TAMEST Board of Directors Appoints New Leadership
The TAMEST Board of Directors is proud to announce the appointment of Ganesh Thakur, Ph.D. (NAE), University of Houston, as Board President and Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D. (NAM), Baylor College of Medicine, as Board Vice President. Both will serve a two-year term beginning February 4, 2025.
Dr. Thakur is a Distinguished Petroleum Engineering and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Professor at the Cullen College of Engineering and Director for Energy Industry Partnerships at the University of Houston (UH). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. In addition, Dr. Thakur has previously served as TAMEST Vice President, TAMEST Treasurer, and TAMEST Treasurer-elect. He is also the former President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers International, representing over 125,000 members worldwide.
“I am honored to become President of TAMEST and love the collaborative spirit of the organization, which allows prominent research leaders across the state to come together to deliberate and support research in medicine, engineering, science, and technology,” Dr. Thakur said. “TAMEST has always supported the best and brightest in our state, and I look forward to helping carry on its mission while continuing to develop opportunities for the next generation of scientific leaders within the state of Texas, the US, and worldwide.”
Dr. Walker is a Professor and Director of the Center for Precision Environmental Health at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has previously served as TAMEST Treasurer and TAMEST Treasurer-Elect. She was also a 2012 TAMEST Protégé.
“I look forward to stepping into the role of Vice President at TAMEST and help advance the important work happening in our state,” Dr. Walker said. “More than ever, it is important to take a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional approach to science and research in our state. We are stronger together and I am in constant awe of the innovative and life changing research taking place here. It is an honor to support it any way I can.”
The TAMEST Board President and Vice President help coordinate and guide the TAMEST Board of Directors in planning strategy, programs and communications.
The Board also welcomed three new members in 2025: Stephen A. Fuselier, Ph.D. (NAS), Southwest Research Institute; Duojia “DJ” Pan, Ph.D. (NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center; and Kenneth S. Ramos, M.D., Ph.D. (NAM), Texas A&M Health.
Dr. Pan will serve as Treasurer-Elect of TAMEST and Selda Gunsel, Ph.D. (NAE), Shell, will serve as Treasurer. Kim Orth, Ph.D. (NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center, will serve as TAMEST Secretary.
The TAMEST Board of Directors is composed of members from each of the National Academies: National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences. Board members serve a three-year rotating term, with several new members elected each year.
The TAMEST Board also recognizes and thanks David E. Daniel, Ph.D. (NAE), The University of Texas at Dallas, who has served on the Executive Committee for the last six years and is retiring from the Board this year. Dr. Daniel helped steer the organization’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, led a Department of Defense project to document and catalogue expertise in our state and stewarded the historic expansion of the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Awards as well as helped create the Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship and Hill Prizes.
He also hosted our two-part Natural Hazards Summit with the University of Houston and Texas Tech University. He will continue to serve as the Chair of the Hill Prizes Committee.
Other board members retiring in 2025 include: Helen Piwnica-Worms, Ph.D. (NAM, NAS), The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who served as Secretary since 2020; Board Member Chau-Chyun Chen, Sc.D. (NAE), Texas Tech University; and Board Member José N. Onuchic, Ph.D. (NAS), Rice University.
TAMEST also gives special thanks to Brendan Lee, M.D., Ph.D. (NAM), Baylor College of Medicine, who served as President for the last two years and will now become Past President. Dr. Lee was the first former Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award Recipient to serve as President of TAMEST. He helped the organization expand to include six new member institutions and led the development of a new strategic initiative to identify and nominate highly-qualified candidates to the National Academies.
Dr. Lee also helped to steer the creation of the Hill Prizes, which recognize and advance top Texas innovators and researchers whose work could have significant impact on science and society. After an incredibly successful first year of the prizes under Dr. Lee’s leadership, Lyda Hill Philanthropies committed over $10 million in funding to continue the prize program through 2027, with six prizes per year of $500,000 each. In addition, at least $1 million in discretionary research funding is being allocated by Lyda Hill Philanthropies on an ad hoc basis to highly ranked applicants and finalists not selected as recipients.
Both the Board and staff thank Dr. Lee for his outstanding leadership and dedication to TAMEST. View the full list of current Executive Committee and Board Members here.
The new 2025 TAMEST Executive Committee will be:
President: Ganesh C. Thakur, Ph.D. (NAE), University of Houston
Vice President: Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D. (NAM), Baylor College of Medicine
Past President: Brendan Lee, M.D., Ph.D. (NAM), Baylor College of Medicine
Secretary: Kim Orth, Ph.D. (NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center
Treasurer: Selda Gunsel, Ph.D. (NAE), Shell
Treasurer-Elect: Duojia Pan, Ph.D. (NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center
Learn more about Drs. Thakur and Walker:
Ganesh Thakur, Ph.D. (NAE)
Dr. Thakur is a Distinguished Petroleum Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor at the Cullen College of Engineering and Director for Energy Industry Partnerships at University of Houston (UH). He is President and Global Advisor at Thakur Services, Inc. and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Thakur is also a recipient of the Governor’s University Research Initiative (GURI) grant, which helped bring him to UH where he is helping lead the nation in cutting-edge research and further elevating future generations of students and faculty while spearheading new breakthroughs in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, all of which are crucial to the long-term success of the Texas economy.
Dr. Thakur’s current research interests include a multi-disciplinary, innovative, and integrated approach to Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) – a means to combat climate change, the recovery of oil and gas through research of CO2 – EOR (enhanced oil recovery), water injection, and integrated reservoir management for conventional & unconventional reservoirs.
He has published over 100 journal articles and conference papers and holds five (5) patents. In August 2024, Dr. Thakur received the Governor’s University Research Initiative Distinguished Researcher award.
Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D. (NAM)
Dr. Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D. is the Director of the Center for Precision Environmental Health at Baylor College of Medicine, where she holds the Alkek Presidential Chair in Environmental Health and is a Professor in the departments of Molecular & Cell Biology, Medicine, and Molecular & Human Genetics. Dr. Walker is internationally recognized for her work in environmental health and elucidation of molecular mechanisms of disease. In 2016 she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and has been recognized with the Roy O. Greep Laureate Award from the Endocrine Society, Leading Edge in Basic Science Award from the Society of Toxicology (SOT), and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American College of Toxicology. In addition to her own extramurally funded research program, Dr. Walker also directs two large multi-institutional training and research for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences: the T32 Training in Precision Environmental Health Sciences (TPEHS) Program and the P30 Gulf Coast Center for Precision Environmental Health (GC-CPEH).
Dr. Walker has over 30 years of leadership experience in both research and administrative capacities. Previous elected and appointed leadership roles include election President of the Society of Toxicology, appointment to both the Board of Scientific Advisors and Board of Scientific Councilors for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and service as the founding Chair of the Systemic Injury from Environmental Exposures (SIEE) Study Section for NIH. Dr. Walker has also served on numerous Advisory Panels, Committees and Working Groups for the National Academies, and provided guidance on external advisory and scientific advisory boards for foundations, academic organizations and government agencies. She currently serves on the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences (NAEHS) Council of NIEHS, and the Fredrick National Labs Advisory Council (FNLAC) for the NCI. She is also a member (and Past-Chair) of the Research Advisory Council for Gulf War Veterans Illnesses (RAC-GWVI) for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Chair of the Programmatic Panel for the Kidney Cancer Research Program (KCRP) of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) of the Department of Defense.
