the engineering program of the texas a&m university system (texas a&m engineering) announced today it has joined the edge® innovation network a collaborative open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia with government input to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to first responders and warfighters "becoming a member of the edge innovation network connects the dots between emergency professionals industry and academia this will smooth the way for rapid transfer of advanced defense technologies and products that will revolutionize how disasters big and small are handled worldwide " said dr robin murphy professor of computer science and engineering "focusing on emergency infomatics the new edge center will bring together texas a&m engineerings unique testing and training facilities subject matter experts and leading researchers to help edge members to deliver critical data-to-decision capabilities that will save lives reduce economic downtime from catastrophic events and create new jobs by leveraging the most advanced unmanned systems wireless networks computing and decision-making systems currently available" pete palmer director of the edge innovation network said "the edge provides a new military and government acquisition paradigm by using both physical and virtual environments where edge members and users can collaborate and innovate together to deliver gap-filling capabilities in months rather than years" sponsored by general dynamics c4 systems there are seven edge innovation centers worldwide and over 200 edge members recent new members include simulation and training systems inc orlando fla; raytheon bbn technologies corp cambridge mass; abrams learning and information systems arlington va; cognitive engineering research institute mesa ariz; and sporian microsystems inc lafayette colo about texas a&m engineering texas a&m engineering encompasses four main components of the texas a&m university system: dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university texas engineering experiment station (tees) texas engineering extension service (teex) and texas transportation institute (tti) with missions of teaching research training and response texas a&m engineering is a cornerstone of one of the states premier institutions of higher education and is uniquely positioned to leverage the capabilities each possesses in research development and training in emergency response its world-class facilities include the 279 acre emergency preparedness campus which houses disaster city® the emergency operations training center brayton fire field and riverside complexes teex a member of texas a&m engineering is the sponsor for the states elite urban search and rescue team texas task force 1 which is also one of the 28 fema federal response teams nationwide emergency informatics at texas a&m university texas a&m university is the sixth largest university in the united states with enrollment of more than 49 000 students with the second largest undergraduate and fourth largest graduate program in engineering its top-10 dwight look college of engineering is third only to mit and georgia tech in national research expenditures multidisciplinary emergency informatics expertise is reflected in the dwight look college of engineering bush school of government and public service center for robot-assisted search and rescue hazard reduction and recovery center internet 2 technology evaluation center (next generation 9-1-1) mary kay oconnor process safety center and the nuclear security science and policy institute