the ability to gather and analyze large and complex data sets is driving progress in many disciplines in an effort to increase the level of activity in big data research at texas a&m university the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) in partnership with the texas a&m division of research texas a&m agrilife research texas a&m health science center (tamhsc) and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) has awarded nearly $350 000 in seed grant funding to seven interdisciplinary research teams for big data seed grants were also awarded for research in the increasingly important field of cybersecurity in an effort to encourage high-impact research within texas a&m and to help foster lasting collaborations and long-term engagement with industry almost $250 000 was given out to five research teams in cybersecurity to be eligible proposals had to include principal investigators or co-principal investigators from at least two different academic disciplines teams selected received up to $50 000 each these seed grants will provide funds to facilitate the formation of research teams and produce preliminary results leading to peer-reviewed publications most importantly the funds should lead to the development of highly competitive research proposals to federal funding agencies and commercial industry partners forty-eight proposals were submitted and seven were selected for funding for big data while 14 were submitted and five were selected for funding for cybersecurity the funded research projects are: awarded seed grants for interdisciplinary research in big data virtual social genome data library: a secure data infrastructure for population informatics principal investigator (pi): dr hye-chung kum texas a&m health science center (tamhsc) co-principal investigators (co-pis): dr michael morrisey tamhsc; dr dilma da silva department of computer science & engineering; and dr mark fossett department of sociology understanding multi-scale hydrology: fusion of big data from ground networks and space-based satellites pi: dr binayak mohandy department of biological & agricultural engineering co-pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering personalized risk assessment through genomic and clinical data integration: a big data approach pi: dr arun sen department of information and operations management co-pis: dr aniruddha datta department of electrical & computer engineering and dr nancy dickey tamhsc learning material properties from in-situ transmission electron microscopy video data pi: dr yu ding department of industrial & systems engineering co-pis: dr tahir cagin department of materials science & engineering and dr lan zhou department of statistics mining satellite measurements to construct a statistical parameterization of rainfall for use in climate models pi: dr ramalingam saravanan department of atmospheric sciences co-pis: dr courtney schumacher department of atmospheric sciences and dr mikyoung jun department of statistics improving understanding of travel behavior and transportation systems through big data analytics pi: dr shawn turner texas a&m transportation institute (tti) co-pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering development of ‘big data scientific workflow management tools for the materials genome initiative: materials galaxy pi: dr rodolfo aramayo department of biology co-pis: dr raymundo arroyave department of materials science & engineering and dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna department of computer science & engineering awarded seed grants for interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity investigating the effects of cyber-attacks on safety and mobility in a connected driving environment pi: dr alireza talebpour department of civil engineering co-pis: dr srinivasa sunkari tti; dr srinivas shakkottai and dr narasimha reddy department of electrical & computer engineering boosting attack identification through correlated system & network monitoring pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering co-pi: dr guofei gu department of computer science & engineering detection classification and mitigation of cybersecurity attacks on synchrophasor systems pi: dr mladen kezunovic department of electrical & computer engineering co-pis: dr jyh-charn liu dr dilma da silva and dr guofei gu department of computer science & engineering fly over wire: coordinated power grid and unmanned aerial system cyber attacks pi: dr robin murphy department of computer science & engineering co-pi: dr le xie department of electrical & computer engineering securing our critical infrastructure networks pi: dr narasimha reddy department of electrical & computer engineering co-pis: dr riccardo bettati department of computer science & engineering and dr pr kumar department of electrical & computer engineering