Attracting funding is the top priority for the new head of Texas AgriLife Research, one of seven state agencies within the sprawling Texas A&M System.
"I can't imagine something more tragic for research scientists than coming to work and not having the funds to do good science," said Craig L. Nessler, who was unanimously approved as director last week by the System Board of Regents.
The College Station-based research agency has a $170 million budget and employs 1,700 people in A&M's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and in 13 regional centers statewide.
Texas AgriLife Research is the state's research agency for agriculture, natural resources and the life sciences. It works with its sister agency within the A&M System, Texas AgriLife Extension Service, which provides community-based education to Texans.
Nessler, 59, held a similar position at the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station at Virginia Tech for the last five years. During his leadership, the school increased from 14th to fifth in research expenditures in agriculture and natural resources, which totaled $91 million in 2008, according to the National Science Foundation.
Texas A&M ranks at No. 8 on the list, with research expenditures in agriculture and natural resources of about $87 million. Nessler said he wants to break into the top five, and possibly one day even rank at the top. The University of Florida at $152 million has that spot.
Mark Hussey, vice chancellor for the Texas A&M System and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said Nessler knows how to work with producers, corporations and government.
"He is an outstanding scientist and a proven administrator who knows how to build a research program," Hussey said in a statement.
Much of the agency's research, officials say, has benefits beyond agriculture, such as developing fruits and vegetables with enhanced disease-fighting compounds, leading innovative studies for renewable energy sources, and improving air and water quality.
Nessler -- who earned a doctorate in plant science in 1976 from Indiana University -- is not new to Texas A&M. In 1979, the then-29-year-old assistant professor of biology taught Botany 101 to 473 students his first semester.
He became a full professor and then associate head of the biology department, until he left in 2000 for Virginia Tech to head the school's department of plant pathology, physiology and weed science.
He returned to Aggieland because many of the challenges the state is facing -- including figuring out more efficient water handling and how to make agriculture more environmentally sustainable -- are global concerns, Nessler said.
It's an industry with a future as relevant as ever, he said.
"I like to think that mankind has great imagination and the ability to think and do great things," Nessler said. "But it's agriculture that allows us to fill our belly while we're doing that thinking."
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