) advocate for for programs that engage students more actively in research.”
*The CPI defines a “PI” as a PI or Co-PI on at least one externally reviewed and funded project or grant within the previous three years. –see bylaws, Section 2. Representation, A. Definition of PI
**see bylaws Section 2. Representation, F. Allocation of Seats